Imagination - Scandalous (1983)

I never had any strong feeling about Imagination back in the day, apart from finding them amusing and being fairly certain that at least one of them was probably batting for the other team. If questioned, I probably would have mumbled something dismissive about bland disco music and how I preferred the work of someone or other that you've never heard of; but picking up those memories in 2019, flipping them over and having a look inside, let's face it - I knew Just an Illusion was fucking amazing even if I wasn't admitting it in front of any bigger boys in leather jackets, much less to myself. The breakthrough came when my mother began hanging out with young Algerian men for reasons which are too complicated to go into, and which aren't quite as exciting as I've probably made it sound. One of them - Arezki, as I recall - had an album he needed taping but no tape recorder, and as the nearest available westernised teenager I was called in to assist. The album was Scandalous.

I spent a long time looking at the cover because it was hilarious, and realised I was actually curious about what the hell this thing would sound like. Of course, I knew it would be awful and probably in a highly amusing way, and not a patch on the work of Portion Control or Bourbonese Qualk or others I'd routinely namedrop without having actually found any of their records in the local shops. I slapped it onto the turntable, hit play and record, and immediately had my nuts blown off by New Dimension.

New Dimension is the first track on side one, a breathy extended funk epic running on phased hi-hat with a touch of maybe Soft Cell, a suggestion of grandeur, and which sounds like the sexier cousin to something from Cabaret Voltaire's 2X45, albeit a sexier cousin which gets out of the house a bit more. It's a long way from the sort of novelty fun-time dance jingle you might expect from three blokes trying to smoulder whilst wearing bin liners.

Naturally the rest of the album seems a bit of a step down once we're past the first track, but it catches up with a few more spins. Imagination slinked and oozed at least as hard as Prince or Rick James whilst managing to remain light and breezy, never quite collapsing Schrödinger's Diva down to any single sexual state.

The boys who paint their faces,
The girls they look so strong…

Yet, I still don't know if they were batting for the other team or not, regardless of Shoo Be Doo Da Dabba Doobe with its chorus of this means war suggesting nothing so much as the Wayans brothers wearing tiny hats. To be honest, I didn't actually realise Marc Almond was gay, so maybe it doesn't matter, or maybe the idea that it might is at least as absurd as that of there even being another team, if you see what I mean.

What does matter is that Scandalous probably remains one of the sexiest albums ever made. It's funky, romantic, classy, sensual, sweet, strangely elegant in all of the right places, and anything the eighties ever had going for it can be found at its finest on this record; and State of Love for one really should have been on one of those Crucial Electro compilations. Don't be fooled by the marketing department which seemingly had them down as the Seaside Special version of Parliament.

Princess Superstar - Princess Superstar Is (2001)

This is the amazing first album by my latest discovery, and I'm going to tell you how great it is because you've probably never heard of Princess Superstar. That's not really how the voice sounds in my head, but it's thinking something along those lines, which probably serves to illustrate what it's like being in your fifties, as am I. The album came out nearly two fucking decades ago; she's tickled the UK singles charts twice, both occasions when I was still living in England, numbers eleven and three respectively; and this was her fourth album, so once again I'm the last to know, not having received any of the previous four million memos. Never mind.

I vaguely remember Princess Superstar Is coming out, but the sales pitch had her down as the female Eminem which didn't exactly sell it to me. Princess Superstar's own take on the issue of her identity is that she's the black Shirley Temple, which is more informative than she probably realised. Contrary to established wisdom, or what I definitely recall as having been established wisdom at some point, white rappers were never that much of a rarity, and if white female rappers were admittedly a little thinner on the ground, what distinguishes Princess Superstar is that she isn't wearing an African hat, effecting a weird accent, or pretending to be Monie Love - who was, in any case, never much of a role model by my estimation. Princess Superstar's deal is that she keeps it real, as we say in the business, and of course that she's lyrically amazing. She's a girl of undeniably Caucasian ethnicity; she's intelligent, witty, and very, very funny without ever quite seeming like a novelty act; and she doesn't mind admitting to enjoying sexual intercourse, to which she makes frequent reference on this album without coming across like some kind of hoochie mama - so one thing which Princess Superstar Is isn't, is one of those albums of a female rapper cramming in as many references to blow jobs as the wax can support because that's what the dudes want to hear; other dudes, I mean - It just sounds kind of desperate to me because I'm elevated and amazing.

All of this and everything else is communicated with a machine gun spray of syllables at least as dizzying as one of those Marx Brothers routines or some of Big Pun's stuff, not quite so fast that you miss what is said, but some of these tracks definitely benefit from repeat listening. Lyrically the female Kool Keith comparison she offers at one point applies some of the time, but she's otherwise very much her own thing - sex, money, rap, all the troubles of the world, and a shitload of sarcasm scored to a hard, beat heavy soundtrack of late nineties hip-hop drawing on the legacy of DJ Premier, big band, sixties television shows and the like. There's no filler, plenty of standouts, and then Too Much Weight with Bahamadia which is one of those once in a lifetime numbers that tears your fucking heart right out of your chest, and which is astonishing. Also, the excellent J-Zone and the aforementioned Keith pop up on a couple of tracks, possibly literally, so that's nice too; and there's a token reference to Pat Sajak, which I find pleasing. Now th8tz gangsta, as the Reverend Westwood would surely observe in that funny voice he does.

