THE HOPKINSVILLE GOBLINS ARE BACK!

It’s the new album, out now!

It’s been another labour of love for myself and my little guys over the last 13 months. We’ve put together 17 new tracks exploring different sides of existence as we know it, served up in the same bluesy punk-funky rocksteady mixture as Posts from Planet Earth. Except different.

The songs are firmly based on terra firma this time. The Hopkinsville Goblins were confused as to why the human race can never reach its true potential, so they’ve spent more time among us, observing. At times they were disturbed. They think removing greed and power from evil men should be the priority for all people. I told them it’s not that simple. People can’t combine to fight the power if they are worried about where their next meal is coming from. That’s how evil men maintain the ugliness, and that’s not about to change any time soon.

This confusion has created a creative tension between myself and my little guys for the first time. Them reaching for the stars, me keeping them on the ground. They don’t mind. They aren’t petty. Sometimes they seek to inspire. Sometimes they seek to question. But they never seek to deceive.

The Hopkinsville Goblins are back on: Amazon, Deezer, iTunes, Spotify, Apple Music and Google Play. Or check them out on Youtube.
Paypal users can check us out (literally) on Bandcamp.

You can be our guest and skip straight to the links, but just so you know, here's what’s on the album:

The Hopkinsville Goblins are back
You can run, but it’s better if you listen

A cold day in hell
The place is packed but there isn’t a soul in there. Watch your plastic doesn’t melt. A song about those nightspots of nightmares everyone has been to at least once in their lives.

What hit me?
We would never want to be guilty of promoting substances, but there are some bad options out there right now that should be avoided. Don’t play with what you can’t control.

Friday night's alright
Saturday night I get it together, turn my life into a show
Sunday night I lay back down with my head in cotton wool
Monday night I call my friends to find out what they know
Tuesday night’s alright for ironing out your clothes
Wednesday night I’m over the hump with two more days to go
Thursday night’s alright for those reality TV shows
but Friday night’s alright for rock’n’roll

I saw a rocket
Fly me to the moon and I’ll let you share my popcorn

Absolute zero
Absolute zero = not Nought.

Stucco soul
People want to disguise the raw materials that made them, but if you apply a veneer it will eventually crack and peel off.

Amerikaemia (diagnosis dub)
Stripped down version of Amerikaemia with some extra hot sauce

Serf City
Let them eat lamingtons on the last bus home in Serf City. Coming to a neighbourhood near you. Very soon.

There's nothin' new under the sun
It’s true: rock n roll started in the stone age. By now you've met Michael Maroney. This one introduces you to the people on the rest of the album.

Even the rats have pissed off
Rats are clever. They don’t hang around where there’s nothing for them. A song about isolation and dislocation. The blues in other words.

GTO
Our hero works in a menswear store with only shop dummies for company. Everything he does is just a warm up for the weekend. Hey, we’ve all got to earn the bucks to fuel our pleasures.

Lose him
No good to you = no good for you.

Wool blind
You will go blind if you don’t think for yourself.

Electric RV blues
A new gadget doesn’t supply the needs of life. That dot on the horizon isn’t getting any closer. The blues in other words.

Easter
You nearly killed me but you missed again.

Go home!
Like a Mexican child from Texas we would, but we don’t have a home to go to.

Words, music and production by Alvis Impulsive; (P) and (C) Banzona Music 2017

Another year, another book sale

Yes indeed. I’ve got to tell you, I hit the motherlode this year. In the music section amongst the old black and white fan books and the boring rock encyclopaedias, what did I find but this gem: “Rip It Up and Start Again; Postpunk 1978-1984” by Simon Reynolds. It’s probably not much of a find really since it was published in 2005, but I still get a buzz out of going into a warehouse filled with 95% trash and finding the hidden gems scattered among it, so to me this is huge. Best $2 I’ve ever spent. I've scanned my copy for the photo – note colour fading and water marks on the side. Awesome. It was obviously very well-loved prior to me getting my mitts on it. I hope that person went out and started a band off the back of it.

