3 posts tagged “sweatbox”
Following up on the "bands with a self-titled theme song" thread from two posts ago, here is Sheffield band Chakk with "Chakk Theme." It did not appear on any Chakk release, only on the Audio Visual LP companion to Rob Deacon's Abstract Magazine 6, a 1985 Sweatbox Records release. "Chakk Theme" is mostly instrumental, with nothing for singer Jake Harries to do except shout "Chakk" once in a while (I don't think second singer John Stuart was in the band yet); it may be the straight-ahead grooviest track they ever recorded:
I frequently ponder my fixation on the music of Sheffield from the 80s. Was it really that special, or am I just exhibiting a symptom of middle age, whereby the favorite music of one's youth or young adulthood is elevated onto a pedestal and becomes the "best ever" that no contemporary music can possibly equal, leaving one stuck in an outdated aesthetic, listening to oldies and decrying the crap that passes for music these days? I think I'm safe on the latter count; there's enough music I like coming out all the time that I don't have time to listen to it all, so I don't really care about the crappiness of the music I'm not listening to. That leaves the first part of the question to deal with: was the Sheffield music scene in the 80s special? Observing it from afar, participating vicariously, it seemed special to me at the time. Back then, and even to this day, I had never been part of a local music "scene," mainly because I never lived anywhere where there was more than one band making music that I liked (often there was less than one band making music I liked), and I never had the initiative to start one. But across the ocean in bleak, postindustrial Sheffield, bands like Cabaret Voltaire, Hula, Chakk, ClockDVA, The Box, The Human League, and more were funking, bleeping, and skronking up a storm. I am pleased to report that it wasn't just romanticization on my part, there really was some magic happening there, and it has been chronicled in several books and at least one film, Made in Sheffield. And thankfully for the cash-impaired, Damon Fairclough has compiled a comprehensive mp3 mix of Sheffield bands, Destroyed by gods, and paired it with extensive commentary on each track, available for free download and reading from his Noise Heat Power website. He paints a firsthand portrait of Sheffield as revealed through its music scene, and manages to make me nostalgic for something I never actually lived through in the first place. Chakk are represented in Fairclough's mix by their first single, "Out of the Flesh" (from a FON reissue not the original Doublevision release). Martin Lilleker, who has written two books about Sheffield music (so far), drops an interesting Chakk tidbit in an interview with Pete Mella:
People actually moved to Sheffield because of it, that's why Chakk ended up forming a band in Sheffield specifically, because of the music. They'd heard the Cabs [Cabaret Voltaire], and would go to the city where that music was being played. Quite a lot of people came to Sheffield University for that very reason.
Fairclough's written piece is the online equivalent of liner notes; remember all the text that used to come with an album, or a CD, that you could read while listening to the music to enhance the experience? I tried listening to a Rhino Records podcast once, but the guy wouldn't play the music until he was done talking about it, slowly, and I couldn't sit through it. The beauty of liner notes, and the 21st century equivalent that I'll call "blog accompaniment," is that you don't have to stop the music to get the information. And it doesn't get any better than Destroyed by gods.
I'm not done with Chakk--I like them more than Fairclough does--but I'm done for today. Stay tuned for more at a later date.
My old chum Platters That Matter Records pointed out that I omitted Perennial Divide from my list of Sweatbox acts the other day. However, I did mention Meat Beat Manifesto, and I always think of them as the same band, as MBM founders Jack Dangers and Jonny Stephens both started out in Perennial Divide (Dangers under his given surname, Corrigan). ("Perennial Divide" is William Burroughs's play on "perineal divide," i.e. the taint.) Perennial Divide only released one full-length album, Purge (1986). The cover art is a depiction (real or imagined, I don't know) of Swindon Railway Works, Swindon being the hometown of Corrigan and Stephens. The standout track is "Captain Swing" (the title referring to a mid-19th-century labor uprising), which showcases Corrigan's bass playing and also introduces the heavy rhythms that would become a hallmark of Meat Beat Manifesto:
As with all Sweatbox releases, the whole thing is good. Another omission pointed out by Platters is Circus X3 (a.k.a. Circus Circus Circus), and on that one I plead ignorance, I never got any of their records. Sometimes it seems like every blog entry leaves me with something else to seek out, but I guess that's life. Finally, I urge you to check out Platters That Matter Records' blog: he is up and running with a wild mix of tunes from his vast record library. "Eclectic" doesn't even begin to describe it. "Dig-um!"
Here's a first: an intersection of my 80s rarities thread with my car-chase music thread. The first song released by A Primary Industry was "Perversion" on Life at the Top, the LP companion to Abstract magazine number 4 from 1984:
Abstract was the brainchild of Rob Deacon, who died last month in a canoeing accident at age 42 (same as me). Life at the Top was issued by Third Mind records, and introduced me to several cutting-edge bands such as Pornosect, Attrition, Bushido, Stress, and Muslimgauze. I have two other issues of Abstract, and they are equally chock-full of creamy postpunk goodness. Deacon evolved Abstract into the Sweatbox record label, which I consider one of the top five labels of the 80s. Sweatbox launched Meat Beat Manifesto, for one, and issued records by A Primary Industry, In the Nursery, Adi Newton's post-ClockDVA group The Anti Group, and probably some more that I can't think of at the moment. They were all great records in beautifully-designed sleeves.
A Primary Industry put out another song on another Abstract LP, an EP (7 Hertz), an LP (Ultramarine), and a 12' remake of Blondie's "Heart of Glass" (all on Sweatbox), then disappeared. I have only now discovered that they didn't actually disappear, the core of Paul Hammond and Ian Cooper just regrouped under a different name, Ultramarine. I never got around to checking them out in the 90s, but I will make up for that shortly.
I can never hear "Perversion" without thinking of Pigbag's signature tune, "Papa's Got a Brand New Pigbag" (1982), so here's that too:
