I
The View
For you who are too young, you that are too old or you who just don't care, 2001 is, in all probability and despite that 'real' begining of the new Millenium hoo-har (well, fucking whoopy!) no more than just another year. A year which shares, courtesy of film director Stanley Kubrick and science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke, it's numerical designation with a particularly good sci-fi film, a film which, in my humble opinion is quite simply the best motion picture ever made. Never in film making history and I just wanna thank etc, etc. Nicholas Cage thinks so too... see, we're a gang. Are you the kind of girl who always does things in a gang? I am. Anyway, because of my 50 year plus affection for tills 2001: a space odyssey film, 2001 the year, is, for me, an event. An event not too disimilar, but easily outdoing the previous 'big one', that being George 0rwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four. Oh, where are they now, the years, the years...
I cunt-slid in November 1959. It was bloody. But out of the mess a beautifull butterfly emerged. Many of my first memories are of television. The inception of the TV generations. Black & white of course, as were my dreams, deliriums and nightmares of that oh-so tender age. I recall watching a rocket launch. Mercury? Gemini? I remember Gerry Aridersons Stingray, its bizarre fish shaped submarines and how devastated I was one Saturday when it failed to be aired! I saw the very first Doctor Who, William Hartnell as the Doctor, and I was strangely affected by the programs weird electronic title score. I recall, an episode featuring cavemen fighting giant woodlice, the eternally grinning Daleks, the disturbing metallic doll-like Cybermen with their outlandish accompanying music and how they fantastically walked across empty black space as if on some sort of invisible catwalk. Wonderfull eerie stuff for a young malchick to grow up on. No wonder my generation turned out like it did !! I also have a vague memory of JFK's assasination... aged 4 I was aware that something big and important had happened. I loved space exploration, the 'space race', science fiction and dinosaurs... a real fucking wuss! Everything else on TV seemed dull to me by comparison. The tedious Man From Uncle series for example. Far to regular and earthbound for my high flying imagination !
In the late 1960's on most sundays my parents would take my sister and myself to see a film in London's West End. I was selective but had to compromise. I wanted to see Dr. Who and the Daleks but not Mary bloody Poppins. Marooned but not Oliver. 1 Milion years B.C. but not Scrooge. We saw 2001: a space odyssey in 1968. I was 9. The 'race' to the moon was on but men even flying around the moon, in Apollo 8, didn't actually happen until the xmas of that year. I left the cinema inspired yet confused but refusing Daddo's offer of a 2001 souvenier brochure. At 5 shillings each (25p!) it wasn't cheap... but what are they worth now? I managed to get hold of one about 20 years ago. I paid L10.
Being as it was the pro-video age I don't believe most people saw a particular film more than once. We didn't anyway, unless it was on TV. So I didn't, see 2001 again until I'd reached the age of 15 or 14 when a friend decided to read the novel. I read it too, saw the film again during it's next local round and that was it. I was hooked, as they say. I even asked the good Daddo to get me the M G M soundtrack album, one of the first records I ever 'bought' and a unique mixture, for the time I guess, of straight classical (Strauss, Khachaturian) and avant garde (Ligeti). At this young age I naively envisaged that by the actual year 2001 I'd be pretty much like the guys in the film, i.e. Professional (sheesh!), Scientific (no way!), Calm (you must be fucking joking cunt!), Devoid of much emotion (if only!), and wearing a dreadfull suit of some bland 1960's futuristic style (eat my fucking kak!)... Totally, totally, totally wrong! And just for the record, while I'm at it... I don't wear fucking trainers, ever! And I don't wear those fucking cuntish baseball caps, fucking no way, cunts, cunts, cunts!!! Filthy corporate fashion brainwashed pigs. Where's your fucking style?! And, getting back to what I was saying, as for Kubrick and Clarkes original vision, there are no huge bases on the moon in 2001. No gigantic earth orbiting space stations complete with "restaurant, post office, barber's shop (aaaggghhh!), drugstore, movie theatre and souvenier shops" in 2001. No manned missions to Jupiter (Saturn was the destination in the novel) and no sign of any Alien artifacts (Von Daniken piss off).
