February 08, 2004
NOW LISTENING
to 23 Skidoo - 'The Culling is Coming'. A collection of some astonishingly disquieting and unnervingly compelling (un)live performances from 1982. Closer to Neubauten or Cabaret Voltaire than to the dark funk of 'Seven Songs'. Tape loops, bells, metal-percussion, illegible vocal refrains, yells becoming lost in a radioactive fog of echoes: an incantatory sound-sorcery. Industrial religion.
skidoo = scariest live show i ever saw (that year, 1982), at "scamps" (!!) in oxford
Posted by: mark s at February 8, 2004 12:16 PMYeh, I remember Kodwo mentioning that you'd said that once. What sort of stuff were they playing?
Posted by: mark k-punk at February 8, 2004 01:22 PMI thought it was studio stuff, with the dates being included because of, ah, ritual resonance/significance?! No notes with the LP, though, so I could well be wrong. Cracking stuff, though, all those tootin' thigh bones, daddio. Didn't they appear at WOMAD as well?
Posted by: John Eden at February 8, 2004 10:23 PMNo, it's all live: two live performances (including one at WOMAD) on the original LP and a third, a stunning piece of live tape manipulation, on the reissued CD.
Posted by: mark k-punk at February 9, 2004 12:20 AMi was at the same Scamps show! i don't remember being scared but it was awesome
ah but Mark S, weren't you also on the stage as well? in support band Jazz Insects....
Posted by: simon at February 11, 2004 01:23 AM!?possibly!? (however i tht the JIs supported maximum joy and rip rig and panic, and wow federation supported 23skidoo but you could well be right, it's a v.long time ago)
(haha was i wearing a skirt? i hope so)
Posted by: mark s at February 12, 2004 10:40 PMi remember ji too...
i loved Scamps in Oxford - the time of Wow Federation and Dum Dum Dum - did anyone go to the gig at BLADES just outside Oxford where Dum Dum Dum headlined and Play Dead supported?
Dum Dum Dum at Baliol college too - when the rainbow strobes were going non-stop for 40 minutes - that was frightening - original ant people and punks from london and skinheads and rugby players - i seem to remember a trance like atmosphere after the fighting as fans took down the old wooden panelling from the Lindsey Room's walls - they were all echoes and tape and big dubby bass... and the singer - a sort of Frank Sinatra on acid - i think he was the drummer then the singer with Wow Federation before leaving to form Dum Dum Dum....
I'm going to dig out the Wow Federation and Dum Dum Dum singles from the attic and listen again...
Posted by: andy at March 27, 2004 12:08 AM