Soundgarden - Superunknown (1994)

I'm not quite sure why but I didn't really get this one until I moved to America. Black Hole Sun always sounded astonishing, and is surely one of the greatest singles ever recorded, but initial impressions of the rest comprised mainly guitar solos and a long-haired man in silver trousers stood screaming yeaaaaaaah baby from the top of a speaker cabinet the size of Ted Nugent's rock 'n' roll shack out yonder. It may as well have been Guns 'n' Roses - and please note the correct punctuation of their name whilst we're here.

Then I moved to Texas, gave Superunknown another couple of spins and it all began to make sense. It's not so much that they were ever just another generic band of dudes rocking out in black leather, but that their strengths are subtle, elements you may not notice immediately, or at least I didn't. Black Hole Sun, for example, you could describe as a really bad acid trip given that it's the sort of description which tends to emerge from the Kafkaesque process of writing about music, but actually it's not really like that at all. It might be better to describe Black Hole Sun as an acid trip going somewhere you would rather it didn't go - if we can momentarily ignore the room-dwelling elephant of such descriptions being essentially ludicrous. What I mean to say is that Black Hole Sun, like much of this album, conveys a range of quite subtle emotions. It's nothing extreme in the sense of Killing Joke or whoever.

The more I listen to this, the more it occurs to me that Soundgarden are, or at least were, pretty much a psychedelic band in the vague tradition of Cream and related Woodstocky types. They make with that characteristic seasick psychedelic notation, the slight sense of disorientation and invocation of coming up on some substance or other whilst melting in a chair staring at your foot. There's an element of early Black Sabbath even, maybe without quite such a bad vibe, although still bordering on dark, like it could all plummet into brown acid hell at any moment; and it works because they eschew the more twee excesses of psychedelia, the boss-eyed claims of having just seen a pixie in the garden despite everyone knowing full well that you're talking out of your arse - or bollocks about third eyes having been opened for that matter. Superunknown is, I suppose, biker psychedelia, more pragmatic, more grizzled, and more inclined to shut up when it has nothing it wants to say, allowing the music to speak for itself; and the music is fucking beautiful, near symphonic in its detail and lightness of touch once you've heard past the walls of overdrive and fuzz.

This has possibly been my purplest ever testimony to a record, but fuck it - Superunknown is worth it.

Manic Street Preachers - Generation Terrorists (1992)

I hated the Manic Street Preachers for a while without actually having knowingly heard any of their music; although I knew for sure that it would be rubbish. They turned up in the music paper every fucking week explaining how all other groups - a category which by default included a few groups I probably liked - were crap, and how they were going to be the biggest band of all time. This latter claim was at least ahead of the curve of all those other lolloping sideburn-having cunts promising to be the greatest rock band ever which, by the time we reached fucking Razorlight, had begun to sound a bit fucking comical. I think it was also that the Manic Street Preachers were Welsh, and militantly so, and yet sang in English - the language of the oppressor - quite unlike my beloved Datblygu, Plant Bach Ofnus, Traddodiad Ofnus and at least a couple of others.

Week after week I would read that the Manic Street Preachers had said this was crap or that was rubbish and I would grow to loathe them more and more, up to the point at which my loathing flipped over into a sort of masochistic fascination - as often happens with me and artists I have initially disliked - and I bought a couple of 12" singles because there they were on a stall in Greenwich market and there was nothing else I felt like buying. I was a little shocked when I heard what they actually sounded like, because I thought they had been joking when they named Guns 'n' Roses as an influence. They hadn't, and I was surprised at how the music really was nothing new, sounding if anything like an exercise in nostalgia, a return to the dynamic of a man in silver trousers stood on a box screaming baaaabbbbbbbbbyyyyyy yeeeeaaaaahhhhhhh!

It was like post-punk had never happened.

I played the records a few more times, and realised that I liked them, because after all, I hadn't stopped listening to the Sex Pistols or the New York Dolls despite Trevor Horn having invented the 12" club mix, so why the fuck not? The more I listened, the more I began to understand it. The ruthlessly traditional form the music had taken might almost be considered a protest in itself considering at least some of that which they had set themselves against, a reaction against progress rendered redundant by having become an end in itself; and the lyrics were fucking great, obtuse and angry, and most important of all, the whole schtick had no trace of career move so far as I could see. They meant it; and they really did love Guns 'n' Roses; and I would never have to listen to the sodding Wedding Present ever again if I didn't want to.

