Nowhere to run, nowhere to hide

So Google and Facebook have been playing fast and lose with your personal data huh? Surprise, surprise. They were given a free gift and no one told them they couldn’t play with it until it was too late. Every time you click “yeah whatever” on the terms and conditions page for your latest app you’re twitching yourself even further into the web. Most people live online now because it makes sense to, but have you ever considered what happens if you want to undo the digital footprints you are leaving behind? Data is a commodity and is going to be one of the most valuable commodities of the 21^st Century after all the ivory and tiger gall bladders have been collected.

People have gotta make a living and they need you. And now they know where you live. Online anyway. The world is a village and you are its idiot because you made friends with those acquaintances you bumped into via friends of your partner’s cousin’s friend and, because of some links to some historical Marilyn Manson gigs in your news feed, they now want to out you as an aethiest to their Mormon Facebook community that keeps spamming your inbox with invitations to join them. Or the time you got tagged in that photo in a restaurant with your girlfriend’s friend’s boyfriend, who your boss recognised as someone he sacked in a previous job - and now he’s looking at you funny, just when you need him as a referee for your dream job. The grapevine produces instant fruit. It’s complicated, is it not, trying to tell the people who are messing up your life to bog off without looking like as asshole (for eternity) in front of the people you do care about.

If honesty is a dangerous thing, how about hiding behind a fake persona? Worth a try if you can get away with it, but don’t let the guys from Catfish find you. Plenty of people stretch the truth online, to some pretty outrageous extents. Why, it won’t be long before some mad musician is claiming they're acting under the influence of aliens. First impressions are almost certainly not what they seem, so think carefully when you’re weighing up those friend requests. Those hot photos are probably just a front.

But it’s all so tempting and it’s available instantly. Or instantly after you give them your credit card details that is. Then after you've signed up you find the glossy hooks on the front page are pure eye candy. All sugar coat and no filling. Like a drunk tourist in Amsterdam, you’re being played every time you venture online. A decent set of digital blinkers are a must have. How many times have you gone looking for stuff online and by the end of the night, not only achieved nothing, but ended up with a whole lot more you never thought of to chase down tomorrow.

Then there’s the whole business about business. You’ve gotta be upfront with the government and the bank and all the other corporations that have you by the short and curlies. Mess up your official identity and you’re life will vanish before your very eyes. They don’t pay money in little brown envelopes anymore. No bank account, no life. Even homeless people are struggling in a cash-free society, but that’s where you’ll be if you screw up. Is that really the only way left to retain your privacy?

Big data = bigger control. And you thought aliens were scary.

Now I know what you’re thinking – what has this got to do with rock n roll? Not a whole lot – this is a shameless plug for some of the ideas my little guys have been throwing out on their albums. Try these tunes on for size:

The best thing about the 60's

You can say a lot of things about the 1960s and a lot of people have, but for me the best thing about the 1960s was still the music. Without the music you wouldn’t have the cultural revolution and all the icons that go with it. But having said that, a lot of the music produced in the 60s was pretty horrid and it hasn’t stood up too well over time. In fact, most of the key figures in 60s music actually annoy the hell out of me.

Bob Dylan – what the hell is he on about? His voice barely rises above the spoken word and his harmonica playing is like nails on a blackboard. There are a handful of his songs I can deal with but on the whole, too much to say and no blues to give it any feeling. Icon one down.

The Grateful Dead? OMFG no. Apparently you had to see them live to appreciate them. The tabs would have helped too so you could at least watch the light show, because musically they are so lame they are lifeless. Mock soul vocals, pomped out lyrical drivel and wimped out guitar solos that go on and on and on and on without achieving anything. All the Dead Heads that have followed them around for 50 years qualify for a big three-foot-high, gold-plated get-a-life trophy. Icon two down.

Jefferson Airplane. I own a copy of Surrealistic Pillow. It has a lot of good songs and a good atmosphere that was lost on everything else they did subsequently. Their biggest problem, apart from Marty Balin’s stoned out, mock soul vocals, is the fact that Jorma Kaukonen came up with THE worst guitar sound in recorded history. Whoever told him that putting an extra pick-up on a semi acoustic guitar then feeding it into a fuzz box was a good idea should have been shot. It produced the tinniest lead guitar sound imaginable and it has the same effect on the nervous system as Bob Dylan’s harmonica. Surrealistic Pillow is good because there are very few guitar solos on it and those they do are played clean. Everything they did subsequently is plagued by Jorma and Marty’s shortcomings. I don’t want to sink the boot in too much because their song writing is so good, but I honestly find most of their stuff unlistenable. Icon three down.

