Author Archives: Michael H. Little

Celebrating Chris Mars, born on this day in 1961. —Ed.

Minneapolis indie rock heroes The Replacements went from snot-nosed “let’s get drunk and puke on the ceiling then fall down on stage” punks to power pop legends on the strength of the deceptively effortless songcraft of Paul Westerberg, and Westerberg reached his peak on 1984’s audaciously titled Let It Be. Taking on the Beatles takes cojones, especially from a guy who once sang, “I hate music/It’s got too many notes.”

Let It Be hardly marked the end of their “too shitfaced to play” ethos, but it was, as Westerberg would note, “the first time I had songs that we arranged, rather than just banging out riffs and giving them titles.” “I Will Dare” is a bona fide slice of pop genius; “Unsatisfied” is “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction” with more heart and more soul than the jaded Mick Jagger could summon up if you tossed him into a pile of cocaine and supermodels and let him stew until unhappy. But Westerberg hadn’t lost touch with his inner punk; songs like “Gary’s Got a Boner” and “We’re Comin’ Out” would have been right at home on 1982’s puke punk classic Stink.

Let It Be is the sound of a punk growing up just to learn that growing up isn’t all that much fun. But grow up you must, as John Mellencamp could have told Paul Westerberg if he’d been willing to listen. “Everything drags and drags,” sings Westerberg on the doleful coming of age tune “Sixteen Blue”; “It’s a boring state/A boring wait, I know.” You try to call your girl and all you get is her answering machine and what does that mean? It can’t be good. And what can you really expect from the future? “Everything you dream of/Is right in front of you,” sings Westerberg, “And everything is a lie.”

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Remembering Gary Wright, born on this day in 1943. —Ed.

Namaste, fellow seekers! And welcome back to the Vedic District and your host, Michael Paramahansa Yogananda Little! On this week’s turn of the cosmic wheel we’ll be discussing New Age seer and synthesizer-around-the-neck avatar Gary Wright, whose chakra-cleansing songs and mystical crystal revelations make him the most spiritually evolved being on our astral plane.

Wright was, arguably, pop’s first New Age musician. Forget George Harrison–who turned Wright on to Eastern religions while they were recording 1970’s All Things Must Pass–he refused to give up on rock and roll. And compared to Wright, Van Morrison and Stevie Nicks are mere earthbound materialists–the Bertrand Russell and Ayn Rands of rock, respectively.

It’s all there on the cover of The Dream Weaver, where a blissed-out Wright rests his head against what is either a telepod to other dimensions or the Findhorn Community’s very own jukebox–the man was staking his claim as the first New Age technocrat, enlisting the aid of machines to further the cause of the Harmonic Convergence.

And, boy, did Wright make a splash. Who, my fellow theosophists, can forget the Annus Mirabilis 1976, when a cosmic convergence brought us both David Spangler’s book Revelation: The Birth of a New Age and Wright’s June 11th appearance on The Midnight Special, where he cast a magickal sorcerer’s spell on an entire nation with his mesmerizing performance of “Dream Weaver”? Surely the stars were coming into alignment at last, and the Age of the Enlightened Unicorn was nigh.

Of course that exalted age never arrived, nor did Wright’s success last. But if the former Spooky Tooth keyboardist’s fleshly fame was fleeting, he has accepted it with Buddhistic resignation–having parted the veil of Maya, he knows all too well that all we are is dust in the wind. Yet he continues to mould a new reality closer to the heart with his ecstatic ectoplasmic musical emanations, which make the ideal accompaniment to both Kundalini awakening and sweatless tantric sex.

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Celebrating Björn Ulvaeus on his 79th birthday. —Ed.

I love ABBA. I love them so much I contacted the Swedish ambassador last week to see if I could buy them. “ABBA are a national treasure,” the ambassador informed me. “But a thousand kroner would probably do it.” I was rather taken aback really, given ABBA are Sweden’s biggest export behind Swedish Red Fish and Swedish meatballs.

