Throbbing Gristle - Scala Cinema, London 29th February 1980

Red hot funksters Throbbing Gristle at the Scala Cinema, from left to right, Chris Carter (just visible at the edge of the frame), Cosey Fanni Tutti, Genesis P-Orridge, and sitting behind him, Sleazy... 

The Scala Cinema was the subject of Monday's post, and this afternoon, I've been revisiting Industrial Records' leap day all-nighter at the Scala's old home at 25 Tottenham Street on February 29th 1980. Accompanying TG on the night were Monte Cazazza, and Sweden's Leather Nun, and between sets there were screenings of the films of Kenneth Anger, Antony Balch/William Burroughs and Austrian experimental film maker Kurt Kren. Looking at the official event program it looks like Towers Open Fire was a last minute substitution, perhaps for After Cease To Exist which was conspicuously absent on the night.

February had been a busy month for the group. On the 16th, a small cadre of friends and associates were invited to Industrial Records studio to hear the group perform a new set which adapted and mutated sounds and rhythms heard on the 20 Jazz Funk Greats album. Just over a week later, TG took the freshly minted Heathen Earth session on the road (so to speak) with the first public unveiling at The Fan Club in Leeds. The same set was essentially replicated just five days later at the Scala, but where the Fan Club show can sound tentative and unfocused, the Scala performance in comparison is far more cohesive and refined. Heathen Earth's spoken-word experiment which sounded so inert at the Leeds show was wisely dropped for Scala, and there's a greater emphasis on mood and atmosphere. Another highlight of the show are Chris' rhythm tracks, in particular the robot beat that propels an extraordinary, hypnotic and dubby rendition of Don't Do What You're Told, Do What You Think.

Perhaps the most memorable moment of the night was when TG's negative ion generation malfunctioned during their set, unleashing a huge flash of lightning to stunned fans in the front-row, and scrubbing 4mins of the recording with a blizzard of impenetrable static. As was their preference, TG performed first on the night, and in between films and bathroom breaks, Monte Cazazza delivered an abrasive set of violent, squally electronics, while The Leather Nun laid down some primitive garage punk for bleary eyed punters.

Throbbing Gristle - Brighton Polytechnic, March 26th 1977

Throbbing Gristle's show at the Brighton Polytechnic (the first of two visits by the group, a second followed in 1978), was staged at the campus' Sallis Benney Theatre, a dingy cavernous space that served as a locus for all sorts of idiosyncratic art happenings. Invited by the students from the art and design faculty, the group might have expected a more receptive audience than the sneering punks at the previous show at the Nag's Head in High Wycombe, but TG managed 50min of their 1-hour set before a hail of jeers and bottles flung by drunk, abusive punters brought things to a close. As TG concerts go, the Brighton '77 show is one of the group's finest, and despite the antagonism on the night, the group were pleased enough to include a few excerpts from the show on Second Annual Report. The Brighton show opens with a particularly strong Zyklon B Zombie, and it's curious that TG all but retired the song after the concert, dropped from the set-list, with the studio version only making a belated appearance a year later as the flipside of the United single. Ominous bass rumblings, eerie drones and garbled walkie-talkie sounds usher in the urban paranoia of Last Exit, (the title, one presumes, a nod to the Hubert Selby Jr. novel), which builds to a chugging mechanical crunch accompanied by a surreal Genesis P-Orridge vocal about being smashed in the face with a brick and suffering disturbing visions of the British Queen being sodomized by her husband. The lengthy instrumental passage that follows is one of the great TG jams, an astonishing free form torrent of noise and mangled voice sample cut-ups, including the dispassionate confession of a teenage murderer, surely one of Sleazy's most effective dialogue lifts. Genesis returns to the mike for Mary Jane / Record Contract with an improvised vocal that is silly, witty, embarrassing, and ultimately fascinating, the long rambling monologue that eventually mutates into a rant against rock star posturing and record company prostitution, the Sex Pistols in particular the focus of Genesis' scorn. Despite the Pistols burning through contracts with EMI and A&M, (and pocketing the severance pay), Genesis clearly valued TG's independence over Malcolm McLaren's cash from chaos strategies.

Perhaps the biggest talking point of the Brighton '77 show (or the concert recording at least) is the coda tacked on to the end of the Industrial tape where the house DJ berates the audience for their hostility towards TG, sarcastically blasting out The Stooges' Down on the Street on the PA. The group, ever mischievous included a few seconds of the exchange to close out one side of Second Annual Report, (a companion of sorts to D.o.A.'s Death Threats) and it's worth noting that this short snippet is the only place where one can hear (albeit a few seconds only) of the Funhouse opener; the Stooges airbrushed entirely from the TG24 CD edition of the Brighton show. And while the concert never descends into the violence of the Film Makers Co-Op show, the mood sounds edgy and tense - at one point Genesis can be heard saying "make sure everything is safe" presumably referring to TG's equipment. In the years following TG's split individual members would recall weariness at the increasing adulation they were seeing at later shows, a sharp contrast to the sense of disillusionment at the Brighton performance. No breakthrough in grey room it seems...

