In the early days of Glass Records, around 1981-82, I was greatly influenced by the Cherry Red label, and via a publishing arrangement got to know the people there pretty well. I was generously supported by Iain McNay and Mike Alway with sound advice and encouragement. I really liked Kevin Harrison's "Inscrutably Obvious' LP that he'd made for them and was thrilled when he agreed to let me release some more of his music, which for some reason or other we released on cassette. People did that kind of thing back then, and so all these years later, when I decided to resurrect the Glass label "Spectro Verdu Est Mort?" was an obvious choice to reissue on CD and DL in full technicolour sound, digitally remastered by John A. Rivers, with whom Kevin recorded the 'Fly" EP for me shortly after.
David E Barker - Glass Redux MMXVI
Notes by Kevin Harrison
I was born in George Eliot Hospital, Nuneaton in 1952 to a working class family. I don't care for anything remotely religious except for a few uplifting hymns with good tunes sung at school. My only solace is when I discover late-night Radio Luxembourg and later the offshore pirates. Rock 'n' Roll & Pop Music! Up until then I've made-do with a broken gramophone, spinning 78's by hand and listening to them at various revolutions. Speeding-up then slowing down, backwards or forwards, it seems a big improvement on playing them in the correct way! In '64 my parents buy a Grundig Tape Recorder. Eureka! I start taping the hit-parade off the radio, but I'm soon bored. I find I'd rather record the sound of my own voice plus nuts and bolts dropping into buckets of water whilst modifying the capstan to produce out-of-this-world effects, (more Doctor Who & Gerry Anderson than anything else I guess. Another favourite childhood thing).
65-66. After seeing a few beat groups at school dances (The Sabres & The Peeps) and at a disused church hall in Chilvers Coton, ('Jack the Ripper' is a big favourite), I decide to start a group with school friends, Ron & Steve. I'm going through the 'teenage rebel' phase and don't have much time for teachers, except for one or two. A person who has a big influence on me is my English teacher, Mrs. Timmins who takes the class to see The Liverpool Poets (Henri, Patten, McGough) and later introduces me to the work of Corso, Ginsberg, Ferlinghetti, and the rest of The Beat Poets. The other love I have is Picasso and later on Surrealism. (Max Ernst, Man Ray & Jean Cocteau).
With the music, I've been through the Bert Weedon/Hank Marvin phase some years earlier first with Mr. Gotobed then Ray, a good guitarist/teacher who plays down the local pub'The Golden Eagle' in Keresley. Things are changing. I'm absorbing a lot of the current pop, soul, rock and folk music. I'm now more interested in The Beatles, The Rolling Stones,
Kinks, Small Faces, The Animals, The Who and particularly Jeff Beck for his amazing eastern-tinged solos for The Yardbirds. I vividly remember trashing my only guitar at the local youth club. A £35 Hofner like Beck smashes into smithereens in Antonioni's film 'Blow-Up'.
I like to go out dancing, favourites are: Motown, Atlantic & Stax. I guess I'm a young mod and all that entails. Then the musical climate alters dramatically. 10/11/67. I see Jimi Hendrix, my absolute idol, The Move, Amen Corner, The Nice, and Pink Floyd (with a disintegrating, dissociated Syd Barrett), all play the same bill at Coventry Theatre.
68-72 - I'm at the local Art School, fall in love with Pop-Art, Dadaism, Girls, Cigarettes and Alcohol. I get into trouble with girls' parents, play my battered acoustic guitar and go to see and hear lots of good bands at 'Mothers', in Erdington. Psychedelic/underground music is now de rigueur and a passion, so, bored with the snobby and strait jacketed conventions of further education I decide instead to rent an Art Studio in Stockingford with my friends Geoff and Aidan. Geoff & I play a bit of acid-folk & record a demo at Fresh Maggots Mick Burgoyne's Home studio (Incredible String Band, Third Ear Band, Tyrannosaurus Rex are an inspiration), I then join 'Whistler', and play some progressive jazz-rock with tricky time signatures (Mothers of Invention, Caravan, Softs), I'm starting to experiment with an ambivalent gender thing, this behaviour often leads to me getting beaten-up regularly at gigs and in the mining village where I live, for the androgyny and non-conformity not the bleedin'
jazz-rock! Roddy Byers (aka Radiation) lives down the road from me and later on suffers a similar fate with the bully boys. On one occasion the same now-mended Hofner guitar gets thrown into the Swanswell, I get badly beaten up and robbed by drunken thugs. Interviewed by the boys in blue they say I deserve everything I got for looking like a f*****g c**t! - Bloody charming. I'm now getting very strong signals about the intolerance and hypocrisy in this society. Around this time I start experimenting with acid. This has an incalculable affect!