Unfortunately but perhaps inevitably, such ambition was doomed to fail, although this is probably acknowledged in the best of their songs, most of which seemed to be about doomed ambition by one definition or another. In practical terms this amounted to their failing to split up after releasing a brilliant debut album as promised, not least because although the brilliant debut album did absolutely everything it should to spectacular effect, it did it for far too long, presumably having been timed so as to fill one of those new fangled compact discs. The vinyl translated to a double album, sacrificing a whole chunk of immediacy, and letting in a few tracks which, whilst fine in themselves, should probably have been b-sides. In fact, thinking about it, neither Tennessee nor that bloody awful novelty remix of Repeat, nor a few of the others, were anywhere near as good as R.P. McMurphy or We Her Majesty's Prisoners or Soul Contamination. What with Methadone Pretty, You Love Us, Slash 'n' Burn, Stay Beautiful and others, this could have been a killer single album of such devastating force as to prevent the formation of Oasis, the Bluebells, the Boo Radleys, Catatonia, Space, Toploader, Travis, Dodgy, the Stereophonics, and a host of other bands who doubtless were already going but probably should have jacked it in anyway. Sadly Generation Terrorists was issued as a killer single album trapped inside the body of a slightly porky double, and then they failed to split up, and poor old Richey Edwards went missing, and they began their slow descent towards becoming one of those Jo Whiley bands providing soundtrack music for car insurance commercials and admitting that they'd always liked Happy Mondays.

Still, listening to this, that doomed magic is still there in most of the grooves, so it is what it is. You're probably better off with a stack of the early 12" singles in some ways, but as a quarter century vintage variation on we mean it, man, this still packs a decent punch.

UK Subs - Another Kind of Blues (1979)

It seems peculiar to consider that more time has gone by since this came out than had passed for all those ageing teds to whom Charlie Harper sang this ain't the fifties any more. The UK Subs emerged at roughly the same time as a bunch of other supposedly second or maybe third wave punk bands who made even Sham 69 seem like old school veterans, or at least that's how I remember it. For the past million years I've tended to associate them with the Angelic Upstarts, Cockney Rejects, and all those other later footbally types - a few decent songs here and there, but somehow lacking colour, and lacking colour even in comparison to Sham 69.

Stranglehold was one of those yappy singles with some guy barking about something punky over fuzzy guitars; She's Not There was just another cranked up version of some sixties record I hadn't even heard, the sort of thing clogging up a million punk covers compilations with expensively mohicaned models sneering unconvincingly on the cover; but still I would go into Midland Educational in Stratford-upon-Avon every weekend and look at all those albums I couldn't afford to buy, amongst which was Another Kind of Blues. The singles I'd heard hadn't been that impressive, but I was still pretty sure it would be worth a listen, and I thought the cover was great, and it was on blue vinyl; but the bottom line was that pocket money and the weekly fiver from my paper round wasn't going to stretch to taking such chances.

Decades pass and I don't spend too much time thinking about the UK Subs beyond the occasional discovery of some curious detail like how they were buddies with Crass in the early days, which seemed to reflect well on both bands, as did Henry Rollins turning out to be a big fan. Then my friend Eddy's band supported them at the Amersham Arms in New Cross, and Eddy - who can usually be relied on to slag off almost anything that isn't on top of its game - described them as a genuinely great live band, adding that Charlie Harper is one of the nicest people you could ever wish to meet. Then some comedy metal combo did a cover of Down on the Farm and so made Charlie a millionaire for life off royalties, which seems like karma doing its job for once.

Finally catching up, the UK Subs who recorded this album didn't really sound much like I expected them too, and definitely had many of the qualities I liked about other records I bought at the time. There's some of that slightly yappy texture of Stranglehold, but mostly it's cranked up rhythm and blues, very tuneful, very punchy, and very, very addictive. The lyrics might not be Shakespeare, but then if you want Shakespeare, looking for him on a UK Subs album is probably not a great start, and they do their job as well as you could wish for. Crash Course and TV Blues both stood out for me as tracks that have been conspicuously missing from my life for the last thirty or so years, but to be honest, there's not a single clunker here.

There's been a lot of utter bollocks spouted about punk in recent years, mainly by those who assume that as a phenomena it was only really happening if you were one of about twelve people seen frequently at the right end of the King's Road during August, 1974. Conversely, Another Kind of Blues, regardless of being a supposed latecomer to the party, is more like something you could call the real thing on the grounds that this album sounds exactly like it felt being fourteen in 1979.

A fucking cracker!