17 Seconds is 10! Part 2, Viv Albertine interview

One of my favourite eras of music is 1976-1982, the period that gave us punk and its even more interesting fall-outs. One of the key players in the scene was Viv Albertine. At the point of this interview, she had started recording again after a gap of many years. She had just released an EP, Flesh, which would be followed by an album, The Vermilion Border, and her autobiography Clothes, Clothes, Clothes, Music, Music, Music, Boys, Boys, Boys. Last year, I even got to meet her at the Edinburgh Book Festival, where she signed my copy of The Slits’ debut album, Cut.

viv_albertine_main

“1979 and 2010 actually seem to have a fair bit in common, thirty or so years apart as they may be. A Labour government struggling to run the country -and as with then, the scary as hell prospect that there could be a Tory Government making it even worse, just around the corner. Yet despite that, healthy DIY music scenes, people taking the ethos of punk and making their own, far more exciting records, people publishing their own written work and setting up their own labels. Oh, and Viv Albertine being behind some of the most amazing recorded work of the year.

In 1979, that work was the seminal album Cut and one of the most wonderful cover versions ever, when the Slits totally transformed Marvin Gaye’s ‘I Heard It Through The Grapevine.’ In 2010, it’s her first recorded work in twenty-five years the wonderful ‘Flesh’ EP.

When I call her at her home on the south coast of England, she’s wonderfully warm, and it’s quite clear that I’m not the only man on earth rather in awe of her. I’m in the company of non other than one Thurston Moore, alternative rock icon, Sonic Youth guitarist -and most significantly for our story today, the man behind the Ecstatic Peace record label.

Viv met Thurston when she went to see Sonic Youth with none other than Gina from the Raincoats, the fabulous band who were the Slits’ contemporaries (and made one of 1979?s other phenomenal records with their self-titled debut.) As Viv puts it, she and Thurston ‘hit it off and hung out for the rest of the evening.’ She let him hear some of the songs that she’d been working on. ‘They weren’t ready [for releasing] I thought,’ she says, however ‘he liked them and thought they should be recorded as part of my musical progress.’

For now the EP is the only thing that’s available, but she says ‘I’ve got so many songs I’m desperate to record. Like with the Slits, I’m getting into my head how I want them to sound.’ She’s playing live and adds that ‘when I play live, the people there are often moved. [The songs] resonate for people.’

This EP is nakedly personal. I have to confess that I find myself desperate to ask about some of the lyrics, yet they feel so nakedly personal that it feels rather like quizzing someone on something that you read when you stole their diary, slipped it back and are desperate to ask them. Yet despite this, I can play it on repeat for several listens, several months after it dropped on the doormat.

I also can’t resist myself from asking about the punk-era that the Slits came through. It’s clear that the Slits found the times they were living in difficult. More than thirty years later, even John Lydon (AKA Rotten) has said that he feels it’s been talked up into something it wasn’t. How does Viv feel about it all, looking back?

‘It [the punk movement] was important to us at the time. We lived in London – and still there was nothing going on! It’s amazing how lacklustre things were.’ But when punk started ‘that small punk movement did attract like-minded people.’ Did it change things for people? ‘Everything was picked to pieces – it was like ground zero.’ And Viv found herself in with some of the people who changed the musical shape of Britain in the late seventies, in a way that despite challenges, still reverberates over thirty years later. Amongst those she knew were people like Sid Vicious and John Lydon -’we were all mates or cohorts.’ The Slits’ original drummer Palmolive (born Paloma Romera) would go onto join the Raincoats, being replaced by one Peter Clarke, better known as Budgie, who drummed on Cut and then went onto join Souxsie and the Banshees and marry Siouxsie Sioux. He in turn was replaced by Bruce Smith, who also played with Bristol’s The Pop Group.

Not that this should give an impression of some kind of punk happy family. Because it’s clear that being in the Slits meant being under attack from a lot of sides. ‘People were so antagonistic,’ she recalls. ‘We were smuggled out of hotels. We were attacked physically.’ The clothes they wore -and this at a time when Vivienne Westwood was laying the ground for what would happen- seems to have shocked people to their very core. As Viv describes it ‘We dressed like something out of a porn mag and bovver boys.’ A tough time, then? ‘It was extremely tough for us. The only person who was kind and open to us was John Peel,’ she says referring to the legendary Radio 1 DJ. The Banshees may have been refusing to sign to anyone -or at least giving the impression that they were, but the Slits had recorded two sessions for Peel before they were signed by Island Records in 1979.