Albums I like at this time: Blonde on Blonde, Revolver, Pet Sounds, Younger than Yesterday, The Doors, Da Capo, Are You Experienced, Axis Bold As Love, Electric Ladyland, Sunshine Superman, Piper at the Gates of Dawn, Velvet Underground And Nico, ElectricMusic for the Mind and Body, Mr. Fantasy, Freak Out, Lumpy Gravy, I Had Too Much To Dream Last Night, Spirit, Marble Index, Gris-Gris, A Love Supreme, United States of America, Third, The Madcap Laughs, Music in a Dolls House, The Hangman's Beautiful Daughter, Astral Weeks, Trout Mask Replica and Joy Of A Toy. I also get very excited when I hear 'In C' and 'A Rainbow in Curved Air' by Terry Riley in a record booth in Berwick Street, and later, Steve Reich's experiments with tape going in and out of phase, 'Come Out' & 'It's Gonna Rain'. After forty-days and forty-nights I move to London (Holland Park then Camberwell) with Lynda, in search of fame and fortune, ha! I finally get work in Baker Street and we make good friends with Ken Burns, an Australian who, like myself is interested in William Burroughs' writings and when his visa expires decides to move to Tangiers.
We see lots of live music at the Roundhouse and other venues, the highlight for me is probably the MC5! Funny, somehow Hawkwind always seem to be playing support at these gigs. Somewhere along the way we also get to see Bowie taking Ziggy out for his first test drive at The Imperial College. After only a year or so, psychedelics, a strange chance meeting, and a personal tragedy affect me in a big way. Suffice to say, I'm soon back in Keresley a bit the worst for wear.
Boxing Day '72 I get married. Oh happy day! I'm listening to T.Rex, Bowie, Roxy Music, The Stooges, Velvets, Lou Reed, Steve Reich, and lots of German Musik: Stockhausen, Amon Duul II, Can, Faust, Kraftwerk, Neu! Cluster, Harmonia. I'm beginning to see the light and I'm getting interested in different ways of making music.
73-'76. I must get a job. Money is short and I end up working at Jaguar Cars with a nice bunch of chaps who, without much resistance from me, lead me astray. There's much serious drinking to be done! I do some demos with alto sax and flute player, Mick Gawthorp, another good friend of mine, with his Akai reel-to-reel recorder. (It sounds a bit like Faust). Simon Draper of Virgin seems to be interested, then not. Eventually the job I'm doing is put under the umbrella of JRT and after two years of working there, I take voluntary redundancy and spend some of the money pursuing my ambition of becoming a professional recording artist.
Anyway back to the music - I buy a '75 Fender Strat, EMS Synthi AKS, Hohner Melodica and a Revox A77, I now have some equipment and start in earnest to try to write and record some music. I become good friends with nascent outfit This Heat in London. I'd met Charles Bullen previously in Nuneaton and at The Farm in Burton Hastings, we rehearse under the name Zoastra a couple of times at The Nags Head with Westy and two drummers, hmm. I wish I had recordings! We swap tapes/phone calls and listen to interesting challenging musics (e.g. Can, Beefheart, Philip Glass, Magma, The Residents, Devo, Eno, Miles, Sun-Ra, Harry Partch etc.) and on one occasion in '76, I get asked if I would record an early gig in a London pub, so I travel down to London, with my Revox, Lynda and John Westacott. When I remove the headphones the sound they make blows me away. Fantastic! One of the tracks I record ends up on their debut album, (released in '79 - the blue and yellow one). Charles Bullen and Charles Hayward visit Lynda and myself in Bedworth and some casual recording is done. At Gareth William's invitation, I also spend a few days in Camberwell playing & recording with the trio.