I've just had another look at Wikipedia and additionally realise I actually sort of know one of the blokes* on this record. I have accordingly just invented a new emotion combining pride with the suspicion that I'm actually a complete fucking idiot.

Next week I'll be listening to REO Speedwagon. You probably won't have heard of them. They're new.

*: Ollie Teeba of the Herbaliser to whom I delivered mail back when I was a postman. This really must be what it's like to be senile.

Chrome - The Visitation (1976)

This was Chrome's first album, recorded by Damon Edge and others prior to the involvement of Helios Creed, and it's a significantly different beast to the ominous android chug with which they became associated. The pulp science-fiction obsession was already well and truly cemented in place as indicated by titles such as Sun Control, Return to Zanzibar, and Memory Lords Over the Bay, and was already well and truly cemented in place with a ton of drugs by the sound of it, and not the mellow ones either. You may recognise the guitar solos fried in acid from later Chrome recordings, and also the tendency to shove things through various industrial strength flange pedals, but otherwise The Visitation is garage punk, albeit fucking weird garage punk rooted in bad trip psychedelics. Warner Brothers said it sounded like the Doors but didn't want to release it, obliging Edge to start his own label. I don't quite see the Doors thing, but there's a lot which reminds me of very early Devo - particularly in terms of subject matter - and even Sparks; and Kinky Lover comes pretty close to being a warped cover of the Beatles' Come Together.

That said, despite these differences, The Visitation is somehow immediately recognisable as Chrome, and you can play Alien Soundtracks straight after without really missing too much of a step. The point of continuity is the vibe, which was cold, dirty, scary, and deeply alien even back when they could have covered the Eagles without anyone doing too much of a double take.

If you're unfamiliar with this band, then they're almost certainly the thing you've been missing all this time.

You're welcome.

Lil Nas X - 7 EP (2019)

As I write, Old Town Road is apparently the singular most enormous pop parade hit song of all time. Being old as fuck and isolated by choice from almost all aspects of contemporary culture, I only encountered the song whilst rummaging around on YouTube in hope of finding some evidence of rap music not having gone completely down the toilet; and thankfully, here is that evidence.

It's weird and disorientating to realise that I'm this old, and that my opinion of Lil Nas X doesn't make much difference one way or the other. I first heard of Billy Ray Cyrus when my friend Eddy did an impersonation of him in the pub in order to illustrate just how shit was Achy Breaky Heart, which would have been 1992; and Chris Rock's Bigger & Blacker was July 1999, at which point Lil Nas X would have been just three months old.

Three months old…

Anyway, no genre has been so historically ready to drown its own kids as rap, usually because someone dared to poke a toe out beyond the established boundary dividing fake from that which is kept wearyingly real; and it sounds a bit like rock music, or there are too many naughty words and it's not very empowering, or it lacks the lyricism of LL Cool J, or It Takes a Nation of Millions is the greatest rap album of all time, in my humble opinion…

If rap has a problem right now, it's probably due to trap poisoning, adult fans of My Little Pony, and grown men who think growling the word represent for three minutes constitutes a flow. Lil Nas X avoids the pitfalls by sticking to tracks which sound good rather than ticking boxes. If that's a problem, maybe just pretend you're listening to Outkast.

Old Town Road samples Nine Inch Nails and features Billy Ray Cyrus, autotune, and line dancing in the video - a recipe for disaster which has somehow resulted in sheer brilliance. I've now seen a few sneering reviews grumbling about it being a gimmick, just a meme, a novelty record, hardly comparable with Big Daddy Kane or someone else you weren't actually listening to first time round, but it's all bollocks. Old Town Road feels a lot like life in San Antonio, at least in certain respects, and does what it sets out to do to perfection, so I couldn't really give a shit if it's somehow a less important cultural artefact than Bohemian Rhapsody because says you.

Lil Nas's success is in making good use of all the shit which usually ruins a song, not least the autotune which features heavily here. Most often the effect turns an underwhelming vocal into a musical component, and one which sits poorly with whatever else is going on, reducing words to an extraneous embellishment. Our guy on the other hand gets the balance exactly right, using tracks which never get too crowded and yet pack enough of a punch in the equalisation department to sound pretty darn beefy; so the treated vocal has space and nothing gets clogged up in the pipes; and you don't have to call it rap if that bothers you, because it still works, and still does what rap should do.

Ridin' on a horse,
You can whip your Porsche,
I been in the valley,
You ain't been up off that porch.

There are also a couple of pseudo-trap numbers, but this is a bizarrely eclectic set without any two tracks quite sounding alike, and Bring U Down could almost have been on that last Pixies album, if that's any indication. Even Cardi B, of whom I didn't particularly think I was a fan, sounds blistering on Rodeo.

Whatever you want to call it, 7 is a fucking great set, pop music done right - simple without being stupid, moving without simpering, smart and snappy in all the right places, and it bangs like a motherfucker, as I believe is the parlance. My only criticism is that there doesn't seem to be a physical release, but never mind.