The Rebel - I am sorry about my hair beneath the planet of the apes Golidlocks + the bare porridges smoke trak cigarets G 4 F-ort Bring out yer Dead
Research Laboratories. Cassette. 25 copies
Comes in plastic bag with A4 insert
Sexton Ming - Fuck Your Freedom
Research Laboratories. Cassette. 30 Copies.
Comes in plastic bag with artwork pasted to cardboard.
I’ve often wondered if Ben Wallers is the only person to ever write songs that reference the cricketers Alec Stewart, Jimmy Anderson and Brian Lara and also call for the death of all humanity? Wallers songs about the extermination of human existence was a common thread that ran through a lot of what he wrote while fronting the Country Teasers but is he really in to cricket? Well that is something because I’ve just spent the last six hours listening to Joe Root take on the Sri Lankan spin attack only to get run out in the last over of the day with a superb piece of fielding by leg slip. This after a shaky start where the openers Sibley and Creepy Crawley blew it once again in their battle against left arm spin. And theres me wondering how I’m going to start this review of The Rebel’s “I am sorry about my hair beneath the planet of the apes Golidlocks + the bare porridges smoke trak cigarets G 4 F-ort Bring out yer Dead’ when it was staring me in the face all along; Ben Waller, The Rebel, Country Teasers, cricket, race, sex, misanthropy, misogyny, death, hate, fear, nationalism, blind patriotism and all of it gathered up in humour darker than a miners pocket and delivered via a sound thats been to Nashville via Edinburgh and certain London suburbs while taking in The Fall [an often quoted comparison but one thats never sat easily with me], the Carter Family and the sodding Smiths. In essence all of the above, the fact that Waller’s uses a crippled swastika as a logo and that he calls his music publishing company IWASFUCKINGYOURDAUGHTERSOLONGANDSOHARDIFORGOTTOSORTOUTANYPUBLISHING is just my way of saying that Ben Wallers is and will in all likelihood, remain not just a great songwriter but also a total enigma to me.
Its one of the reasons I’ll happily run in to my burning home to recover all the Country Teasers albums and more than likely several The Rebel releases too. It would be worth suffering a few flesh burns and some smoke inhalation lung damage to rescue what I consider to be a small run of essential albums and singles all made by a person whose never yet got the rewards he’s deserved.
I’ve watched numerous interviews with Waller and marvelled at his almost shy demeanour and erudite conversation, his camo gear twin set, stetson hat, shirt and tie attire and his wire framed Deirdre Barlow spectacles. His obvious intelligence, softly spoken voice and contemplative ways seeming at odds with the subject matter of his writing. As ‘The Rebel’ I’ve watched video of his one man gigs as performed in a Mexican restaurant in Australia where he’s shared the stage with a babies high seat chair and sang songs of misery to an audience of bemused diners most of whom are wandering back and forth from the bar in obvious disinterest. Watching him deliver the blistering Point of View at the Windmill in Brixton is nothing short of shocking and exhilarating all at the same time; stooped over his guitar, shirtsleeves rolled to elbow and with what looks like deep scratches on his arm, a beatbox pumps out the beat while he picks a few chords on his electric guitar and in his flat delivery gives us this:
Zyklon-B was a terrible gas
'Cause it killed off all those jews
That's why it made such a good gas
From Hitler's point of view
Points of view
I like Obey by the Brainbombs
And lots of you do too
But Sarah Payne's poor mum and dad
Can't share that point of view
Points of view
The bombs in your bag, it kills fifteen
But it also kills you
You must have been very serious
About your point of view
Points of view
'Kill all the Pakis!' rings out again
In the pubs and football stands
That's a point of view which can be very
Hard to understand
But humans have hot red blood
They like it on their hands
Men kill men kill men kill men
Till not one human stands
Fries are free
Toast is free
Kisses are free too
Your granddad killed a lot of niggers
To buy those free things for you
Now a bunch of Pakis wants to
Take them away from you
What color face deserves what
Depends upon your point of view
Personally, I think, and this is
Just my point of view
All human life must be destroyed
Here I have to admit that after the Country Teasers eventual and predictable implosion I let Waller and The Rebel drift in my attentions. Such was my Waller like lassitude I even failed to turn up for a gig of his at the Wharf Chambers. What a damned fool I was. LP’s I bought none, the occasional single yes. Wallers releases a lot of material and somewhere down the line it was one release too many and I took a turn in the road and never went back. Until now.
