Review: GOAT Live at Star And Shadow Cinema, Newcastle 20th October 2012

I don’t go to many concerts these days, probably due to expense/laziness, but mainly down to the fact that there aren’t too many good bands out there that warrant the effort. I’ll support my friends etc and check out those word of mouth recommendations from time to time, and this is how I came across GOAT, an obscure Swedish outfit that were playing only 3 shows in Britain recently, and what a stroke of luck that one of those 3 shows happened to be in Newcastle. Most bands these days bypass Newcastle, probably due to there being a fairly moribund scene here – no-one seems to get that excited here, all too cool for school methinks.

I came across GOAT when a friend of mine sent me a link to one of their videos on you tube and I became slightly obsessed with it, with it’s dirty bass line and freak out guitar married to a tribal chanting and video featuring South American indigenous people falling prey to white hunters.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=keAwK766Ek0  

Now I had heard that this band hail from an obscure part of Sweden and, despite having known each other since childhood, had never really played live, instead concentrating on jamming, and more recently recording an album called “World Music”, which is superb. So, with this in mind, could they cut it live? Were they going to prove to be a mighty disappointment? Not on your Nelly!

Like The Residents GOAT prefer to let the music do the talking and therefore regale themselves in masks and outfits belying their interest in tribal accoutrements ranging from African to Venetian, from Witchcraft to Voodoo, painting themselves in a variety of guises like a tribal Halloween party. The two female singers, who, like Abba, sing all their chants in unison, were dressed like middle eastern dancers at a fancy dress ball, with Venetian masks and feathers, entering with bells and incense and dancing throughout like Sufi dervishes.

Their music is hypnotic, tribal, intense, and heavy, reminding me of so much ethnic, mainly Jungian African/Moroccan music, but also more Western stuff especially Can and This Heat and some of the more hypnotic Krautrock.

The place was packed, dark and hot and, due to the amount of tall people standing towards the front, it was difficult to see everything, which I think added to the mystique, catching glimpses of the band as they played. The sound was intense, and mesmerising as they lurched from one dark vibe to the next, like a voodoo dance party. Each part played added up to more than the sum, creating a chanting looping rhythm that forces the body to move to the pulse of the percussion which crashes and throbs with the bass (a red Rickenbacker 4001 no less), while the 2 guitars intertwine and stab and occasionally let rip with dirty lead breaks, intermittently holding down the beat like chains on a slave.

I found my head and neck pulsing with a life of their own whilst my legs and feet stamped on the ground with Beefhearts floppy boots while I was transported to a time when there was nothing but life coursing through our veins and out of our hands in celebration that there was nothing but to be alive.

GOAT is a celebration, but not necessarily a happy one. They are life-affirming and death-affirming. They shake your soul out of it’s body and carry it away on Mayan pyres with dreams of ancient bones rattling, and dark drums beating somewhere out there on the ‘vast and subtle plains of mystery’ (Joni Mitchell). I don’t know if they intend playing live again, but if they do please check them out. You may never be the same again, and you’ll be all the better for it.

The making of "Play ForToday"

Kick-started by our love of Tim Smith and the Cardiacs, which is where we came in initially right back in the early 90’s when we all first met and the whole thing came into being in the first place. And after years of living together and playing together, busking for coppers, splits and spats, falling in and out of love, starving on the streets of London and our eventual rise in the late 90’s, only to drift apart for years to be brought back together by the man who started it all in the first place. We always knew we had something extraordinary, and if something’s worth doing, it’s worth doing again.

So there we were in a café in Stoke Newington, like nothing had changed since we first played here 15 years before. Still scrimping and starving, 5 impoverished souls with a bloody great yearning and no way of knowing just how we can all make this work. Hanging everything on a simple naïve optimism we decided to do it again. Just how do 5 people from different parts of the country, with no money and no contacts and no hope, with a reputation like ours, set about making an album? An album that they hope one day will be lauded as the greatest piece of art, the most stupendous piece of work, that will stand the test of time and be heralded the world over and bring peace to the world (or something). It’s not going to be cheap, they thought.