Throbbing Gristle - Nag's Head, High Wycombe, 11th February, 1977

Listening to Throbbing Gristle's concert at the Nag's Head, High Wycombe, 40 years ago this month...

1977 was Jubilee year for the United Kingdom so it's fitting that Throbbing Gristle's first concert of '77 opened with a little throwaway number for Her Majesty, ("Prince Phillip licked her cunt"). TG's show at the Nag's Head is noteworthy for being the group's first show outside of an art happening, the venue was a dyed in the wool rock club which had recently embraced punk, and between TG's noisy experimentation and the Nag's Head faithful (who gobbed and pogoed to the Sex Pistols and the Clash a few months earlier), the battle lines were well and truly drawn. TG's set remained largely the same as their previous concert but the focus and cohesion the group had at the ICA was replaced by disorder and frustration. According to one eye-witness at the show, TG were plagued with technical problems and glitches from the outset, the group were 20mins late going on which was enough to invoke the wrath of the crowd, their hostility was matched by 53mins of ugly, serrated soundscapes and the occasional provocation by Genesis P-Orridge, ("If you think you're escaping you are just stupid cock-sucking cunts anyway").

Still, there are some highlights – a wayward rendition of  Very Friendly with a fantastic spacey violin coda, a long instrumental passage of harsh electronics and a montage of sampled news reports (including an item about the execution of Gary Gilmour, a particular obsession of P-Orridge's at the time). Following an eerie take on Slug Bait, the mood of the show becomes increasingly combative, with P-Orridge ad-libbing some nonsense much to the annoyance of the crowd, while the group struggled with unruly equipment. When the band get going again, the punks' demands for some two-chord thrash is met with a particularly aggressive version of Zyklon B Zombie which climaxes with an audience member joining in the vocal. "I'll never have them back here," Nag's Head landlord Mick Fitzgibbon told one local newspaper.

Exotic connections

I'm listening to the first two volumes of Martin Denny's Exotica series this morning, courtesy of Scamp's excellent 1996 twofer CD - required listening for any Throbbing Gristle devotee, though I tend to prefer Les Baxter's exotic excursions. This latest round of headphone tourism was inspired by TG's Greatest Hits album which I was poring over at the weekend in search of some elusive information. Greatest Hits was dedicated to Martin Denny (long before the lounge revival of the 90's rekindled interest in the composer) but it was the album's art direction which put Denny in mind, or rather, Liberty Records who issued Denny's early albums in some very attractive sleeves, starring Exotica Girl Sandy Warner. I can't help but think the alluring photograph of Cosey Fanni Tutti on the Greatest Hits album would have made a more effective cover for the 20 Jazz Funk Greats album (such was the propensity of record labels to use glamour girls to sell cut-price compilations) but either way it's an effective way of confounding expectations. TG also borrowed the typeface from the title of the second Exotica album for their own logo, and donned Hawaiian shirts (or in Gen's case, a Yellow Magic Orchestra shirt) for the group photo on the rear sleeve, complete with some amusing props - a mooring rope, a stray crab and Cosey's cornet.

Alternative shot of the Greatest Hits group portrait, courtesy of the 2011 re-issue

The connections between Throbbing Gristle and Martin Denny run deeper than packaging homages. The influence of Denny on TG's music is felt on some of the group's most beautiful songs - 20 Jazz Funk Greats introduced vibes to the TG sound, on tracks like Tanith, Exotica, Hot on the Heels of Love, later reappearing on the final single Distant Dreams (Part 2). The group paid its most explicit tribute to Martin Denny with the Journey Through A Body track Exotic Functions, with its strange animal noises and polyrhythmic percussion. I mentioned the renewed interest in the 90's of vintage exotica, and interestingly there's an overlap here between TG and the belated lounge scene. When Tim Gane of Stereolab was tested for The Wire's Invisible Jukebox feature in issue 164 (October 1997), he recalled first hearing Martin Denny's music on a TG tape: "The first time I heard Martin Denny was on a Throbbing Gristle cassette back in 1979, and I always loved the track. I didn't even know what it was. It was in the middle of a load of stuff - it was a live gig they were playing".