The album Cut still sounds ahead of its’ time even now. The cover with the three girls – Viv, singer Ari Up and bassist Tessa Pollitt covered in mud was not designed to titillate but unnerved many. The only question I ask her about the cover, I tell her, is whether she’s heard the rumour that the Rough Trade Record shop had a meeting about whether or not to stock the album because of the cover. [N.B. This is mentioned in the sleeve notes to the Rough Trade Shops Post Punk 01 compilation]. Viv laughs and says she hasn’t heard this rumour but it wouldn’t surprise her. Though the Slits were later signed to the Rough Trade label, then linked with the shop, Viv says that head honcho Geoff Travis ‘didn’t think we were PC enough! We weren’t considered feminists.’

As the seventies became the eighties, so the scenes shifted and times got tougher. ‘ Punk was so wonderful…and then the eighties happened.’ The Slits played a final gig at the Hammersmith Palais and split up in November 1981. Viv’s unquestionably influenced many people over the years -’I’d be flattered if Madonna took influences from us’ – but it’s not all moved her. The 1990s saw the emergence of the Riot Girl movement, but ‘the riot girl movement didn’t grab me.’ She reflects that ‘After the Slits…after a year, I felt the whole music scene was dead. I started to make films and literally downed the guitar.’ She went to film school and proudly states on her website that ‘she didn’t drop out.’

Not involved in the recent Slits reformation for either the ‘Return Of the Killer Slits’ EP or the Trapped Animal album, Viv is still continuing to persue her own path. I hope there’ll be more albums. She’s playing live and tells me that she’s planning to come to Scotland towards the end of the year, and we round off our conversation by discussing venues in Scotland.

Check out the EP – there’s more ideas and better songs there than on some people’s entire careers. Viv Albertine continues to make her presence felt -and it’s great to have her back.”

Viv Albertine Interview (repost)

Yesterday evening, I went to the Edinburgh Book Festival to hear the legendary Viv Albertine reading from her autobiography Clothes, Clothes, Clothes, Music, Music, Music, Boys, Boys, Boys and being interviewed by Ian Rankin. Afterwards I queued to meet her, and she was absolutely lovely (according to the ‘net, she is 60 this year…is she hell.) and she even signed my copy of Cut, The Slits’ seminal debut album from 1979.

In honour of this, I am reposting the interview I did with her in 2010. At the time, she had just released her EP, Flesh, which would be followed by the album The Vermilion Border in 2012…

viv_albertine_main

“1979 and 2010 actually seem to have a fair bit in common, thirty or so years apart as they may be. A Labour government struggling to run the country -and as with then, the scary as hell prospect that there could be a Tory Government making it even worse, just around the corner. Yet despite that, healthy DIY music scenes, people taking the ethos of punk and making their own, far more exciting records, people publishing their own written work and setting up their own labels. Oh, and Viv Albertine being behind some of the most amazing recorded work of the year.

In 1979, that work was the seminal album Cut and one of the most wonderful cover versions ever, when the Slits totally transformed Marvin Gaye’s ‘I Heard It Through The Grapevine.’ In 2010, it’s her first recorded work in twenty-five years the wonderful ‘Flesh’ EP.

When I call her at her home on the south coast of England, she’s wonderfully warm, and it’s quite clear that I’m not the only man on earth rather in awe of her. I’m in the company of non other than one Thurston Moore, alternative rock icon, Sonic Youth guitarist -and most significantly for our story today, the man behind the Ecstatic Peace record label.

Viv met Thurston when she went to see Sonic Youth with none other than Gina from the Raincoats, the fabulous band who were the Slits’ contemporaries (and made one of 1979?s other phenomenal records with their self-titled debut.) As Viv puts it, she and Thurston ‘hit it off and hung out for the rest of the evening.’ She let him hear some of the songs that she’d been working on. ‘They weren’t ready [for releasing] I thought,’ she says, however ‘he liked them and thought they should be recorded as part of my musical progress.’

