Robert Plant - Bones of Saints

The video for Robert Plant's new song 'Bones of Saints' makes some innovative use of old Look and Learn illustrations by artists ranging from John Millar Watt to James E. McConnell.

Alan Moore on record

Alan Moore's connections with music and the music industry date back to the mid-1970s, before his first illustrations and comic strips began appearing in fanzines and small press magazines. His connections with the national music press began in 1979 with his first professional commissions from Sounds magazine (illustrations of Elvis Costello and Malcolm McLaren) which led to the appearance of the "Roscoe Moscow" comic strip in 1979-80.

Moore, however, had already begun writing lyrics by the age of 17: music became part of his poetry readings at the local Arts Lab: "There are a lot of musicians in the Arts Lab, so I'd sit down and work out what music would go best behind a certain poem and sometimes we'd do it the other way round—they'd have the music and I'd work out words to put in front of it." (The Extraordinary Works of Alan Moore, p.41)

An early collaborator, Alex Green, recalls:

I first met Alan in '76 when Stanton Walgrave were invited to do the music for the play 'Another Suburban Romance'. This great surrealist drama, a cross between Beckett and Peyton Place, had been written by Alan and Jamie Delano and was then in rehearsal. Glyn Bush and Pickle wrote an incredibly complex score which was exhaustingly perfected and mostly recorded only for the project to founder when a couple of actors dropped out. After this I kept in close touch with Alan—amongst other things we worked on the material that would subsequently become the set for the Emperors of Ice Cream, when we had a dozen songs ready I placed an advert in the [Northampton] Chronicle & Echo seeking fellow conspirators—this would have been October or November 1978. Dave [J.] was one of the respondants—we met in the Angel Hotel. Although he was really into the idea of the Emperors he couldn't stop talking about this other band, Bauhaus 1919. Subsequently he did not have any spare time for several years and so had no involvement with the Emperors—and did not in fact, meet Alan until years later.

The original Emperors of Ice Cream was formed in 1978 and split a year later. Alex Green calls them "The dream band that never got beyond rehearsals. All music and lyrics by myself and Alan Moore."

A second incarnation of the Emperors of Ice Cream was formed in 1992 featuring Moore, Tim Perkins, Chris Barber, Curtis E. Johnson and Pete Brownjohn and, although the band remained active until 1994, they released on one song, which appeared on the cassette-fanzine, Frank.

"A few years ago, I was in a local rock band called The Emperors of Ice Cream, and one of our numbers that always went down very well live, was a thing called, "Mr. A", says Moore. "The beat and the tune of it were completely stolen from "Sister Ray" by the Velvet Underground, but the lyrics were all about Steve Ditko ... One of the verses was, "He takes a card and shades one-half of it in dark, so he can demonstrate to you just what he means/He says, 'There's wrong and there's right, there's black and there's white, and there is nothing, nothing in-between.' That's what Mr. A says." [laughter] And then we'd go into the chorus. Yeah, it was a Velvet Underground thrash, but with lyrics about Steve Ditko."

The Alan Moore Songbook from Calibur was a collection of lyrics written for The Emperors of Ice Cream and various other bands.

"Yeah, well, most of those songs actually emerged from when I was with a band, about six or seven years ago, eight years ago, called the Emperors of Ice Cream," says Moore. "[That's when] I'd written most of those songs, then a couple of them I'd written back when I was seventeen. The band was good, we had some good fun, we did some good songs but it probably would have just been just a pop band at the end of it and there's plenty of good pop bands. But the band all broke up, with the usual "musical differences", i.e. we couldn't stand each other."

Moore also penned lyrics for various other artists: "Wurlitzer Junction"/"The Merry Shark You Are" (Boy's Own Label BO1) was a 1980 single by The Mystery Guests, with both songs written by Moore (who interviewed the band for Sounds in 1981); having met David J. in around 1978, Moore wrote a poem that appeared on the inner sleeve of Bauhaus's 1981 LP Mask and did a spoken introduction to side 1 of their Satori in Paris EP (1982).

In 1983, Moore, in the guise of Translucia Baboon, teamed up with David J. (Captain Jose Da Silva) and Alex Green (Max Akropolis) to form The Sinister Ducks and released the single "March of the Sinister Ducks"/"Old Gangsters Never Die" (Situation Two SIT25) in a sleeve designed by Kevin O'Neill which folded out to reveal an 8-page comic strip drawn by Lloyd Thatcher. "March of the Sinister Ducks" was also given away as a flexidisc with Critters #23 (1988).