Throbbing Gristle - At the I.C.A., London, 18th October, 1976

"You see, we couldn't get a gig so we thought we'd play at the I.C.A. The Marquee wouldn't have us" (Genesis P-Orridge, Melody Maker, November 20th, 1976)"

After two low key performances during the summer of 1976, Throbbing Gristle made their official debut on October 18th at the opening of COUM's Prostitution show at the Institute of Contemporary Arts. The exhibition catapulted COUM, from obscure performance art group to notorious cultural terrorists, when UK broadsheets and tabloids vented their disgust at COUM's display of used tampons, anal syringes, framed hardcore photos of Cosey Fanni Tutti (pages from adult magazines she posed for) and other scandalous objets d'art. The strategy to officially launch Throbbing Gristle at the Prostitution event was a spectacular bit of self-promotion, even attracting attention from one unlikely source, Scottish MP Nicholas Fairbairn who called for the Arts Council to be scrapped and deemed all involved "wreckers of civilisation", a headline grabbing quote which has since become a byword for the group. Another unsympathetic eyewitness was Tony Parsons who wrote a sneering sarcastic account of TG's performance for the NME. In fact, TG's set dubbed Music From The Death Factory is one of their great early performances, the band surging with creativity, confidence, and fearlessness.

The opening number Very Friendly had been previously recorded at Death Factory studios but the ICA version is the definitive reading of the song, a dramatic (but factual) account of the final hours of 17 year old Edward Evans before his brutal murder by Ian Brady and Myra Hindley. Genesis P-Orridge delivers a tour-de-force vocal, antagonistic, outraged, even a little theatrical ("There's been a mu...mu...mu...mu...murder") amid great tendrils of synth whipped up by Chris Carter, a clanging percussive rhythm track (which had appeared at the AIR Gallery and Winchester shows albeit in fragmentary form) bursts of improv noise and snatches of cut-up dialogue lifted from news programs. Very Friendly segues right into the toxic We Hate You (Little Girls), an exercise in deliberate bad taste but showing a humorous element of TG, something the later wave of Industrial groups could never quite master. Following the relative calm of an eerie instrumental passage, the group embark on Slug Bait, one of TG's most unnerving pieces, led by a weirdly accented vocal by Genesis acting out a Manson Family style slaying. Dead Head returns from the previous show but here is presented in much more lugubrious, sinister form. The final song of the evening, Zyklon B Zombie bears almost no relation, music or lyrics wise to the track found on the flipside of the United single, and after 38mins (and not 60mins as promised by Genesis in his introduction) the ICA concert ends with a high pitched alarm, and polite applause from, one imagines, a bewildered audience. Incidentally, right at the end of the Industrial tape (and at the 58:46 mark of the reissue CD) there's a short clip from BBC Radio's Newsbeat about the Prostitution show, which includes a soundbite by Genesis.

Throbbing Gristle at the AIR Gallery

Listening to Throbbing Gristle's live debut which took place 40 years ago today... On the 6th of July, three months before the group's official launch at the "Prostitution" show at London's Institute of Contemporary Arts, Chris Carter, Peter Christopherson, Genesis P-Orridge and Cosey Fanni Tutti performed for the first time as Throbbing Gristle at the AIR Gallery on Shaftesbury Avenue. The AIR Gallery itself is worthy of a mention. Located near St Martins College Of Art and the Slade, the AIR (which stood for Artists Information Register) was a space for new artists to display their work, the gallery positively encouraged artists "whose work breaches traditional boundaries". Prior to TG's performance, Cosey Fanni Tutti performed a highly visceral solo COUM action entitled Woman's Roll. The group's debut was witnessed by about 30 people although witness may not be the correct term as TG performed in one room, with the sound relayed to an adjacent room where the audience was gathered.

As for the music itself, the AIR Gallery concert is one of the group's most minimalist sets, an entirely instrumental 38mins of dark brooding, low end bass-guitar noise, sheets of distorted electronics, heavily amplified plucked violin strings, and layered throughout with pre-recorded tapes of chugging rhythms and eerie synth lines. The quality of the official recording is murky (reminiscent of bootlegged Les Rallizes Dénudés shows), the cassette recorder sounds far removed from the source which may well be an accurate facsimile of what the audience experienced. Incidentally, 8min or so of the AIR Gallery show was included as part of the Best of...Vol 1 tape and much later, a lengthy and significantly cleaner sounding excerpt from the performance, appropriately titled Raw Mode of Life, was included on the unofficial 1997 Dossier CD release Kreme Horn.