Instead, during the 1970's, I became intrigued by my discovery of the Surrealist painters (Dali's Madonna of Port Lligat hung in my school's corridor... are production that is!), I elected to be a Glam Fag, then a Funk Rocker (at the time I hated the 'Rocker' bit!). The early 80's saw me heavily into the music of the experimental avant garde. Then I wanted to hear 'proper' tunes again, discovered the Thrash Metal upsurge, became a late 80's headbanger, took that neck-ache into the 90's along with a rekindled interest in the avant garde, reached the age of 41, made it to the year 2001. 28 years of music, from my first Glam-Faggery purchase of Gary Glitters 'Do you wanna touch me' 7" in 1973 up to the latest aquisition of Whitehouse's Cruise CD in March 2001. And of all those hundreds of intervening bands, many, many, many of which are unarguably quite superb and outstanding, it is Whitehouse that I personally and without any doubt whatsoever, consider to be the best.
The Band
20 fucking years. 15 fucking albums. Over 90 live fucking actions. The most extreme, the most power full band ever.
In 1978 William Bennett, an 18-year-old guitarist playing in offshoot punk band Essential Logic "often phantasised about creating a sound that could bludgeon an audience into submission". At the time Essential Logic toured with Daniel Miller (now of Mute records) and Robert Rental both with whome William became friends. Daniel provided inspiration and help whilst Robert sold William "an uncontrollably vicious beast of a synthesiser which subsequently became the heart of the Whitehouse sound". Leaving Essential Logic and starting up the Come Organisation label in 1979 William, with some assistance from Daniel, recorded the Come Sunday 7" single at IPS studio in London along with an album named after an infamous psychiatric hospital, Rampton. Along with the band Come, Come Organisation was also host to a number of other projects, one of which was called Whitehouse, named after clean-up TV campaigner Mary Whitehouse and a soft porn magazine. Whitehouse's first two albums of experimentation, Birthdeath Experience and Total Sex soon gave way to the "purist sound of power electronics" as defined by the 3rd album, Erector, the cover of which featured a Steven Stapleton illustration of a spotlighted dick which had to be photocopied and stuck onto the actual LP sleeve itself as no printer would 'handle it', so to speak. And so, with the Erector LP a "monster had been created - a living entity with a volition and direction of its own".
Between this period and 1985, another 6 albums and a total of 41 live actions, Whitehouse courted controversy, revulsion, hysteria, censorship of their record sleeves and bans of their performances. Dedicating albums to sadists and mass murderers, naming them after concentration camps and invoking sentiments of an extreme right wing bent Whitehouse proudly, and quite rightly, declared their music to be "the most violently repulsive records ever conceived". Absolute magic! Along with a frenzied and sexually murderous lyrical content these extraordinary recordings were considered by the majority to be totally unlistenable. Few people seemed, or even wanted, to notice the Sadian black humour running through the body of this material, indeed, much of the inspiration for Whitehouse came from the Marquis writings, especially his celebrated masterpiece, The 120 Days Of Sodom. Audiences were put off and scared off, regularly leaving the band to play to an empty space where once a congregation had stood. Truely wonderfull is it not?!
While working for an illustration agency in 1984, I paid a business visit to the Sounds music paper offices to see a certain journalist, one Dave Henderson, who's weekly Wild Planet column, which focused on the industrial, experimental and avant garde, I eagerly read and admired. During my introductory phonecall to him he actually said to me that he thought Whitehouse were "crap!" I found that statement quite astonishing coming as it did from Mr Wild Planet himself! How on earth did he fucking come to that conclusion? Had he even listened to the records? Had he by fuck!! There's an expert for you. Yeah, another one. Head buried in the sand, pen and pad shoved up his arse. Seemed like a nice enough bloke though.