ABBA’s frothy brand of Europop and disco bring back fond memories of my first and last visit to a discotheque. The experience was unforfeitable insofar as it ended with me throwing up in the parking lot, but it wasn’t ABBA’s fault–staring at the revolving glitter ball above the dance floor gave me vertigo.

From disco classic “Dancing Queen” to “Waterloo,” ABBA’s songs were good, innocent fun. Who can resist their infectious melodies and perfect harmonies? Lots of people, evidently. ABBA were anathema to the “Let’s burn down the disco crowd,” and none other than Robert Christgau saw fit to describe their “real tradition” as “the advertising jingle.”

Formed in 1972 by Agnetha Fältskog, Björn Ulvaeus, Benny Andersson, and Anni-Frid Lyngstad, ABBA first made their mark by winning the 1974 Eurovision Contest–a sure step to superstardom, as evidenced as by such memorable bands as Teach-In and Herreys. It took awhile for ABBA to catch on with US listeners, but when they did they did it big—in the years between 1974 and 1981 they placed a dozen singles on the American Top 40.

The ABBA sound is a study in contradictions. On one hand their music is as frothy as it’s frosty; detractors will tell you their music is as cold as a dip into a Hellasgården ice bath. But to pop and disco lovers their music is something you’ll want to warm your hands over—especially if you spent your formative years listening to “Dancing Queen.”

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Celebrating Doug Clifford, born on this day in 1945. —Ed.

During a recent crawl down Bourbon Street in New Orleans I heard a lot of mangy cover bands manhandle a lot of my favorite songs. Was I outraged? Hell no. I enjoyed every minute of it. There’s nothing I love more than listening to a band of barely competent rock ‘n’ roll discards–I’m a rock ‘n’ roll discard myself–butcher the classics. My only regret is I didn’t hear a single one of them do their honorable worst to Creedence Clearwater Revival.

Because I loves me some Creedence. During the psychedelic era, when just about everybody else was jamming away ad infinitum to songs about peace, love, and sundry other species of Aquarian bullshit, CCR’s John Fogerty was writing unfashionably short songs as tightly wound as Swiss clocks about dread and menace. He saw bad moons rising, wondered who was going to stop the rain, and warned that when you’re running through the jungle, it’s best not to look back. And unlike, say, the Velvet Underground, his songs were immensely radio friendly–they might as well have come equipped with payola. J. Fogerty is that rarest of all creatures, a natural-born hitmaker, and a hitmaker of such prolixity that Creedence fell into the habit of releasing double A Sides. You have to write a lot of damn good songs to be that cocky.

Creedence Clearwater Revival was, with the arguable exception of the Velvet Underground and the Grateful Dead, the premier American band of their era, and on 1970’s Cosmo’s Factory–the band’s fifth album in two years, amazingly enough–CCR hit their creative zenith. On it Fogerty makes writing great songs look dizzyingly simple; only 2 of its 11 songs fall short of indispensable, and they’re both covers. The rest of ‘em are stone cold classics, and they range from monumental covers (the 11-minute “I Heard It Through the Grapevine,” which is less a jam than a carefully structured exercise in locking down a groove) to a foray into friendly lysergic-country pastoralism (“Lookin’ Out My Back Door”) to a note-perfect Little Richard tribute (“Travelin’ Band”). And I could go on.

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Remembering Steve Clark, born on this day in 1960. —Ed.

Hello music fans! You’re joining me here live from lovely Pyongyang, North Korea, where I’m about to sit down with Supreme Leader Kim Jong-Un, who is about to make a big musical announcement!

And here comes Kim now, ready to verbally spar in a glittering WWE wrestling jacket and tights, a baby tiger cradled in his arms! What chubby charisma! What a dazzling smile! It’s hard to believe this is the same guy who had a mid-sized city executed for sneezing during one of his 5-1/2-hour speeches! A palace lackey seats us in two very uncomfortable solid-gold chairs, another palace lackey brings Kim his jade bong and baggy filled with primo Godfather OG, and after we both take a couple of hits and I get very, very paranoid, it’s time to get down to the nitty-gritty.

