Coffin Pricks

Wouldn't mind being in Chicago tomorrow night for the first show by new band Coffin Pricks. Former Bob Tilton guitarist Chay Lawrence is manning the low end and Monorchid/Skull Kontrol/Red Eyed Legends/Circus Lupus man Chris Thomson does the vocals. Sounds about right to me. To be listened to back-to-back with the Eddy Current Suppression Ring song in the previous post. Then "Stranded" by The Saints maybe? You can make your own comp, I'm rubbish at them.

Group Home Haircut by impastah-rasta

COTD 3: Ferrari 365 GT4 2+2 / 400 / 412

It had to happen. I picked 2 esoteric choices for the first Car of the Day entries and so now I have to pick a Ferrari.
Sorry.
I’ve been nuts about Italian cars since I was a kid. Blame my parents. Blame Magnum PI or Miami Vice. Blame Beverley Hills Cop II. Blame Cannonball Run (One and Two, but mainly One).
However: in keeping with the spirit of these vehicular outbursts, I’m going to select one of the most unpopular cars to ever leave the Maranello factory gates – the 365 GT4 2+2/400/412 series.
Even at the height of the car boom of the late 1980s, these front-engined four seaters were tricky to shift. And this was at a time that people were paying over list-price for anything with a prancing horse on the bonnet and it was possible to sell a brand new car for a huge profit just by taking delivery of it.

You can trace the disinterest in the series through the history of 2+2s that the company have made (2+2 meaning “2-in-the-front/2-in-the-back”, or “not quite a 4-seater really, unless you’re really short or you don’t have legs”).
The wonderful 250GTE was the first mass-production car that Ferrari produced. An elegant but muscular saloon powered by the same V12 as the more sporty and desirable models but able to take the kids and the luggage to the summer house (at exceptional speed). It had the poise of a street rod but the simple and beautiful design details of it’s more valuable (now) siblings like the 250 GT SWB. Crucially, it’s a subtle car.
It’s easily in my Top 10 Ferraris, maybe even my Top 5. As someone who can name over a thousand minor variations in the marque and who wrote several thousand words (for no real reason) on the great “0846 debate”, this is high praise indeed. I really think about these things. I really am that much of a loser.
However, take a quick look online and you’ll see the majority of these lovely cars have been scrapped, with the mechanical aspects cruelly stripped out and used to build either replicas of more valuable models like the GTO or kept as spares for the real thing by wealthy vintage car racers. Recently an absolutely perfect condition GTE showed up on EBay minus its engine after it was bought at auction solely for items which were to be used as spares for a more financially valuable car. At least someone has the chance to salvage something from this one, elsewhere GTE body shells lie in coachbuilders’ backyards acting as accidental flowerbeds:



It’s heart breaking.

The 400 series (I’ll call it that for shorthand) has a similar story. Brought out in the early 1970s as a replacement for the 365 “Queen Mary” it roughly echoes the equivalent changes to Ferrari design of the period in that the curves and open lights of the older models were replaced with slightly more angular styling and sleeker, pop-up lights (see the 275 GTB to Daytona, or the Dino to 308GTB later on).
Today, it’s possible to pick one of these up for less than a Nissan Micra but the hideous costs of maintaining a 30-something year old, V12 engined Italian car mean few people are wealthy (or brave) enough to take the risk. Specialist breakers’ yards (such as http://www.eurospares.co.uk/) are full of these things. In fact, take a look at this widely circulated photo of the recovered wreckage from the tragic Lockerbie bombing:



That’s right; in the foreground is the remains of a Ferrari 400.

I can’t remember the last time I saw one of these things on the road, moving.
That is a pity, as that’s where they are in their element. Modern cars are designed with the photographic image in mind. Most people will see their first glimpse of a new supercar in print, not in the flesh. So you end up with cars like the Ferrari F50: it looks like a bazooka battleship on a glossy page but it just sits wrong on the road, ending up looking like the outpourings of a just-pubescent male in the back of his maths book.
The 70s period for design house Pininfarina acts as a textbook example of how to design a car that looks great on the road.



Recently I saw a first series Ferrari Mondial (a car similarly maligned in Ferrari aficionado circles) on the road and it looked fabulous. Squat, hunched forward, clearly defined and unfussy in detail compared to modern Ferraris. The 400 perfectly illustrates this line of thinking, though you can see why it isn’t universally considered a design classic.

