B is for Baader Meinhof

In the pages of Frank's APA we have started doing this thing where we go through the letters of the alphabet and talk about something we like beginning with each letter. This is my entry for the letter B.

Some time after recording the third Auteurs album Luke Haines found himself beginning to lose interest in the band. For some reason he found himself listening to a lot of funk and reading about West German left-wing terrorism in the 1970s. He hit on the great idea of combining the two in a concept album about the famous Red Army Faction (colloquially as the Baader Meinhof gang, after its two most famous members). Thus in 1996 he released this record.

The album overall has a mutant funk feel to it, with odd flourishes of vaguely Middle Eastern sounding strings, calling to mind the links with Palestinian groups the RAF ineffectually cultivated. A lot of the percussion sounds like handclaps or something akin to tablas, with the opening track ('Baader Meinhof') in particular being hand-claptastic.

I do not think this album did that well - I keep seeing people on the Internet saying that they love Luke Haines but that for them this is easily his worst album. These people are wrong. Or maybe they do not share the interest in 1970s terrorism that I have; for me the combination of Luke Haines' cultivated nastiness and a view of the subject gained from reading the likes of Tom Vague's Televisionaries makes this the best thing ever.

The songs take us on a tour of the strange radical politics of the period, throwing out references to the likes of Rudi Dutschke and Carlos the Jackal, as well as to such RAF stalwarts as Andreas Baader, Petra Schelm (not so much a RAF stalwart as their equivalent of Freddy from Superfly) and Holger Meins. The lyrics maybe get more poignant as the record rolls on, increasingly hinting that the RAF was a bloody failure, both for its members and its victims. The closing track, a reprise of the opener, makes the obvious point that far from undermining the state, the RAF's failed campaign reinforced it, by creating a climate of tension that caused people to back more intrusive policing methods.

Lyrics about West German terrorism may not be everyone's cup of tea, but surely everyone can enjoy this album's mutated white English take on funk.



record cover image source

Televisionaries image source



Related

"Art Will Save The World: a Film About Luke Haines" (2012)

Back in 2007 Luke Haines played Dublin. Two civil servants attended the concert. One of them went up to Mr Haines after the show and said, "I would like to make a film about you". When that fellow revealed his status as a civil servant, Mr Haines laughed in his face and told him to fuck off, but the fellow persevered - dropping out of the service, going to film school and finally securing the funding to make the film, eventually winning over Luke Haines' support for the project. As a result, he made a film which I then saw at a Sunday afternoon screening in the Irish Film Institute. No one knows what happened to the other civil servant.

In some respects this film follows the usual music biopic model. There is a bit of narration form Mr Haines telling the story of his amazing career in music. Archive footage shows his past bands appearing on television and stuff. Various people appear and talk about what they think of Luke Haines and his music (sadly there is no appearance by Metallica or Steve Albini). But it also does a bit of deconstructing he documentary, man, bringing home the blah blah blah artifice of the form, with some people saying things they affirm not to be true. There are also scenes where a load of chancers are auditioned for the role of playing Luke Haines (sadly there are then no scenes of any of these people being Luke Haines, perhaps with one of them fighting Luke Haines to establish which one is the real deal and so on).

I enjoyed this film, particularly the archive footage and any of the scenes were Haines was talking to camera, but I also found it a bit disappointing. Some of this I think comes from the inevitable disappointment of seeing a documentary about a subject you already know a lot a about - I was sorry they did not include more of this or highlight the importance of that. The fairly low budget of the film was a factor here too - the filmmaker attended a talk afterwards and said it was all shot in a couple of days or something, and it does rather show. I suspect, though, that these are the quibbles that come with too much knowledge of a subject - if you just knew a couple of songs by Luke Haines (or less) and were curious to know more about him then this would be a great film to see.

