The last time
street-smart Geordie visionary Johny Brown's work appeared in
Scotland was when his play, William Burroughs Caught in Possession of
the Rime of the Ancient Mariner, appeared at the Citizens Theatre in
Glasgow. While a reignited formation of Brown's troupe of junk-yard
baroque soothsayers, The Band of Holy Joy, who had released several
records on the Rough Trade label throughout the 1980s, had just
released their sublimely euphoric Love Never Fails album,
Brown's epic onstage
fantasia cast actor Tam Dean Burn as the eponymous author of The
Naked Lunch on Coleridge's sea-faring vessel.
Also in tow were
fictionalised evocations of fellow experimental novelist Kathy
Acker, former New York Dolls guitarist Johnny Thunders (played by
former Exploited bass player turned actor in The Acid House and Gangs
of New York, Gary McCormack), and artist Jean-Michel Basquiat.
With such a motley crew
on board, this was punk theatre personified, and continued an
association between Brown and Burn that saw the pair collaborate on a
series of plays for online art radio station, Resonance Fm. One of
these was a view of the late Associates singer Billy Mackenzie as
seen through the eyes of one of his pet whippets.
With such a mix of high
drama, absurdism and polemic with an underground literary bent, it
seems fitting that the first of two shows in Scotland for a decade by
The Band of Holy Joy on the back of their just released new album,
Easy Listening, comes at Edinburgh's premiere live literary
speak-easy, Neu Reekie. Sharing a bill with Momus, aka Nick Currie,
plus spoken-word artists Luke Wright and Patience Agbabi prior to a
full Band of Holy Joy show in Glasgow the following night, Brown's urban folk
demotic sounds rawer than ever on Easy Listening, whatever it's title
implies.
One song, There Was A
Fall/The Fall, is an angry report from the front-line concerning
newspaper seller, Ian Tomlinson, who died after being struck
unlawfully by a Metropolitan police officer's baton during the London
G20 protests in 2009. Tomlinson was not a protester, but was on his
way home from work when he fell victim to the unprovoked attack by
the police officer.
The song is related by
Brown in a sardonic but forensic litany of events that sounds lifted
straight from a coroner's report. In its intent and its increasing
intensity that eventually erupts into a cacophony of rage, it's as
close to twenty-first century Brecht as you'll get. Especially when
accompanied by a video that features Tam Dean Burn in a theatrical
dressing room applying make-up which it soon becomes clear represents
the actual wounds on Tomlinson's body.
This follows on from
Burn's appearance in the even starker video for another song, He
Ordered Her To Spit Like A Porn Star. With there Was A Fall/The Fall
in an earlier version as the more explicitly titled Met Police Tried
to Hide Police's Disciplinary Record, both songs appeared on City of
Tales, a limited edition double cassette package of rediscovered
archive material from 1985 and new material recorded in 2012. Other
songs, including Empty Purse Found in Hotel Lobby and It Beats Up Their
Heart, He Said, were equally bleak grimoirs made even more so by
their accompanying videos.
Brown and The Band of
Holy Joy have been far from idle inbetween Love Never Fails and Easy
Listening, with a compilation of archive material, Leaves That Fall
in Spring – Seminal Moments, released by Cherry Red in 2007. This
was followed by four new releases, with much of the new material
developed for two song plays, Troubled Sleep – a fictional account
of Sid Vicious and Nancy Spungen's last days at the Chelsea Hotel –
and Invocation to William, performed to celebrate the fiftieth
anniversary of the publication of Naked Lunch.
The songs from the show
were released on the mini CD, A Lucky Thief in A Careless World, with
the songs from Troubled Sleep making up the bulk of the band's 2010
Paramour album. A third song play, Beuys will Be Beuys, preceded
2011's How To Kill A Butterfly album and The North Is Another Land
the following year.
With Brown's latest,
stripped-down line-up of the band featuring extensive visuals, even
as their Resonance FM radio show, (…) Such A Nice Radio Show, plays
with the aural form, whatever happens this weekend, The Band of Holy
Joy's righteous indignation remains a bruised but necessary force for
good in a messed-up world it seems their mission to soundtrack until
the bitter end.
The Band of Holy Joy
play as part of Neu Reekie, Summerhall, Edinburgh, Friday February
28; King Tut's Wah Wah Hut, Glasgow, March 1st. Easily Listening is
available on Exotic Pylon now.
The List, February 2014
ends
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