third / sister lovers

Big Star documented their disintegration during the desperate and dichotomous sessions for this uncommercial, unfinished, shambling, rambling, cult classic.  The band had gone from a quartet on their debut '#1 Record' to a trio on their second album 'Radio City'; but for the recording of their third album, they were to the duo of Alex Chilton and Jody Stephens.  

They returned to Ardent Studios in Memphis to work with producer Jim Dickinson and a revolving door of studio and guest musicians.  Chilton and Stephens were dating sister Lesa and Holliday Aldredge at the time; and the tapes were labelled 'Sister Lovers' as a joke.  The sessions featured Alex Chilton on vocals, guitars, and keyboards; and Jody Stephens on drums and vocals;  with Lesa Aldridge on vocals; Tommy Hoehn on backing vocals; Jim Dickinson on bass guitar, drums, and mellotron; Lee Baker and Steve Cropper on guitar; Richard Rosebrough and Tarp Tarrant on drums; William Murphey, Jimmy Stephens, Tommy Cathey, and Tommy McClure on bass guitar; and Carl Marsh on reeds, woodwinds, synthesizer, and string arrangements.  

Stephens remembers:  “On ‘Third’, the band definitely took a turn.  I was so in the frame of mind of the songs from ‘#1 Record’ and ‘Radio City’, that it took me a while to warm up to some of the new songs. ‘Downs’ was a little out there for me, an exercise in percussion imagination. There was a deflated basketball being hit with stick as a bass-drum effect. The off timing of it all -- and yet it somehow hangs together. With some of those songs, Alex submitted demos with just him singing and playing acoustic guitar, and there were moments when he’d slow down, speed up -- Alex being human in expressing that through his guitar. Jim built things around Alex’s playing. There was a moment when Alex came into the studio with the demo for ‘Kanga Roo’ and said to Jim, ‘OK, produce this, Mr. Producer.’ Jim built the chaotic stuff around it, instead of having Alex adjust his métier so that it was more steady. It’s the only way those songs hung together...There are definitely dark aspects -- ‘Downs,’ ‘Holocaust,’ ‘Kanga Roo’ -- everything has a melancholy air to it. It took me a minute to come around to that record for some of it, but it was a brilliant statement of where Alex was emotionally at the time...I brought in a friend, Carl Marsh, to arrange a string section for a song I wrote, ‘For You’. Carl and Alex hit it off, and Alex started having ideas for strings on other songs. It was the combination of Alex’s imagination for strings and Carl’s arranging talents that created this atmosphere. In ‘Nightime,’ the icy strings set up what Alex’s lyrics were saying...(Ardent engineer) John Fry and Jim Dickinson took a trip to New York to play it for label people like Jerry Wexler and Lenny Waronker in hopes of finding a deal...One of them said, ‘I hope I don’t have to listen to that again.’ It wasn’t warmly received...There was a thought that maybe the album wouldn’t come out, so Alex and I went our separate ways...I thought it was a great record – I thought we made three really good records, but we were pretty much ignored."

Chilton would later confess:    "I didn’t do the billing. That album was sold by the production company, to a record company, that called it what they wanted to. We never titled the record, and we never decided what the group name was. Those things were decided upon three or four years later, as a marketing decision, by the record company that released the album. We certainly were not intending to call ourselves Big Star, if in fact we were intending to call ourselves anything...I think Jody [Stevens] and I were going to hang together, and call ourselves something or other, but we never got around to actually making any final decisions about it...I was just throwing ideas at the wall. The idea was to choose, at the end, what to use. But then, in the end, I was pushed out of the process. The producer, Jim Dickinson, took over the entire thing, and then he chose. That project was taken out of my hands at the critical moment where all decisions about what to use and what not to use were being made. I mean, I was just writing things, and doing things. The plan was to cooperatively decide what got used, but I got pushed out...Nowhere does it conform to what I had in mind at all...I would’ve done a ton of things differently. I could give a thousand examples. There are so many, it’s futile to even start. It has to do with everything, from every mix to every selection of voice track to use, to the selection of tunes. I could probably pick six or seven or eight tunes I would have used, but I think it suffices to say that I was pushed out of the process as soon as the mix-down began...The entire idea of the album was ruined a long time ago...I’m just saying it wasn’t the record I intended to make. I’m not sure what record I did intend to make. I was going to make that decision in the end. As I said, I was throwing ideas left and right, and I was going to choose them later. But I was never allowed to do that. "

'Third / Sister Lovers' wasn't released for four years.  The test pressings that Ardent made were deemed to have no commercial potential and shelved.  When PVC acquired the tapes, they gave the album its first official release in 1978.  It never charted; but has gained acclaim as an influential underground masterpiece.  