Another problematic feature of the film was that it seems like it came to the cinemas last year but was made some time before that, so events had passed it by somewhat. Obviously the film could have done with an in-depth discussion of Mr Haines' concept album about 1970s British wrestlers and an Irish audience may have been interested in some coverage of his recent collaboration with Cathal Coughlan on the uncovering of the North Sea Scrolls. But the area where the time lag seemed most of a disappointment was in the film's lack of engagement with the whole Jimmy Savile business and the rounding-up of every man involved in the entertainment industry back in the 1970s. The seedy side of the music and entertainment business back then seems like a real concern of Luke Haines in his songwriting, to such an extent that a lot of the Savile and related stories in the papers seemed like the coming to life of Luke Haines lyrics, and it would have been interesting for the film to touch on all that.

The PoMo deconstructionist elements did not annoy me as much as they might have done - indeed, some of them were actually funny. However, I think this drawing-attention-to-the-artificiality-of-the-documentary is something that documentary makers should stop thinking of as in any way big and clever. I am media-literate enough to be aware that there is a certain amount of artifice involved in making documentaries and it really is not something I need to be reminded of when watching them. Unless I am watching a documentary about documentaries, obv.

One final point - Luke Haines is joining that select band of men who looks better as they get older. The contrast between the shots of Young Haines, with his long indie hair as opposed to the dapper chap that is Old Haines is very striking.

LATER - I wonder if I am being insufficiently enthusiastic here? I came away from the film wanting to re-listen to all my Luke Haines-related records, thinking also that there are still nuggets out there on those of his records that I have yet to acquire and listen to properly. This, surely, is a key sign of a successful music documentary.

That concert in 2007

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A is for "After Murder Park" by the Auteurs

In the pages of Frank's APA we have started doing this thing where we go through the letters of the alphabet and talk about something we like beginning with each letter. This is my entry for the letter A.

I am writing about After Murder Park by The Auteurs. This was the third album by this band, released in 1996 when the band's career was on the slide a bit. It was recored by Steve Albini, whose basic approach dovetails nicely with Luke Haines' song-writing. Although the instrumentation is broadly the same as on the previous Auteurs albums (guitar, bass, drums, cello), the sound is rather different, thanks to the live-sounding Albini production with its usual fore-grounded drums.

Haines is I think one of the great under-rated songwriters, someone who has languished in semi-obscurity perhaps because he (by reputation) is such a contrary individual that few people in the biz were willing to do him any favours. His best songs typically see his nasty snarl married to his equally snarling guitars, and you get some songs that really go for that here, with 'Married to a Lazy Lover' and 'Light Aircraft on Fire' being typical examples here. But the songs do not all sound like that, there is also the wonderful 'Unsolved Child Murder', which seems to tell of a community torn apart by a child disappearance, jumping from different points of view including that of the local character who has been popularly tarred with responsibility for the terrible crime. The grim subject is offset by music that is basically late Beatles pastiche. Another fun tune is ' Child Brides', which seems to be from some yokel community with its Own Ways, reacting against city slickers rolling in and taking away their underage wives. Small wonder the album was such a monster hit.

I should have more to say about an album I profess to love, but I was up against time constraints. So I will leave it at that and hope to produce something better for B.

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Image source

"The North Sea Scrolls" (2012)

If you have been paying close attention to my writings then you will know all about this already. It is a collaboration between musical superstars Cathal Coughlan and Luke Haines and Australian writer Andrew Mueller. It purports to describe the contents of the eponymous scrolls, documents found in a house in England that reveal the true history of that country during its period of foreign occupation. The album has two discs, but is not a double album. On one disc, each song is preceded by a discussion by Mr Mueller on the contents of the relevant scroll. On the other disc the same songs are repeated, mostly without the Mr Mueller's spoken pieces, the logic being presumably that people will want to re-listen to the music more than the talking.

The narration and the song lyrics cover areas that are familiar from Luke Haines' own songs - the fascinating world of minor celebrities of the 1970s and 1980s and the general rubbishness of England in the past. An Irish twist is added by the inclusion of references to Martin Cahill (whose murder site I pass every day on my way to work), now revealed to have spent several years as Proconsul in England. Several of the Cathal Coughlan songs also reference the Jerry Cornelius mythos of Michael Moorcock, which dovetails well with the 70s fascination of Old Haines.