This is a book you need to read. Not only has Mr Reynolds come up with the most informed and informative book on this essential period of music, but he has done it with generous dozes of humour and some great anecdotes. If I am going to criticise it at all I’d say his focus is weighed more towards the indie side of things at the expense of some of the better known artists, but that’s an editorial call he had to make to keep the book manageable. As a result, anyone that veered closer to the mainstream, major label deals and/or international success is more or less side-lined. This means the likes of The Clash, The Psychedelic Furs and XTC only get mentioned in passing. The latter especially get treated pretty shabbily, being dismissed as a skinny-tie new wave band. That’s a crime I find it hard to forgive him for, but otherwise he hits the mark pretty well and leaves plenty of space for you to form your own opinions. That’s the beauty of music. There are no right answers and everyone is free to develop their own reality around it. No one should ever be lambasted for having an opinion different to yours (unless they are completely ignorant of course. Citizens of Dumbfuckistan take note).

One of the best parts of this book is actually the introduction where he produces a vivid assessment of the cultural and political flavour of the times, and describes the burning need for musicians to seize the time they were living in and use it as a launching pad into the future. Just as the counter-culture did in the 60s, postpunk tapped into the zeitgeist of the times and brought it to life. In fact it largely defined it, or at least provided a soundtrack for it. The cold-war, Ronnie and Maggie, unemployment, new technology and future shock. It’s all there in the sounds produced by musicians desperate to capture the changes happening around them. Not escape from them as they did in the 60s. Define them.

The period in question is a distinct time capsule. You can see the start and finish of it all. It kicks off with the Sex Pistols last stand in January 1978 and careers on a wild thrill ride until 1984, when all that was left were the mascara stains on Frankie’s stonewashed jeans. The energy had burned itself out, snuffed by the rise of big money labels and MTV giving people a clear career path to Pop Stardom. Being a creative artist became untenable as the corporates bought up the indies. It was back to the dole queue or Tescos for most. For a sequel, someone needs to write a book covering the wilderness years up to the end of the 20^th Century. It might have been done for all I know. Maybe next year’s book sale. Can’t wait!

One thing that came home reading this book is that postpunk music was deliberately agnostic of its roots. In hindsight that was a big mistake and gave rise to big fat lies like “the early 70s were an embarrassing cultural wasteland” and “the 60s were all about self-indulgent hippy dreamers”. Nothing, of course, is further from the truth, as we all know now from our vantage point nearly 50 years after the fact. Back then though, people’s perspective was a bit distorted. If postpunk hadn’t developed from the Stalinist philosophies of the punk movement it might have soared to even higher levels of achievement than it did. It’s no coincidence that the most enduring postpunk bands were the ones that absorbed their influences from their 60s-70s roots, or from long established cultures in other places like reggae and funk. That’s the lesson my little guys try to get across: you should never cut yourself off from anything. Even the most hideous thing can produce something that influences you – even if it is a lesson to avoid it at all costs and do the opposite. Find out what that sounds like in any of the other posts on this blog:

Who the hell?
Amerikaemia
Serf City
The Hopkinsville Goblins are Back!

Serf City

Nice to see you back. It’s been a while. Apologies for the long gap between posts. I’ve been out in the barn putting the finishing touches on some new material for your listening pleasure. This post is a heads up about the new single release from The Hopkinsville Goblins, “Serf City”, tied to some wider thoughts on the current state of things.

It’s ironic that this is the second release in a row of a political nature given how much my little guys hate politics. They see politics as a surrealist circus at best and a dance of death at worst. The truth probably lies halfway in between. Let’s face it. Democracy is basically a lottery in which you risk giving people you wouldn’t ordinarily piss on the power to control your destiny. I guess it beats fascism, but there are some sliding scales of democracy so you need to be careful what you are talking about. Democracy at best is an illusion derived from the clever use of statistics. There hasn’t been a real mandate for any government to rule in any world power for longer than anyone can comfortably remember. Last year saw the big backlash against this, but the effect was even worse than the cause. Rock to the left, hard place to the right.