In photos it’s hard to determine its “face”. Its curious bi-level nose is the culprit – making it hard to define the crucial eyes and mouth recognition that makes a car appealing to us weird human types. That face recognition is why we see the Morgan Aeromax as cross-eyed, the Citroen DS as “Shark-like” and the Fiat 500 as unthreatening. The 400 is just confusing – from standing eye-level at least. It looks like it should solely have pop ups like a Bitter Coupe or BMW 8 Series; or a more defined and stepped up nose like the latter Pininfarina concept car the Ferrari Pinin, or other equally luscious Farina creations like the Lancia Gamma Coupe or the Fiat 130 Coupe. The Aston Martin Lagonda suffers from the same styling problem (among many others – though it too looks incredible on the road). Plus, the need for 4 seats makes it all look a little stretched and poorly balanced. In photos it’s only the rear ¾ view that appeals.



Put it on the road next to the cars of the time (or now) though or crouch down and look at one from a seated perspective and it looks fantastic. I remember going to the coast in Norfolk with my parents and seeing a black 400GT heading towards us on the other side of the road with its lights up. It stuck in my mind like a photo. The car’s width and poise make it look perfectly aggressive whilst still being strangely subtle (for an enormous V12 supercar). It is the absolute antithesis of the F50 and I am willing to stake money that it will age significantly better than either the current 599 or its direct descendant the 612 Scaglietti, both of which are too big, too ostentatious and too sloppy looking to really work. The 612 in particular looks like the early stages of an omelette. The angular, sweeping 400 is confident and bold in comparison and represents the perfect gentleman (or woman) express.

It’s also the only Ferrari I have ever been in. My late Granddad called me up to say I should pay him a visit with my Dad when I was about 13 or so. He took me to see a mechanic neighbour of his who had borrowed a late 70s 400GT from his work to offer rides to kids at a garden fete. I think it was registered APG 58T. It was £55,000 back then. You could get one for a tenth of that now. It was in a perfectly 70s metallic silver blue/green with tan leather inside. I went for a ride in it and it felt like it was taking off on the road between Northborough and Peakirk. I remember looking at the speedo and it saying 130 mph. Judging from Ferrari’s optimistic speedos it was probably closer to 100 but that’s still plenty on an A road in a car that weighs the same as a bungalow. It was a carburetted model too so the noise was deafening – even though this was supposed to be a more civilized Ferrari. It left quite a mark on me. The registration doesn’t show on the DVLA database as being taxed anymore. I wonder where the car is - probably languishing in a parts yard somewhere or, worse still, re-born as several hundred Coke cans.

So why is it so unpopular? I’d guess it’s because people who want a Ferrari tend to lust after one for years and it signifies that they have somehow “made it” when they own one. So they inevitably buy a red one and want it to be as striking looking as possible so the neighbours get the message. The 400 just doesn’t fit with that. For one, it looks terrible in red (a lot of Ferraris do, oddly) and despite its gargantuan power train and enormous grunt it’s hardly a sports car. It’s aimed more at the discreet Mafia boss than the freshly-famous pop star or footballer.
Its cheapness tempts owners new to the marque who then find they don’t have the pit of funds required to maintain it as it should be maintained so lots of these cars are in a serious state of disrepair now and with the values so low they’re more liable to be broken for spares than they are restored as working on a V12 Ferrari costs the same amount regardless of whether that car is worth 10 thousand pounds or 10 million. Which is a shame.

I went to a Ferrari car show recently and in amongst the sea of red wedges - all with their owners in red polo shirts with red golfing umbrellas - was a solitary 412GT in a deep bronze colour. It was driven by an elderly gentleman who rolled up – not in an explosion of exhaust noise and tyre screech but in relative calm – and sat reading the paper in it before donning his panama and leaving as quietly as he had arrived.

That is why the 365GT2+2/400/412 deserves a re-evaluation – it’s a car with real class.



Value now: you can get a good one for £20,000

Pub quiz trivia fact: Jeremy Clarkson might have called it "awful in every way" and relegated it to an entry in the Top Gear Crap Cars book but Daft Punk didn't agree with him and made a black 412GT the star of their film Electroma in 2007:



Links:
Wikipedia
Online Forum
Octane Article
Registry

Kogumaza Activity

(Chinchillafest, May 7 2010)

The L&S014 7" has it's own ordering page at the L&S website here: http://lancashireandsomerset.co.uk/index2.html
Head to the Bands link for info on other L&S artists like Enablers, Nathan Bell, Mugstar and more...