Target's Kezar

More Kezar stuff to mark the anniversary of Throbbing Gristle final concert, 35 years old today... The Kezar show was videotaped by Joe Rees of Target Video and later issued in 1983 as Live In San Francisco At Kezar Stadium. The historical significance of the Kezar show aside, the Target video was important as it restored all the cuts that were made to the concert when it was issued as the Mission of Dead Souls album in 1981 by Fetish Records. Still, there was one glaring anomaly on the Target video (and the later TGV edition) - the track Spirits Flying was not part of the film for reasons unknown - perhaps the segment of the film suffered from technical problems or maybe Target vetoed the track due to the presence of some X-rated dialogue in the opening moments. A shame as Spirits Flying features Cosey's most significant contribution to the Kezar concert when she takes up her horn. Despite the Target video getting an upgrade to DVD for the TGV set, the original Target VHS edition is worth savoring, as it features better picture quality, a unique mix of the concert, and includes some shots that are not on the DVD. Fortunately some good soul has uploaded the Target version albeit with sync problems. Incidentally, if you're watching the concert, look out for Jello Biafra in the crowd, seen bobbing along to Looking for the O.T.O

Incidentally, local noise rock group Flipper were the opening act on the night of May 29th 1981, and as per TG's set, Flipper were also videotaped for posterity, and fortunately the footage is available on youtube, finally dispelling the oft-repeated rumor that the band played a 90min version of Subhuman (?) The Flipper set is worth watching for TG fans as it features an impromptu appearance on stage by Genesis P-Orridge (at the 22.30 mark) to loan his bass guitar to Bruce Loose when his short-circuits...

Throbbing Gristle at Kezar Pavilion

"Thank-you and goodnight. That's the end of Throbbing Gristle" 

To mark the 35th anniversary of the dissolution (of sorts) of Throbbing Gristle, I've been listening to the Kezar Pavilion concert which took place on May 29th 1981 in San Francisco. The group's termination date had been predetermined in the weeks before the two US shows, by this point the sense of weariness within the group was palpable - the Los Angeles concert the week before had been one of TG's most shambolic performances, but perhaps recognizing the historical significance of the Kezar date, TG sound focused and cohesive, if understandably melancholic. Evidently the split was on Gen's mind, in his subdued introduction he quietly intones, "It's a strange experience to finish" and on the track Guts on the Floor (whose title reads like a statement on COUM's transgressive actions), Gen is heard singing the line "Ending it all this way, ending it all today". The influence of 20 Jazz Funk Greats is apparent at Kezar - Persuasion is given a humorous US slant ("I remember this story told to me by Jim Jones just before he went to Guyana"), and Circle of Animals and Looking for the O.T.O are essentially re-writes of Tanith and Still Walking. One of the more personally pleasing aspects of the Kezar show is the presence of a sample of dialogue from my favourite film Apocalypse Now, heard during Funeral Rites - "Terminate with extreme prejudice. You understand Captain that this mission does not exist nor will it ever exist", which neatly reflects TG's official statement a month later on the cessation of all activities, which simply read "The Mission is Terminated"

TG on Celluloid

Another French connection, this time an unsavory one… pictured below, my copy of Throbbing Gristle’s D.o.A album on the French Celluloid label. Celluloid earned the wrath of Industrial Records when the label put out unauthorized copies of the Second Annual Report and D.o.A. I’m unaware of the exact circumstances of the fallout – a quick flick through Simon Ford’s book doesn’t offer any explanation, but TG (or perhaps Genesis P-Orridge) outlined their position in no uncertain terms in the 1982 RE/Search book William S. Burroughs/Brion Gysin/Throbbing Gristle. I picked up my copy of the Celluloid D.o.A in the early 90’s, a few years before I discovered it was a counterfeit but I’ve never felt inclined to “Destroy all copies” as the RE/Search book advises. Interestingly, Celluloid also put out Industrial’s Thomas Leer & Robert Rental album The Bridge in 1979 (to little controversy it seems), and what’s more, Celluloid’s website, which includes the label’s complete discography omits the two TG albums, the crime airbrushed from history so to speak…

J’adore Sordide Sentimental !

Office chit-chat about winning the lottery always sends me cruising eBay for things I could never afford, and this morning, I’m looking at some highly coveted singles released by the Sordide Sentimental label, typically a numbered, limited edition 7” single packaged in an A4-sized sleeve containing various inserts and idiosyncratic French/English liner notes. Three releases in particular are holy grail objects for me: Throbbing Gristle’s We Hate You (Little Girls) / Five Knuckle Shuffle, Joy Division’s Licht Und Blindheit and Tuxedomoon’s Une Nuit Au Fond De La Frayere / Egypt, the latter two in particular for the great artwork by French fantasist Jean-François Jamoul. The 1980-issued Licht Und Blindheit single (which contains Atmosphere/Dead Souls) is interesting to muse on, Jamoul’s illustration of a figure descending into a netherworld seems to echo Anton Corbijn's famous 1979 photograph of Joy Division at the staircase of Lancaster Gate tube station. More significant still is the beautiful painting inside the Licht Und Blindheit package, depicting a mysterious hooded figure - a predominant feature of Corbijn's 1988 video for Atmosphere... As for those lottery winnings, a German seller is selling what looks like an excellent edition for a cool €1,000 which is a good price – I’ve seen lesser quality editions on sale for almost double that price (any copy going for less will surely be a counterfeit).