'Third / Sister Lovers'
full album:
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x25dg4u_big-star-third-sister-lovers-full-album_music

Big Star: Third/Sister Lovers (Full Album) by afieled

00:00 Kizza Me
02:44 Thank You Friends
05:51 Big Black Car
09:28 Jesus Christ
12:08 Femme Fatale
15:39 O, Dana
18:15 Holocaust
22:05 Kangaroo
25:52 Stroke It Noel
27:58 For You
30:42 You Can't Have Me
33:53 Nightime
36:46 Blue Moon
38:54 Take Care

briefcase full of blues

The Blues Brothers started a blues revival when they opened up their 'Briefcase Full of Blues'.  John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd developed their characters "Joliet" Jake and Elwood Blues as part of the sketch comedy variety show 'Saturday Night Live'.  Aykroyd says the idea began early on in his relationship with Belushi when he brought him to a small blues club he ran in Toronto:    "So we're sitting there…the windows all fogged up, and John listens and says, 'Hey, what's that music?  Well, I say, 'John, that's a local blues band,' and he said, 'Wow, that's great.' 'Well, it's just local…you come from Chicago, which is the home of the blues.' But John said he was into heavy metal, and I said, 'Well, you can teach me 'bout that, and I'll teach you about the blues.'  So we started listening to this record, and Howard Shore says, 'Yeah, you guys should start a group. You could call yourselves the Blues Brothers.' So that early, even back then, before we went to 'Saturday Night Live' and were hired there, we were thinking about doing a band together."  A year later, when they were reunited in New York, John told Dan:  "'Hey, remember when we were in Toronto and we were talking about doing some music? Well, I got these blues albums...Oh, yeah....He said we should pick a couple of songs…. 'You could play harp, I could sing.'  I said, 'Who's going to back us up?' and he said, 'Ah, we'll figure that out.'…So we began together to figure out songs we could do effectively that wouldn't sound too bad...So we got the suits from Lenny Bruce, ("just to fool the straights") the shades and hat came from a record that John Lee Hooker had called House of the Blues.  All of a sudden, we had material that we could do. We had a look. So how and where were we going to play?"      Willie Nelson and his band were playing at New York's Lone Star Café and invited the Blues Brothers down and they would back them up:  "We did five songs the first night, and it was a big hit; and the next night it was a bigger hit and the next night it was an even bigger hit. We did three nights, with the briefcase on the arm, and John would unlock it and out would come the harmonica…we thought to ourselves, We really have something here."


Belushi revealed:    "It's really strange.  I used to play drums in bands in Wheaton. Stones-Beatles stuff. It was the most fun I've ever had, playing parties and garages. Then this concert happens and it's like living out your fantasy. I never even listened to the blues. Shit, I listened to more Sabbath and Led Zeppelin in one week...Even though I grew up in Chicago and I guess it was all around me, I didn't really hear it. Not until I was in Eugene [Oregon] last year shooting 'Animal House'...There were a lot of rainy nights with nothing to do and this guy I met there, Curtis Salgado, began playing me all this music. It was fucking unbelievable. I was starving for it and Curtis kept asking me if I was really interested. Interested. I couldn't stop playing the stuff! Magic Sam, Lightnin' Hopkins, Junior Wells--I walked around playing that shit all the time. I bought hundreds of records and singles. And then I knew Danny had played the harp in Canada, and I always could sing, so we created the Blues Brothers...The music we play--Stax, and Chicago blues--all of it is music we like to listen to. I just can't handle all the pre-programmed, processed fuckin' disco. There's no feeling in that shit. Our music isn't perfect but it's emotional...We have to play this or we can't hear it.! And it really should be heard. There just aren't that many places you can go and see the blues any more."