Easter Sunday and our lovely daughter Rebecca is born eight weeks premature,Charles Bullen & Mary are visiting, we spend time in the sun and take photos at the Blue Lagoon in Bermuda Village. (The weather is hot and sunny for this time of the year). Next time they visit, Rebecca is finally allowed to come home from the hospital after spending six or seven weeks in an incubator. Life is sweet again!
'77-'81. Everybody I know celebrates the arrival of 'punk'. The Sex Pistols & The Clash play Coventry Lanchester Polytechnic. I meet Joe Strummer, friendly, positive, and Johnny Rotten,snotty, negative. Perfect! The gig is a great inspiration. We meet twenty or so other punk revellers requiring medical attention in Casualty at Cov. & Warwick Hospital including good mate from Keresley, Roddy Radiation who sometimes pops round to our gaff and records a few demos. Favourite UK bands during this time include The Pop Group, This Heat, Subway Sect, The Fall, Gang of Four, Wire, PiL and Magazine. American 'new wave' artistsI like are Patti Smith, Television, Suicide, The New York Dolls, The Modern Lovers, TheCramps and Père Ubu. Later on I'm also spinning Dr. Alimantado 'Best Dressed Chicken', Tapper Zukie 'MPLA', Augustus Pablo 'King Tubby meets Rockers Uptown', Dillinger 'Cokane in my Brain' and Lee Perry 'Double Seven' and anything else I can find that is produced by 'Scratch'. Completely stoned 'bonkers' genius!
I join 'Transposed Men'. The name comes from a sixties book cover I have glued to the front of an old drum machine. Neol and Brad are already friends of mine and the line-up shows great promise - Neol Davies - Guitar and Vocals, John Bradbury - Drums, Desmond Brown - Hammond Organ, Steve Wynne (aka Vaughan Tive) - Bass, and myself on Guitar & Vocals. I have already recorded a few demos of Neol's songs at Brad's cellar in Warwick at a prior date. Anyway the main bulk of the songs we are playing will become staples in The Selecter's set and many will feature on their first album. Virgin Records are interested but nothing happens. Anyway I digress, when Brad leaves to join The Specials everything falls apart. After a while Neol and Desmond team-up with some of the ex-members of Hardtop 22,Pauline Black joins them on vocals, and The Selecter is born, Steve Wynne eventually joins The Swinging Cats and sometime after that Dexy's Midnight Runners.
'79-'81, I get invited to do a support spot at a birthday party at the 'Rockhouse' in Coventry, The Urge are playing, later they ask me to record a rehearsal session. After a few weeks I join them, I play guitar, electric piano and EMS synth and start to introduce some of my songs to the group. We decide to dispense with the definitive and we are now just called urge. We release our first single 'Revolving Boy' financed partly by student entertainment manager Duff (recorded at 'Spaceward Studios' in Cambridge) on our own label 'Consumer Disks'. When John Peel first plays it we are sitting in a car, needless to say it makes us feel ten feet tall when he describes it as "more Coventry genius!" When Fos joins us as our manager he also doubles as road-manager when we embark on a brief tour of Holland and Germany. After we get back Pinnacle agree to distribute the single for us.
David and I have good chemistry. It turns out to be a good song writing team, and we remain good friends in the future. The first single 'Revolving Boy' takes it's title from a pulp sci-fi paperback, about a pre-pubescent boy named Derv spinning around in zero gravity searchingfor love. It's married to an updated Stax groove and underpinned by an hypnotic dub bassline,music fans! Although things are grim with Thatcher gaining power in the general election, this only seems to feed the desire of Coventry musicians to make a stand and take a strong political stance. Overall, there is a positive, more optimistic scene starting to grow. This is a good period for music in Coventry, there's lots of bands that play different styles of music, who all know (of) each other. There's friendly rivalry for sure, but a sense of unity seemsto be the most prevailing attitude. Importantly The Specials success seems to galvanise the scene. Martin Bowes (Attrition) essential 'Alternative Sounds' is the 'zine with all the dope about what's happenin' locally.