So who do you like Alvis? Come on. You spent most of the last post railing against the state of the Universe - tell us something good already.

Okay, okay. Sinking the boot into icons is actually a lot of fun, but I’ll get back on topic. And I didn’t even get around to the Beatles.

I’ll spend the rest of this post hooking you up with my favourite tracks from the 60’s. Yes tracks. Because in a lot of cases it’s just the odd track that people did that floats my boat, not their overall legend or output (with the exception of Jimi, but that’s a given – they could dig him up now and he’d still be cooler than anyone else treading the boards). So here goes. In no particular order, you need to hear these:

Section 43 – Country Joe and the Fish. Not the version on their first album, but the one on their first EP. If any 1966 track qualifies as ‘psychedelic’ this is it. The whole thing seems to come from a place further than far east, and it sounds like it is being played in a key of its own. It’s actually just an ordinary minor key, but the languid baseline uses a musical language outside anything ‘rock’ had produced up to that point, and ever since too for that matter. Truly music to trip to. Even the silly country twang in the middle makes sense in this world.

A Beacon from Mars – Kaleidoscope. Music to trip to is a theme across these tracks actually. This is the title track from Kaleidoscope’s second album, recorded in 1968. What is particularly mind-blowing about this track is that the band recorded it  live in the studio. Starting out barely audible with a slow take on Howling Wolf’s Smokestack Lightning it develops over 12 and half minutes into a nocturnal journey through forgotten parts of America and outer/inner space. It simmers and bubbles away with a hypnotic momentum, highlighted by an incredible feedback solo halfway through. This is one of my favourite pieces of music full stop.

Music – Kaleidoscope. Not the same Kaleidoscope as above, but I couldn’t resist putting them both in. This is the English band of the same name but of very different flavour. These guys were serious intellectuals, and this is what you get when you let four Cambridge types loose in a studio with a bunch of tabs, a phaser unit, and some musty opera samples. Not as pompous and dated as it sounds, it’s actually a genuine assault on the senses. Another pure one-off.

Wind Chimes – Mad River. Not the version on their first EP this time, but the one on their first album. The EP version has some inexplicable Hare-Krishna chants in the middle that just piss me off. The album version has none of that and features some incredibly deep ‘acid rock’ guitar soloing across it. ‘Acid rock’ actually just translates to the use of minor keys in a rock setting but what the hey. Everything needs a good marketing term doesn’t it. Their first album is the best thing that came out of San Francisco in the late 60’s and is recommended in its entirety. Laurence Hammond is one of hippiedom’s best vocalists and all of these guys were seriously talented on their instruments of choice. The only draw back is that the album was mastered at the wrong speed so it’s a bit chipmunked, but there is probably a speed corrected version available by now so get googlin’.

1983, A Merman I Should Turn to be – Jimi Hendrix. No sinking the boot in here. Jimi is, was and always will be, my main man. Ironically this track isn’t full of guitar playing – it’s Jimi stretching out in the studio in his favourite sci-fi/fututistic/fantasy mode, creating a movie for the mind. Almost every instrument is played by Jimi overlaid track by track, including wind noises made by his mouth. I have listened to this in a lot of different settings in a lot of different states. If I get the choice it will be what I listen to on my death bed. It’s THAT good.

Mommy, What’s a Funkadelic? – Funkadelic. Yes indeed – we need some funk in here. This just scrapes in on topic as it came out late 1969. The first track on Funkadelic’s beyond-mere-classic first album has weed smoke wafting off it as soon as you put it on. The album should have come with its own little bag. Slow paced and kinda sleazy, it hits the spot whenever you are in the mood for something a little warped. The only drawback is the thin guitar sound and slightly out of time drums in places – but who knows, that might have been intentional (or unavoidable).