You don’t plan to have me killed, do you?

Ha, ha. Never. You are my favorite Western Rock Critic. Your extremely positive review of Christopher Cross echoed many of my own insights on the genius who brought us “Sailing.” We Christopher Cross fans must stick together.

So what’s the big announcement?

For many years I have banned Western Music. It is decadent, serves no propaganda purpose, and makes people dance. North Korea is like the town of Bomont, and I will not put up with any Kevin Bacon-like footlooseness. Such counter-revolutionary hijinks could undermine my very cool Cult of Personality.

That said, I have given my personal okay to certain types of Western Music over the years. My all-female military ensemble The Morenbong Band has been known to play the theme from my favorite movie Rocky, for example. I cannot watch Sylvester Stallone triumph against adversity without crying, and then killing anyone who has witnessed me crying. I’ve tragically lost many beloved family members in this manner.

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Remembering Glen Campbell, born on this day in 1936. —Ed.

The English Pre-Raphaelite poet Dante Gabriel Rossetti once wrote, “Each hour flings a bomb at my burning soul.” Before adding, “Neither from owl nor from bat can peace be gained until I clasp my wombat.” I admit to being completely flummoxed by what this Rossetti chap means by “his wombat.” Did he have, in his personal menagerie, an actual wombat? One that he clasped to his troubled bosom when bombs were being catapulted at his burning soul? Your guess as is good as mine.

But I digress. The point I’m trying to make, albeit in a hopelessly circuitous way, is that my soul too has been burning of late, and I don’t see a wombat in sight. I have a cat, but when I attempt to clasp him to my bosom he is immediately transformed into a furious blur of tooth and claw. So I ask myself; how best can I regain my peace? And the answer, stated as succinctly as possible, is Glen Campbell.

The odd thing is that despite the fact that I grew up in a rural backwater, in a town so small that the “Welcome to Littlestown” sign and the “You Are Now Leaving Littlestown” sign were the same sign and many of my fellow townspeople made those toothless rustics in Deliverance look like cosmopolitan sophisticates, the only country music I ever heard came to me via Hee Haw, which I would occasionally watch with the old man. That said, I totally loved “Rhinestone Cowboy.” It fell into the rarified genre of glam country, and I could never hear it often enough. That said, I’d never heard any of his other songs and was never tempted to buy a G.C. LP.

When I finally got around to listening to him as an adult, and happened upon such immortal songs as “Wichita Lineman,” “Galveston,” and “By the Time I Get to Phoenix,” I’ll admit I was disappointed. The string-heavy arrangements turned these great numbers to treacle. Distracted from the songs’ greatness, they did. Which I why I was thrilled to discover Campbell’s final studio LP (he’s still with us, but in the final stages of Alzheimer’s disease), 2013’s See You There.

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Remembering Bernie Worrell, born on this day in 1944. —Ed.

Funkadelic—and Parliament as well, naturally—were America’s go-to bands for psychedelic funk at the dawn of the Seventies; their acid-fried, groove-based jams came complete with fries, shake, and a generous helping of raunchy high humor, and you would practically have to be a member of the KKK to deny them. Theirs wasn’t just the sound of Black Liberation, it was the sound of Human Liberation, because as George Clinton understood only all too well, we all need to free our asses.

If 1970’s Free Your Ass… And Your Mind Will Follow isn’t my favorite Funkadelic album it’s not for lack of good old-fashioned genius. It’s just a mite uneven. Side One’s as great a one-two punch as you’re ever likely to bump your ass against. Side Two, with the notable exception of the brilliant “Funky Dollar Bill,” not so much. That said, this six-song LP—weaker second side and all—still constitutes an essential addition to any sentient life form’s home musical library. Believe me when I say the people on Venus (they prefer to be called people; “alien” is considered a racial slur) will want to purchase this album if they haven’t already. People from Venus are in need of some ass freeing too.