Don’t ask me – I guess you operate on the principle that if you want something enough it will happen. I still can’t see how that’s possible, but lo, 3 months later there we were in Snap studio in North London, with Guy Massey at the controls, embarking on our mission impossible and recording the first two songs in a 3 day session. Contacts were pulled, and deals were made. Old friends and new pulled together to make it happen. Dave Bedford and Andy Mcleod and Simon Williams – thank you.

Of course you don’t get anywhere without a bit of hard work and a lot of inspiration, and we’d put in the hours writing and rehearsing, and playing, until we had a set of fine songs that we could be proud of, and that we hoped would set the world alight. The writing of “Sovereign” alone was fraught with Dostoevsky style candlelit scribbling in the wee small hours, whilst slotting rehearsal spaces around our busy schedules, and crawling up and down the M1 sleeping on floors, hoping that one day it’d all be worth it.

Cut to the end of the strange summer of 2011 – did that actually happen? And there we were at the Bull & Gate playing two glorious sold out nights, showcasing some of the new songs that were rolling off the presses ready to be recorded for posterity. Andy Mcleod had been having secret meetings on our behalf and had come up trumps with a deal to record the rest of the album. 15 days.

15 days…15 days! That’s less than 2 days per song. How will we manage? It took Pink Floyd 8 months to record “Dark Side of the Moon”. These were our worries when we approached the recording (not bad worries to have though in the big scheme of things), and the sessions weren’t all plain sailing, but Vanessa did cook us some lovely food to keep us all going, and thanks to all the time spent rehearsing and playing, the songs were laid down fairly quickly, and despite Guy sustaining a broken rib resulting in the wonderful Marco Pasquareiello stepping in to desk duties for a while, we almost managed it. I say almost. We did have to negotiate another 3 days, but that’s certainly not bad considering what we were up against. Vanessa, in between cooking duties and of course laying down some magnificent bass lines, managed to capture some stuff on her flip cam, despite the sometime hysteria of Richard and the reluctance of some parties to be captured on film!

And so we reached the end of the year with an album in the can. Despite all the odds we had achieved what we set out to achieve. Unfortunately we couldn’t record everything we had written, and with more songs to come, I’m afraid before long we’re going to have to do it all again. After all, songs are like babies. They cry and cry and keep you awake at night, and you have to clothe and feed them and send them out into the world when they’re old enough. Will this ever end? Probably not. We are like proud parents right now watching their progeny crawl off to their first day at school, hoping they’ll do alright, and not get bullied.

Marmaduke Dando Hutchings/The Murder Barn live at the Village Underground 21/10/11

I must say I’ve heard the name a few times but didn’t know anything about the man and his music. I was pleasantly surprised when this smart, clipped but slightly strange individual took to the stage, walking around like Vivian Stanshall doing Bryan Ferry, stepping lightly around the stage like a cat.

His songs and his persona shower you with references. Within minutes my head was full of names – Stuart Staples/Tindersticks, Divine Comedy, Jacques Brel, Scott Walker, Bryan Ferry, Nick Cave, Baby Bird etc

But by the second song I was thinking only of one man. The man himself. Looking like a Victorian/Edwardian man of means, he has a unique approach to his songs. He doesn’t just sing them – he acts them, like mini vignettes – slices of a life slightly askance, almost imagined. Marmaduke Dando Hutchings is a creation, a force of nature, a sideshow freak, a dandy aesthete, with one pointed shoe in this world and the rest in some nether world of Victorian ephemera, and between the wars music hall. He reminds me of the Glass Eaters books of G.W Dahlquist – both real and ridiculously far-fetched, ludicrous yet compelling.

There is much clever wordplay in the lyrics, yearning for a better time. There is sickness and darkness, humour and desire. There is subtlety and beauty in the delicate tunes, and there is artifice and fantasy and a will to hold up a mask to the world and show you a Punch and Judy show of idealised life. A life that seems somehow more monochrome and dull than that which is pictured. It is darker yet more beautiful, richer, though more evil than this one. An exaggeration and a distortion of life, presented as art – it touches but is not touched. It exists in it’s own time and space and is not affected by the real life that surrounds it – like a museum.