For now the EP is the only thing that’s available, but she says ‘I’ve got so many songs I’m desperate to record. Like with the Slits, I’m getting into my head how I want them to sound.’ She’s playing live and adds that ‘when I play live, the people there are often moved. [The songs] resonate for people.’

This EP is nakedly personal. I have to confess that I find myself desperate to ask about some of the lyrics, yet they feel so nakedly personal that it feels rather like quizzing someone on something that you read when you stole their diary, slipped it back and are desperate to ask them. Yet despite this, I can play it on repeat for several listens, several months after it dropped on the doormat.

I also can’t resist myself from asking about the punk-era that the Slits came through. It’s clear that the Slits found the times they were living in difficult. More than thirty years later, even John Lydon (AKA Rotten) has said that he feels it’s been talked up into something it wasn’t. How does Viv feel about it all, looking back?

‘It [the punk movement] was important to us at the time. We lived in London – and still there was nothing going on! It’s amazing how lacklustre things were.’ But when punk started ‘that small punk movement did attract like-minded people.’ Did it change things for people? ‘Everything was picked to pieces – it was like ground zero.’ And Viv found herself in with some of the people who changed the musical shape of Britain in the late seventies, in a way that despite challenges, still reverberates over thirty years later. Amongst those she knew were people like Sid Vicious and John Lydon -’we were all mates or cohorts.’ The Slits’ original drummer Palmolive (born Paloma Romera) would go onto join the Raincoats, being replaced by one Peter Clarke, better known as Budgie, who drummed on Cut and then went onto join Souxsie and the Banshees and marry Siouxsie Sioux. He in turn was replaced by Bruce Smith, who also played with Bristol’s The Pop Group.

Not that this should give an impression of some kind of punk happy family. Because it’s clear that being in the Slits meant being under attack from a lot of sides. ‘People were so antagonistic,’ she recalls. ‘We were smuggled out of hotels. We were attacked physically.’ The clothes they wore -and this at a time when Vivienne Westwood was laying the ground for what would happen- seems to have shocked people to their very core. As Viv describes it ‘We dressed like something out of a porn mag and bovver boys.’ A tough time, then? ‘It was extremely tough for us. The only person who was kind and open to us was John Peel,’ she says referring to the legendary Radio 1 DJ. The Banshees may have been refusing to sign to anyone -or at least giving the impression that they were, but the Slits had recorded two sessions for Peel before they were signed by Island Records in 1979.

The album Cut still sounds ahead of its’ time even now. The cover with the three girls – Viv, singer Ari Up and bassist Tessa Pollitt covered in mud was not designed to titillate but unnerved many. The only question I ask her about the cover, I tell her, is whether she’s heard the rumour that the Rough Trade Record shop had a meeting about whether or not to stock the album because of the cover. [N.B. This is mentioned in the sleeve notes to the Rough Trade Shops Post Punk 01 compilation]. Viv laughs and says she hasn’t heard this rumour but it wouldn’t surprise her. Though the Slits were later signed to the Rough Trade label, then linked with the shop, Viv says that head honcho Geoff Travis ‘didn’t think we were PC enough! We weren’t considered feminists.’

As the seventies became the eighties, so the scenes shifted and times got tougher. ‘ Punk was so wonderful…and then the eighties happened.’ The Slits played a final gig at the Hammersmith Palais and split up in November 1981. Viv’s unquestionably influenced many people over the years -’I’d be flattered if Madonna took influences from us’ – but it’s not all moved her. The 1990s saw the emergence of the Riot Girl movement, but ‘the riot girl movement didn’t grab me.’ She reflects that ‘After the Slits…after a year, I felt the whole music scene was dead. I started to make films and literally downed the guitar.’ She went to film school and proudly states on her website that ‘she didn’t drop out.’

Not involved in the recent Slits reformation for either the ‘Return Of the Killer Slits’ EP or the Trapped Animal album, Viv is still continuing to persue her own path. I hope there’ll be more albums. She’s playing live and tells me that she’s planning to come to Scotland towards the end of the year, and we round off our conversation by discussing venues in Scotland.