Whitehouse seemed to just disappear after the 1985 Great White Death LP release. By 1987 I was well into Heavy Metal, the gigs, the girls, the gonorrhoea... On visiting the Vinyl Experience backstreet abortionist record shop off of Londons Oxford Street I was surprised to find a whole rack of Whitehouse/Come Org LP' s at quite high prices, about L-40 each at the time. On enquiring, I was told that William Bennett was working in Spain, teaching English and living happily ever after. So, I thought, that was that. Bit of history. End of story. Then, during my employment at the Piccadilly Circus branch of Tower Records in 1990 there came a resurrection of the Whitehouse phenomena, a retrospective compilation CD/DP release, a new album, Thank Your Lucky Stars and two Live Actions in London, Whitehouse were back! From then until the present day there have been countless Live Actions all over the world, five new studio albums, various CD reissues of Whitehouse and related bands and three CD's in the Extreme Music series plus many other items of interest too outrageous and numerous to mention here!
End of All Music
Kubrick's ultraviolent antithesis to 2001, the highly celebrated A Clockwork Orange, saw Walter Carlos' electronic renditions of Beetchoven, Purcell and Rossini endeavouring to help describe a vision of a futuristic social night mare. His (Walter is now a 'her'... some people have all the luck) own original self-sustaining composition, Timesteps, an excerpt from which was used in the film, sealed that panorama, hermetically, within the late 1960's early 1970's timeframe, something that Erika Eigen's banal pop parody I Want To Marry A Lighthouse Keeper, also from the same film, didn't quite achieve, being, as it is, almost timeless in its intentional blandness. Note its use in a recent TV commercial Further back to 1949 and Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four description of a totalitarian state in which popular music is written by machines "without any human intervention whatever on an instrument known as a versificator". Popular songs created to sedate the oppressed prolitariate, part of the apparatus assembled to prevent them from thinking too much. From thinking at all. Drivelling song after drivelling fucking song... sound's familier does it? "It was only an 'opeless fancy..." Sing-a-long-a-brain dead. Remind you of anyone does it? Oligarchy in the UK. Ministry Of Sound is right. Orwellian ministry's. Those governmental departments of Love, of Peace, of Plenty and of Truth which, in reality, represent the complete opposit... Hate, War, assured Poverty and Lies. Why not just call it Minisound? Why fucking bother at all? Send them to Joycamp (forced-labour camp). Idiotic, vacuous, mind numbing pop. A so-called Indie scene, Experimental scene and Alternative scene that are just as bad and just as guilty and no matter what is done to dismantle it these abominations still persist. Filthy, stinking, undead corpse. Die you fuck. Die. A strain of bacteria constantly adapting to the latest vaccine. Oh fair enough, it isn't really for adults. Is it? Fucking is it? Why don't you stand up for what you believe in?! Cunts! Cunts! Cunts! Whatever, whatever, whatever, it's still as insufferable as an American electorial 'contest', an annoyingly grateing background irritant that makes a target of itself, asking for it. Asking for it babe. And you're gonna get it. Yet another inane dance act, smiling gormless buffoons strutting out their abysmal routine. 'Boy bands' rolling off production lines as if Henry Ford had been a cunting pop mogal, jealous of Johnathan King and what he's been up against. They call it 'product'. A tin of baked beans please. Some toilet rolls, a pack of tampons, a Spice Girls CD. Ah, and Bob The Fucking Builder for the littlest one... make sure the thing grows up to be a lad, don't want any bumfuckery in our family, in'it right Handy Andy? Tits out then girls. Pre-bimbo, pre-teen Dolores Haze's and older bitches who should know better but just wanna be famous. For what? Famous for fucking what? Look at me, I'm famous! I'm on the bleeding telly, are you watching, are you fucking watching!! Inseminate me now. Do it. Now! Cheap. Whitehouse-Cruise CD 2001 SLCD024 Jane Corbin, BBC reporter: "But the idea that children could possibly want sex is totally abhorant... to everybody?" David Hines, Wonderland Club member: "Not to us". BBC's Panorama 11.2.2001 I have locked myself away. Special isolation conditions such as were employed by Whitehouse members for the recording of the Psychoathia Sexualis LP in August 1982. The telephone is cut. The doorbell is disconnected. The mobile phone has been fustigated until it is truely unrecognisable as a mobile phone. An ancient peace envelopes the room. I have given strict instructions not to be disturbed on any account whatsoever... except for an absolute dire emergency. I can envisage only one such situation that would authorize an interuption at this, oh so very special time... if Dark Lo were to summon me (I dream), her 15 year old hormones seething (sure looks that way), an exotic flower bud, anxious months in the swelling, suddenly bloomed overnight (would I lie to you?), unseen, as my world slept. Intoxicating fragrance from a bed of angels, made flesh. An unlikely and Hopeless fantasy. But you never know. Never... Dark Lo, newly bobbed hair as black as space in long dusky coat, sophisticated little lady. Dark Lo, in flared jeans, hooded top, wooly cap, cool snug chick. Dark Lo, defenceless in just white shirt buttoned only once between breast and navel, tail vacuumed to her arse, cuffs loose and floppy revealing those tender wrists (pulse taking side), every crease caused by her form in the cotton fabric an enthralling universe of obsession crying out to be explored. That's my Dark Lo. Scruffy now. Enough to bring the dead man back to life! Admit it. Come on, admit it. Admit it you fucking liers! Admit it! I hate fucking liers. I hate fucking cunts, Trainer wearing cunts. Baseball cap wearing cunts, What vision is left? And is anyone asking? Crass.