More stunning artwork courtesy of Jean-Louis Dupré (Throbbing Gristle) and Jean-François Jamoul (Tuxedomoon). No obvious links emerge between TG and Tuxedomoon but interestingly the collage inside the Tuxedomoon package, designed by Sordide Sentimental co-founder Yves Von Bontee recalls similar work by Genesis P-Orridge, while the photo of indeterminate origin could pass for a COUM action. The TG single is the more collectible of the two and contains impenetrable Jean-Pierre Turmel liner notes and a collage that would be best described as NSFW. Incidentally Jean-Louis Dupré is the brother of Lawrence Dupré who designed TG’s camouflage uniforms.

Throbbing Gristle Heaven

Pictured below, Cosey Fanni Tutti and Genesis P-Orridge at Heaven, December 23rd 1980. Photo courtesy of Akiko Hada... My thanks to the TG FB group for sharing a link to artist and videographer Akiko Hada’s website showcasing 20 years of music photography – well worth a visit. And with that in mind I’m listening to the Heaven show this afternoon, one of the finest of the late-era concerts. Rough Trade issued the show on cassette as Beyond Jazz Funk, and the title is not as wry as one might expect, with Cosey and her trumpet trying to get away with as much jazz as possible on this particular night. But mostly, the Heaven show is TG at its most rhythmical, and abrasive - perhaps as a consequence of the lo-fi recording which lends Chris Carter’s beats a real crunch. Dossier put the show out on CD in 1993 with sleeve notes by Gen, stating that “…this is essentially the last, unified performance by TG. Internal Tensions and transitions took an irreparable toll shortly hereafter”.

As 1980 rolled over to 1981, the group’s days were numbered, the mission close to termination, and performances were increasingly patchy. The Lyceum show in February sounds particularly listless, and while Heaven lacks the white heat improvisation of earlier TG concerts (the set is similar to San Francisco 6 months later), it makes up for it with sheer energy, the psychic youth responding in kind, with enthusiastic cheers, whistles and calls for the hits – one audience members requests Hamburger Lady throughout, but to no avail. Derek Jarman filmed a portion of the concert for his abstract Super8 short T.G.: Psychic Rally in Heaven (with some cuts from the Second Annual Report for the soundtrack). Incidentally, a few lines of dialogue from Alan Clarke’s theatrical version of Scum can be heard at one point, I’m guessing it was a favourite of Sleazy’s…

Berlin Atonal

Berlin has not relinquished its grip on me just yet, I’m currently listening to Throbbing Gristle’s two consecutive nights at the SO36 Club in November 1980. Both concerts were heavily bootlegged over the years, most famously by the German Zensor label as the Funeral In Berlin LP featuring Val Denham’s great sleeve artwork. This was another album I was checking for among Berlin’s vinyl dealers but no luck. Of the two nights at the SO36, the November 8th show is the best and remains one of TG’s last great concerts, highly visceral and full of great invention with definitive readings of An Old Man Smiled, Something Came Over Me, and Discipline which I believe had its first performance on this night. The second appearance at the SO36 is less vital, the performance sounds frustrated and lacking focus but as on all TG nights there are moments of terrific psychick magick. Perhaps the group’s energy had been spent sightseeing in the dreary weather seen in the pics of TG at the Berlin Wall. The fantastic picture below is from one of the SO36 nights, courtesy of Richard Gleim and shared by the TG FB group.

Twenty-Four Hours

Tape porn courtesy of Industrial Records and the original 24 Hours boxset briefcase from 1980 comprising 24 cassettes of live Throbbing Gristle music plus 2 additional cassettes of the group interviewed for radio (circa 1978 I suspect).

From the Discogs page: "Initially offered for £77 for the UK, £80 for Europe and £82 for the rest of the world. By the time of the 1980/81 mail order catalog, each set retailed for £88 (for UK and Europe) or £99 for the rest of the world (postage paid)"

In January 2015, a complete set with the inserts and signed ephemera sold on eBay for £1,131.00 (+£48.80 p&p)...