Thanks to Research Laboratories I’ve been cursing my reticence and have spent a week catching up and with increasing incredulity wondering to myself why it is Wallers still languishes in cult status territory when his songwriting is of such import. I sure as hell hope he doesn't go to his grave without wider recognition.
Wallers solo work as The Rebel bears distinctive marks; the lugubrious sing/talk delivery, a trebly electric guitar plucked with spidery fingers, beats delivered from a programmed beat machine, a small keyboard capable of producing catchy riffs all of this fed into a four track mixer to which he adds samples taken direct from tv, the BBC World Service, tuneless whistling, Star Trek dialogue, his own dialogue, typewriter clatter, washing machines. The results benefiting from being suitably lo-fi and distorted so as to make the finished whole sound like its been dubbed and re-dubbed on to a forty year old Boots C120.
On ‘I’m sorry …’ there are thirty tracks [including a hidden extra track] and covers of songs by Chaz and Dave, Rod Stewart, Paul Young, Timbuk 3 and Spaceman 3, there are songs of quotidian existence containing gonzo keyboards [In a Polski Slep 4/4] and how Cafe Oto could be improved by being converted in to a McDonalds [McDonalds Dalston Jnctn], there are instrumentals where the keyboard goes all swirly Robert Wyatt, there songs plucked from seriously out of tune acoustic guitars, there are songs where Wallers bangs the keyboard with his fist or at least thats what it sounds like, found sounds are included that are the result of leaving the tape recorder running while making a cup of tea with the radio on in the background. What there isn’t is much in the way of what you might call verse chorus verse structure [unless you count the cover versions] but there is plenty of experimentation, extemporization I dare say and ideas a plenty. I imagine Wallers mind being a seething, boiling sea of ideas and most of his waking moments filled with the realizing them.
Track titles include:
DAY 1 AT THE SUBMARINE RACES
DAY 2 AT THE SUBMARINE RACES
DAY 4 AT THE SUBMARINE RACES
LECKING BLACK COCKS & SUSTAINED BASS NOTES [a natural history program tv sample about black cocks which is then mixed in to a sample of how Prince used sustained bass notes]
CLOWNS DON’T LIKE 2B LARFTAT
IM SORRY ABOUT MY HAIR
MIDNIGHT LAY HAT RUN
FLIDAY POLEM
What happened to ‘Day 3 at The Submarine Races’ is not recorded. And there at its almost end is Wallers singing ‘bring out yer dead’. Perfect.
Thirty one tracks of keyboard blurts, found voices, noises, part songs and a Chas and Dave cover might lead some to wonder as to whether this is Wallers at the Finnegan’s Wake stage of his career or whether this is just a continuation of what he’s been up to for the last twenty odd years. What the hell do I know?
Meanwhile, somewhere down on the south coast Sexton Ming has abandoned his porridge van and picked up his cudgels in the fight against police brutality. How we got here is anybodies guess, my exposure to Sexton Ming being a limited one from when he had his porridge van and released stuff that sounded like him doing the washing up as he sang opera. A strange one for sure. An outsider artist of a certain stripe and so far off the no audience radar as to be living in a suburb of Yemen.
Mings eclectic, some might say scattergun approach towards sound collage and erm ... song construction has taken a serious turn to the left with the inclusion of ‘The Beating of Kelly Thomas Mix’. Thomas, an unarmed, schizophrenic homeless man was beaten by six police officers for resisting arrest and died of his injuries five days letter. Sound familiar? This was California nine years ago. Its a harrowing listen with Ming adding lo-fi buzzing to the police audio of the event, an attack that saw zero persons get any jail time.
Elsewhere Ming swings his piano from jazzy cocktail, to silent movie to vaudeville, all samples of course, then there’s proto PE noise, pub chatter and more bizarrely vocals in which his voiced is sped up to resemble Smash aliens. On ‘Forced to Eat His Flesh’ he goes the full Andrew Liles and chucks in tortured souls, clashing cymbals and the wails of the damned. There are tv samples, bird sounds, funereal dirges delivered in a Nick Cave style manner and some neo folk industrial ambience. Someone shouts ‘shut up you old bag’, an acoustic guitar riff … endless it is and not to everyones cup of tea but perfectly fitting into the Research Laboratories ethic of providing us with music from the outer reaches of wherever this is.
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