Robert Christgau once said of this baby, “Not only is the shit weird, the weirdness signifies,” and to that I can only add “Amen.” Opener “Free Your Ass and Your Mind Will Follow” is a 10-minute freak-out over which the brilliant Eddie Hazel plays blistering guitar of the sort that will make you forget all about Jimi Hendrix. He’s joined by a madcap chorus of vocalists (I count eight in the band’s lineup) repeating slogans (“Free your mind!”, “The kingdom of heaven is within!”, “Open up your funky mind and you can fly”), uttering paradoxes (“Freedom is free of the need to be free”), and generally getting all hotted up. It also boasts great bass by Billy Nelson and some very fuzzy organ by his magnificentness Bernie Worrell, and may well constitute the coolest dime bag of music you’ll ever snort up your ears.

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Remembering Dickey Betts. —Ed.

When it comes to your bad karma and shitty luck, The Allman Brothers Band is a tough act to follow. And no, I’m not just talking about the tragedy that was Allman and Woman. I’m talking about the motorcycle accidents that claimed the lives of Duane Allman and Berry Oakley; rampant infighting and supernatural drug use; and a big-time cocaine distribution bust that led Gregg Allman to testify against his road manager in order to save his own ass. But despite the deaths, the duplicity, and even Cher and Man, The Allmans remain the most influential Southern blues-rock band of all time, and next to Lynyrd Skynyrd, the best damn band to hail from south of the Mason-Dixon Line.

But here’s the thing about the Allmans; I can honestly say I never much cared for them until Duane Allman took that fatal spill on his motorcycle. Because Duane, God bless his totally rad facial hair, was a blues player, and the fact is I despise the blues. As The Simpsons’ Bleeding Gums Murphy immortally said, “The blues isn’t about feeling better. It’s about making other people feel WORSE.” Don’t get me wrong; I can handle them if they’ve been radically tweaked, freaked, warped, or twisted. But Duane, a traditionalist, played ‘em old school, making me the dick at the party who ran out screaming every time somebody put on “Statesboro Blues” or, even worse, “Stormy Monday.” As for “Whipping Post,” it’s way up there on my Shit Parade alongside “Midnight Rambler,” “People Have the Power,” and the entire recorded output of The Clash.

The bottom line? One man’s tragedy is another man’s blessing, and Duane’s untimely demise had the ironic effect of transforming The Allman Brothers Band into a group whose music I actually like. 1972’s Eat a Peach had a few great songs, such as “Blue Sky” and “Melissa,” that took the band in a non-blues direction, but it also included the infamous “Mountain Jam”—really, did the world really need a song so long it took up two sides of a double LP? It took the advent of guitarist/vocalist Dickey Betts as the Allman’s de facto leader to produce 1973’s Brothers and Sisters, which emphasized a unique hybrid of country rock over the blues, and threw in some good-times boogie for good measure.

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Celebrating Bez on his 60th birthday. —Ed.

A crash course for the ravers—back in the late 1980s, Happy Mondays became the veritable house band for Madchester’s e-fueled rave scene, which transformed an entire generation of Joe Bloggs-clad English kids into pinwheel-eyed, whizz-happy 24-hour party people stepping on and up, up, up to a dizzying sound composed of equal parts alternative rock, acid house, funk, and psychedelia.

Oh, it was a glorious time, a true Renaissance as it were. I’d have loved to be there when the party started, and every blessed baggy-jeans wearing ecstasy-altered geezer at the Haçienda loved every other baggy-jeans wearing ecstasy-altered geezer at the Haçienda. And every single one of them knew the song—which just happened to be the Happy Monday’s deliriously danceable “Step On,” with its infectious keyboard progression and funky drumming—would go on forever.

