Three Chords and a Half Truth.
There's this band. Well, I say band...Let me start again. There's these two guys. They grew up together, in and out of each other's back yards, fighting, losing teeth, scraping knees: real Huck and Finn stuff. They hated each other and they loved each other like brothers. Which is to say they hated each other. But they were bonded in the blood. They grew up together, they flunked out of school together, they dodged the draft together, and they started a band together. With a ginger kid on drums who soon died.
Its a hackneyed tale, full of misty-eyed macho bullshit. Who cares? Because they didn't grow up to be Mick and Keef or Jimmy and Robert or Steven and Joe. They grew up to be nobodies. They almost completely failed to make any records. Their live gigs were were passive aggressive, poorly attended and almost always ended in violence or humiliation or humiliating violence. They made almost no mark on musical history. Despite being eligible for induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame for some time now no gilt-edged invitation has been forthcoming. Though they maintain they wouldn't turn up for it anyway. It's elitist and against everything that they hold dear, though they have long forgotten exactly what it was that they hold dear.
In any realistic sense Johnny Ghostly and Marty Polpette - the creative unwell-spring of The Charlemagnes - are failures (they won't mind me saying this. Or at least they won't find out about it - they're not big on the internet). They have lived their lives without touching the sides: sliding through the annals of rock history as through they've hocked their friction. Which is the one thing that they have held onto. Though the pair are notoriously unreliable narrators (and they're not great at coming back from the bar with your change either) here is what I have managed to ascertain as verifiable truth:
They formed the band in their native South Brunswick in 1966 (or possibly 67). They made a double sided single in the early seventies on the Bromide label, copies of which are both hard to come by and hard to listen to. They moved to South London in the late seventies or early eighties and have remained there. And they have finally recorded their debut album after a gestation period that's longer than my lifetime.
And its wonderful. A mad, strange, and oddly focused record, though lyrically its all over the place: "Sugar (on my cereal)" is literally the bee's knees, finding Johnny attaching pollen to the insect's legs with "special gloves". "Barbed Wire and Axel Grease" rhymes "There's a war on" with "I ain't a moron" and is the closest thing here to a love song. The "Shellshock Shuffle" was strangely left off "Land of a Thousand Dances" but lurches to its own arrhythmic beat here; The Waltzing Dead anyone? Fiery single "Hot For Crime" takes its name from Jean Genet (and he would have been pleased that it was briefly banned by Facebook) but takes time out to aim cheerful pops at Mumsnet and graphic design! (No) Pay Day (In The USA) is apparently a straight forward attack on Trump's America using the weaponry of parentheses. But, really, who can say? The dusty library of Johnny Ghostly's mind churns up odd partnerships and striking strangenesses. Who else would write a song like "French Mistake": a rip-roaring rocker that references Claude Vannier and language labs in pitiful Franglais! Ghostly no longer sings with the band and lives a sedentary life: reading, drinking and eating breaded chicken. But they keep playing his songs - because, realistically, no one write songs like these.
Ghostly's partner in crime - Marty Polpette - has an incredible knack for taking his partner's oddball oddments and turning them into classic songs. That's what this record sounds like: a proper suite of great punk rock songs. They burrow into your head like botflies and STAY there: "Shellshock Shuffle' clumps around your consciousness like a prison gang breaking rocks. "That Girl is a Mess" is a bad tenant: painting your walls black and seeking planning permission for a gazebo you hate. "Hey! Look At You!" is the only song you will ever hear for the rest of your life. If that sounds traumatic it really isn't - these songs will become old friends: dissolute, wayward old friends, but old friends just the same. And unlike real old friends you wont have to keep going to their funerals. The band are exemplary - this is a worthy addition to the rock canon and the realisation of what amounts to a life's work for this band. It shouldn't be a life's work - but it is! Hearing "Sugar" played on BBC Radio 6's Gideon Coe show was a genuinely moving experience. The Charlemagnes broadcasting to the nation! Unthinkable. You've come a long way, babies!
The album is released on November 2nd on Raritan Records. You can buy it here: https://raritanrecords.bandcamp.com/?fbclid=IwAR1bS9Z__4C87EURPKgOYvSQ6fl7-O_gP-eTsRHau3rJUaVmRT6y-Qmov5EE
The album is being launched at The Cavendish Arms in that London with the legendary John Langford and his Men of Gwent and the incredible Eight Rounds Rapid. It will be an amazing gig and I'm missing it stuck here in Belfast. You should go in my stead. As my representative on earth. Tell them you wrote the sleeve notes - they won't know any different.