Welcome to the world of Marmaduke Dando Hutchings – a looking glass world of objet d’art, scientific journals and monocles, old manuscripts and half drunk bottles of gin, all carefully placed for greatest effect by a mind who wants you to believe that it’s all real. Or is it?

I had the great fortune once to witness a concert by a band called Persecution Complex – a mixture of art school freaks playing complex glam riffs over almost prog chops. Two young sisters led the band on guitar and voice respectively. Chesca providing alto range vocals – beautiful and glamorous and powerful, and Becca with her 2-tone hair and a scary dedication to inspirational riffage. I manages to acquire a 3 track demo tape which I played over and over, and still to this day it remains in my mp3 player and always gives me a thrill when it comes up on random.

Well let me tell you that the sisters have done some growing up and now front The Murder Barn. Their influences have spread like tentacles to include the organic depths of Nick Cave/P.J. Harvey/Tom Waits.

To listen to the Murder Barn is like taking a journey by sea to an unknown shore in the company of strangers with a leery glint in the eye. You might not feel safe, your drink might have been spiked, and your wallet may be gone in the morning, but you will feel somehow the better for the experience, and your life will be forever enriched.

I have to say that in Chesca Dolecka we have a female singer quite unsurpassed in the current music scene. She is both beautiful and powerful, a mixture of Joan Baez and Grace Slick, a voodoo queen, a Waterhouse heroine, a Rousseau dream. In her demeanour there are elements of the folk dreams of Albion with it’s pagan magic rituals, and Thomas Hardy style village heroines. But there is also gypsy fire and Haitian devils and New Orleans mondo trash.

The music has the voodoo vibe of tex mex, and the European Transylvanian gypsy dances. To see the Murder Barn is to witness a ritual, with all it’s catholic pomp and guilt catharsis, as well as its Sufi dervish and African trance. It is power, dark and terrifying, yet spiritually uplifting.

The band look great (despite every male member sporting beards!) – all red and black and dark burlesque. The musicianship is cohesive and supportive, with heavy riffs and sea shanty rhythms, distorted organ stabs, Duane Eddy style twangs and rolling accordion washes.

If you are a fan of the glorious Technicolor of the Hammer films, along with the sinister paganism of the Wicker Man. If you occasionally dress up as a pirate and enjoy the feeling of being a rebel on the rolling seas, or if you dream of bodice ripping heroines and Daphne Du Maurier Cornish Inns. Or if you prefer your music blood red and appreciate the art of Lorca and Frida, or if you’ve ever loved the Spanish toreador and the surrealism of Picasso/Dali. If you want music that is powerful and moves you like an ocean wave and you like female singers whose prose and vibrato can rip out your heart and caress it’s curves…then listen to the Murder Barn.

Dole Scum

Dole Scum

I first “signed on” after leaving school in June 1979. Obviously one was obliged to wait several weeks before receiving it and I ended up with a cheque for the princely sum of @£70. Being a naïve 16-year-old hippie I went out and bought an acoustic guitar and a Neil Young album (Harvest), with the intention of never looking back, and, apart from some brief spells at college and being in a signed band for a year, that’s the way it’s been since.

I have had to learn how to live on a pittance that has stopped growing in line with the cost of living (thanks to New Labour), and with the prejudice that has been developed by political and media campaigns over the years.

When I first signed on there was very little stigma attached to it. In general people still believed in the welfare state and it’s inherent kindness to those less fortunate. We are after all; all in this together, and there but for the grace of favour go the lot of us. But there was a new attitude amongst the upper echelons which was seeping it’s way through the rich gentrified landowners, and through their elected representatives, the Conservative party, they sought to turn man against man, not to mention woman against woman. By spurious rumour not based on fact the public would be drip fed lies – about scroungers, about unions, about hooligans, travellers, hippies, punks, socialists, the working class. The haves started to become extremely prejudiced against the have-nots, regarding them as dangerous (this feeling is based purely on fear, because, with a slight shift in circumstance, you could become one of them). (For cultural reference points here watch “Cathy Come Home” and “Boys From The Black Stuff”).