The Fool – Quicksilver Messenger Service. One of the common features across these tracks is the lack of vocals or lyrical content (Funkadelic don’t really write lyrics!). This one is the only ‘song’ in the list, but it’s a long one, clocking in at around eleven minutes. The lyrics and vocals aren’t the most memorable feature it has to be said. The high notes are cause for any cats in ear shot to run out the door, but these guys were jammers so give them a break. It’s guitars to the fore this time. Brilliant solos all across it, with a nice little percussive wah-wah break taking it to places a little other-worldy. Spaced out tarot-rock anyone?

It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue – The 13^th Floor Elevators. What happens when you take a Dylan song, give it some decent vocals and overlay it with floating guitar lines of the sort the Grateful Dead can only dream of? You get this. I had to include an Elevators track because they are genuine 60’s icons for all the right reasons – chemical overindulgence, free thinking and musical talent taken to illogical extremes with an enduring cult following to match. Roky Erikson is a survivor of bizarre proportions given what he put himself through in the late 60s, and he was still able to put out stand up music into the 1980s when all of his contemporaries had either sold out or completely lost the (musical) plot. This track is from their second LP Easter Everywhere – a work of beauty that stirred the frantic garage rock of their classic debut into a smoother paste without wasting the crucial blues chunks. If they had kept it together they would have been huge, but they burnt out and joined the canon of 60s what-might-have-beens instead. Sad, but almost inevitable.

Trust Us – Captain Beefheart and His Magic Band. I need to double check when this came out but it was before Trout Mask Replica and that was 1969 so I think we’re good. The list ends with the most indescribable song. Everything that makes the good Captain great is included here. Lyrics that sound profound, but are really just nonsense. Bluesy guitar licks and wild production. It sounds mad and it probably is (although word has it the Captain was putting it on most of the time). It makes me laugh every time.

I’ve left out tracks by Frank Zappa, Fleetwood Mac and Santana because their best stuff starts around 1970, and none of it has the same vibe as the above, mainly because the atmosphere of lysergic experimentation that produced them was starting to fade away.

As usual I’ll try and link these back to our stuff. In reality its something of a stretch this time around, although we aren’t strangers to slow, spaced out instrumentals so I don’t feel too dishonest. Try Nullarbor and Void and Light Well on Posts from Planet Earth as a starting point. They probably come up to the belly button of the above tracks. And phasers and samples? – Well, that we can do!

Posts from Planet Earth on Amazon, I-Tunes, Spotify, Deezer and Google Play.

The Hopkinsville Goblins Are Back! on: Amazon, Deezer, iTunes, Spotify, Apple Music and Google Play. Or check them out on Youtube or from any of the purveyors of fine sounds listed on this site

Paypal users can check us out (literally) on Bandcamp.

Scorpios suck and other slices of cosmic wisdom

Hi folks 

It’s been a long time between posts. I’ve had to deal with massive amounts of shit in my day job which has taken me out of, er… life, for months. I’ll spare you the nasty details, but what it boils down to is that scorpios suck. I have known a few, and they all seem hell bent on ruining my life. I know that’s a sweeping generalisation based on a pseudo-science, but it’s true – you can tell one of these schmucks a mile away. People who know about astrology will tell you the essential features of each star sign. Librans are vague fence-sitters, cancerians are evasive egotists, taurians are blunt battlers, but let me tell you about scorpios. They are pedantic, unreasonable, hypocritical, dogmatic, righteous and underhanded, and in 99 cases out of 100, WRONG about whatever it is they feel so strongly about. They will tell you what they think about you to your face while pulling strings behind your back to pull away the carpet. They should all stick to working as parking wardens given their attitude, but unfortunately they always aim for the top.

You would think that some of the most driven and famous figures in history would be scorpios given their attitude, but guess what – there are none. That’s because people can see their shortcomings and refuse to give them what they want. Fun fact: Hilary Clinton is a scorpio. She thought she should be given the presidency not once but twice because it was her right and lost out both times. The second time she lost to the biggest idiot in world political history, which goes to show just how much people can’t stand a scorpio. That’s a source of endless gall for them, and it just fuels their vindictiveness even further. Now our Hils is reduced to writing bitter after-the-fact books and going on talk shows to try and deflect the blame away from herself onto everyone else.

