The NoMen are Pirates
Aaaargh Jim Lad! Splice the mainbrace! Pieces of Eight!!!
The new NoMen album will be available on “The Blackest Day”, the day we celebrate the death of Captain Bartholemew Roberts (Black Bart) in 1722, the day that heralded the end of the ‘Golden Age’ of piracy on the high seas.
Tune in to tomorrow nights NoMen FM show to hear a few tracks and check out our BandCamp page on Friday for a couple of pre-release free tracks.
The album will be available to order from Friday 10th and it comes in a suitably ‘piratey’ parchment sleeve sealed by the ring of ‘Black Bart’!
More details and pictures tomorrow…. me hearties!!!
Jet Boy / Jet Girl
There is another new mix of music on the MixCloud NoMen FM show. There’s no real theme, just an unusual selection of unrelated discs! The show starts with a punk rock explosion with from Elton Motello, Steve Treatment and the Saints before mellowing out with Serge Gainsbourg’s masterpiece ‘Melody Nelson’. The next few records show how good session men can be! Session musicians often got the reputations of being talentless hacks but the Serge Gainsbourg, Tim Rose and Sixto Rodrigues tracks we play here are all lifted to a higher plane by the musicians. The band behind Tim Rose drive his murder ballad on to a frenzied climax with the drums and scratchy guitars punctuating and highlighting every twist in the tale; it puts the Bad Seeds tawdry version of the song to shame. Serge Gainsbourg’s band create a mind meltingly sparse funk; whoever arranged the bizzarre bassy orchestration deserves a medal. The players on Sixto Rodriguez’s ‘Cold Fact’ album never upstage the singer as he leads us through his downbeat vision of late sixties inner city America.
We play the original (?) and the best (!) version of Loiue Louie. There is late seventies power-pop, some rockabilly by female artists, some sixties rock’n'pop and we present the five loudest, fuzziest most fearsome power chords in a folk rock song!!! (find them at the end of Alison Gross by Steeleye Span!)
The Seventies
Today’s NoMen radio show answers the question, “What was music like before punk in the seventies?” We focus on cheesy pop, hard rock, trippy jams and classy glam!
Would you believe that The Osmonds, the ultimate Mormon boy band, would be singing over Led Zep’s Immigrant Song riff? It’s like a mash up 30years before they were invented.
At the other end of the spectrum we have Kevin Coyne baring his soul on Marjory Razorblade and Leonard Cohen going OTT with Phil Spector. If you want straight ahead rock we have Mott the Hoople, Alice Cooper, Steve Marriott with Humble Pie and weird albino blues man Johnny Winter!
Glam rock is covered by a couple of bass driven classics from David Essex and a couple of T Rex classics not to mention the birth of electro pop from Giorgio Moroder’s Chicory Tip (see picture).
Jamaica’s dub guru Lee Perry made his best records in the 70s, but what the hell was he doing making trippy folk-prog with John Martyn?
Punk rock came along in ’76 and for a brief time cleared the airwaves of Yes, Genesis and ELP but the good bands featured here (OK, not Chicory Tip or The Osmonds) lived on and thrived until death, dodgy accountants or acting jobs made them give up!!!
Girls in the Garage!
One of my favourite series of LPs is “Girls in the Garage” which were released by Romulan Records and featured a selection of sixties psychedelic, garage, beat and teenage angst all performed by GIRLS! Tonights NoMen FM show features many tracks from this collection and some other girlie classics from the sixties.
NoMen FM – Girls in the Garage
The show starts with the bizarre ‘Sock it to me!’ which was the theme to the US hit comedy show “Rowan and Martin’s Laugh In” and there are snippets from the comedy show throughout our broadcast. The music starts in earnest with the classic ‘Tame me Tiger’ which is like ‘Wild Thing’ gone wild and originates from Holland of all places. We rock through various garage and pop gems which all should have been massive hits like the unbelievable ‘Nightmare’ by The Whyte Boots which has more angst in it’s three minutes than the Shangri Las put into their entire career! For out and out garage fuzz you cant beat Linda Gayle’s version of ‘Maggies Farm’ and for classic pop there doesn’t get much better then ‘Trains’ by the Mavericks or ’7.00am’ by Jacquelin Taleb.
We end on the timeless, outright unmusical anomaly that is The Shaggs!
We’ve only scratched the surface of this genre so look out for another Girls in the Garage show in the near future… Sock it to me!!!
Black Christian Rock!!!
The NoMen have been doing some New Year Spring Cleaning and discovered two albums that have been left on the shelf since 2010. Pop over to Bandcamp to download them both for Free!
Firstly we have the BLACKalbum.
The Darkest and heaviest NoMen album yet! These tracks have been around since the end of 2010 but they didn’t fit in with any of our other release so have been left on the shelf. Now we feel the world is ready for the Dark Side of the NoMen!
The collection starts of with “Who Ya Kiddin” a dense heavy metal two chord riff over sledgehammer drums. George NoMan manages to tell a tale of despair and self destruction over the heavy metal thunder! Next up is a cover of Psychic Television’s ‘Unclean’ which starts of gently and builds into sludgy, monolithic metal riffing dropping in and out of focus like a King Tubby dub engineered by a troll in an opiate trance! Jamie NoMan doesn’t sing very often but when he does it’s always a hit! “I Can Hear The Voices But I Don’t Know What They Mean” is a disturbing track that maybe gives us an un-nerving insight into what goes on inside his head…
“Terence Ruddy” is a friend of ours who supplied us with his liquid light collection for our live TV special. This song started out as a cover of a Japanese underground song (Do Not Compromise by Inryou Fuen) but we couldn’t play it properly and for some bizarre reason it morphed into a chant of Terence’s name over a pulsing bass and drum pattern which stops and starts like Neu having a mental breakdown! The title track of this collection finishes on a slightly lighter note… It’s a tribal journey to redemption held together by a solid beat and almost tuneful wahwah and bass interplay. Brian NoMan takes the lead vocal on this one though he seems to be channelling the spirit of Geronimo!