The single was recorded at Beck Studios in Northampton. According to Green "'March Of The Sinister Ducks' was built up in layers on top of a basic structure of Dave's guitar and piano. The cabaret saxophones on the choruses were augmented with kazoos played by Alan and myself. Vocals and duck effect came later. 'Old Gangsters Never Die' was recorded live with us all together in the same room, I seem to recall that the version released was the third take." 'Old Gangsters Never Die' was originally a soliloquy in Moore's play Another Suburban Romance.

The song has been widely available on the web for some years, including a few animated versions on YouTube.

The band performed only two times, although Moore's collaborations with David J. continued: in 1984, J. released V For Vendetta (Glass Records 12032, distributed by Beggars Banquet), an EP which contained four tracks inspired by the comic. The A side, "This Vicious Cabaret", was a song that had appeared in issue 12 as part of the strip when it ran in Warrior (Aug 1983). The B side consisted of three tracks: "V's Theme (Intro)", "Incidental" and "V's Theme (Outro)". The EP was released on CD in 1998 by Cleopatra Records, as was a compilation of David J. material, On Glass, which included "This Vicious Cabaret", "Incidental" and "V's Theme (Outro)".

Musically, nothing else was heard from Moore for some time, although he was famously referenced in the Pop Will Eat Itself song "Can U Dig It" ("Alan Moore knows the score"). Moore wrote "Murders in the Rue Morgue" (Cold Spring Records, 1990) for The Satanic Nurses, but the song was never released commercially. The song was later illustrated by Neil Gaiman as one of Moore's 'Songbook' songs in Negative Burn #13 (Jul 1994). The Nurses included guitarist Curtis E. Johnson who was shortly to join the Emperors of Ice Cream.

Moore subsequently recorded "Madame October" with folk musician Tom Hall for the album Watering the Spirits (Sure Head Music, 1994; also available on the compilation Rocking for Rumania, Builth Balkan Crew, 2005) and wrote "Me and Dorothy Parker" for The Flash Girls' Maurice and I (Fabulous Records fcd 001, 1995).

On 16 July 1994, Moore and other performed at the Bridewell Theatre in London, Moore's spoken words backed by music from Tim Perkins and David J. Moore recalls:

Me and Tim Perkins, who was also in the Emperors, we stuck together and just after that I got into magic. The first thing that we did was this big performance in '94 at Bride Lane, off Fleet Street, Subversion in the Streets of Shame. It was Paul Smith from Blast First records had got Iain Sinclair to put together a three day event of, I suppose, subterraneans, really. I was reading; there was Stewart Home; Robin Cook [aka] the crime writer Derek Raymond, that was his last reading before he died, he came and did a reading about death, very ill ... and then Kathy Acker turned up unexpectedly halfway through the performance and did the best reading I'd ever seen her do. Dear, sweet, lovely Kathy Acker. She'd got kind of Mary-Jane shoes on. And socks. I don't know whether it was some kind of paedo-thing that she was going through but she looked kind of— I mean, like, you know, she was in her fifties, nearly fifty but she look so sweet and cool and cute and she did this brilliant reading. So we finished off the Saturday night with this hour-long magical extravaganza. That came out, it was Cleopatra records, in the States, they brought out the CD that's just called The Moon and Serpent—Grand Egyptian Theatre of Marvels.

A track from this performance, "Hair of the Snake That Bit Me", appeared on the Hexentexts: A Creation Books Sampler CD (Codex Records CODE1, 1995) whilst the full performance was released by Cleopatra Records (Cleo 96882) in 1996.

A second performance, on Moore's 42nd birthday (18 November 1995) at a Victorian magistrate's court in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, was released as The Birth Caul: A Shamantism of Childhood (Charm/Locus CHARRMMCD22) with music by David J. and Tim Perkins.

The next thing we did was The Birth Caul and then we did a thing at Highbury [London], which is the one that's just coming out in a couple of week's time. Steve Severin from [Siouxsie and] the Banshees, he's got his own record label now, Re: records and The Highbury Working is going to be coming out and we're very proud of that.