I’ve been dealing with not one, but two of these creeps and it’s been a massive distraction from what is really important, like my little guys accumulated wisdom and taste in beats.

Even more than a thin slice of astrology, my little guys would like to offer you three pieces of wisdom from the depths of the universe that will help you get by. 

1.            Reject all forms of organised religion.

2.            Technology is not necessarily your friend.

3.            There is much, much more going on than meets the eye.

The Hopkinsville Goblins try to sneak this into their music one way or another without trying to ram it down your throats, but here is our chance to expand on it, so please indulge us for a minute if you will be so kind.

Religion is superstition and ignorance gussied up as the truth. It seeks to nullify the pain and fear in life with the promise of ludicrous rewards and over-the-top punishments when your life is over. When combined with politics its pure poison. It gives the ruthless and power hungry the ultimate weapon in control, and the greedy and pious the philosophies they need to crush their fellow man without conscience. My profit’s greater than your profit and my prophet’s greater than your prophet. It makes the righteous more righteous and the gullible more gullible. 

Richard Dawkins is my man when it comes to telling it like it is, but at the same time, backing science as an alternative isn’t 100% foolproof either.

I have been looking at developments in artificial intelligence lately. I know someone that was at a tech conference recently that featured music composed by a living person side by side with a composition put together using A.I. They reckoned they couldn’t tell the difference. Which is what makes A.I. simultaneously exciting and scary. Check out the recent Bladerunner reboot for a pretty believable vision of A.I. in the future. The fact that the hero is an artificial being with an avatar house companion seems pretty normal in this context and its something you might see in your own neighbourhood in the not too distant future. Like I say, fascinating and a little bit unnerving. Unless they insist on inscribing capital A’s on android’s foreheads a la Red Dwarf it could end up being quite a crowded, confusing little world. There was an episode of Dr Who back when John Pertwee was the Doctor in which an evil mind programmes an army of android shop dummies to act as his terrorist army. Scary as hell. Unrealistic? Ter-mi-nat-ors ne-ver stop. Just wait for the first A.I. soldiers to start rolling of the production line and then scoff at my cynicism. I give it two years before the first ones are delivered.

On the bright side, lonely men everywhere will no doubt benefit from some Cherry 2000 style action. I’m sure they are working on that right now.

The best use of tech would be to tap into the sources of energy we can’t sense. The more tech dependent we get, the less aware we get, so tech can at least do us a favour and redress the balance. People used to be aware of so much more because they were closer to the natural rhythms of the planet. The further we get from those rhythms the more vulnerable and self-destructive we get. Global warming is a fact folks. So is the plastic island in the Pacific. If you ever visit the pristine white sand beaches of Thailand and Indonesia try not to step on the crust of plastic debris on the high tide mark. When the world gets sick it redresses the balance by putting pressure on what’s causing the problem. In this case that’s us people. Your mother is coming to get you.

This has been another Hopkinsville Goblins public service announcement. Thank you for your kind indulgence. There is a fashion among musicians to thank God for their inspiration. I thank a bunch of little green men. I don’t see the difference.

Posts from Planet Earth on Amazon, I-Tunes, Spotify, Deezer and Google Play.

The Hopkinsville Goblins Are Back! on: Amazon, Deezer, iTunes, Spotify, Apple Music and Google Play. Or check them out on Youtube or from any of the purveyors of fine sounds listed on this site

Paypal users can check us out (literally) on Bandcamp.

Stuck outside Kaikoura with the space nomad blues again

For those unfamiliar, Kaikoura is a little tourist town on the east coast of New Zealand’s South Island, famous for whale watching and crayfish eating. More recently for a massive earthquake that luckily killed no one but demolished a significant amount of road and railway. The fact that hardly anyone lives there was a plus on this occasion. It’s also famous for a UFO encounter that nearly saw my little guys busted in 1978. A still from the film taken by the Aussie film crew commissioned to track ‘em down appears on the cover of Posts from Planet Earth. It’s the closest you’ll get to a band photo given how camera shy my little guys are.

You may wonder why we don’t play live, but really. Do we look like Alvin and the Chipmunks?