When I saw the live show of these songs in early 2012, they began with the famous image of Jimmy Savile introducing Frank Bruno to Peter Sutcliffe projected behind them. This was before they opened with 'The Broadmoor Blues Delta'. This was before that Jimmy Savile stuff broke, but it all seems oddly prophetic of it all and to fit in perfectly with the subject matter of this record and other Luke Haines productions. I am curious now as to whether he is now dreaming of writing a concept album about Savile and his partners in crime - something that would be sure to storm its way to the top of the album charts.

On record, the stand-out track remains 'The Morris Man Cometh', a description of how during the occupation of England morris dancers were mobilised as a collaborationist militia. The song is done in a great faux-folkie style with Haines on lead vocals and Coughlan providing some great "hey nonny nonny" backing vocals. However, this should not be thought of as a one-song-album. As well as that track, there is a real beauty and sadness to some of the tunes on which Cathal Coughlan sings lead. I am thinking here of the likes of 'Ayatollah Cornelius' or 'Witches in the Water'. But the whole record is endlessly appealing.

Overall I suppose this record is a bit niche. If you like the same kind of things that I do then you will probably love it. If you are not so interested in peeling back the layers of obfuscation to reveal the truth then this might not be for you.


The North Sea Scrolls live

Luke Haines live again

As part of my general love for all things Luke Haines, I went to see him again in January. This time round he was playing on his own in Whelans. I went on my own – my usual friends were too busy sitting in a pub talking about books. However, I unexpectedly met another friend there, who had wandered along with someone else to check out Mr Hate. The concert format this time was that Haines was on his own on a bare stage with none of the fancy costumes or projected images we had at the North Sea Scrolls event. Haines instead played songs and read from his books.

I would have to say that I did not really enjoy this as much as the North Sea Scrolls event (or indeed the concert at which I first saw Old Haines a couple of years back, also in Whelans). Partly it was a bit short – and to me the shortness seemed a bit needless, for this was a Sunday night and the venue was not trying to hurry events along so that they could start up an indie disco. And the event was not badly attended, so it's not like a demoralised Haines cut the gig short so he could slink off and cry into his pint.

The other not great thing about it all was the reading from the books. Now, in theory this should have been great – Haines is an amusing raconteur and the stories he has in his books are fascinating, but at the end of the day it is easy enough to just go and read the bloody books (or to acquire the audiobooks, read by one Mr Luke Haines). When I saw him first he treated us to anecdotes about the songs he was playing, and in a concert performance that is more what you want than accounts of the time Metallica came to his flat.

What music there was was however excellent. The wrestling tunes took on a new lease of life and seemed to work far better in the stripped-down live format than on record. Everything else was great too, with 'Bad Reputation' (his nasty song about Gary Glitter) packing a considerable bite. What was particularly fascinating was the tune that got the biggest recognition applause – 'Lenny Valentino', from the second Auteurs album. In retrospect, was that the Auteurs hit?

When the concert was over, I made my way home past the hellhole that is the Palace on Camden Street. A DJ was playing 'Rock and Roll Part 2', the Gary Glitter classic. I imagined Luke Haines, the creator of the song 'Bad Reputation', smiling away to himself.

That's enough Luke Haines for now, but I can once again remind readers that I have ready compiled a CD-R introduction to the man's music (for which there is no commercially available compilation or introduction). If anyone wants a copy, drop me a line. If you are the holder of copyright in the music of Luke Haines then I beg to inform you that this paragraph is entirely fanciful.

Panda Valentino

An inuit panda production

And Now I Post About An Album About Wrestling

Luke Haines
9½ Psychedelic Meditation on British Wrestling of the 1970s and early '80s (2011)

Yes, Luke Haines has released a concept album about British wrestling. I think I would get more out of this if I was more familiar with the subject. I am old enough to remember the people these songs are about, but I had very little interest in the subject so it's all a bit mysterious to me. For the benefit of younger or American readers, British wrestling is a bit less comedic than American wrestling, but my impression is that the games were equally scripted. Whenever I saw wrestling on the TV it would feature a load of chubby blokes laying into each other while an audience of grannies bayed for them to tear each other apart.

