Tag Archive: Michael Gira


The enduring appeal of Rema-Rema

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May 29, 2023

WHAT YOU COULD NOT VISUALISE directed by Marco Porsia (Canada, 2022)

It takes a special kind of music obsessive to contemplate making a documentary about an obscure indie band who released just one four-track EP and only played about a dozen live shows. There are no videos or live footage of Rema-Rema. Even in Simon Reynolds’ definitive study of post-punk, ‘Rip It And Start Again’, the English band are only mentioned in passing to say that Marco Pirroni played with them.

Rema-Rema’s ‘Wheel In The Roses’ EP was the first release on the esteemed 4AD label jointly founded by  Ivo Watts-Russell and Peter Kent. On the 4AD website, Watt-Russell describes hearing the band’s demo for the first time as a kind of epiphany: “It was the first point I knew that we were actually doing something serious.”

The distinctive cover shot of African tribesmen was the main reason why many bought the EP in the first place. The sleeve gives no other information other than to list the musicians: Gary Asquith (guitar/vocals), Marco Pirroni (guitar), Mick Allen (bass/vocals), Mark Cox (keyboards) and Dorothy Max Prior (drums).

Rema-Rema were apparently named after a Polish machine manufacturer (don’t ask!) although it’s probable that it was picked because had same catchy resonance as The Kingsmen’s rock standard ‘Louie Louie’.

Turin-born director Marco Porsia (now based in Canada) has already gained the esteem of serious music lovers through his brilliant documentary charting the rise and rise of  Michael Gira and Swans – Where Does A Body End? (2019). It was no coincidence that Swans were playing in Bologna the day after his attendance at the screening of ‘What You Could Not Visualise’ at the city’s Cineteca. (Swans’ drummer Phil Puleo was sitting in front of me in the audience!)  

In the film, guitarist Marco Pirroni is the off-stage villain of the piece. Pirroni left the band abruptly to seek fame and fortune with Adam & The Ants. The remaining four members could not contemplate carrying on without him. Their story could have ended there but in researching this film, Porsia found to his surprise and delight that he was not alone in regarding Rema-Rema’s 1980 EP as a treasured artefact; a kind of holy grail of post-punk.

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Devendra Banhart – Fancy man loses hero status

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July 11, 2017

9e1294e6fcdbbaf68ecdf171bd269f81651a92e2“Kill yr idols” advocated Sonic Youth back in the day, an extreme strategy that is not actually an invitation to murder but a warning against putting faith in heroes. Bob Dylan meant something similar when he sang (in Subterranean Homesick Blues) “Don’t follow leaders, watch the parking meters”.

Be your own person is the implicit message. While it’s ok to admire and respect others, it’s always worth remembering that people have a nasty habit of letting you down. Keeping a healthy sense of detachment avoids being disillusioned. Far safer to set your own goals, maintain your own standards and generally search for the hero inside yourself.

Devendra Banhart is a case in point. I was a huge fan of his when he burst upon the scene under the wing of head Swan Michael Gira. 2004’s Rejoicing In The Hands remains one of my all time favorite albums and I had the good fortune to see him play songs from this and its immediate follow ups – Nino Rojo and Cripple Crow. For a while he could do no wrong in my eyes. His charm, wit and good looks added to his appeal. In short , though not quite an idol , he used to be a hero. Continue reading →

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LIVE SWANS

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December 7, 2010

Are you looking at me?

WANTED

Rumours of the death of Swans have been exaggerated.

I can vouch for this having experienced their ear-bruising concert at Bologna’s Locomotiv club.

The volume alone is loud enough to waken corpses and should lay to rest any notion that Michael Gira has reconvened the band as a cosy nostalgia act. These six guys may no longer be in the full flush of youth but they put any snot-nosed noise bands to shame.

Gira, at the tender age of 56 , has the look of someone rejuvenated, a fact already placed on record by the September release of the stunning new Swans album My Father Will Guide Me Up A Rope To The Sky.

He is clearly not kidding when he says that in performance he seeks to achieve a state of  “simultaneous self negation and rebirth”. Continue reading →

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KILL YOUR IDOLS

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December 11, 2008

Kill Your Idols is a film made by Scott Crary in 2004.  It took the prize for Best Documentary at the 2004 Tribeca Film Festival and gained a distribution deal with Palm Pictures.
Under the tag line “the New York No Wave scene and those who followed” it features appropriately grainy footage of gigs from the Hardcore heyday of the late 70s/early 80s . There are clips of  the likes of DNA (a wonderfully geeky Arto Lindsay), Teenage Jesus & The Jerks (one of the best band names ever) and The Swans (Michael Gira in primal mode).