'Briefcase Full of Blues' was recorded live at the Universal Amphitheater, L.A. when the group opened for Steve Martin.  The album was produced by Bob Tischler with Paul Shaffer as musical director and features John Belushi as Joliet Jake Blues on lead vocals and Dan Aykroyd as Elwood Blues on harmonica and lead vocals on "Rubber Biscuit";   with Paul "The Shiv" Shaffer on hammond organ, wurlitzer electric piano and acoustic piano; Steve "The Colonel" Cropper and Matt ""Guitar" Murphy on guitar; Donald "Duck" Dunn on bass guitar; Steve "Getdwa" Jordan on drums; Lou "Big Lou" Marini and Tom "Triple Scale" Scott on tenor sax; Alan "Mr. Fabulous" Rubin on trumpet; and Tom "Bones" Malone on tenor sax, baritone sax, trombone, and trumpet.  Horns were arranged by Tom Malone and background vocals by Elwood Blues, Steve Jordan, Lou Marini, Tom Malone, Al Rubin, Tom Scott and Paul Shaffer. 


'Briefcase Full of Blues'  reached number one on the Billboard 200 and went double platinum, spawning two top forty hits and eventually inspiring a motion picture.  The album was dedicated to Curtis Salgado. 









http://bluesbrothersofficialsite.com/








King Bee on SNL on January 17, 1976
http://www.bluesbrotherscentral.com/multimedia/video/video-jake-elwood/king-bee/

The Blues Brothers - King Bee by OReily0201





Hey Bartender
http://www.bluesbrotherscentral.com/multimedia/video/video-jake-elwood/hey-bartender-snl/






'B' Movie Boxcar Blues





Soul Man


Blues Brothers- Soul Man (SNL) from Cole Williams on Vimeo.







'The Blues Brothers' motion picture features musical performances from James Brown, Cab Calloway, Aretha Franklin, Ray Charles, and John Lee Hooker.   .  The album was dedicated to Curtis Salgado.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5NnapHZP8mQ&list=TLRSc7Zcsr8co













'Briefcase Full of Blues'
full album:




1. Opening: I Can't Turn You Loose (Otis Redding) (0:00) 
2. Hey Bartender (Floyd Dixon) (1:49)
3. Messin' With The Kid (Mel London) (4:50)
4. (I Got Everything I Need) Almost (Donnie Walsh) (8:26)
5. Rubber Biscuit (Charles Johnson and Adam R. Levy) (11:16)
6. Shot Guns Blues (Donnie Walsh) (14:14)
7. Groove Me (King Floyd) (19:38)
8. I Don't Know (Willie Mabon) (23:24)
9. Soul Man (Isaac Hayes and David Porter) (27:40)
10. "'B' Movie Box Car Blues" (Delbert McClinton) (31:08)
11. Flip, Flop, And Fly (Charles E. Calhoun and Lou Willie Turner) (35:16)
12. Closing: I Can't Turn You Loose (Otis Redding) (38:55)

