Crazy For Nuts.

Enragés Fou Noix
Various Artists
CD/DL


One of the best books I’ve read this year was Sue Prideuax’s magnificent biography of Friedrich Nietzsche; ‘I Am Dynamite!’ Nietzsche could debate for ten hours at a stretch, fancied himself as a composer, was a close friend of Wagner [they eventually fell out], hated Christianity, loved Jews when it was fashionable to hate them, was nearly blind, suffered all his life with terrible intestinal medical complaints and spent his last eleven years on this planet a bedridden madman reduced to drinking his own piss and howling like a dog. His sister and mother [whom he hated] had the good fortune to benefit from his work which started to sell just as Nietzsche found himself clinging on to a starving horse's neck in Naples begging the owner to spare it from further harm. As his health, both mental and physical deteriorated further, his sister and mother displayed Nietzsche as little more than a curiosity allowing visitors who came to pay homage to this most gifted of men embarrassing glimpses of the bedridden wreck. Life can be real shitty at times.

Enragés Fou Noix is a fundraiser for the Mental Health Resistance Network. Madness, or whatever the medical term is [I know nothing of the terminology in regards to mental health] is still with us. As much in Nietzsche’s life as in our own. It will never go away. But at least we know a lot more about it now. Nietzsche’s own ‘softening of the brain’ as it was diagnosed [which was probably the result of a syphilis infection he got while visiting prostitutes, prostitutes he visited on the instruction of his doctor so as to ‘get the monkey off his back’ so to speak - as an aside its also worth noting that Wagner help spread the rumour that Nietzsche’s bad eyesight was a result of excessive masturbation, who needs friends eh?] is now a lot more understood and ‘softening of the brain’ lives in the same recycling bin as balanced humors, the application of leeches and electro-shock therapy.

I have Kelly Reader to thank for this comp. Thanks Kelly. Its been lurking in the inbox for a while and I’ve been dipping in to the Bandcamp version on and off for weeks but it wasn’t until Vicky Langan pointed out that the Disco Mental cover version of Donna Summers ‘I Feel Love’ is the best thing since Hipster rye sourdough that I really took notice and realised I owed it to Kelly and the Mental Health Resistance Network to tell the world about it. And yes Disco Mental’s cover version of Donna ‘Summers I Feel Love’ IS the best thing since Hipster rye sourdough and yes I did play it over and over again too marveling at the way as to how Simon Morris sings like a pub singer with ten pints in him slurring the words as he makes his way to the gents with Several’s synth beat backing bleeping and blopping along as he sings/slurs. Disco Mental being Simon Morris and the now late John Several who in the last days and weeks of his life managed to create at least two [that I know of] of the most outrageous disco cover versions I know, the other being the flip to the Ceramic Hobs Fifty Shades of Snuff single and a cover of Gloria Gaynor’s ‘Never Can Say Goodbye’. One can only hope that theres more in the archives. I am forever greedy for such things.

Lets not stop there though because this gets better. There’s a Homosexuals track on here that reminded me of just how good the Homosexuals were. Are. ‘3AM [Pink Pony]’ is a sing-a-long, grab your mates by the shoulders life affirming slice of pop taken from their 2016 ‘Important But True’ digital only album. Thats why I missed it. And there’s an exclusive Guttersnipe track of such ferocity it’ll leave you rolling around on the floor clasping your eardrums and a Danielle Dax track from her 1983 debut LP thats the epitome of English Folk and makes me wish I had the LP with its cover of rotting testicles and weeping eyes.

OK they’re my favourites but there’s still plenty to admire here; Hawksmoor Brood which is Several again in classic synth sequencer mode with Jowe Head supplying vocal samples, Salford Media City who sound like a loose Half Man Half Biscuit cum The Fall with whistling and shortwave radio, Silver Dick with two minutes of parping improv and Joincey vocals, a fearsome spoken word piece by David Hoyle accompanied by portentous rumbling thunder and in-between all these eighteen tracks the lovely Carol Barton dispensing words of wisdom and witticisms ‘Mental health difficulties is what you get if you’re honest with a psychiatrist’.    

I’m tempted to write ‘you’d be mad not to buy it’ but thats just cheap. Just buy it instead.


https://madpridemcr.bandcamp.com/album/enrag-s-fou-noix


https://thehomosexuals.bandcamp.com/



http://www.sueprideaux.com/