Oh, and Christmas is coming up. Why not buy a Charlemagnes album for a loved one or special enemy? Its the gift that keeps on taking: your senses, your sensibilities, your social security. It will change your life - would I tell you a half truth?
Its a hackneyed tale, full of misty-eyed macho bullshit. Who cares? Because they didn't grow up to be Mick and Keef or Jimmy and Robert or Steven and Joe. They grew up to be nobodies. They almost completely failed to make any records. Their live gigs were were passive aggressive, poorly attended and almost always ended in violence or humiliation or humiliating violence. They made almost no mark on musical history. Despite being eligible for induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame for some time now no gilt-edged invitation has been forthcoming. Though they maintain they wouldn't turn up for it anyway. It's elitist and against everything that they hold dear, though they have long forgotten exactly what it was that they hold dear.
In any realistic sense Johnny Ghostly and Marty Polpette - the creative unwell-spring of The Charlemagnes - are failures (they won't mind me saying this. Or at least they won't find out about it - they're not big on the internet). They have lived their lives without touching the sides: sliding through the annals of rock history as through they've hocked their friction. Which is the one thing that they have held onto. Though the pair are notoriously unreliable narrators (and they're not great at coming back from the bar with your change either) here is what I have managed to ascertain as verifiable truth:
They formed the band in their native South Brunswick in 1966 (or possibly 67). They made a double sided single in the early seventies on the Bromide label, copies of which are both hard to come by and hard to listen to. They moved to South London in the late seventies or early eighties and have remained there. And they have finally recorded their debut album after a gestation period that's longer than my lifetime.
And its wonderful. A mad, strange, and oddly focused record, though lyrically its all over the place: "Sugar (on my cereal)" is literally the bee's knees, finding Johnny attaching pollen to the insect's legs with "special gloves". "Barbed Wire and Axel Grease" rhymes "There's a war on" with "I ain't a moron" and is the closest thing here to a love song. The "Shellshock Shuffle" was strangely left off "Land of a Thousand Dances" but lurches to its own arrhythmic beat here; The Waltzing Dead anyone? Fiery single "Hot For Crime" takes its name from Jean Genet (and he would have been pleased that it was briefly banned by Facebook) but takes time out to aim cheerful pops at Mumsnet and graphic design! (No) Pay Day (In The USA) is apparently a straight forward attack on Trump's America using the weaponry of parentheses. But, really, who can say? The dusty library of Johnny Ghostly's mind churns up odd partnerships and striking strangenesses. Who else would write a song like "French Mistake": a rip-roaring rocker that references Claude Vannier and language labs in pitiful Franglais! Ghostly no longer sings with the band and lives a sedentary life: reading, drinking and eating breaded chicken. But they keep playing his songs - because, realistically, no one write songs like these.
Ghostly's partner in crime - Marty Polpette - has an incredible knack for taking his partner's oddball oddments and turning them into classic songs. That's what this record sounds like: a proper suite of great punk rock songs. They burrow into your head like botflies and STAY there: "Shellshock Shuffle' clumps around your consciousness like a prison gang breaking rocks. "That Girl is a Mess" is a bad tenant: painting your walls black and seeking planning permission for a gazebo you hate. "Hey! Look At You!" is the only song you will ever hear for the rest of your life. If that sounds traumatic it really isn't - these songs will become old friends: dissolute, wayward old friends, but old friends just the same. And unlike real old friends you wont have to keep going to their funerals. The band are exemplary - this is a worthy addition to the rock canon and the realisation of what amounts to a life's work for this band. It shouldn't be a life's work - but it is! Hearing "Sugar" played on BBC Radio 6's Gideon Coe show was a genuinely moving experience. The Charlemagnes broadcasting to the nation! Unthinkable. You've come a long way, babies!
The album is released on November 2nd on Raritan Records. You can buy it here: https://raritanrecords.bandcamp.com/?fbclid=IwAR1bS9Z__4C87EURPKgOYvSQ6fl7-O_gP-eTsRHau3rJUaVmRT6y-Qmov5EE
The album is being launched at The Cavendish Arms in that London with the legendary John Langford and his Men of Gwent and the incredible Eight Rounds Rapid. It will be an amazing gig and I'm missing it stuck here in Belfast. You should go in my stead. As my representative on earth. Tell them you wrote the sleeve notes - they won't know any different.
Oh, and Christmas is coming up. Why not buy a Charlemagnes album for a loved one or special enemy? Its the gift that keeps on taking: your senses, your sensibilities, your social security. It will change your life - would I tell you a half truth?
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