The first drop of 2020’s Covid-19-impacted Record Store Day is nearly upon us, but before we get there, here’s one more spotlight on a label with multiple recordings on deck for August 29. More accurately, we’re talking six releases from Fire Records and its subsidiaries Earth Recordings and Call of the Void. Like the majority of RSD product, the half dozen below are all either reissues or archival material, but the studio albums from The Groundhogs, Throwing Muses, Josephine Foster, and Pigbag are all solid choices, as is the live recording of Bert Jansch, and the soundtrack to Dennis Hopper’s The Last Movie is downright inspired. There’s little time to waste, so let’s take a look…
Split, the fourth album from UK blues-rockers The Groundhogs, wasn’t quite as ambitious as their prior set, 1970’s Thank Christ for the Bomb, but the first side of this ’71 effort does consist of the title track in four (distinct) parts, so it’s not like they regressed into 12-bar hackery. Christ was reissued by Fire last year along with a second disc of material, and as the full title Split + Extras should make clear, the generosity is repeated here.
Due to their trio reality, with the considerable guitar prowess of Tony T.S. McPhee front and center (bassist Peter Cruickshank and drummer Ken Pustelnik complete the lineup), The Groundhogs often get likened to Cream (sometimes not favorably), an association deepened by McPhee’s mild vocal similarity to Jack Bruce. However, a better comparison is probably to Ten Years After.
What The Groundhogs share with Cream, Ten Years After, and with blues-rock outfits in general are accusations of running already worn out ideas into the ground. But as mentioned above, the ‘hogs were openly exploring possibilities bordering on progressive (if not capital p Prog) while maintaining an appealing heaviness. I happen to rate the Groundhogs higher than Alvin Lee and co., and while their best stuff doesn’t reach the same heights as Cream, I’d say they were more consistent (a contentious viewpoint, I’m sure). McPhee is a burner and not a showoff, so Endless Boogie fans should take note.
Purgatory/Paradise, Throwing Muses’ ninth record, is also the byproduct of three individuals, specifically drummer David Narcizo, bassist Bernard Georges and founding and sole constant member, guitarist-vocalist-songwriter Kristin Hersh. While many surely recall the early Throwing Muses lineup with guitarist-vocalist Tanya Donelly, she departed the group in 1991 and wasn’t replaced, with the trio configuration largely the norm since, though Donelly did sing backup on the Muses’ self-titled album from 2003.
Throwing Muses was a return to action after a seven-year break (prophesized in the title of ‘96’s Limbo). A decade then elapsed before Purgatory/Paradise arrived without a trace of rust. A double album featuring 32 tracks (some of them brief, fragmentary even, and in more than one version) totaling just a smidge over 67 minutes, on CD it originally accompanied a book of lyrics, essays, stories and artwork (plus a download of additional material), though in 2014 it was issued on 2LP by the Happy Happy Birthday To Me label.
That was a slim edition of 500 copies, so this repress of 950 (which slightly anticipates their new album Sun Racket, to be released by Fire on September 4) is far from superfluous, especially since it’s one of the band’s strongest releases. I gave it a longer highly positive review for this very website back in 2014, and I’ll reflect here that the set holds up exceptionally well, in part through the quality of Hersh’s songwriting, but also in the strength of instrumentation and interaction. If a blend of post-College, Alt, and Indie ideas, Purgatory/Paradise offers Throwing Muses as a rock trio in the classic sense.
Josephine Foster’s This Coming Gladness was released in 2008 on Bo’Weavil Recordings and received a vinyl edition of 1,000 copies that year. Fire’s reissue cuts that total in half and replaces Foster’s cover painting on the original with a full color photo of the artist. What hasn’t changed is the music, which can be described as psychedelic folk, though that tag really doesn’t get to what makes Foster’s music (here and throughout her body of work) such a distinctive delight.
That would be the beauty and power of her voice in tandem with a vibrantly anachronistic quality, both vocally and compositionally. For this reason and the era in which she emerged, Foster has often been dropped into the New Weird America category, but through strength of execution and sheer imagination, her albums transcend the designation, which is why This Coming Gladness is just the latest of her releases to briefly return to circulation on vinyl.
This set isn’t as ambitious as the records that precede and follow it in her oeuvre, with those LPs delivering interpretations of German Lieder and adaptations of poems by Emily Dickenson respectively, but This Coming Gladness does throw a magnificent spotlight on Foster’s skill at performing her own material, while Victor Herrero’s guitar and Alex Neilson’s drums establish the psych-rich non-throwback nature of the whole. If you dig Foster, this one (like so many of her others) is essential.