Some recent linkage:
http://www.leftlion.co.uk/articles.cfm/id/2821
http://www.textura.org/reviews/kogumaza.htm
http://still-single.tumblr.com/post/557520858/kogumaza-sevens-b-w-mara-7-low-point
http://www.leftlion.co.uk/articles.cfm/id/3047

Upcoming:
September 4: Hired Geeks all-dayer at The Victoria in London
Truly mindmelting line-up with Part Chimp, That Fucking Tank, Please and a load more including us.
October 24: Nottingham Rescue Rooms with The Ex
Getting to support one of our favourite bands. What's more our friends Bellini are playing Nottingham the night before (fingers crossed).

An LP is in the works as well.

Car Of The Day - Intro

I've written about cars on this Blog before so I'll save the confession/explanation about being a massive petrolhead. Put simply, I love car design - specifically between the mid 1960s and the early 1980s. Modern supercar/sports car design is all about either technical excellence or extreme ostentatiousness but there was a period where car design represented an almost pure and maybe even naive striving for true creativity. Unhampered by safety constraints, fuel consumption worries and little details like practicality, car designers of the 60s/70s were let loose with a brief no bigger than creating something wonderful that people would want to drive and hope to own. I like that optimism.
Now it seems we'll never see cars like this again. Sure, there seems to be another hypercar released every week that costs a million dollars but they're all hideous and 90% of the time are just driven around as gigantic visual bank statements by their owners and say more about the unfair division of wealth in the world than the creativity of the designer or the individuality of the owner. Seriously - how can anywhere be in recession when someone can spend a million dollars on a car?
Plus, the car is the enemy despite the fact most people have one and lots of people have more than one. Much as it pains me to admit it, Clarkson and the Top Gear folks have at least got something right when they rail against "eco mentalists". I'm anti-some-cars. I'm anti people using them when they don't need to. I'm anti people doing the school run in a Range Rover or buying a BMW that does 190mph and 12mpg and driving themselves, on their own, to work in it everyday. But make a car that is beautiful to look at, fun to drive and with a sense of occasion and people will do everything they can to keep it running. It might do 8 miles per gallon but the owner might only do 2000 miles a year in it. What's worse: someone doing 100,000 miles a year in a Prius that they scrapped their old car to buy and was made on several different continents using components shipped/flown to the factories that themselves churn out pollution OR someone buying, say, an Aston Martin from the 1980s that was handbuilt (and all the parts are still available) and only doing 5000 miles a year. It's crazy.
So: owning an exotic car back in the 60s or the 70s was very different to now. Not just politically. The cars were frequently hard to drive, unreliable and poorly supported in terms of after-sales care so driving and maintaining something like a Ferrari or a Maserati was a labour of love, even into the 1980s. The idea of a car as an investment was laughable also and cars that are now worth several million dollars were used for blasting around country roads for fun and repaired with a hammer by devoted owners who were deemed crazy for buying them.
Modern cars (with a few notable exceptions) are too big, too garish and too over engineered in comparison to appeal to me. You really shouldn't be able to potter to Waitrose in a Lamborghini. Not without it catching fire anyway.
Since I was about 12 years old I've thumbed the For Sale ads in classic car magazines and mentally selected my ideal money-no-object purchases from those available. I still do it now.
So, I'm taking a further stand for the automobile with Car Of The Day: a random and not completely regular look at cars that always make my fantasy garage when flicking through Classic & Sportscar on the bog. I have no mechanical knowledge, save for the experience of what has gone wrong on my own cars, so this is based mainly on sights and sounds.
If you own one of the cars featured, be sure to get in touch. Likewise if the photos used belong to you: I'll try and credit where I know who took the photo but that's not always possible.
I would like to point out that I drive a 1999 Peugeot 306 HDI Meridian Estate in metallic red. It is called "The Pig". I think this actually makes me more qualified to talk about dream cars, seeings I have ten per cent of fuck-all chance of actually owning any of them. Enjoy.