So, now is the time. The package arrived yesterday, from trusty Carbon disks. I admit that I've been far too distracted, watching the best of the darling nymphets coming and going, uniformed pleated skirt black tights sensible black shoes, but 'casual' coat allowed, from my lookout post. I take a blade and cut the packets seal... this 'MailitePlus' padded envelope is savagely torn to pieces, rabid dog fashion. I shan't be able to 'save' the fucking planet by re-using this one. Who cares? I do not care. Long live the animal kingdom. A pleasent sweet plasticky aroma is released, and we're not even through the CD's cellophane sleeve yet. Must be osmosis. The funereal looking cover design isn't a total surprise, but is a surprise nontheless, for I have already seen and read Sotos' white out of black obitual style graphics front sleeve text on the promotional Susan Lawly 'Cruise' postcards. It would be v. unprofessional to quote it all here, especially running, as it does, to around 100 words, but in essence, it is a ruthless and warranted strike on an artworld which, Peter considers, "allows for such safe postmodern distancing" and a condemnation of "art aficionados who prefer art that 'raises questions'..." All written, of course, in his inimitable exponant tenor. If Sotos' writing is percieved by the shallow as filth, it is because truth is filth and the aforementioned shallow slackers, I say, do not wish to stare it in the face knowing, only too well, the mirror that is that which returns their gape. No Trevor Brown illustration this time then. In fact, no 'art' at all. Conspicuously artless. Now I'll slit the cellophane wrapper, caesarean-like, and prepare to sniff the actual contents. Wow! This one smells goooood! All printy inky-wink... Though I must warn you, don't inhale too deeply, you'll end up ODing and will want to vomit. Take it from an expert. Open the CD case and... blackness. All black and very tastefull. Out slides the 16 page booklet.. It has lyrics! Very good. Very good. Lets play, lets play, lets play. First song. Title track. Cruise, but with the bracketed addition of the phrase 'force the truth'. Musically, think of the instrumental Worthless, from Whitehouse's previous CD, Mummy and Daddy. A quick undulating buzz of a score like that of some loud electronic insect's wing's Idiotically dances out, indictably, from the jaded speakers of my 'big one'. Almost sirenesque in some parts thus creating an impression of dire urgency. Line upon line upon line of recklessly delivered barking vocals of condemnation. Such a simple and perfect construction! I am in heaven! Is this Philip's utterance too? Now William again. Then Philip William. Yes, definatly William now ... who else on this earth) could deal that idiosyncratic drawn out wall? No one. Never. Ever. I love this. Amazingly, at times, you could almost convince yourself that you were listening to Crass's Steve Ignorant of yore, almost believe there is such a schmuter as a sequined Crass t-shirt, worn by celebrities of fortuity. 0h, the glamour of it all. We really must put them out of our misery because "right now I'm seriously fucking sick of it". Then you can, more convincingly, fantasize that it is Bodychoke/Sutcliffe Jugend mastermind Kevin Tomkins doing the honors. So simple. So easy to understand. Such depth. And, all spent, we fade away with the ever so delicate etherial phantom of the previously mentioned sirenic alarm. That is the way to do it. The only way to do it. He always knows what to do...