As it happens, contact with people diminishes their powers, so they don’t have much choice. But all this hiding and dodging from contact with people is a source of conflict for them, since they love people so much. That, and where to do your laundry between planets. It’s a source of the blues in other words, proving that the blues is indeed a universal thing.

“The blues is a low down shaking chill” – Preaching Blues, Robert Johnson 1936

Robert Johnson wasn’t the first to record the blues but he hit the nail on the head with that line. That feeling you get when you realise that what you need and what you are capable of given the reality of the world just don't add up. And then having to deal with that. It’s a feeling that’s been around as long as there have been people, there just wasn’t a recognisable way of communicating it through music until the culture created by ongoing deprivation, of people supposedly freed from slavery, found its voice in the southern states of the USA.

So what is it all about? Well the blues isn’t about being poor and depressed. It’s actually an expression of strength in the face of adversity, combined with deep sense of righteousness in the face of ingrained injustice. The expression is sometimes aimed at society as a whole, but most often it exists on a personal level when the deprivation in question forces people to prey on each other. The blues are a personal thing. Anyone can have them, and everyone experiences them differently, but the feeling is the same.

"You without me is like heavy metal without the blues notes: you'll never go platinum" - It's a Doggy Dogg World, Snoop Dogg 1993

The blues have developed from their acoustic origins via amplification and sophisticated arrangements into a whole range of forms. The delivery may be different but the basic sound and feeling doesn’t change. It’s spread throughout culture like the vines in a Mark Twain novel. Son House informed Howling Wolf who inspired Lynyrd Skynyrd who are echoed by the Kings of Leon. And so it goes on a hundred other branches. How do you know it’s the blues? You can feel it. And it generally feels good.

For the last year or two I’ve been going on a backwards journey through time. Since “modern music” (whatever that is) is stuck on a treadmill of corporatised, technology enhanced, sanitised tedium I figured I’d try and find the source of the Nile. It wasn’t hard. Since all the earliest blues recordings are now in the public domain you can find them everywhere at budget prices. But if you want to understand them, you can’t go past the Not Now and One Day reissue labels. These guys know their stuff, and while their sleeve notes are limited to about 400 words, you don’t need to read endlessly to get it. Too many words only guilds the lily. You just need to get the gist then listen. How many of you know the difference between East and West Coast blues? I didn’t realise there was one either till I got into their compilation series. Likewise Delta blues versus Texas blues and so on.

At this point I want to say that a sainthood should be on the way to Jack White. While I never could get into the White Stripes, the work he is doing now on preserving the earliest blues for posterity gives him maximum points in my book. It seems that it’s all down to individuals with a heart and money to achieve things that governments used to on the behalf of the society they are paid to maintain. It’s an interesting development, and it sort of restores a little faith in humanity in the face of billionaires crying poor and sucking up the wealth of the many. Urgh! Don’t get me started.

So where is this all leading? Uuh – same place it usually does – Hopkinsville Goblins tracks. In this case the link is back to the bluesier sounds: “Shiny Pebbles”, “Soaking up the Suds” and “Home Run” on Posts from Planet Earth and “Even the Rats have Pissed Off”, “Electric RV Blues” and “Easter” on The Hopkinsville Goblins Are Back! "Electric RV" may not sound like a blues song on casual inspection, using as it does the fretless bass voice on a Roland drum machine as the anchor, but the themes are the same – separation, struggle, frustration. And humour. Yes, the blues even has room for a laugh at times.

As a last word, for my money the ultimate blues track is “Dark was the Night, Cold was the Ground” by Blind Willie Johnson – it’s Robert Johnson’s lowdown shaking chill expressed in wordless sound. It was recorded in 1927 and blows everything recorded in 2017 out of the water, ourselves included. Don’t believe me? – oh yee of little faith. "Monolith Surfing" on Posts from Planet Earth also aims to use two chords to generate a feeling, but the purpose is different. That one explores deepest outer space, but "Dark was the Night" nails deepest inner.

Posts from Planet Earth on Amazon, I-Tunes, Spotify, Deezer and Google Play.

The Hopkinsville Goblins Are Back! on Amazon, Deezer, iTunes, Spotify, Apple Music and Google Play. Or check them out on Youtube or from any of the purveyors of fine sounds listed on this site

Paypal users can check us out (literally) on Bandcamp.

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!