In the 80’s we had to put up with the middle class looking down on us like shit on a shoe. Now everyone regards us not just as scum but also as criminals, when really we should be given a fucking medal for the shit that we have to deal with, from snotty nosed jobs-worth’s, to threats from bailiffs representing council tax/housing/landlords etc. Leave us alone – it’s not a crime to be poor.

We are not taking your hard earned pay and pissing up your backs with it. We appreciate your decency, and your kind-heartedness. We might not have your skill and your intelligence, but please don’t penalise us for it. If anyone is taking the piss it is your representatives – your councillors and your MP’s, who have cost the taxpayer billions in illegal claims and second home and travel expenses, and paid holidays and restaurant bills. We are just trying to survive and have a decent standard of living.

I still believe in the welfare state and I welcome the ideals put in place by William Beveridge during the Attlee government of the 50’s. I believe we should help those less fortunate attain a standard of living comparable to modern civilisation’s needs, and that people have a right to a modern health care and shelter and food to live on, and enough to help them to realise their potential, with financial encouragement and training in whatever they desire, and free education for all, not just those with rich parents – and I don’t think it’s too much to ask to use your taxes to pay for these things. What I do object to is the people who squeeze your hard earned cash into their own pockets and then scapegoat the poorest members of society, by trying to make you believe that these people are scum of the earth dole scroungers who don’t have any worth or value, and denying them a voice or access to the things that can help them to rise above the ranks and become “decent” members of society.

Fat is a festering issue

This week I have been thinking mostly about fat. It’s not just a feminist issue. It occurred to me that most people in this world believe there is a direct co-relation between eating and weight – the more you eat, the bigger you get, and so fat is a greed issue. You only have to listen to the snide little comments comedians like Jimmy Carr and Ricky Gervais infer to get this point. They truly believe this is the case. If it were, wouldn’t life be so simple? The fact is that scientists don’t know what causes one person to have weight issues and another not to. I grew up with an older brother and sister. My brother was thin and we weren’t. Neither my Mother or Father had issues with weight, and of all of us, my brother was probably the greediest. His weight has never fluctuated, no matter what activities he was performing or what he was eating, and I could say the same for myself – no matter how much I ate in a particular time period, or how much exercise I took, despite minimal fluctuation, I remained pretty much the same. The depression brought on by the knowledge that no matter what you do to lose weight it never shifts can cause some people to comfort eat, which can add even more pounds, but the fact is that weight is not a greed issue, and scientists are still baffled. But how much research is being done in this field? After all most people, including scientists, still believe that’s it’s just based on the amount you eat, and therefore probably don’t see the point – just eat less you fat bastards! I believe the likes of Jimmy Carr and Ricky Gervais have this same problem and resent fatties, because there but for the grace of expensive weight loss treatments go I! Chubbies pick on fatties because it takes the attention away from their own flabby backsides!

Obesity is a growing problem and needs to be tackled and more should be spent on scientific research into its causes, and why it doesn’t affect all of us. Perhaps we could isolate genes or DNA mapping and find a way to combat it. This is a very skinny biased society and there is an awful lot of prejudice against fatties (I should know) so pull out your bony fingers and get to work people. I’ll happily be your guinea pig.

On a slightly separate issue there is also a problem with sizing. The point at which someone is referred to as obese is too low. I believe the average size for a female is 14 to 16 (there’s no male alternative size but shall we say 12-15 stone). Above size 16 isn’t obese, it’s just overweight. Obese should not come into play until well over size 20. Size 12 is underweight, size 10 is skinny and anything under is morbidly skinny – freaks! (Obviously these figures are dependent on height and age, but lets talk averages). Doctors tend to point the finger too much by using the word morbidly – you can be overweight and healthy, just as you can be underweight and unhealthy.

So come on people – stop judging and get with the programme. Stop pointing and laughing at us fatties and turn your attention to the skinny fucks, who also can’t help the way they are!