'Briefcase Full of Blues' 
liner notes by Miami Mitch Glazer:   
"Jake had a vision. It was his, the only real one he'd ever had, and he clung to it. There had been too many messy gas station holdups with only some green stamps and a case of Valvoline to show for the risk. Joliet Jake had always been full of schemes. But this was different; it played across his tiled cell wall 24 hours a day. And the ending was always the same – Jake and his younger brother Elwood cruising out of Calumet City, Ill., with the sun in their shades and a full tank of gas. He absentmindedly rubbed his Buddha belly; even on a diet of jail food and Chesterfields, Jake had gained weight. Someday they’d have a penthouse on Lake Shore Drive … float around with bourbons and blonds. It was out there for the taking and Jake could smell it like ozone in damp air.
It had always been the blues. Even back in the Rock Island City orphanage (that sweaty kid factory with the black windows) Jake and Elwood were saved by the music. actually, saved by a gray-haired janitor everybody called Curtis. He wore these sinister midnight shades, a narrow black tie and a porkpie hat that he kept pushed back on his head. Curtis wrapped his waxy brown hands around his guitar neck and played the most dangerous blues this side of Robert Johnson. The nuns scorched their days with holy threats and Curtis rescued them by night. Down in the coolness of his basement he taught the brothers the blues.
Silent Elwood never did put more than two sentences together, but all those lost words burned from his Special 20 blues harp. And Joliet tore that voice from some hidden darkness, twisting his chubby body, snarling at the heavens, a born sinner. They used the basement because it was secret and because the echo gave them a nice dirty sound: Howlin’ Wolf and Little Walker, slapping like a bad dream around the chilly room. and then one night, Jake brought in a gleaming E string he said came from Elmore James’ guitar. He held it tight and as it glowed in the bulb light, Jake sliced Elwood’s middle finger and then his own. Now the solo boys with soul in their blood were brothers. Jake and Elwood Blues … the Blues Brothers.
When Jake could keep himself out of jail, Elwood took off from the Taser factory and the brothers rode the state bare. They played everywhere: after-hours clubs, black-light bars. Word spread quietly across the steel belt about the two men in the porkpie hats who still played the blues. And soon other musicians crawled out of the night. The Colonel showed up in Decatur with his Telecaster and Duck. The Shiv, Mr. Fabulous, Blue Lou, Bones, Triple Scale, and crazy Getdwa strutted in one Saturday night. Finally, Guitar Murphy, bigger than life, joined up and they were set. One scary soul band as mean and righteous as a fist."

outlandos d'amour

The Police channeled their musical ambitions into punk and reggae to take advantage of the new wave movement on this outlandish introduction. The trio of Stewart Andrew Copeland, Gordon Matthew Sumner (Sting), and Andrew James Summers was originally formed by Copeland (who had been in Curved Air for a brief stint) and Sting (from Last Exit) with guitarist Henri Padovani in January of 1977.  Copeland says: "I actually had the name The Police, before there was a group."  

The band was conceived to capitalize on the burgeoning punk movement.  Sting confesses: "One of the biggest influences the Sex Pistols had on me was they were destroying something which had held me back.  I was much older, a much more sophisticated musician, and a more mellow person than Johnny Rotten or Sid Vicious; but I could relate to that anti-establishment feeling: the energy and aggression - hatred!"  

They toured and released one single 'Fallout / Nothing Achieving' on the independent Illegal label formed by Stewart's older brother and the band's manager Miles Copeland III.   It charted at number forty-seven in the UK; but, after Copeland and Sting took part in a short lived project known as Strontium 90 with Andy Summers (who had been in Soft Machine and the Animals) and Mike Howlett (of Gong), they decided to replace Padovani with Summers.  Copeland recalls:  "Mike Howlett wanted to steal my group; so I stole his group! ... [Andy] pulled me into a cafe and said, 'You guys have a great group except that you need to sack the guitarist and get a new one - me!'."

Summers asserts:  "As far as I'm concerned, The Police didn't really start until I joined."     Their first session with producer John Cale didn't go well; so Stewart got his brother Miles to put some money into studio time at Nigel Gray's Surrey Sound in Leatherhead.   The band produced the sessions that featured Sting on bass guitar, lead and backing vocals, and harmonica on "So Lonely";  Andy Summers on guitar, and spoken word and piano on "Sally"; Stewart Copeland on drums, percussion, and backing vocals;   with Joe Sinclair on piano on "Hole in My Life" and "Masoko Tanga"; and  Nigel Gray and Chris Gray as engineers.  The working title for the album was 'Police Brutality'.   When Miles heard 'Roxanne', he took it to A&M and they released it as a one-off single.  It failed to chart; but it provided the impetus for the completion of the album, which was then called 'Outlandos D'Amour', a sort of internationalist approximation of "outlaws of love".  The album eventually went to twenty-three in the US, twenty-two in Canada, fifteen in Australia, six in New Zealand and the UK, and number two in France and the Netherlands.