What struck me was the raw physicality of these performances.  More than one interviewee states that the music was secondary – attitude was more important than technique. The driving force was giving vent to the sense of rage and resentment (society is to blame!).  This is probably why so few of the records from that era really stand the test of time. As with the most obvious counterpart of  British Punk in 1976/7  this was something to experience in the flesh. It was  the antithesis of commodified culture.  Eno’s ‘No New York’ of 1978 is the most cited album of this scene but the fact that it only includes 4 bands (Contortions, Teenage Jesus, DNA and Mars) make it an inadequate document. Not including anything of  Glenn Branca’s ‘Theoretical Girls’  is the most  glaring ommission.
In ‘Rip It Up And Start Again’, Simon Reynolds describes No Wave accurately as “a cultural spasm, an extremist gesture, that could only exhaust itself“.

Mercifully Crary’s film doesn’t set out to market the nostalgia factor but to examine the legacy.  One of the main purposes of the film is to comment on the fact that such harsh, dissonant acts inspired and spawned a number of bands working today.  As a result, equal weight is given to the art rock bands like Liars, Black Dice and Yeah Yeah Yeahs  that drew inspiration from these  post punk acts .  Not surprising these are mostly regarded with disdain by the uncompromising Lydia Lunch.

A  particularly tenuous link is that of Gogol Bordello. Their brand of Ucranian Gypsy Punk seems to me to have more in common with bands like The Pogues and Les Negresse Vertes than with Hardcore underground rock. The inclusion is forgiveable because Eugene Hütz  is such a lively speaker.

I hadn’t previously heard of A.R.E Weapons and won’t be rushing out to buy/download their music on what I saw here. Lead vocalist Brain F. McPeck  is a real poseur who bares his well toned torso and his equally ostentatious  ego,  coming across like  the missing link between Jim Morrsion and Spinal Tap.

What is most evident is the massive debt owed to Sonic Youth in the way they took  the energy of No Wave and mixed it with a Velvet Underground dynamic to create a crossover sound without selling out to mainstream taste.  It’s no coincidence that it is they who coined the Kill Your Idols phrase of the title and that Thurston Moore is one the most articulate voices we hear in this film.

At the end of the film, however,  even Moore, in common with other contributers, is lost for words when asked what the next big thing could be to match the cultural impact of the No Wavers.
However, I think it is significant that he and Michael Gira are now both heads of influential record labels (Ecstatic Peace and Young Gods respectively) that promote neo-folk and psych-noise of the New Weird America. This is  to my ears at least one of the truest legacies of  the diy spirit of Punk.  It may be  less overtly threatening and use more than three chords, but this is music which is its equal in terms of authenticity and sincerity.

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Michael Gira sings for the sinners

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November 21, 2008

Michael Gira – ‘Gira’ is pronounced as in ‘giraffe’ without the ‘ffe’  – is from the strum and holler school of rock.
On stage in Ravenna, his elegant, dignified bearing together with his courteous stage manners belie the fact that his songs are packed with raw emotion and barely concealed rage.

He sings of  blood , pain, sin, death, desire and, if you’re lucky,  brief glimpses of redemption.

 
Gira’s aura and passion would make him  an highly effective hellfire preacher with the capacity to terrorise a rapt congregation. Fortunately for us he’s on the side of the sinners of the world.

The songs struck me as not so much composed as wrenched from the dark depths of his psyche then thrust into the cold light of day, still pulsing and hurting.

His baritone singing voice can best be described as full blooded. What he lacked in vocal range he more than made up for with the power and directness of the delivery. When words failed he yelped and howled very effectively.

 A tune he described as a quiet song (Reeling The Liars In) contains lines about collecting skin and eating tongues. The volume may not be loud but the imagery most certainly is.

He played ten songs in all – see Last.fm here for the set list.

The two best songs he played were ‘Promise of Water’ and ‘Blind’. The latter he introduced as an “ancient ‘Swans’ song” and in it the first person narrator (a younger version of Gira himself?)  describes an unwillingness to  face  up to the violence and suffering he witnesses. Two lines that stood out for me were “I created a lie” and  “I was strong, clear-minded and blind”. The second line later switches ‘clear-minded’ to ‘self deluded’.

Promise Of Water combines a strong portentious beat with some more vivid imagery, this time of howling dogs and streets filled with blood. The song doesn’t lend itself to a tidy synopsis (in other words, I have no idea what it was about!)  but it’s fair to assume he was singing about more than feeling a little thirsty.             

After an hour on stage he bid us farewell saying: “I’d like to leave it there if I may – I feel I’ve done the best that I can possibly do”.    

It was just about the right length for music of this intensity. While Gira is not an artist whose records I could imagine listening to a lot, I was impressed by his stage presence and enjoyed the honesty of his performance.

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