The subject does make for the kind of bizarro 70s Britain subject matter that Haines loves, but I am far less interested in this than in, say, 1970s West German terrorism. I therefore find this record a bit hard to get to grips with. I also suspect that maybe, just maybe, the songs here are not as good as on other recent Haines records. The production might also be a bit unexciting.

image source (includes further reviews of interesting stuff, including a record by Matt Berry)

An inuit panda production

The True History of England

And we went to a performance of the North Sea Scrolls. Or a concert-lecture experience at which the contents of the North Sea Scrolls were discussed in words and song. These scrolls, discovered in the North Sea or thereabouts, reveal the true history of England in the recent past. They were revealed to us by Andrew Mueller (sometime music journalist, famous as the only one of his kind to like Toasted Heretic), Cathal Coughlan (formerly of Microdisney and the Fatima Mansions) and Luke Haines (formerly of the Auteurs, Baader Meinhof & Black Box Recorder), all clad in colonial garb and pith helmets. They also had a woman with them to play cello, but she wore normal clothes and may not have been a prophet in the same way they were.

The night went like this. Behind the musicians a photograph would be projected. These changed for each song. Examples of pictures featured included the following:
- Jimmy Saville introducing Frank Bruno to the Yorkshire Ripper.
- King Zog of the Albanians
- soldiers marching through a desert carrying a huge picture of some guy
- a Pearly King
- Emperor Jean Bedel Bokassa I
- many more (see my Flickr page for further details)

Andrew Mueller would then introduce each scroll, revealing the astonishing revelations it contained (who would have thought, for instance, that the last round of the Northern Ireland conflict had been kept since the early 1970s by Australian tribute acts? Or that Ireland conquered England in the 1950s, later installing Martin Cahill as proconsul?). One or other of Coughlan or Haines would then sing a song about the contents of said scroll. Our favourite tune was probably the one about how the occupiers of England recruited Morris dancers as a feared collaborationist militia, the song being called 'The Morris Men Cometh'.

For the encore Coughlan and Haines sang two of their own songs each. I found myself wondering if maybe I should investigate the work of Cathal Coughlan, as he has an attractive crooner's voice and an ironic yet heartfelt approach to lyrics. Haines himself did 'Leeds United', which made me happy, and one from his recent concept album on British wrestlers of the 1970s.

Someone at work asked me whether it all worked. I would have to say it did. The evening featured all new songs and lots of poncey spoken word stuff*, but there was a distinct lack of awkward audience shuffling and muttering or people shouting "Play 'Town to Town', you cunt". This suggests that people were enjoying the challenging nature of the evening, thought the fact that Coughlan and Haines have reputations as hard men may have put people off getting lippy.

pictures

An inuit panda production

*with an amusing and somewhat self-referential joke about the Captain Lockheed and the Starfighters record, too complicated to explain here.

Old Haines

I have finally made a compilation of great Luke Haines tunes. If you would like a copy, let me know. I will eventually send it to you, having first checked that you are not a narc working for the record industry, or Luke Haines himself.

I do not have a complete collection of music by Luke Haines, missing at least one of his solo albums and two of The Auteurs'. I do not have Das Kapital either, this being a weird compilation of his stuff he released himself, only with all the songs re-recorded with lush orchestral backing and then released with a cover indistinguishable from Brian Eno's Before And After Science. But I have a fair bit nevertheless. I list the tracks on the compilation below, with some notes. They are chronologically ordered, apart from the two that envelope the collection.

Baader Meinhof
'Baader Meinhof'

This is from the concept album about the Red Army Faction that Haines released as Baader Meinhof, probably after reading either Tom Vague's Televisionaries the issue of Vague on those crazy West German ultra leftist nutjob revolutionaries who terrorised their country in the 1970s. This track is an odd bit of very sparse mutant funk with middle-eastern elements and handclaps in which Haines introduces the subject. The lyrics are perhaps incomprehensible to anyone who does not share Haines' interest in the RAF. If you need a primer, check out http://www.baader-meinhof.com/ . I love this tune a lot, though I did find myself wondering subsequently to what extent its recording was influenced by Felt's 'Space Blues'

The Auteurs
'Show Girl'
'Bailed Out'
'Early Years'

These three are from New Wave, the first Auteurs album. I've picked more up-tempo numbers. These show off Haines' guitar playing and his rasping vocals. The great story about this album is that when it failed to win the Mercury Prize, Haines assaulted Brett Anderson of winners Suede, claiming that he had stolen the prize money.