Originally released in 1982 on Y Records, Dr. Heckle And Mr. Jive by Pigbag is the latest release from Fire’s punk/ post-punk reissue label Call of the Void; the prior LPs are Pere Ubu’s Terminal Tower comp of early singles, the self-titled debut from class of ’77 Londoners The Boys, and a collection of material from noted but lean of discography Birmingham outfit The Prefects, Going Through the Motions. Pigbag fit into this scenario without a snag, while also being something of an outlier.
Formed by Chris Hamlin with Roger Freeman, Chris Lee, and James Johnstone, Pigbag specialized in horn section-laden punk-funk with jazzy affectations; they probably remain best known for their debut single “Papa’s Got a Brand New Pigbag,” which was big in the UK in ’81 and even hit the lower region of the US dance chart. If the success away from home seems unusual, please understand that Pigbag were complementary to the No Wave disco scene transpiring in NYC at the time.
Getting Simon Underwood of the Pop Group to join on bass really honed the eight tracks on Dr. Heckle And Mr. Jive, partly because he brought along Ollie Moore on saxophones, with the two helping to sharpen the precision of a high energy situation. Like many of their UK post-punk contemporaries, Pigbag had a penchant for aggressive style hybridization, but perhaps their defining trait is the lack of vocals. This only deepened the need for instrumental savvy, though the tightness favors groove over flash. This is the album’s first vinyl press since ’82, so the 1,000 copies should go rather quickly.
A large component in the scheme of the other reissue-focused label in the Fire Records family, that’d be Earth Recordings, is Brit-folk, with the catalog of the extraordinary guitarist Bert Jansch arguably the endeavor’s crowning achievement. This is partly because they’ve pushed beyond the established ’60s cornerstones of Jansch’s output and redefined much of his later work, and furthermore, did it all with a high level of care spanning from the design and packaging to the assemblage of material in multidisc sets (importantly covering productivity from the ’90s and ‘00s).
Earth has also been attentive to Jansch in performance, with Live In Italy of particular interest as it’s a previously (well, mostly) unreleased concert from 1977 captured in Mestre at the Teatro Corso with fiddler Martin Jenkins and guitarists Sam Mitchell and Leo Wijnkamp Jr. joining in. If you’re a fan of Jansch’s Avocet, which was recorded in February of the following year, you’ll likely anticipate that some selections from that album are featured here, and that deduction is right on the money.
And hey, if you picked up Fire’s 40th anniversary edition of Avocet, you’ll have already heard three selections form this performance. But as the show tops 70 minutes with two encore selections, those tunes were only a taster of what’s on offer here. Overall, for those well-versed in Jansch’s stuff, Live In Italy isn’t a mindblower, but it is nicely varied set with Mitchell and Wijnkamp (both of whom recorded for Stefan Grossmann’s Kicking Mule label during this era) adding much to the proceedings near the finale. Jenkins wraps it all up with a solo jig. 1,000 copies on black vinyl.
The releases above, with the exception of Pigbag, are all from acts with an established connection to Fire or Earth (while, as said, Pigbag fit right into Call of the Void’s thematic objective). However, the first time ever release of the soundtrack to Dennis Hopper’s doomed production The Last Movie definitely caught me by surprise. With audio taken directly from the film reels and presented as a collage of excerpts, it can be nearly as disorienting as the film itself, which I’ve seen exactly once but with many thoughts about it in the years since. This album reignites those contemplations something fierce.
Made in Peru with a cavalcade of hippies, hangers-on, Hollywood fringe dwellers and even a legit legend (director Samuel Fuller as the man helming the film, a western, within the film), The Last Movie reportedly once existed in a six hour version, but was yanked away from Hopper by the studio, cut down and then given a two-week run. For decades thereafter, the film was nearly impossible to see; in its absence was a tale of the dangers of giving young and successful but unproven artists carte blanche. Godardian jump-cut surrealism with a fragmented meta-narrative was not what the studios had in mind.
There’s an alternate universe where The Last Movie was a huge commercial breakthrough and Jaws and Star Wars never happened, but unfortunately, we’re stuck in this one, where Hopper’s film effectively derailed his career for almost a decade. Featuring Peruvian folk & dance music, dialogue excerpts, gunshots, Kris Kristofferson singing “Me and Bobby McGee,” and work from the unheralded singer-songwriter John Buck Wilken, it’s a fascinating encapsulation of a film that’s existence was only possible for a brief moment in time, with its beautiful and fucked essence closing that door of opportunity.
The Groundhogs,
Split
B+
Throwing Muses,
Purgatory/Paradise
A
Josephine Foster,
This Coming Gladness
A
Pigbag,
Dr. Heckle And Mr. Jive
A-
Bert Jansch,
Live In Italy
A-
V/A,
The Last Movie OST
A-