This is why the Hopkinsville Goblins have based themselves in New Zealand. It’s so far away from the international centres of madness that you can breathe a little and observe impartially. The flip side of this is that it is so far away from the action that it can be a bit dull.

But have no fear. After the insanity around the world throughout 2016, the good people of New Zealand are now facing their own political circus in September this year. Yes, we get to choose from the same parade of ego-maniacs, carpet-baggers and crooks that have always called parliament home, plus the clutch of do-gooders who try (and fail) to keep it real. All of this taking place while the country slides ever further into third world status. Possibly an exaggeration, but it wouldn’t surprise me if smallpox makes a comeback here first, or some new and unknown super, resistant-to-everything bug busts out here to decimate the tiny population as a warm up to taking down the rest of the planet. Plague and poverty are ours for the taking.

But I digress as usual.

The Hopkinsville Goblins have a new single out. It’s a thinly disguised stab at life in New Zealand’s largest city – a place now so absurdly over-priced that even its own residents can’t afford to live there. For the few that can it’s probably a really nice place to be, although it does tend to rain a lot. For everyone else it’s … well, get the single and you can sing along to the chorus.

Let them eat lamingtons on the last bus home:

I-Tunes, Spotify, Apple Music, Google Play or check it out on Youtube.
 
Taken from the new Hopkinsville Goblins album, out now!

Dub'n XTC

Given recent world events you wouldn’t be blamed for wanting to disappear to another space and time. Somewhere free from megalomaniac billionaires and where Prince, Bowie and Lemmy where still producing the goods. I think I’m still in the denial stage of grief about 2016 as a year. Escape isn’t an option of course and unfortunately you just have to deal with the hand you are dealt.


I’ve been trying to clear some mental space to work in lately. It’s good therapy. My little guys have been leaving me the sketches for some new stuff and I need to have a nice big barn to play in. The easiest way I found of taking your head to another space and time is to immerse yourself in dub. Some might call it escapist, I call it a holiday. And not just in the Jamaican sense of a holiday, (although the best dub obviously has that connecting flight), I mean an otherworldly holiday. The best dub will take you anywhere you want to go. When I listen to serious dub I often find myself wandering in a nocturnal forest where the trees have lost their leaves and a distant city provides the only source of light and noise. I’ve got no idea why – I don’t analyse stuff like that. If it’s good to you why fight it.

Now I know what you are thinking, and no, you don’t have to hit the herbal highway to go places with dub. Legendary dub master King Tubby never touched the stuff when he was working in his studio. The same can’t be said for Lee Perry, but then he was on a planet of his own to start with. What most of the early dub masters had in common was a root in DIY electronics. They were studio technicians interested in manipulating sound with home made devices. They also happened to be in an environment where they largely had the freedom to make their own rules. Being very good at what they did didn’t do any harm either.

Commercially dub is a non-starter. It works best in a live situation. It started out as an add-on to the top hits of the day played at Sound System parties in Jamaica. People wanted to hear an extended groove so they could dance it out some more. That completed, the DJ would talk/sing over the track to take it to wherever the crowd wanted it to go. That gave rise to the whole toaster genre in Jamaican music. Basically a direct parallel to the first rappers at US block parties. The root of it all goes back to the studio and the electronic wizardry applied to turn the rhythm track into a stand-alone piece of music. Let’s face it 3-4 minutes of bass and drums would be nothing without some added highlights, no matter how cool the bassline is.

The first dub LPs were pretty basic affairs along the lines described above. That was until the aforementioned King Tubby and Lee Perry began developing their studio techniques on the rhythm tracks they had open access to in their studios. Pretty soon dub versions were the essential companion to the standard commercial release for any artist’s work, and toasters like I-Roy, Big Youth and U-Roy became established as artists in their own right.