No sooner has Cruise (Force The Truth) dwindled than Princess Disease comes out to play... recorded in a cast iron pipe the most murderous liquidised intestine brain and bone splattered fragment drenched hammering tribal drumbeat you will ever fucking hear. A pounding jackbooted army stamping on a solitary human face forever, tsunamic wave of terror. And, as the iron pipe banshee shrieks, all skin is peeled away and the body rolled in seasalt. "No more caesar salads" for this baby either. Yeah, "shake, rattle and roll it then...." My plate of steaming potatoes makes me feel sick. Better if I go straight to the hot chocolate dessert.
Movement 2000 is a decendant of a particular branch of the illustrious whitehousian family tree, going back generations. The title track from the 1980 Birthdeath Experience LP was the classic nihalistic song! It has been performed live on some occasions to great effect! The 2nd Whitehouse LP, Total Sex, featured the track Politics, another rendering of the Birthdeath theme it ignites with a ten second burst of electronics followed by almost 2 minutes of silence. These two statements worked far better on vinyl, it has to be said, than the pure silence of the CD format. Vinyl gave the 'silence' an eerie presence whereas you could use the CD reissues to test out your CD player for stray background noise! Whitehouse are not unique in the silence stakes however. Off the top of my head I can mention the highly celebrated improvisationist group AMM used silence in their performances, athough AMM's is percieved as a pause, a taking of breath, as opposed to whitehouse's total oblivion! Entering the family realm of Whitehouse's 3 whitenoise-like 'Movement' pieces we have Movement 1982 from the Newbritain LP, Movement 1994 from Halogen CD and, our catalyst for now, Movement 2000. I say white-noise as against pinknoise which is how the sleeve notes to the Birthdeath album describe it, but, these said notes refere to whitenoise songs incorperating vocals, sexually inclined vocals and therefore 'pink' as in Japans pink movies. The Movement series have no vocals and so, devoid of flesh, they are desolate and bleak statements. A raw and somewhat unproccesed appraisal would run something like this...
Movement 1982-Cavernous white tiled slaughter chamber with discreet ambiant echo. Cold. Movement 1994 -Construction site machinery dronings with moderate underlaying rumble. Warm. Movement 2000-Liquid oxygen/liquid hydrogen engines at full thrust with maximum aerodynamic pressure on the vehicle. Warmer still. The commonality between all three pieces is their purity and refusal to compromise. Got it? Good. You should.
The concluding track on the Mummy and Daddy CD is entitled Private, being a 20 minute long compendium of off-air interviews with murder, rape, child abuse and drug victims (and their families) and recordings of emergency calls to the police and the like which I assume had been assembled by Peter Sotos (and 'produced' by Steve Albini). I have another CD full of this type of material called Buyers Market Volume One, again collected and compiled by Peter with Albini's production. I really must pay a visit to Chicago some day and wonder if there was ever a volume two? Now we have, on the Cruise CD, in the very same vein, Public, confusingly not produced by Steve but recorded by him yet there is the credit 'P.Sotos' under the word Public on the track listing. Well, I don't know what's going on here and quite frankly my brain hurts thinking about it. Public... yet more victims, women, children, recounting their sorry tales of abuse, drugs, murder etc., located slap bang in the middle of Cruise's 6 tracks, Public being the 7th if you get my drift. The raw inspiration for Whitehouse's material? A reminder? A reinforcement? Just in case? Is it interesting? Yes. Entertaining? Yes. Titilating? Arousing? To a degree. You really must recognise yourself. And the media hypocrisy. What do you really believe? Do you pretend to be shocked? Every time? Every fucking time? TV generation and their kids and the kids fucking kids? Harrowing? No. I'm comfy. God... my name just came up!
No pause, the instrumental, Scapegoat, is right there. Right now. The cast iron pipe recording technique is used again beating the 'noise artists' at their own game. It's a question of dignity. A greater or lesser degree. And quality. Ending with a series of electrostatic blips they are either designed, or my big one is fucked. No. Not fucked. I hear, at long long last, the studio version of Dance the Desperate Breath, six months later. One does feel that one has waited long enough.