The Auteurs
'Light Aircraft On Fire'
'Child Brides'
'Unsolved Child Murder'

These are from After Murder Park, the fourth Auteurs album. This was produced by famous record producer Steve Albini. I find that Albini's spare sound suits the Auteurs well. 'Child Brides' is a particular favourite of mine, though 'Unsolved Child Murder' packs its own punch and always remains topical.

Baader Meinhof
'There's Gonna Be An Accident'
'Kill Ramirez'

More Baader Meinhof action. I don't get all the references, though 'Kill Ramirez is plainly about Carlos The Jackal.

Black Box Recorder
'Girl Singing In The Wreckage'
'England Made Me'
'Kidnapping An Heiress'

These three are from England Made Me, the first Black Box Recorder album. This band saw Haines collaborate on songwriting with louche individual John Moore, while Sarah Nixey (the then Mrs Moore) provided vocals to songs largely written for her. It took me ages to get the lyrics of 'Kidnapping an Heiress' – for a long time I just saw them as a succession of somewhat threatening one liners ("And we're searching for your daughter", "Nine hundred dead in Jonestown", "And she's lying in the basement" etc.), though closer listening reveals this to be lyrically linked to the Baader Meinhof stuff, in that it is about the kidnapping of Patty Hearst by the Symbionese Liberation Army, a bizarre episode that eventually saw Hearst changing her name to Tania and helping her former kidnappers to rob banks. As for 'England Made Me', while the Black Box Recorder is excellent, the solo version I once saw Haines perform live took it to a whole other level, making you finally understand the deeds that made the Empire.

Black Box Recorder
'The Art Of Driving'
'The English Motorway System'
'The Facts Of Life'

The second Black Box Recorder was called The Facts of Life, and saw Haines and Moore writing loads of songs about driving and sexual comings of age. A lot of the male vocals on here sound like they are by John Moore, so maybe he did more of the writing? Or maybe not. Anyway, these three songs are great, but there are loads of other top tunes on the album, if this is the kind of thing you like.

Black Box Recorder
'The New Diana'
'Andrew Ridgeley'

These are from Passionoia, the third Black Box Recorder album. I do not like this one so much, feeling that it is a bit swamped by the poppy production they use on a lot of the tracks. 'Andrew Ridgeley' is a total classic, though, a hymn to the other one from Wham!. I wonder what he thinks of it?

Luke Haines
'Off My Rocker At The Art School Bop'
'Leeds United'
'Bad Reputation'

These are from Haines' recent solo album Off My Rocker At The Art School Bop, the second or third album released under his name. Some of the songs, like the first one here, are quite popped up, but this seems to work better than with Passionoia. If you are very young or unfamiliar with English culture then maybe the second or third songs contain elements that pass you by. 'Leeds United' talks of a time in the 1970s when Leeds United were a serious force in football and Peter Sutcliffe was murdering women in and about the Red Light districts of Yorkshire towns. 'Bad Reputation' is about Gary Glitter, the 1970s pop star latterly more famous for nonce-crime, a figure so notorious that Haines has to point out at concerts that the song does not imply any sympathy for Mr Glitter. This song for me is a career highlight for Haines, with the delivery of lyrics like 'I was born to be a monster' dripping with malevolence.

Baader Meinhof
'Baader Meinhof'

This is also from the Baader Meinhof album. Haines liked this tune so much that he did it twice, with this being the elegiac version in which Andreas Baader et al bemoan their failure.

EDIT: I subsequently acquired the second Auteurs album and updated this compilation to include some tracks from it, but I am not going to bother fully editing this post to reflect the new tracklisting.