http://www.thepolice.com/








'Roxanne' was inspired by prostitutes that hung around the hotel the band was staying in Paris and a poster of 'Cyrano de Bergerac'  in the lobby.  According to Sting, the song includes a studio mistake:  "I was just about to sing the first line of this celebrated song when I noticed there was an upright piano next to the microphone. I was feeling tired - I'd been up all night for some reason - so I just sort of sat down. I though the piano lid was closed, but it was open, so I wound up playing this incredible chord with my ass. It was this atonal sort of cluster that went really nicely against the chords we were playing. We thought it was funny, so we left it in."   The BBC didn't approve of the subject matter and wouldn't play the song; but when it was re-released a year later, it charted at number thirty-two in the US, thirty-one in Canada, twenty-two in Ireland, nineteen in the Netherlands, twelve in the UK, and eight in France and New Zealand.  
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3T1c7GkzRQQ




'Can't Stand Losing You' was banned over the cover art; but it still was a hit, going to forty-eight in New Zealand, nine in the Netherlands, seven in France and  Ireland, and number two in the UK.  Sting recalls:    "We had that publicity campaign with posters about how the BBC banned Roxanne. The reason they had a problem with Can't Stand Losing You was because the photo on the cover of the single had Stewart standing on a block of ice with a noose around his neck, waiting for the ice to melt."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nH0vjLwMyc4




'So Lonely' hit number twenty-six in the Netherlands, ten in France, seven in Ireland, and six in the UK. 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SaNt9-QkiHI






1978 US tour
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tGhgJ7zdp94





'Outlandos D'Amour'
full album:



All tracks written by Sting, except where noted. 

Side one
1. "Next to You"   2:55
2. "So Lonely"   4:50
3. "Roxanne"   3:12
4. "Hole in My Life"   4:55
5. "Peanuts" (Sting, Stewart Copeland) 4:02
Side two
6. "Can't Stand Losing You"   2:59
7. "Truth Hits Everybody"   2:55
8. "Born in the '50s"   3:45
9. "Be My Girl – Sally" (Sting, Andy Summers) 3:24
10. "Masoko Tanga"   5:42

dub housing

Pere Ubu pushed the boundries of their dark and demented garage rock with the funky twitch of this avante-garde cry from the abyss.  After their debut 'The Modern Dance', the group left Mercury Records and were signed to Chrysalis.   As with their first album, the sessions for 'Dub Housing' were produced by the band with Ken Hamann and featured David Thomas on vocals and organ; Tom Herman on guitar, bass guitar, and organ; Tony Maimone on bass guitar, guitar, and piano; Allen Ravenstine on EML synthesizers, and saxophone; and Scott Krauss on drums.

Ravinstine reveals:    "'Dub Housing' was the one that we had to come up with stuff. And now actually 'Dub Housing' is my favorite record. Everybody else likes 'The Modern Dance' ... I think that a lot of that we wrote in the studio. And I don't know what it was and right now, I can't remember anything that was on that record but I really, really liked that record...And the whole breaking of the bottles and all that stuff, that's what I think. I wanted that undercurrent- there's chaos here.  That kind of thing always appealed to me so I was always interested in it if there was an element of subversion, darkness. You know, I was a very dark kid when I was a young man. I think I'm less so now but I was very much so when I was a kid. And I was a kid when we were making this music! I was in my 20's. My God, that was 40 years ago! We were angry kids 'cause kids are angry. So we're making this noise and we were poking fun at things and I was interested in that subversion." 

Thomas:   "If I said that the next album, 'Dub Housing', was what I would call an ‘original masterpiece’…'The Modern Dance' was first. The sound of the band was so startling and so different; our approach to music was so different from anything else going on, that album created the impact. It’s like 'Rubber Soul' or something, it was like, ‘Whoa, what the hell’, you know?...The cross that we bear is that you know… we are a pop band. We’re not an experimental, avant-garde anything, we’re a pop band. We’re trained and schooled in pop music. We love pop music. It’s just that we don’t see any point in doing…there are all sorts of other people doing pop music better than we can do it and with more dedication. We would get bored with it because if we can do something, we don’t like doing it; what’s the point of doing something you already know how to do? Among the art types, they can’t really embrace us because every album we’ve ever done references pop music and comments on pop music and uses pop music idioms and connections and resonances. The pop people can’t embrace us either because we’re too “weird” about the whole thing! It’s really been the bane of our existence, but the fact is, that’s fundamental to the understanding of what we do. ... [Rocket From The Tombs] was always doomed. Everything from Cleveland was doomed. RFTT is totally inconsequential and irrelevant. Pere Ubu is totally inconsequential and irrelevant. That is the power of Cleveland. Embrace, my brothers, the utter futility of ambition and desire. Your only reward is a genuine shot at being the best. The caveat is that no one but your brothers will ever know it. That’s the deal we agreed to."