During this period I release a cassette 'On Earth 2' on the 'Ambivalent Scale' label. This Nuneaton collective comprises Eyeless and Bron Area among others. I feel an immediate affinity with them and record some tracks for Side 1 of Bron Area's 'One Year' cassette. (EIG's Martyn Bates later matures into a prolific songwriter and an inspired, idiosyncratic and brilliant vocalist). We try to organise dates where Bron / Eyeless play with urge or myself whenever it's possible.
I start performing local live gigs with my Stratocaster and a tape-delay system, (this consists of 2 tape recorders, both in record mode, the tape spools from the left (tape deck #1) through two sets of recording heads and is taken up on the right (tapedeck #2) the delay is the space between the tape heads, you can then improvise over the top of what you've already played, this is cool as it automatically records the performance. I find out about this system from Brian Eno's 'Discreet Music' album on his Obscure label.
After good press reviews and word-of-mouth for On Earth 2, Mike Alway from Cherry Red asks me if they can release it on their label as an LP. I agree. After a few overdubs, and a sprinkle of 'ear candy' at WSRS in Leamington by the talented and charming John A. Rivers, it becomes Inscrutably Obvious. The cover for this and the subsequent Fly EP are designed by my good friend Mark Osborne, who I later work with quite extensively. Also a compilation LP is released by Cherry Red - 'Perspectives & Distortion' features a track from Inscrutably Obvious. I also produce demos for Coventry bands, Idol Eyes, Human Cabbages and spend a bleak but hilarious time with The Mix in London and at Chris Squire's home studio in Virginia Waters. I would later describe this as very Withnail And I! April '81 urge split up due to insurmountable difficulties with Arista and some acrimonious internal wrangles. This is a very difficult time. A new urge line-up is quickly put together, incl. Lynda, Dave Gedney, Rick Medlock, Dennis Burns and myself. But times have shifted and the elusive chemistry has gone. Chic & funky, we play plenty of gigs, but by this time we've had too much shit kicked out of us, and despite record company interest, we reluctantly decide to call it a day.
Next is a cassette for Glass Records - Spectro Verdu est Mort? This is followed by the more commercial 12" EP - Fly. This features, myself, Lynda on backing vocal, Horace of The Specials on Bass, and Rick Medlock on Drums. It gets good reviews in the music press, (NME like 'Views of the Rhine), and it's played plenty on local radio, but that's about it. Unknown to meat the time was that the Fly EP was a big hit on the Italo Cosmic Disco Scene, with DJ's Danielle Baldelli & Beppe Loda being the main champions.'The Wonderful World of Glass' compilation features tracks by Martyn, Pete, Steve and myself. There is a solo album scheduled, variously listed as Neuro-Atomic or Fraudulent Confessions/True Obsessions. but it never materialises.
"Inscrutably Obvious was the first batch of compiled recordings made at DNA Studio (my home studio) from 1975-1980. Spectro Verdu Est Mort ? was a continuation. Recorded on B&O and Revox 2-track tape recorders it utilises the basic technique of bouncing tracks to achieve sound-on-sound recordings. Instruments: EMS Synthi AKS, Teisco Electric Piano, Philips Philicorda, stand-up acoustic piano, Fender Stratocaster, Hohner Alto Melodica, Denon CRB-90 "Rhythm Box", Boss Dr Rhythm DR-55, MXR-85, MXR Flanger, Watkins Copicat and Carlsboro Echo units, TV/Radio, a cheap bass guitar, bass drum, cymbal and assorted percussion, sound effect records, tape loops, tape echo and a tape-delay system."
Kevin Harrison 2015