It's still spoken word, with music, but with The Highbury Working we did something really different. Say, with The Birth Caul, the words and the music are still integrated, obviously there's bits where I'm saying something, then something happens in the music and their obviously connected, which is not bad when you consider that The Birth Caul is actually a live recording and that I was reading to prearranged tapes, so I had to kind of time every word that I said for that hour. You see, with The Birth Caul, the music and the words are integrated but the music still tends mainly towards the ambient. It's more like kind of patterns of sound or fields of sound or drones or whatever, whereas with The Highbury Working, as opposed to The Birth Caul, what we're doing is more like dance music—one track on it is very much like drum 'n' bass—and the integration between the words and the music is a lot cleverer. It's a lot more dancey. It's probably the most accessible piece we've done. Like I've said, there's always been a dance element in my mysticism. Yeah, so, you know, I'm looking forward to this and John's done a really great cover and a really great package for the CD. It's a little Sergeant Pepper, that we've got here.

The Highbury Working was released by Re: (RE:PCDN03) in 2000 and was followed by two other Moore performances, Angel Passage (ASIN B000068PYJ, 2000) and Snakes & Ladders (RE:PCD05, 2003), with Tim Perkins, the latter recorded at Conway Hall, near Red Lion Square, for the Oxford and London Golden Dawn Society.

In between, Moore had produced a spoken-word adaptation of Brought to Light (Codex Records CODE5, 1998), with music arranged by Gary Lloyd, based on his half of the Brought to Light book drawn by Bill Sienkewicz.

To date, these have been the last of Moore's spoken-word releases, although a new 45rpm vinyl single, which included Moore singing "Immortal Love", was intended to be released with the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen volume Black Dossier. The single was cancelled from the hardcover edition of the book that appeared in 2007 and was announced for the Absolute Edition that was to appear in 2008. It was subsequently dropped, meaning that the $100 AE had almost no additional features (beyond its larger size, slipcase and new endpapers drawn by Kevin O'Neill) that had not appeared in the original release.

A note by Adi Tantimedh on The V forum noted:

The reason the record isn't included in the Absolute edition is that DC's lawyers were played the songs and were worried that they sounded too similar to old British Sixties pop and TV shows, including the Thunderbirds theme. Fearing charges of plagiarism—as opposed to pastiche or homage—they refused to press the songs for the book. Moore was only told this much, much later, and is pissed off, because, you know, if Oasis can do Beatles riffs without getting sued, why can't a song that pastiches Sixties pop?

So the songs are still owned and controlled by Moore and his co-composer to do as they please, as long as DC has nothing to do with it. Moore is supposed to still control the masters and copies have not been circulated so far.

Moore, it seems, was only told at the last minute that the record would not appear. However, Pádraig Ó Méalóid has reported that Moore has said that the single will see the light of day at some stage.

Notes
Lots of details of the various strips that appeared in Negative Burn, most of which were subsequently collected in Alan Moore's Songbook, can be found here.

The interview with Alex Green (Apollox, 1995) can be found online here.

Mike Moorcock on record

Comics are written by creative types and it's no surprise that there's a spill-over between comics' creators and the music industry. The earliest connections date back at least to the 1950s when Mike Butterworth, the editor of Valentine, set up the Great Pop Prom, which was sponsored by Valentine and its companions, Marilyn and Roxy. The Great Pop Prom followed the Last Night of the Proms at the Royal Albert Hall and the first shows in the late 1950s could boast Tommy Steele, Cliff Richard, Chris Barber's Jazz Band, Billy Fury, The Vernon's Girls, Alma Cogan, Cuddly Dudley [Moore?] and many others. In 1963, The Beatles and The Rolling Stones appeared on the same bill for the first time and, by the end of the Sixties, the Pop Proms were a seven-day event and could boast Led Zeppelin on the opening and a last night headlined by Chuck Berry and The Who.

But it was another Mike—Mike Moorcock—who became the first comics' creator to make an impact with his own music. Mike was a young editor at Tarzan Adventures when he cut his first demo disc in 1957 for EMI, although, as he would later admit, "it was, even by the standards of the day, considered too dreadful to release." This was this his first brush with music. "I was playing guitar in a whorehouse at the age of 15," he has said, "not because I was that good on the guitar or that sexy but because I got on well with the girls and they liked me. I was a sort of mascot."

He subsequently joined, and left, Fleetway Publications (1959-61), and supported himself by playing guitar in clubs and coffee bars. "Skiffle groups first of all, then Woody Guthrie style country/folk blues and finally a kind of John Mayall trip," he told Steve Lake in a 1975 interview. He was briefly in a county and western group called The Greenhorns but, he says, "When I discovered that I could make more money by writing than playing music, I stopped playing music."