Check out the EP – there’s more ideas and better songs there than on some people’s entire careers. Viv Albertine continues to make her presence felt -and it’s great to have her back.”

Two specials for Valentine’s Day

viv_albertine_main

Yup, it’s Valentine’s Day (in case you had forgotten) and here are two special things for you.

Flutes take on Haddaway’s 1993 cheese-fest and manage to turn it into something profound and lovely:

Meanwhile, the significance of this track from Viv Albertine to Valentine’s Day is that it one of eight new tracks taken from the vinyl version of The Vermilion Border, to be released in March 2013. It will apparently only be available for one day (this stream, rather than the vinyl), so act quickly:

News just in: Viv Albertine will play Glasgow’s Poetry Club on March 9.

Meanwhile, I have been involved in bringing Flutes to play at Penicuik library on April 20, a free show at 3PM…

Album Review: Viv Albertine

viv-albertine-the-vermilion-border

Viv Albertine -‘The Vermilion Border.’ (Cadiz Music)

Back in 2010, I interviewed Viv Albertine about her then new EP, Flesh. She told me then that she had so many songs that she was desperate to record. Two and a half years later, her first solo album is with us. And it’s been more than worth the wait.

Sure, Ms. Albertine was a member of The Slits and her influence on so many who have followed after cannot be underestimated. But let’s look to the present: this album is one of the strongest and most original I have heard this year (and that’s talking top five out of over three hundred). She has a refreshingly honest take on songwriting. It’s not simply The Slits part 2. A song title like the album’s opener ‘I Want More’ could simply be a greedy call for bling in the hands of so many; instead, here it is the sound of someone taking control and wanting more from life. It sounds like a manifesto – in a good way -not just for the album, but for the continuation of her musical journey, having effectively downed her guitar for the best part of a quarter of a century.

These are great songs, but they’re nakedly personal. The vermilion border is a biological term for the border between the reddish skin of the lip and the more regular skin of the face -and to listen to this album is not a journey into the psyche, but the privilege of reading someone’s diary. It’s a privilege, but once you’re in…there’s no turning back. You’ve got that close.

That’s not to say it’s an unpleasantly intense or embarassingly confessional record, because it’s not. And there’s a fabulous sense of humour within too, particularly on tracks like album closer ‘Still England‘ and ‘Hookup Girl.’ Oh, and the list of contributors (Jack Bruce, Tina Weymouth, Glen Matlock, Mick Jones, Dennis Bovell, and Danny Thompson, amongst many) adds to what is a warm and rich musical tapestry.

Even if she never makes another album again, this album is a genuinely thrilling ride.

****1/2

The Vermilion Border is released on Cadiz Music on November 5.

Christmas Posts 2011 #19

viv_albertine_main

Following on from last year’s Christmas single, Viv Albertine comes up with another goodie for this Christmas.

Entitled ‘It’s A Christmas, Single’ this is quite possibly NSFW, as they say. It was recorded with US no-wave duo, Talk Normal. They all met whilst being label-mates on Thurston Moore’s (Sonic Youth) label.

Viv Albertine – It’s A Christmas, Single by BAM!

Here is the video:

This was last year’s offering:

Viv Albertine -‘Home, Sweet Home (…At Christmas).’ mp3

Viv is due to release her new album next year. Did I say this last year? No matter, I would never mess with a member of The Slits.

Read my interview with Viv here

Another LEGEND returns in time for Christmas

viv_albertine_main

Well, it’s getting to that time again: I am starting to get to work on my end of year lists for the annual Secenteen Seconds Festive Fifty and the Top 75 albums list, which should appear here soon. Any suggestiosn for anything you think I should make sure I hear before the end of the year gratefully received.

I will also be doing my annual posting of Christmas related songs. Having posted Poly Styrene’s awesome ‘Black Christmas’ last week, this track is from the Slits’ Viv Albertine, who I had the pleasure of interviewing earlier this year.

Following on from last April’s Flesh EP, Viv Albertine will be releasing this as a download-only Christmas track, entitled ‘Home Sweet Home (…at Christmas).’