Herman would leave the group during the recording of their next album; but the seeds were planted during 'Dub Housing':    "A couple things were going on to point me out of Ubu. For one, I liked touring and everyone else seemed to hate it. Ironic, since I never went on tour again until I rejoined the band. For another, David was going thru a religious phase that I resented having my name associated with. Remember, back then it was publicly seen as a band, not DT and the Ubus. Those were side issues, really. The big thing was 'New Picnic Time'. I felt we'd made certain mistakes on 'Modern Dance', certain other mistakes on 'Dub Housing', and 'New Picnic Time' would put it all together in the definitive Rock album. Instead, it was a new thing. I was Very disappointed. If it didn't happen then, it wasn't going to happen. So, I went off to do it myself. And failed, obviously. Ubu is an entirely different entity now. Amazing, since it's still very much Ubu. People think it's David's band now, but it's not. David serves Ubu, as we all do. Back in the day, it was anarchy. Now it's very much under David's direction. I may be the only one who thinks so, but to me, the musicianship in the band is at it's highest level ever. Then, I was, probably, the most accomplished musician in the band. Now, I'm probably the least. I'm speaking strictly about the ability to have technique available to serve inspiration. Everyone who ever played in Ubu had lots of creativity. No-one in their right mind would try to rate, or quantify creativity in Ubu. The process is different now. Most importantly, no one has any notions of popularity or monetary reward. While this can be frustrating, it's also liberating."

http://ubuprojex.net/

'Dub Housing' 

full album: 

All songs written by David Thomas, Tom Herman, Tony Maimone, Allen Ravenstine and Scott Krauss.

"Navvy" – 2:40
"On the Surface" – 2:35
"Dub Housing" – 3:39
"Caligari's Mirror" – 3:49
"Thriller!" – 4:36
"I, Will Wait" – 1:45
"Drinking Wine Spodyody" – 2:44
"(Pa) Ubu Dance Party" – 4:46
"Blow Daddy-O" – 3:38
"Codex" – 4:55

babylon by bus

Bob Marley and the Wailers captured the dynamic sound of their trenchtown experience on this expansive and influential document of their reggae redemption roadshow.  Recorded in Paris and London during the European leg of his 'Kaya' tour, 'Babylon By Bus' features Bob Marley on lead vocals and  rhythm guitar; Carlton Barrett on drums; Aston "Family Man" Barrett on bass; Tyrone "Organ D" Downie and Earl "Wire" Lindo on keyboards; Junior Marvin and Al Anderson on lead guitar; Alvin "Seeco" Patterson on percussion;   and the I-Threes (Rita Marley, Marcia Griffiths, and Judy Mowatt) on backing vocals. 

Marley would express at the time:    "We wanted to introduce the crowd or some people who don't know...We truly express Rasta through reggae...Music is the universal language... To me it's just a vessel that the truth is in...I wouldn't say...reggae and Rasta is same thing; but I would say reggae is a vehicle and a way to carry around Rasta...a way of communicating to more people. sometimes you listen to a reggae you might not hear the words you hear the bassline, you might hear the drummer you love that, I say you love that you keep listening someday you might understand the words.  Reggae is a vehicle to carry Rasta to the people ... Well, you know, the way I feel about the music… It can be copied you know. But, it’s not copied direct... It’s the feel. You know? It carry a feel. If you ask plenty musicians… Them know it – but them can’t do it. So people still searching for this truth here, which this Reggae music you know, bring cross to them. And the only purpose it serve is to tell the people about Rastafari...It’s not how long you’ve been a Rasta, it’s how long it take you to grow – because what you is – is what you is. From beginning to the end. You can never change, ‘cause if you even adopt things later – your own fate ah write out. So we ah just Rasta from creation, you know? It’s not an easy thing to explain. We’ve got educated standards and we still have people who can’t do it. But me ah common sense man, that mean when we explain things we explain it very, very simple way that me explain to a baby. The baby’ll understand too, you know? So we ah say now, like the Bible. The Bible say, God say he shall return as the King of King, the Lord of Lords, The Conqueror, the Lion of the Tribe of Judah, and him shall come in a new name. And his new name shall be dreadful among the heathen ... 'Exodus' is the movement of the people.  Now, we have to check these things very carefully.  You see, 'Exodus' is the movement in Jamaica and then we see the peace movement come... so that was the exodus from the post cold war fears...So 'Kaya' was the more during peacetime.  So after peacetime then is 'Babylon By Bus'...and after you go to 'Babylon By Bus' then you will know about the Babylon system."