Please note that the following 3 paragraphs were written prior to the release of the Cruise CD and hence my being unable to comfortably read the lyrics in the safety of my own hole. I have chosen to leave them unchanged in order to preserve the immediacy of the read.
The Live Action #86 show in October 2000, London, was where I first heard Dance the Desperate Breath. I was pretty (very pretty), drunk and on an utter high, recalling it the next hungover morning as 'William reads from letters received' and moaning that I 'couldn't hear'. To me at the time it came across as some sort of recipe or a text interspersed with recipe's... a letter 'punctuated' with recipe's was my LA #86 impression. All I really wanted that night was for William to cook for me babe. Cook anything. Viewing the LA #86 video months later didn't make Dance the Desperate Breath much clearer and in any case we are treated to the rare and holiest of specticals, an Ed Wood/Johnny Depp look alike in the audience doing a healthy bout of Whitehouse worship, his arms outstretched prayer-like, up and down, crying "Whooaa, Whooaa!!" with each bow. He could have chosen to curtsy politely like me but no, he elected to be a cunt and his exhibition was on such a par with Whitehouse that Peter Sotos, realising this and not wanting to be outshone, drenches our cheeky offender in good quantities of beer squirted from his very own subversive lippy-wipps. Thus, the pleasently effeminate chap calms down and the rocus is back on Whitehouse! William dribbles his brew diaretically. Gigers Alien has better table manners than this. 'William goes into crucifiction pose mode. Cor! Then comes little dainty dance mode, similar in vein to his Caligula march of old. Wow! What is a girl to do? Piss herself I guess. I did.
Playing the LA #86 audio tape does help to decipher more of the lyrics but it wasn't until the all knowig, all sensual Simon Morris of the Ceramic Hobs kindly informed me (in fact he should be writing this!) with a "did you know, the inspiration to this track came from the sickest fucking website I've ever seen-'Anorexic-rec'- a porno site dedicated to the beauty of anorexic and bulimic girls". Fucking, fucking, fucking yeah!! I mean isn't this just sooo fucking excellent!! God, sometime? I love, love, love this world!!! Do you know you can check out a site-www.necrobabes.com ?! Fantastic name! And a page on 'Objectum Sexuality' by a woman who's sexually attracted to the Berlin wall! (Yeah, but is the Berlin wall sexually attracted to her?) And then there's the one, Simon says, about "folk who get off on having horses tread on them. Holy fuck..." Hmmm, holy fuck is right Simon. Makes my beloved Dark Lo in her creased, vacuumed, floppy cuffed white shirt seem bloody dull really. No wonder they all want fucking computers. Maybe I really am just a boring old git after all .
Well, whilst writing all this I've been listening to the LA #86 audio tape (it is possible!, assure you) and it seems that I mistook the lyric "I do a lot of body wrap for a lot of people" as "I receive a lot of letters from a lot of people". Can't say I've ever heard of 'body wrap'. Bodychoke yeah, but bodywrap? Well, I get the picture. Yes, we see.
This following paragraph was written after the reading of the lyrics...
I'm in fucking ecstasy! So, so, so, so, so tucking good!. Possibly Whitehouse's finest hour. Now I know it. I'd do anything for the master. Any thing. En-ee-fucking thing! You too should get your life together, as I have done.
A crowd mulling around in the background. William whispers the words... incredible! Bizzare! I think we are in for a surprise, sure to explode soon, as indeed the live version took off, hystericiy. How very different this is from LA86. Ami never showed. But this is amazing! Where was this Bradford Red Light District style backdrop recorded? what are they saying? Was that a child? Lets fuck. Lets fuck. Traffic. A bus. No, it never did erupt after all. Scary. Very, very scary.
The inclusion of the identical version of A Cunt Like You, first heard on Mummy and Daddy, is puzzling. It is without doubt the most vicious song ever concieved and possibly my favourite by Whitehouse. Is this their way of saying goodbye with rumours circulating some months ago regarding Philip Best leaving the group? I hope not. Watch that space.
So there you have it. It's yours now. All yours. Enjoy the final and definitive sound of the real human birthdeath experience. Once and for all. In fact, there is nothing more to say.