…and sorry it’s been so quiet around here the last few days. Feeling a bit grotty…

Update:

An mp3 cleared to post arrived in another email:

Viv Albertine -‘Home Sweet Home (…At Christmas).’ mp3

Not only that but Viv will be releasing her own solo album next year. AND Early 2011 will see Viv releasing the last ever original Slits song never previously released; ‘Shoulda Coulda Woulda’. Recorded in Compton LA in 1980, remixed by Dennis Bovell, who produced Cut and mixed ‘Home Sweet Home.’

Interview – Viv Albertine

viv_albertine_main

1979 and 2010 actually seem to have a fair bit in common, thirty or so years apart as they may be. A Labour government struggling to run the country -and as with then, the scary as hell prospect that there could be a Tory Government making it even worse, just around the corner. Yet despite that, healthy DIY music scenes, people taking the ethos of punk and making their own, far more exciting records, people publishing their own written work and setting up their own labels. Oh, and Viv Albertine being behind some of the most amazing recorded work of the year.

In 1979, that work was the seminal album Cut and one of the most wonderful cover versions ever, when the Slits totally transformed Marvin Gaye’s ‘I Heard It Through The Grapevine.’ In 2010, it’s her first recorded work in twenty-five years the wonderful ‘Flesh’ EP.

When I call her at her home on the south coast of England, she’s wonderfully warm, and it’s quite clear that I’m not the only man on earth rather in awe of her. I’m in the company of non other than one Thurston Moore, alternative rock icon, Sonic Youth guitarist -and most significantly for our story today, the man behind the Ecstatic Peace record label.

Viv met Thurston when she went to see Sonic Youth with none other than Gina from the Raincoats, the fabulous band who were the Slits’ contemporaries (and made one of 1979’s other phenomenal records with their self-titled debut.) As Viv puts it, she and Thurston ‘hit it off and hung out for the rest of the evening.’ She let him hear some of the songs that she’d been working on. ‘They weren’t ready [for releasing] I thought,’ she says, however ‘he liked them and thought they should be recorded as part of my musical progress.’

For now the EP is the only thing that’s available, but she says ‘I’ve got so many songs I’m desperate to record. Like with the Slits, I’m getting into my head how I want them to sound.’ She’s playing live and adds that ‘when I play live, the people there are often moved. [The songs] resonate for people.’

This EP is nakedly personal. I have to confess that I find myself desperate to ask about some of the lyrics, yet they feel so nakedly personal that it feels rather like quizzing someone on something that you read when you stole their diary, slipped it back and are desperate to ask them. Yet despite this, I can play it on repeat for several listens, several months after it dropped on the doormat.

I also can’t resist myself from asking about the punk-era that the Slits came through. It’s clear that the Slits found the times they were living in difficult. More than thirty years later, even John Lydon (AKA Rotten) has said that he feels it’s been talked up into something it wasn’t. How does Viv feel about it all, looking back?

‘It [the punk movement] was important to us at the time. We lived in London – and still there was nothing going on! It’s amazing how lacklustre things were.’ But when punk started ‘that small punk movement did attract like-minded people.’ Did it change things for people? ‘Everything was picked to pieces – it was like ground zero.’ And Viv found herself in with some of the people who changed the musical shape of Britain in the late seventies, in a way that despite challenges, still reverberates over thirty years later. Amongst those she knew were people like Sid Vicious and John Lydon -‘we were all mates or cohorts.’ The Slits’ original drummer Palmolive (born Paloma Romera) would go onto join the Raincoats, being replaced by one Peter Clarke, better known as Budgie, who drummed on Cut and then went onto join Souxsie and the Banshees and marry Siouxsie Sioux. He in turn was replaced by Bruce Smith, who also played with Bristol’s The Pop Group.

Not that this should give an impression of some kind of punk happy family. Because it’s clear that being in the Slits meant being under attack from a lot of sides. ‘People were so antagonistic,’ she recalls. ‘We were smuggled out of hotels. We were attacked physically.’ The clothes they wore -and this at a time when Vivienne Westwood was laying the ground for what would happen- seems to have shocked people to their very core. As Viv describes it ‘We dressed like something out of a porn mag and bovver boys.’ A tough time, then? ‘It was extremely tough for us. The only person who was kind and open to us was John Peel,’ she says referring to the legendary Radio 1 DJ. The Banshees may have been refusing to sign to anyone -or at least giving the impression that they were, but the Slits had recorded two sessions for Peel before they were signed by Island Records in 1979.