'Babylon By Bus' made it to number one hundred and two on the US Billboard 200 album chart, fifty-eight on the US R&B album chart, forty-four in Sweden, and forty in the UK.  The energy of the live performances is palpable as the aggressive interplay between the dueling keyboards and dueling guitars simmers and approaches a psychedelic funk.  






http://www.bobmarley.com/








'Babylon By Bus'
full album:



Side one
1. "Positive Vibration"   Vincent Ford 5:50
2. "Punky Reggae Party"   Bob Marley, Lee Perry 5:51
3. "Exodus"   Marley 7:41
Side two
4. "Stir It Up"   Marley 5:17
5. "Rat Race"   Rita Marley 3:41
6. "Concrete Jungle"   Marley 5:37
7. "Kinky Reggae"   Marley 4:46
Side three
8. "Lively Up Yourself"   Marley 6:18
9. "Rebel Music (3 O'Clock Roadblock)"   Aston Barrett, Hugh Peart 5:20
10. "War / No More Trouble"   Allen Cole, Carlton Barrett, Marley 5:28
Side four
11. "Is This Love"   Marley 7:27
12. "The Heathen"   Marley 4:29
13. "Jamming"   Marley 5:54

germfree adolescents

X-Ray Spex took on conformity and consumerism with the wild eyed wail of this pubescent punk propaganda pursuit.  The group was started by Poly Styrene (Marianne Joan Elliott-Said) and manager and producer Falcon Stuart after seeing the Sex Pistols perform.  Stuart recalls:  "Energised by the Rotten crew, Poly started to write some more radical lyrics and music exploring the dynamics of consumerism and techno development, laced with teen irony, romance and rebellion. And so it was I started to man the project that was to become the X-Ray Spex."

Styrene would explain: "I didn’t actually choose that name. X Ray Spex was my name, but Poly Styrene wasn’t. I was writing about plastic and things like that in my songs and one day my manager said to me “I’ve got a name for you” and it was Poly Styrene. It was very funny, because he could also call me Polly Put the Kettle On for a joke, so that’s where the name came from. I thought “Well, I’ll have it” and then I started using it for my fashion label really, not for my personal name, but my manager kept calling me that and eventually I just embraced it and started using it. X Ray Spex was my name, but Poly Styrene wasn’t. It was a tongue-in-cheek name, a joke, but I did quite like it when he came up with it ... I was looking in a porno magazine, and I saw an ad for these spectacles that you can see nude ladies through and they were called X-Ray Spex: that's why."

They put ads in Melody Maker and NME and formed the first lineup of the group with  Jak Airport (Jack Stafford) on guitars, Paul Dean on bass, Rich T on Drums, and Lora Logic (Susan Whitby) on saxophone.  Logic remembers:   "I took a few saxophone lessons then practiced a lot on my own and busked a bit. I joined a folk band for a few weeks but didn't really like that. I was really rebellious and I wanted to do something different with my life and get into another world. Around autumn '76, I saw an ad in Melody Maker looking for 'punk' musicians. I didn't even know what punk was but I just showed up. The manager for X-Ray Spex liked the idea of having another woman in the band with Poly so I made it. We got on so well, really hit it off and rehearsed a lot. It was like a dream."

