A
Certain Ratio never got to release the record they were supposed to make with
Grace Jones. Island Records boss Chris Blackwell saw to that after he
discovered the planned alliance between the brooding Manchester avant-funk band
and the iconic Jamaican diva.
One
of the proposed tracks, a cover of Talking Heads’ Remain in Light era song,
Houses in Motion, minus a vocal from Jones, was recently released as a trailer of
sorts for acr:box, a four-CD collection of singles, remixes and unreleased
demos put out by Mute Records spanning the whole of ACR’s 40-year tenure on the
frontline of punk-funk. The band’s anniversary is being celebrated on their
current tour that takes in a show at Edinburgh’s Voodoo Rooms this weekend.
Bells and whistles, one suspects, will be compulsory. But what of the fabulous
Ms Jones?
“Grace
Jones had done a version of Joy Division’s She’s Lost Control,” says ACR’s bass
player and co-vocalist Jez Kerr, “and it was the A&R man’s idea to do it.
We were going to do Houses in Motion and our song, And Then Again, and there
was talk about us going out to Compass Point in the Bahamas to record it with
Martin Hannett, who was producing all the Factory stuff at the time, but the
A&R man had jumped the gun, and when he found out, he didn’t want Martin
Hannett anywhere near it, so it never happened.”
Even
so, the two rediscovered recordings of the song that did take place - one
overseen by Hannett, the other by the band, both featuring Kerr’s original guide
vocal - are a low-end joy that sound like they could have been recorded
yesterday. In this sense, A Certain Ratio have arguably found their time,
reclaiming a sound later defined as punk-funk and taken into the mainstream by
the likes of LCD Soundsystem. More recently, Manchester-based band Duds have
picked up ACR’s mantle of skewed inner-city multi-culturalism.
Jones
isn’t the only pop icon to have crossed paths with ACR. In 1980 on the band’s
first visit to New York, as well as picking up a host of street-smart Latin
rhythms, they were supported at a club date by an ambitious young singer called
Madonna, who would later make her UK TV debut with full dance troupe in tow on
an edition of anarchic 1989s pop show The Tube filmed at a pre-Madchester Hacienda,
the Factory-owned nightclub that would later be the epicentre of the UK’s dance
scene.
Named
after a line in The True Wheel, a song on Brian Eno’s 1974 album, Taking Tiger
Mountain (By Strategy), A Certain Ratio were formed by original vocalist Simon
Topping and guitarist Peter Terrell, who performed their early FX-driven
experiments as a duo. Kerr joined after seeing the pair’s first gig at Pip’s
disco (behind the cathedral, as the TV ad made clear) in Manchester. A football
protégé who had been on Manchester United’s books since he was a child, Kerr
was looking for another outlet after a broken ankle forced him out of the game.
“I
was at a bit of a loss and joined Manchester Youth Theatre,” says Kerr. “That’s
where I met Jilted John and Gordon the Moron, who I ended up sharing a house
with. Punk was happening, and at at Pips I got chatting to Peter, then I bumped
into Simon on the street, and he said they were looking for a bass player, and
I had a bass, so that was that.”
The
next gig saw ACR sharing a bill with a band called Alien Tint, described by
their guitarist Martin Moscrop as a “crap glam punk band.” Moscrop was taken
with ACR’s approach, and had already adopted their recession chic sartorial
sensibility. They asked him to join, and it was as a still drummerless quartet
that they were spotted by Joy Division’s manager Rob Gretton, and released
their first single, All Night Party, on Factory Records.
Given
their emphasis on percussion and dance rhythms after Drummer Donald Johnson
joined, such a move seems astonishing in retrospect.
“There
was always a percussive thing going on,” says Johnson, who joined after Factory
Records boss Tony Wilson turned up at his mother’s house unannounced shortly
after Johnson had watched Wilson host local news programme, Granada Reports. “They
played their guitars as rhythm instruments, and for me that all made sense.
They were all quite shy, and they never looked at the audience, but in terms of
opening things out, I was just one of the catalysts.”
A
Certain Ratio did their growing up in public, with Terrell and Topping’s
departure in 1982, marking a more outward-looking approach. Where the early
incarnation of ACR sounded broodingly insular, they gradually came blinking
into the light to create full-on club classics, from their cover of Banbarra’s
Shack Up through to Latin percussion wig-outs and the heart-on-sleeve euphoria
of Won’t Stop Loving You. Along the way they flirted with major labels before
reaching a natural impasse in 1994 following the death of Gretton, who had
released a couple of ACR records on his own label.
As
the world caught up with them, ACR regrouped, playing occasional gigs, before
releasing an album of new material in 2008. With ACR’s current line-up fleshed out by
long-standing sax player Tony Quigley, some-time Primal Scream chanteuse Denise
Johnson and recently joined keyboardist Matt Steel, Mute’s recent archive
releases have been an important taking stock for the band. Beyond their
fortieth birthday, however, their eyes are very much on the future.
“Mute
are such a great label,” says Kerr, “and they made us realise how good some of
the stuff we’ve done actually is. You listen to the old stuff, and you realise
that no-one really knows it, so it’s great to have things out there on a proper
footing. What we’re really concerned about now is doing a new album. Now we’re
back out there again, this time out I reckon A Certain Ratio will carry on
until we drop dead.”
A
Certain Ratio plus Sons of the Descent play the Voodoo Rooms, Edinburgh, June
1. acr:box is available now on Mute Records.
www.mute.com
The Herald, May 31st 2019
ends
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