#1: De Tomaso Mangusta
#2: Saab 900
#3: Ferrari 400

Tender Trap Artwork

I've just finished this artwork for the band Tender Trap and their forthcoming album and single on the Fortuna Pop and Slumberland record labels.
In terms of formats and details it's the biggest job I've ever done. The band were super helpful all along the process, giving me clear concepts to work with. The album is called Dansette Dansette, in reference to the portable record player brand. The band explained that they wanted to get across a feeling of happy naivety - of girls dancing to music in their rooms on their own or with friends and the world that music and records in particular can allow someone to escape in.
I thought that was a great idea and I wanted to produce a sleeve (especially on LP) that people would want to look at when listening to the music on the record within it; where if it was the only information anyone had about the band, then it would be enough for them.
They were very keen on some of the drawings I'd done of outdated technical objects, like tape machines or audio equipment so it seemed obvious to use an actual Dansette on the cover. Luckily two of my friends have very nice examples in their houses so I took a series of photos to make the front cover images for the LP and the accompanying 7" from. I also based a lot of the other elements (like the fake sticker on the front and the choice of fonts throughout) on Dansette's own labelling and advertising from the time.
I liked the idea of people dancing around the Dansette so this formed the basis for both of the back covers, using silhouettes to keep the ages and eras of the dancers purposefully vague and timeless.
I'm a great believer in the band photo on a record sleeve for certain bands and I thought Tender Trap should definitely have one. They got their friend, the awesome photographer Alison Wonderland, to shoot them with a Dansette, in suitably bright colours and then I made a drawing from the photo for the inner sleeve.
Even with the CD we wanted to get across the idea of it being a record in the old sense of the word, so the CD face is designed to look like an LP and the CD tray image shows the turntable from the Dansette.
Anyway - it's out soon and it's probably my favourite sleeve that I've done so thanks to them for asking me and to Sean and Mike at the labels for their help. Follow the various links above to hear stuff from it and to eventually buy it. And needless to say, feel free to enquire about my freelance rates.
Click on the images to be magically transported over to Flickr where you can see them all blown up in detail...

Chucklesome

http://www.self-titledmag.com/home/2010/03/08/primer-harvey-milk-tear-their-discography-apart-from-the-shitty-blues-rock-of-the-pleaser-to-the-total-creative-bankruptcy-of-their-latest-album/

Felix On Double Six TV

Bernard Street, Oh Thee 73 and Where Is My Dragon? filmed in Cardiff in January 2010.

Italian Car Photos

Now showing at Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/sumlin/sets/72157623398758364/

Don't Trust Brainwashed

Brainwashed's End Of Year Poll results are in here: Clickety-click

Not only does the this-is-pretty-good-but-I-really-wish-it-was-better-I-mean-how-hard-can-it-be? Om record God Is Good make it to number 4 in the Top 10 Albums Of 2009 but Brainwashed reader Anthony D'Amico has this to say about Bellini's The Precious Prize Of Gravity:

"All I remember about this album is that I put it on for a couple minutes, shrugged, and turned it off."

Thanks for that Anthony.

Lungfish Live 1991

Henry Chunklet has decided to digitise and upload a shitload of cassettes that would otherwise be consigned to the great box-under-the-bed-filled-with-dust-and-pubes in the sky. Lots of these came from Chris Thomson but one of Henry's own is this sound-desk recording of Lungfish in Baltimore in 1991.
They do a mighty version of I Don't Live Today by Jimi Hendrix about halfway through too, as if you needed anyore reasons to have a listen...

Brooks Headley

Sam McPheeters profiles his former bandmate Brooks Headley for Vice, with photos by Glen Freidman:
http://www.viceland.com/int/v16n11/htdocs/the-dessert-psycho-223.php?page=1

Headley drummed for Born Against, UOA, Skull Kontrol and Wrangler Brutes among others and is now a renowned pastry chef in New York. No shit. As McPheeters puts it:

"The mystery of tragedy is a staple of news shows—the distraught parents who never thought their child would be capable of murder, the coworkers baffled by an incident of workplace violence. But its correlate mystery—the opacity of talent—gets relatively little play in the media. For me, it’s just as intriguing. How can someone rise to prestige without giving any indications of ambition? What made Grandma Moses take up painting in her 70s? What made G.W. Bush take his life seriously at 40? How do people pull off these radical and seemingly effortless course corrections? Thus was the mystery of Brooks..."

As a huge fan of both desserts and Headley's bands this is a grand read, so go read it...

And while we're at it, here's some of Brooks' drumming from You Tube, just don't read the comments:

Supersonic 2009

Some photos from this year's Supersonic Festival here: http:
//www.flickr.com/photos/sumlin/sets/72157622873687340/

Here are a few:









And here's some film of Earthless covering Cherry Red by the mighty Groundhogs. Enjoy:

Kogumaza On Your Telly

http://www.babelgum.com/4008071/rockfeedback-recommends-kogumaza.html

Thanks to Tim and the Rockfeedback folks.

I'm Becoming James May

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/motoring/columnists/jamesmay/6408789/Its-Ferrari-time.html

Has James May been reading my Blog?
I guess, unlike me, he can afford one at least.

