Mark Fisher RIP

Sad news from the UK is the passing of Mark Fisher, cultural theorist and inspirational music writer. 

Fisher's influential K-Punk blog was widely admired and wide read. Fisher used a cultural theorist's perspective to examine underground and mainstream music, from his original fascination with Roxy Music and The Jam through to Burial, via Japan and Rufige Kru. He was also a founding member of Warwick University's Cybernetic Cultural Research Unit (with musician and label boss Kode9), and a lecturer in the Department of Visual Cultures at Goldsmiths in London. 

In 2004, Fisher released Ghosts Of My Life, a book that covered a wide range of topics and shared his personale mental health struggles. The book also explored Fisher's ideas on "hauntology," which is a method/theory of understanding the world when culture has lost momentum at the "end of history." 

"Hauntology is a coming to terms with the permanence of our (dis)possession, the inevitability of dyschronia," Fisher wrote in a blog post in 2006. "I repeat, I re-cite: hauntology is the closest thing we have to a movement, a zeitgeist, at the moment (and one of the uncanniest aspects of it is the fact that there seem to be very few lines of explicit influence among the artists involved)."

Fisher followed up in 2009 with Capitalist Realism: Is there no alternative? Which argued that since 1989 capitalism had portrayed itself as the only valid economic-political system. 

His final book The Weird and the Eerie was published in January 2017. His loss will be keenly felt by many, not least for the that fact that the most recent book he was working on, had a truly mouth watering title Acid Communism. One can only dream...

A fund has been set up to help his wife and son. Please donate if you can.

Mark Fisher Fund

Bands I wish I'd been in #6 - Aztec Camera

It's been a while...

Things have changed, you have changed, so have I and yet. We can't ignore the past. 

I suspect that I've already mentioned this but... way back, in the way back. There was a band from East Kilbride named Aztec Camera (partly after 'Camera camera' by Teardrop Explodes). They aimed to blend The Fall, The Clash, Velvet Underground, Bob Dylan, Wes Montgomery, The Flying Burrito Brothers and possibly Love into one rather joyous cheeky little melange of jazz chords, intelligent lyrics, checked shirts and raucous gigs. 

Aztec Camera first appeared on a Glasgow cassette-only compilation of local unsigned bands on the Pungent Records label. The band's first UKsingle release was sold as a 7" by Postcard Records—a Glasgow-based independent record label co-founded by Mr Edwyn Collins and Dame Alan Horne in 1981. The single featured the song "Mattress Of Wire" and a rather beautiful b-side entitled "Lost Outside The Tunnel". They also released in  "Just Like Gold" and "We Could Send Letters" in the same year. An acoustic version of the latter song appeared on a compilation album, entitled C81. Following the two 7" releases with Postcard, the group signed with Rough Trade Records in the UK and Sire Records in the US for their debut album. 

At this point, the band was officially a quartet: Roddy Frame (vocals, guitar, harmonica), Bernie Clark (piano, organ), Campbell Owens (bass) and Dave Ruffy (drums, percussion). Their debut album was produced by John Brand and Bernie Clarke at ICC Studios in Eastbourne. The stand out single was "Oblivious", which Roddy unashamedly admitted was an attempt to get the band on TOTP, which didn't make him a bad person!

During the recording process for the album, Frame apparently used a different guitar for every song. For the song "Orchid Girl", Frame explained in 2013 — during the 30th anniversary tour — he was attempting to merge the influences of his favorite guitarist at the time, Wes Montgomery, and punk rock icon Joe Strummer. I was actually in the studio the day that Roddy recorded "Orchid Girl" and it is still one of the most remarkable moments in music of my life. (Apologies for the 'drop).

Allegedly, in a late 1990s television interview, Frame explained that a "boy" image was associated with him during this era, and that he was annoyed by it at the time, as he was taking his music very seriously—"you don't want to be called 'boy'; especially when you're listening to Joy Division"—but he eventually stopped caring about it. - Seriously Wiki, is that in any way relevant?

Anyway, throughout the whole High Land, Hard Rain tour/time I followed the Aztecs around the UK and loved every single minute. We were collectively the Boy Wonders!

The Boy Wonders

I brought you some francs from my travelling chest
You'll spare me the thanks 'til you know I'm the best
So come Hogmonay when love comes in slurs
Resolutions I'll make and you can label them 'Hers'
We threw our hands up high we, nearly touched the sky,
We clicked our heels and spat and swore
We'd never let it die

All those boy wonders
Sold their medals when they saw this train
Now this boy wonders
When he'll feel the fall of honest rain
I came from high land where the hopefuls have to hesitate
Now this boy wonders
Why the words were never worth the wait

I'm waiting, waiting.In pastel paper pink over grey

We wrap, wrap, wrap and chuck, chuck away
The poor excuse they peddle as their prose.

Dry your tears, tie your tongue and you're never sixteen
And I'll give you a glimpse of the hard and the clean
And my travelling chest will be open to you
And boy will you learn that you haven't a clue

I even asked my best friend but he could not explain
It hit me when I left him
I felt the rain and called it genius,
Called it genius.

All those boy wonders
Sold their medals when they saw this train
Now this boy wonders
When he'll feel the fall of honest rain
I came from high land where the hopefuls have to hesitate
Now this boy wonders
Why the words were never worth the wait

I'm waiting, waiting.
In pastel paper pink over grey
We wrap, wrap, wrap and chuck, chuck away
The poor excuse they peddle as their prose.