The album Cut still sounds ahead of its’ time even now. The cover with the three girls – Viv, singer Ari Up and bassist Tessa Pollitt covered in mud was not designed to titillate but unnerved many. The only question I ask her about the cover, I tell her, is whether she’s heard the rumour that the Rough Trade Record shop had a meeting about whether or not to stock the album because of the cover. [N.B. This is mentioned in the sleeve notes to the Rough Trade Shops Post Punk 01 compilation]. Viv laughs and says she hasn’t heard this rumour but it wouldn’t surprise her. Though the Slits were later signed to the Rough Trade label, then linked with the shop, Viv says that head honcho Geoff Travis ‘didn’t think we were PC enough! We weren’t considered feminists.’

As the seventies became the eighties, so the scenes shifted and times got tougher. ‘ Punk was so wonderful…and then the eighties happened.’ The Slits played a final gig at the Hammersmith Palais and split up in November 1981. Viv’s unquestionably influenced many people over the years -‘I’d be flattered if Madonna took influences from us’ – but it’s not all moved her. The 1990s saw the emergence of the Riot Girl movement, but ‘the riot girl movement didn’t grab me.’ She reflects that ‘After the Slits…after a year, I felt the whole music scene was dead. I started to make films and literally downed the guitar.’ She went to film school and proudly states on her website that ‘she didn’t drop out.’

Not involved in the recent Slits reformation for either the ‘Return Of the Killer Slits’ EP or the Trapped Animal album, Viv is still continuing to persue her own path. I hope there’ll be more albums. She’s playing live and tells me that she’s planning to come to Scotland towards the end of the year, and we round off our conversation by discussing venues in Scotland.

Check out the EP – there’s more ideas and better songs there than on some people’s entire careers. Viv Albertine continues to make her presence felt -and it’s great to have her back.

The Flesh EP is out now on Ecstatic Peace.

She will play the following shows:

30 Apr Scaledown, The King and Queen, London; 1 May The Old Blue Last, London; 8 May Un-Convention Factory Macclesfield; 9 May All Tomorrow’s Parties Minehead; 14 May 2010 The Miller, London; 15 May Resonance FM, London;
30 May Je Thames, London; 5 Jun Flat Lake Festival, County Monaghan; 31 Jul Ladyfest, Norwich; 6 Aug Rebellion festival, Blackpool.

Viv Albertine’s website/Viv Albertine myspace

EP review – Viv Albertine

viv-albertine-flesh-ep

Viv Albertine – ‘Flesh EP’ (Ecstatic Peace)

Viv Albertine’s EP is her first release in twenty-five years. Whatever she has been up to in that time (the press release doesn’t say – and the reputation of the Slits is one that you would always be respectful to one of its’ members), she is now back recording and playing live with her band Limerence, and signed to Ecstatic Peace. Ecstatic Peace is the label run by Sonic Youth’s Thurston Moore, so utterly cool that it makes the likes of Sub Pop, Matador and Domino look like mere wallflowers by comparison.

Over the course of four songs, Ms. Albertine sets out her stall again, with four tracks that show that she was definitely a member of one of the most adventurous groups ever, and all these years after Cut, the Slits’ peerless debut, she can produce stuff that has a serious edge. This is music that is deeply personal, that still has a pop sensibility and is completely on her own terms. Original Slits drummer Palmolive went on to join the Raincoats and in many ways this solo EP reminds me far more of their debut than that of the Slits. ‘Never Come,’ the opening track holds its’ own with anything the Slits or Raincoats produced, indeed the whole EP does. The first band she was in, Flowers of Romance also featured Keith Levene (who would join PiL), the aforementioned Palmolive and one Sid Vicious. The influences of the past are here but she’s not looking backwards.

It’s an EP that benefits from frequent listening and from repeated playing -already this evening I’ve played it three times, and I’m likely to give it another spin again soon.

****1/2

Flesh is out now on Ecstatic Peace.

Stream it here:

Viv Albertine’s website/Viv Albertine’s myspace