It didn’t of course—I strongly recommend Pulp’s “Sorted for e’s and Whizz” if you’re looking for a post-mortem—and Happy Mondays crashed as hard, or harder, than anybody else, having gone “crack crazy” (in guitarist Paul Ryder’s words) in Barbados during the sessions that would culminate in 1992’s Yes Please! But you can still hear the joy of being young and very, very chemically altered in every song on Happy Mondays’ 1999 Greatest Hits.

On such immortal ravers as “Step On,” “Kinky Afro,” “Loose Fit,” “Mad Cyril,” and “24-Hour Party People” brothers Shaun and Paul Ryder and Company (including of course, the band’s official “dancer” Bez) kept the punters soaring above the dance floor all night long. It’s all there in “Kinky Afro”—Brit pop melded smoothly to a seductive groove—and “Loose Fit,” the definitive baggy anthem and Madchester fashion manifesto, which fuses funky percussion to a lovely riff and a message (“Don’t need no tight fits in my wardrobe today”) that put a sizeable segment of England’s youth in flares.

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Remembering Herbie Mann, born on this day in 1930. —Ed.

Good morning class. I stand before you today to discuss a very important but relatively unexamined musical sub-genre. I’m talking, of course, about shirtless jazz. The “Shirtless Jazz Age” began at the dawn of the 1970s and came to an end in the mid-1980s, and at its peak buried excited record buyers in a virtual avalanche of bared nipples.

Jazz expert Roy Mantooth, author of the definitive shirtless jazz oral history Take It Off! , writes, “Free jazz was out. Free nipples were in. Shirts were for squares and white guys recording on the snobby Windham Hill label. As for the music, who really cared?”

And Mantooth was right. Because shirtless jazz had nothing whatsoever to do with music, and everything to do with posing shirtless on album covers. I’ve never even listened to the LPs in my carefully curated shirtless jazz collection, and I consider myself an expert in the field. Like children, shirtless jazz should be seen, not heard.

Historically, the movement was bookended by two bare-breasted titans. At the vanguard we have the great Herbie Mann, whose pioneering 1971 LP Push Push brought bold, topless improvisation to the Down Beat crowd. As Amiri Baraka noted in 1987’s The Music: Reflections on Jazz and Blues, “Something changed after Push Push hit the record stores. Discarded shirts soon filled the trash cans behind jazz clubs all across America.”

Push Push was a radical statement indeed; Herbie stands boldly on the cover like a swinger departing an orgy, hairy chest pelt slathered in WD-40, flute flung insouciantly over a naked shoulder, a decidedly smug post-coital pout on his face. Mann didn’t just invent shirtless jazz with Push Push; he suggested that the flute had other possibilities, creatively salacious uses that didn’t bear thinking about.

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English-Welsh indie pop supergroup Swansea Sound do quite the tightrope walk. The band specializes in witty, hyper-intelligent punk-infused songs that will have you jumping around in sheer giddy pleasure. But, and this is where the tightrope gets very thin indeed, many of these very same songs address the human toll of rapacious capitalism. In short, Swansea Sound do the seemingly impossible—they produce scathingly sarcastic protest songs that will have you (to swipe an image from the Immortal Moz) dancing your legs down to your knees.

And Swansea Sound (they’re Hue Williams and Amelia Fletcher on vocals, Rob Pursey on bass, Ian Button on drums, and Bob Collins on guitar) pull it off with aplomb on their sophomore LP, 2023’s Twentieth Century. Its fetching blend of pop punk swagger and savage satire put it near the top of my year’s faves, which is hardly a surprise when one considers that the band includes members from such indie pop legends as the Pooh Sticks, Heavenly, and Talulah Gosh (to name just three). But it’s also quite the feat because I’ve always been a firm believer in the separation between Rock and State.

What’s more, Swansea Sound don’t just talk the talk—they take action. Why, they’ve just announced they’ll be auctioning off a one-off lathe cut of their very witty new single “Markin’ It Down,” perhaps the most huggable track from Twentieth Century, to raise money for striking Amazon workers in Coventry, England.