Their addition of saxophone to the punk sound was unique at the time.  Styrene:  "They say...'Oh you can't have a saxophonist in a punk band', and they see it work, then everybody likes it."   They played several successful gigs at the Roxy and were offered several record deals.  Styrene reveals:  "We had a one off deal with Virgin Records but in the deal they offered, they wanted too many albums in too short a space of time so we signed with EMI."

  

Before they could record an album, Logic was ousted from the band:  "Poly saw that I was getting a little too much of the spotlight and I was just replaced without any notice after a year. They even used all the sax parts I worked out for the album with a new player ... Yeah I had a great time. It was great fun...Before I was kicked out. Well the official line was I had to finish my schooling. It was in two papers."

She was replaced for a brief time by John Glynn and then by Steve 'Rudi' Thompson.  It took over a year for them to put out an album.  'Germfree Adolescents'  was recorded at Essex Studios with Poly Styrene on vocals; Jak Airport on guitar; Paul Dean on bass; Rudi Thomson on saxophone; and B.P. Hurding on drums;   with Ted Bunting on saxophone on "Identity" & "The Day the World Turned Day-Glo"; and Falcon Stuart on production and cover concept.  Bunting says:  "I got called in to do some playing. Why me? I was a versatile player and it was probably easier for me to record the songs. It was just an afternoon…The band were there and all the backing tracks had been done. It may well have been that Laura had recorded them and they told her they needed redoing. I wasn’t involved in any of the band politics and would have kept out of it. Laura’s always been fairly bitter about my involvement which I understand. My dealings with the band were very much mediated by Poly and Falcon. And I think I did more tracks than Poly reckons but I’m not bothered."  

'Germfree Adolescents'  reached number thirty on the UK album chart.  The band folded less than a year after it came out when Styrene was committed.  Styrene considered:  "That was on tour in Doncaster. I saw a UFO. It was all around the same time. After that traumatic experience I was pretty hyper. Our roadies used to give us a little bit of marijuana before we went to sleep because after a gig you are really buzzed up. You can’t really sleep. You’re too excited, so they always used to give us a little bit of that when we went back the hotel. I don’t think they gave us anything hallucinogenic but that night I was really stressed. I had just come back from America and New York and I had gone straight into doing a tour, and then obviously I had that whole traumatic experience. Rather than deal with it, I went into denial and then ended up doing another tour, and after that I started to go into something else which was even more far out.  ...  It felt like a bad omen.  Like I was doing something wrong, misguiding people. It made me think I needed to be careful before I put ideas out into the world. My mother thought I was hallucinating, and I was put in the Maudsley [Hospital]. Because if you see things and hear voices, you're considered to have schizophrenia. I really missed playing. But in hindsight, it got me off the treadmill. I'd been growing up in the public eye, with all my teenage angst ... I was dealing with a lot and then to be given a label like that, only to find out later that I wasn’t and that they had got it wrong, was really difficult. They said to me 'You’re a young girl who has got out of her depth and you will never be able to work again.' That is a very hard thing to be told at 21 ... I had to get away from it all... mostly I just rested... It's not true I went bonkers. It just got too much. there were plenty of pressures on me...I went to New York. It really turned my head. All that attention - they treat you like you're really different. It got to me...I was worn out and doing drugs...I was smoking a lot. People were all around telling me how wonderful I was. I didn't start to exactly believe it, but I started to get very insecure"  









http://www.x-rayspex.com/





"Oh Bondage Up Yours!" was the band's first single, released in September of 1977. 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ogypBUCb7DA








Poly Styrene  interview: 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D8hAqdx7g4M












'Germfree Adolescents' 
full album:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ujrva0tiTqc





All songs written by Poly Styrene.


"The Day the World Turned Day-Glo" - 2:50
"Obsessed with You" - 2:26
"Genetic Engineering" - 2:46
"Identity" - 2:21
"I Live Off You" - 2:06
"Germfree Adolescents" - 3:10
"Art-I-Ficial" - 3:21
"Let's Submerge" - 3:23
"Warrior in Woolworths" - 3:03
"I Am a Poseur" - 2:30
"I Can't Do Anything" - 2:55
"Highly Inflammable" - 2:32
"Age" - 2:36
"Plastic Bag" - 4:51
"I Am a Cliché" - 1:52
"Oh Bondage Up Yours!" - 2:48