That's not quite true. In 1971, Mike was contributing to Frendz magazine—a serialised story, "Voortrekker" appeared in early issues—and, through editor John Trux and another contributor to Frendz called Bob Calvert, was persuaded to see a band called Hawkwind. Impressed by his first gig at Shepherd's Bush he saw the band again and, not long after, was invited to work with them. When Bob Calvert disappeared—the first of many bouts of psychiatric illness for which he sought treatment—Moorcock stood in, debuting with the band on 23 July 1971 at the first of three free gigs performed underneath the arches at Ladbroke Grove.

Mike's first experimental song for the band was "Sonic Attack", which became a seminal track when it appeared (performed by Calvert) on the live album Space Ritual. A few months after his debut with the band, he penned the comic strip "The Sonic Assassins", drawn by Jim Cawthorn, which appeared in the November 1971 issue of Frendz.

Mike's recording career probably peaked in 1974-75 when he wrote a number of tracks for Hawkwind's The Warrior On The Edge Of Time LP, including the single "Kings of Speed" (UP 35808) released in March; the album (released in May) was loosely based on Moorcock's Eternal Champion and featured three Moorcock-penned tracks "The Wizard Blew His Horn", "Standing On The Edge" and "Warriors". Mike read "The Wizard Blew His Horn" and "Standing On the Edge" for the album. "Kings of Speed" was originally written for Mike's own project which was also to appear in May '75.

The New Worlds Fair (UAG 29732) was released under the name Michael Moorcock's Deep Fix and featured Mike on guitar, mandolin and vocals, Graham Charnock (guitar, vocs), Steve Gilmore (guitar, vocs), Kuma Harada (bass) and Peter Pavli (cello), along with an array of guests on various tracks, including Snowy White (guitar), Herbert North (guitar on "In the Name of Rock and Roll"), backing vocalists Shirely Roden and Debi Ross, plus various Hawkwind members—Dave Brock (guitar on "Last Merry Go Round"), Simon House (violin, keyboards), Nik Turner (sax), Simon King (drums) and Alan Powell (drums).

The original release was to have been preceded by a single "Starcruiser" / "Dodgem Dude" but United Artists passed on it and it was only given a belated release by Flicknife (FLS 200) in December 1980. The original New Worlds Fair had 11 tracks...

Candy Floss Cowboy
Fair Dealer
Octopus
Sixteen Year Old Doom
You're A Hero
Song For Marlene
Come To The Fair
In The Name Of Rock 'n' Roll
Ferris Wheel
Last Merry Go Round
Dude's Dream

... with some connective narration. The album has been re-released a few times on CD with additional tracks: in 1995 by Griffin (GCD 332 0, Mar 1995; in the UK by Dojo (DOJO CD 88, May 1995) with "Candy Floss Cowboy (demo)" (the original LP track is a narration) "Dodgem Dude", "Starcruiser" and "The Brothel of Rosenstrasse"—the latter originally released as a single by Flicknife (EJSP 9831) in December 1982 (b/w "Time Centre"); and in 2008 by Esoteric with a further three additional tracks, previously unreleased demo versions of "Kings Of Speed", "You're A Hero" and "Dodgem Dude".

A variant version of the album, remastered from the original tapes, appeared from Voiceprint in 2005 under the title Roller Coaster Holiday (VP 351CD, Jan 2005) which included (in addition to the "Starcruiser" and "Dodgem Dude" tracks) a different demo version of "Candy Floss Cowboy", an instrumental "Starcruiser" and an acoustic "Dude's Dream" with different lyrics.

Mike also contributed to Bob Calvert's 1975 album Lucky Leif and the Longships (United Artists UAG 29852, Sep 1975), playing banjo, and the 1981 album Hype (A Side Records IF 0311, Sep 1981), playing 12-string guitar.

He has also written lyrics for Blue Öyster Cult: "The Great Sun Jester" (Mirrors, Columbia, Jun 1979), "Black Blade" (Cultösaurus Erectus, Columbia, Jun 1980) and "Veteran of the Psychic Wars" (Fire of Unknown Origin, Columbia, Jun 1981), the latter a call-back to the Warrior on the Edge of Time track "Standing on the Edge" which includes the phrase "the veterans of a thousand psychic wars". Mike performed live with BOC at Dragon Con in Atlanta in 1987.

"I got a bit disappointed with music," Moorcock has said. "Pete Pavli and I produced a lot of stuff both for Gloriana (the musical) and for The Entropy Tango which didn't really get a lot of enthusiasm from our then manager."