I reached out to Swansea Sound bassist Rob Pursey, who just happens to be one of the best songwriters in the rock biz (as well as a very kind and funny man) for comment, and here’s what he had to say about the band’s throwing in their lot with the Amazon strikers: “I write songs that often satirise the digital oligarchs who dominate our lives. Maybe that achieves something—maybe nothing more than a wry smile. But the Amazon workers who have the guts to join a union and take industrial action against one of the richest and most powerful companies on Earth are the ones who are really making a difference. It seemed right to use the proceeds from the auction to help support them, and to let other people know about their struggle.”

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Celebrating Ed O’Brien, born on this day in 1968. —Ed.

Not long after Radiohead released 2000’s Kid A, my friend Patrick and I gave it a scathing review without having actually listened to it, on the basis that its only appeal was to depressives better served by listening to the Archies. We also surmised that if Thom Yorke was such a creep why bother, because who wants to hang out with a creep? And seems we weren’t alone. Author Nick Hornby lambasted Kid A, and a critic for England’s Melody Maker dismissed it as “tubby, ostentatious, self-congratulatory, look-ma-I-can-suck-my-own-cock whiny old rubbish.” You won’t hear that sort of language on The Crown.

It was the Melody Maker review that finally convinced me to give Kid A a listen–if the the damn thing was really that bad, I wasn’t going to miss out on the opportunity to pile on. But Kid A isn’t the space age fiasco I’d hoped for; its Pink Floyd/Brian Eno vibe make it the perfect accompaniment to a hard day over a hot bong. Your more active types, on the other hand, risk drowning in its ambient ooze. That sound you hear off in the distance is a non-fan, crying out hopelessly for a lifeguard.

The band itself was split over Kid A’s new direction; vocalist/songwriter Thom Yorke went into the studio convinced rock music had “run its course,” while guitarist/keyboardist Jonny Greenwood and bass player Colin Greenwood worried that they risked producing “awful art-rock nonsense just for its own sake.” Yorke was full of it–folks have been writing rock’s obituary since the early 1960s. The Greenwoods were wrong as well–Kid A may not be my cup of studio overkill, but it’s a noble foray into the realms of electronica that works, at least in parts, very well indeed.

Dreamy atmospherics abound, and on occasion Radiohead take things too far. The soundscape that is “Treefingers” is a limpid pool of nothing special, and if Yorke thinks he’s breaking new sonic ground he’s dead wrong; David Bowie was doing this sort of thing in the late seventies. The title track is a trifle livelier thanks to its snazzy drum beat and electronic squiggles, but Yorke’s distorted vocals serve only to annoy, and the big bass thump at the end of the song is too little too late.

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Celebrating John Kay on his 80th birthday. —Ed.

Steppenwolf’s most excellent eponymous 1968 LP is one helluva debut. If it were a waif, I would take it in, buy it lots of cool video games, and send it to Yale. Hopefully it would provide for me in my old age.

Even your pet goldfish knows Steppenwolf derived its name from Hermann Hesse’s 1927 novel of the same name. But your goldfish is wrong. In an exclusive 2018 interview with yours truly, Steppenwolf lead singer John Kay confessed he actually took the name from CNN anchorman Wolf Blitzer. Said Kay, “Wolf lived next door and I can tell you with absolute certainty he’s a werewolf. On full moons he used to chase rabbits across my backyard on all fours, howling. The next night he’d be back on CNN, looking his normal self. But if you looked closely, you could see flecks of blood in his hair.”

Steppenwolf’s origins can be traced to the Toronto band the Sparrows. In 1967 by Kay and two other members of the Sparrows relocated to Los Angeles, changed their name, and recruited two additional members, one of whom would later be handed his walking papers after–wait for it–his girlfriend convinced him to avoid LA because it was going to be leveled by an earthquake and fall into the sea. Hasn’t happened yet, but better safe than sorry.

Steppenwolf and Kay–who is legally blind, but not probing stick, seeing-eye dog, Jose Feliciano blind–came out of the starting gate running. Steppenwolf spawned two immortal songs, the best known of which has become the official anthem of outlaw motorcycle gang everywhere. The LP’s other songs aren’t as well known, but they all kick ass and take surnames.