There is enough classic dub available on Youtube to keep you going for the rest of your life. A lot of it consists of vinyl rips off scratchy copies of rare, long out of print LPs, but that isn’t a problem. It does highlight the need to look after your vinyl and get a decent turntable though, but that’s another matter. Start searching on King Tubby, Scientist, Prince Jammy and Lee Perry and go from there. You’ll soon notice that each dub master has their own signature sound that’s as recognisable as a fingerprint.

I hate the concept of ‘the best’, but my favourite dub LP is Slum which features Gregory Isaacs tracks dubbed by Prince Jammy. It’s filed as a Gregory Isaacs LP but his voice hardly ever appears across any of the ten tracks. It’s a brilliant piece of music on its own because of the intricate balance between the studio effects alongside the original tunes and brief vocal snatches. It’s more than simply dub in other words. Lee Perry uses a similar approach, but his works are much denser and less focussed, and his output is so vast it’s hard to know where to start. Scientist and King Tubby are strictly dub. Their dubs are what people think of first when they think of dub as a concept. King Tubby came first but Scientist took it further.

The influence of reggae on the British punk movement in the late 70s is pretty well documented and it’s safe to say it was a symbiotic relationship. The Clash and The Ruts took to it wholeheartedly both musically and culturally. So did The Slits but they were horrid. Others watered it down but managed to produce some worthwhile stuff. But what of dub in all this? Well, it did make it across to Britain too, but its influence wasn’t as far reaching. Its most obvious influence, outside of local reggae outfits, came out in groups like PiL and the Pop Group with a stripped down bass and drums approach to song writing, but there were only really a couple of Jamaican-style British dub masters. Of these Mad Professor is the most prolific, producing a staggering number of LPs over a long period of time, and turning dub into live performance while he was at it. His take on dub is genius along the lines of the Slum LP above – adding as much new stuff as he took away to make each track a new composition in what’s almost a jazz style. Check out any of the twelve volumes of his Dub Me Crazy series to see what I mean. The work of Denis Bovell with dub poet Linton Kwesi Johnston is also essential. This takes toasting into slightly more serious territory, but still delivers the goods at the bottom end.

I'm going to end this very scholarly post with XTC. ‘Why?’ I hear you ask. The reggae influence in XTC’s sound is limited to a couple of singles and some LP tracks, and it’s often so well disguised its unrecognisable, so why bother mentioning them here? Well, they are one of my favourite bands for one reason, but also because of a single side project completed by front man Andy Partridge in 1980 that uses dub principles to produce completely new compositions from mix ups of songs from their first three albums. Andy’s Take Away/Lure of Salvage is a real gem. Why more bands haven’t followed this course is a real mystery. Not having the talent could be one reason, but even Andy never tried to repeat it so perhaps it is just a solitary stroke of genius. Some of the tracks are better than the originals they are taken from, like New Broom which openly competes with their classic single Making Plans for Nigel, and The Rotary that kicks the hell out of its parent Helicopter. As a landmark of creativity the album stands as a little island of madness in a vast ocean of blandness. It’s long out of print but it was released (incompletely) as Explode Together on CD a long time back as an XTC disc. You need to hear it, and you also need to get the three LPs the original tracks come from while you are at it. Plus their fourth album Black Sea just because it’s so good. Did I mention they are one of my favourite bands? Google some live XTC bootlegs to see why they were one of the most dynamic live acts ever as well – they’ll be on Youtube. Most everything is.

As with all these posts there is a link back to Hopkinsville Gobins tracks. Find out why on Amazon, I-Tunes, Spotify, Deezer and Google Play, or from any of the purveyors of fine sounds listed on this site. You can also get your Paypal on at Bandcamp.

Or try before you buy on Soundcloud.

And don’t forget to check out Amerikaemia while you are at it. There will be a dub version of that coming up on their next project.