There are only 5 songs on the album but it clocks in at 45 minutes so be patient when downloading! It was recorded in November and December 2010 and May 2011 then mixed and Edited on December 31st 2011.
I can hear them talking, I can hear them scream. I can hear the voices but I don’t know what they mean!
Warm are the Sounds
In stark contrast to the Black album we have a collection of Christian and other ‘spiritual’ music. Many of these tracks were originally by artists on the wonderfully bizarre Emblem Record label who operated from a small village in Scotland during the late sixties and early seventies. See our previous blog for more details…
Happy New Year from The NoMen
Check out the NoMen playing live in Dusseldorf with guest vocals by Ralf Hutter from Kraftwerk! It’s hard to believe this actually happened!
Last Radio Show of 2011
It’s been an amusing sideline for the NoMen to present their weekly show on MixCloud. Some shows have featured new recordings by the band and some have just been an excuse for the various members to play their favourite records.
Check out the Christmas Top of the Pops show which features two new tracks by The NoMen including the full six minute version of Autobahn. This show is remarkable simply for the fact that it is introduced by the late, great Sir Jimmy Saville!
Todays show has no gimmix… just great music!
It starts with some 50s rock’n'roll including The Fire of Love by Jody Reynolds and Lee Hazelwoods first record The Fool. One of the worst records ever made was I Dig Rock and Roll Music by Peter, Paul and Mary which we play for your amusement (actually it’s one of the best records ever made!) There is recent stuff from PJ Harvey and Devandra Bernhardt, classic rock from The Dandy Warhols and Terence Trent D’Arby, and good old noise from Kleenex and World Domination Enterprises. Highlight of the show (and so good we play it twice!) is the gorgeous chilled out Rastfarian spiritual Amagideon by Ras Michael and the Sons of Negus!
Enjoy, and have a great New Year…
104 Years of Solid Gold Music!
For no particular reason the NoMen have selected tracks from 1907 to the present day (2011). The only reason our selection starts at 1907 is that the oldest recording in Allan NoMan’s LP collection is from that date. Listeners who are easily offended might want to skip this track as it contains the “N” word and is possibly even sung by a minstrel in ‘blackface’. You have been warned!
Other highlights include a 15 year old Suzi Quatro singing the praises of alcohol and early death!!! We have a couple of tracks from the massively overlooked Sixto Rodriguez who’s 1969 album Cold Fact is a sneering, Dylanesque classic. The track we have chosen isn’t a real representation of the rest of the album but it’s in the fuzzed-out garage style the NoMen love! The other Rodriguez track is the 2003 cover version of Sugarman performed by David Holmes with additional vocals by a 60 year old Rodriguez!
There is some thinly disguised Sigue Sigue Sputnik and Peaches both indulging in some Alan Vega styled electronic rock’n'roll, and even some Yoko Ono getting into some straight forward rocking from 1971.
Another band who are often overlooked in British rock history is Stray who’s first two albums are brilliant. They are probably overlooked because everything else they ever did was shit! The track we play is the massive opening epic to their 1971 album ‘Suicide’ which verges on over-the-top prog but keeps it’s head above the water with it’s glam rock guitar and fuzzy mellotrons!
This is the twelfth NoMen show and we’ve never played any banjo tunes. Shocking!! To rectify the matter we start this show with what is arguably Earl Scruggs finest fingerpickin’ five string assault on his banjo… Randy Lynn Rag. There’s another bit of banjo picking later on in the show.
Flatt and Scruggs – Randy Lynn Rag, 1957
The Pleasure Seekers – What a Way to Die, 1964
The Poppy Family - Free From The City, 1969
Yoko Ono – Midsummer New York, 1971
In Deep – Last Night a DJ Saved My Life, 1982
May Irwin – The Bully of the Town, 1907
David Holmes – Sugarman, 2003
Rodriguez – Only Good For Conversation, 1969
Peaches – Tombstone Baby, 2003
Sci-fi Sex Stars (Sigue Sigue Sputnik) – Rockit Miss USA, 1986
The MC5 - Looking at You (original),1968
Jim Eanes – Log Cabin in the Lane, 1959
Fitzroy & Harry – Reggae Sounds Are Boss, 1970
Michigan and Smiley - Nice Up The Dance, 1979
The Sound Dimension – Real Rock, 1969
Blind Willie Johnston – Praise God I’m Satisfied, 1929
Steve Treatment – NoMen FM Jingle, 2011
Stray – Son of the Father, 1971
Love Ink - Rock On, 2011
There hasn’t been any reggae featured on our shows so far so we bring you the might ‘Reggae Sounds Are Boss’ from 1970 on the PAMA label plus a couple of Studio One, Coxsonne Dodd productions. To round off the show with something brand new we feature Love Ink doing a version of David Essex’ sublime 1972 hit ‘Rock On.’
Listen to the show here… and leave a message or a comment telling us what you think!