Silver Currant

Great man of fuzz, echo and wah-frenzy Ethan Miller (of Howlin' Rain and Comets On Fire) has his own blog and here it is: http://silvercurrant.blogspot.com

Monk's rules to live by are awesome:
http://silvercurrant.blogspot.com/2009/03/monks-rules-to-his-band.html

"You've got to dig it, to dig it - you dig?"

Mind Control

In 2004, the Wolves Of Greece rock band/theatre group were invited to play a very large show with the lovely Lightning Bolt in The London. This was, as they say in the industry, a "Big Deal". A few days before the gig our singist, Simon, sheepishly called us all up and said he couldn't do the show because something important had come up. Upon being pressed, we managed to get it out of him that he had tickets to see hypnotist/mind bender/trickster Derren Brown perform live. We were outraged and applied so much pressure to poor old Simon that he sacked off Derren and did the show. It was fun.It made a list of the loudest gigs of all time as well, I might add. Though Simon did quit the band shortly afterwards.
So, what's this got to do with anything? Well, how times change because all I've done is watch Derren Brown for the last 3 weeks or so. Today I am staying at a friends', waiting for the keys to my new house, sitting around all day with nothing but a laptop and I am actually excited at the prospect of watching 4 On Demand all afternoon and the many Derren Brown related programmes available.
Who gives a shit how he predicted the lottery ultimately? It was a televisual event (the clue is in the title) like I remember from my childhood when everyone at school, even the teachers, would want to discuss it the day after. It was something that got people talking and rather that than a bunch of mentally challenged people locked in a house shrieking "ohmygod!" for 24 hours a day surely?
Anyway, Derren Brown's Blog is always good for a read, even when it contains (admittedly quite decent) impressions of Stewie Griffin.
In summary: more hypnotism, less noise rock. Simon was a visionary.

Nathan Bell

Nathan Bell (with Rogério Martins, Richard Ribeiro and Luciano Valério) live in Sao Paulo, Brazil, May 11 2009.

Bilge Pump

It struck me last night, whilst watching Bilge Pump for what I estimate to be the 200th time, that they really are the best band in the world. I've sung their praises in a little more detail here so I'll spare the gushing except to say that the Bilge/Lords Tour of March 2008 was so much fun I didn't leave my house for about a month afterwards. I managed to film a little bit of Bilge every night on the shittiest digital camera in the world and I recommend you ignore the quality and watch some of them now. The Bristol County Sports gig goes in my memory as the best Lords gig we ever did by some distance, concluding with Kush from Zun Zun Egui on vocals and Turps on drums (and Gringo with the quality video camera somewhere at the bar) and then Bilge still blew us off the stage.
The clip above is from Milton Keynes and features the re-appearance of the now-famous "Bletchley Omelette" where many youthful men become so excited by Bilge Pump they strip to the waist and hoist the band above their heads like Gods. Rightfully so.
In true You Tube style there is one comment:

hugboxx
"Lol look at all those faggots"

Indeed.

So here are those clips:

"Bastard Scaffolder" and "Up The Nest" from Nottingham 20/3

"Can I Touch Your Leg?" from London 21/3

"Thank You Very Much" from Bristol County Sports 22/3

"Natural Blonde" plus the crowd playing the drums and a death-defying amplifier leap from Bristol County Sports 22/3

"Dour Hogwax" from Dalston 23/3

"Natural Blonde" featuring Kevin Smith on 'curtain' from Dalston 23/3

Joe embarks on Ian MacKaye-style speech about the quality of the toilets (followed by "A Storm In A Teardrop") from Milton Keynes 24/3

"Up The Nest" thwarted by one and a half pints of ale from Milton Keynes 24/3

Crowd surfing and Turps in the audience from Milton Keynes 24/3

"I Am Perfectly Fine" from Liverpool 25/3

"Up The Nest" from Leeds 26/3

Enjoy!

A Feast Of Music...

If you're anything like my good friend Ross you'll go all foamy at the thought of some of the bands that came out the US underground in the 80s and early 90s. Despite the constant re-packaging of what was (I presume) a series of beautifully spontaneous outbursts of music into some grand plan re-told on DVD with a Thurston Moore and Byron Coley commentary, there are still some truly killer bands that thankfully remain off the radar for documentary makers and lucrative reformation tours. Kind of like the UK come to think of it. That's another column/book though...
I'll get to the point. Chris Thomson has offloaded all his cassettes onto Henry at Chunklet who has decided to do the right thing and make them available for folks to listen to. First up is a series of MP3s from a demo by Cupid Car Club.
Go here: http://www.chunklet.com/index.cfm?section=blogs&ID=554

"We’re all going to be sick of these by the weekend"