The various sessions were eventually released. Following the release of the "Dodgem Dude" single, Flickknife put out "The Brothel In Rosenstrasse" / "Time Centre" (EJSP 9831, Feb 1982) as a limited edition single. These two tracks, plus "Good Girl Bad Girl" and "Another Quiet Day In Auschwitz", has also been released as a cassette (Cyborg Records, May 1992). An official bootleg cassette, Moorcock's Deep Fix—Concerts and Rehearsals was given away free at the Atlanta Fantasy Convention in August 1990.

These various tracks have resurfaced on a number of Flicknife compilations, notably the Hawkwind: Friends and Relations series: "Good Girl, Bad Girl" and "Time Centre" on Friends & Relations (SHARP 101, Mar 1982), "Dodgem Dudes" and "Time Centre" on The Best of Hawkwind: Friends and Relations (SHARP 1724CD, Nov 1988) and "The Brothel In Rosenstrasse" and "Starcruiser" on Hawkwind, Friends and Relations: The Rarities (Anagram Records CDM GRAM 91, Mar 1995); "Dodgem Dude" also appeared on the Hawkwind & Co.: Your Last Chance 7" EP (FLS 214, Feb 1983). "Time Centre" has also been released on the compilation Space Box: 1970 and Beyond (Cleopatra Records CLP 9772 2, 1996).

"The Tale of the Entropy Tango" had originally appeared on a vinyl LP which Brian Tawn produced for Hawkwind Feedback... it was actually issue 12 of his fanzine Hawkfan (HWFB 2) but delays caused it to be released in July 1986, after issue 14 or 15 was released. The track was credited to Michael Moorcock's Deep Fix and Brian Tawn. The album has subsequently been released along with a second vinyl album Tawn released (The Elf by Alan Davey) as The Elf and the Hawk (Black Widow Records BWR 026, Jan 1999).

During this time, Mike had again become more involved with Hawkwind: a studio recording of "Sonic Attack" became the title song for Sonic Attack (RCA Active Records RCALP 6004, Oct 1981), which also included three other songs penned by Mike: "Psychosonia", "Coded Languages" and "Lost Chances"; Mike contributed "Running Through The Back Brain" to Zones (Flicknife Records SHARP 014, Oct 1983), which had been recorded as a demo in 1981, and "Arrival in Utopia" and the title track to Choose Your Masques (RCA Active Records RCALP 6055, Oct 1982).

The Chronicles of the Black Sword (Flicknife SHARP033, Nov 1985) was Hawkwind's 14th studio album and, like their 5th (Warriors on the Edge of Time) was heavily influenced by Mike's writings, in this instance the character Elric of Melniboné (along with one song, "Needle Gun", inspired by Jerry Cornelius); Mike is credited with only one track, "Sleep of a Thousand Tears", a live version of which appears on the CD version (SHARP033D) Flicknife released in 1986.

A live version of the album, Live Chronicles, was first released in 1986, although a dispute with Hawkwind's management meant that Mike's contributions to the live show were missing. A later re-release (Griffin GCDHA0136-2, Feb 1994) reinstated Mike's contributions, "The Chronicle of the Black Sword", "Dead God's Homecoming" and "The Final Fight". He can also be seen on the Chronicle of the Black Sword video (Jettisoundz JE150, 1986) which has since been released on DVD.

Mike can also be heard live on Yule Ritual, recorded in 2000 (Voiceprint Records HAWKVP 19CD, Oct 2001), including the only recording (I believe) of him performing "Sonic Attack". I'm not sure if he's on the earlier Choose Your Masques: Live 1982 (Voiceprint HAWKVP 3CD, Nov 1999), although he certainly performed with Hawkwind at Hammersmith during the nights that the album was recorded in November 1982. Two tracks ("Coded Languages", "Warrior on the Edge of Time") from the same live shows appeared as a bonus on the CD version of Out and Intake (Flicknife SHARP 040CD, May 1987). He is also on Nik Turner's live recording Past or Future? (Cleopatra Records CLP 9685 2, Mar 1996).

The various sessions recorded by Mike and Pete Pavli were eventually released in December 2008 as The Entropy Tango and Gloriana Demo Sessions (Noh Poetry Records), credited to Michael Moorcock & the Deep Fix. The album has also been released in the UK by Voiceprint (VP477CD, Jan 2009). The CD includes an interview with Mike conducted by Don Falcone of space rock collective Spirits Burning. Mike recently performed vocals on "Every Gun Plays Its Own Tune", "The Entropy Tango", "Ingleborough" as well as playing guitar and mandolin on other tracks on the Spirit Burning album Alien Injection album (Black Widow, 2008); the various tracks are taken from the Entropy Tango and Gloriana sessions. You can get a taste of the music on the Deep Fix myspace page.