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So once upon the time there was this band of kick-out-the-jams, honest-to-god revolutionaries (or so they claimed—they seemed far more interested in becoming big rock stars than actually bringing down the fascist American state) who came out of Detroit and played this raucous brand of “high-energy” rock and roll.

And while they never sold many records (lotsa hype didn’t stop them from just fading away), over the years they’ve become these larger-than-a-Buick Motor City legends like The Stooges. Except The Stooges never trucked in revolution, probably because they were smart enough to understand that punks don’t fight revolutions (people with guns do). Which is to say Iggy and the boys were actually paying attention in class when the Rolling Stones put out “Street Fighting Man.”

The band of course was the MC5, and every hip individual loves them, if only because if you DON’T love them you risk becoming an unhip individual and NOBODY wants that. Why, they could take away your membership card. Well I’ve never loved them; I’ve never been able to understand what all the fuss is about. Sure they looked great and had real street cred being the musical arm of the White Panther Party and all, but I’d be lying if I said there’s a single MC5 song I’d expend the energy necessary to remove the album it’s on from its sleeve and put it on the stereo. Which basically puts them lower on my musical totem pole than the very unhip likes of REO Speedwagon, Styx, Journey, Sammy Johns, and the lamentable Grand Funk Railroad even.

Then again, who cares if I like a band or not? Nobody, that’s who. If you’ve gotten this far and read the above you no doubt think I’m simply a crank who’s full of shit, so please allow me to explain WHY I think the MC5, who were an undeniably good (but not great) band and an essential entry in any good book about rock history, do nothing for me. And as good a place as any to state my case is their second album (but first studio album), 1970’s Back in the USA.

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Celebrating Justin Sullivan, born on this day in 1956. —Ed.

You’ve got to love New Model Army. They were once introduced on Brit TV program The Tube as “the ugliest band in rock and roll,” their lead singer went by the name Slade the Leveller for years to avoid losing his unemployment benefits, and the United States refused them entry to the country on the grounds that their music was “of no artistic merit.” I love that last part. Oh, and the angry young leftists of New Model Army—they snatched their name from Thomas Fairfax’s English Revolution militia of the mid-1600s—were forced to abandon playing the song “Vengeance” on The Tube, due to its friendly lines, “I believe in justice/I believe in vengeance/I believe in getting the bastards.”

The band has switched genres the way some people switch their bedroom lights on and off, but one thing has remained the same—New Model Army are angry punters with a knack for controversy, as is demonstrated by the fact that 1993’s Love of Hopeless Causes came complete with directions on how to construct a nuclear device. 1991’s Thunder and Consolation is considered their high point—even Justin Sullivan, aka Slade the Leveller, has modestly called it “brilliant”—although I consider 1990’s The Ghost of Cain excellent as well, what with its great songs “The 51st State” and “Poison Street.”

I generally believe that rock and politics make unfortunate bedfellows, but I like New Model Army because as the album title Love of Hopeless Causes indicates, they know that in life there are winners and losers, and they understand what class they belong to. Which is not to say they’re taking their loser status lying down; they’re not. But unlike those wankers in the Clash, who were either totally naïve or incredibly cynical, New Model Army seem to have no illusions that their music can change the world.

Instead they rage on in the face of futility, knowing it’s a sucker’s game. And they’re not falling for any of that “the meek shall inherit the earth” bullshit either, as they sing in folk/post-punk “The Ballad of Bodmin Pill”: “How we all dance with this fire ’cause it’s all that we know/And as the spotlight turns toward us, we all try our best to show/We are lost we are freaks, we are crippled, we are weak/We are the heirs, we are the true heirs, to all the world.” Sullivan is not implying that their inheritance will be one of plenty; No, theirs will always be an inheritance of suffering, and injustice, and powerlessness in the face of the haves, who have always ruled the world and always will.

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