Tag Archives: Genesis Breyer P’Orridge

Alex Fergusson – Stay With Me Tonight (Red Records single, 1980)

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Alex Fergusson 'Stay With Me Tonight' 7" artwork

red records | 7″ rs003 | 1980

There appears to be a television theme running through Daniel Miller‘s work between 1978 and 1980. First (of course) there was Mute‘s first move, his single ‘T.V.O.D.’ as The Normal; Silicon Teens, his fake synth group, had a track called ‘TV Playtime’ and Missing Scientists, who Miller produced for their single ‘Bright Lights Big City’ were better known as The Television Personalities. Alex Fergusson, whose ‘Stay With Me Tonight’ Miller produced under his Larry Least alias in 1980, was a founder member of Alternative TV. If nothing else, this release proves that too much TV is not necessarily a bad thing, despite what the health professionals might say.

Alternative TV were formed by Mark ‘Sniffin’ Glue’ Perry and Fergusson, a Scottish guitarist. The debut release by the nascent ATV was a flexi (‘Love Lives Limp’) given away with the last issue of Perry’s Sniffin’ Glue punk fanzine in 1977. Shortly after, following a couple of 7″ singles, Perry sacked Fergusson and cast his original collaborator aside. Fergusson went on to join Sid Vicious biographers Fred and Judy Vermorel’s brainchild, the band Cash Pussies (with Alan Gruner, model Diana Rich and Ray Weston); Cash Pussies released one single, ‘99% Is Shit’ which featured clips of Sid Vicious being interviewed, and withered away like the Vermorel-constructed act they were. In 1981, Fergusson formed Psychic TV (aka Psychick TV) with Genesis P. Orridge (who had been a sometime ATV percussionist) and Peter ‘Sleazy’ Christopherson, after the initial demise of Throbbing Gristle. TG had contacted Fergusson when they were working on the soundtrack to the Vermorels’ Millions Like Us movie, asking him to assist with the music they were creating.

1980’s solo Fergusson 7″ on Red, ‘Stay With Me Tonight’, sounds a million miles from those punk / industrial roots. Featuring Fergusson on vocals and Gruner on synths, the track is a pretty, out-and-out synthpop track that provides no clue whatsoever to the harsh cerebral onslaught that Psychic TV would create. Quite how Daniel / Larry got on board is hard to understand, but it perhaps serves to highlight how intertwined the punk / post-punk landscape in the UK was. (Gruner would go on to work with Bonnie Tyler; we won’t talk about that.) The synths on both tracks distinctly sound Miller-esque, both from Fad Gadget and Depeche Mode records; it wouldn’t surprise me if perhaps they were Miller’s synths. No details are provided on where this was recorded or who else worked with Miller / Fergusson / Gruner on this, but it’s feasible that this is a Blackwing / Eric Radcliffe / John Fryer affair like the Missing Scientists 7″.

‘Stay With Me Tonight’ (copyrighted to 1979) has a steady, thudding beat and some brilliant arpeggiating synths plus a beat on the chorus that Depeche Mode would definitely borrow for ‘Dreaming Of Me’. The way some of the synths get filtered from subtle background noises to foreground flashes is good too; it’s an effect that acid house and techno would repeat ad infinitum, but it’s nice to hear it deployed on a synth pop track. Fergusson’s vocal has a certain naivety, an unpolished, nasal youthfulness which is about the only ‘punk’ quality this song has; punk in the sense that it sounds like he’s not a singer in the trained sense. Overall, it’s a nice, upbeat and forgotten synth pop track and I really like the transition from flat-out verses to sparse choruses, which sounds like a Miller trick to me.

The less we say about the name of the B-side, ‘Brushing Your Hair’, the better. The track is a too-short synth instrumental, co-written by Fergusson, Gruner and Miller. The drums have a Krautrock quality while electronic squiggles reminiscent of the percussion on Depeche Mode’s ‘Nodisco’ have prominence in the foreground. Meanwhile, a wavering keyboard riff that was appropriated and expanded for Fad Gadget’s ‘Ricky’s Hand’ makes a brief appearance. This track has Daniel Miller’s handiwork in major evidence, and it’s worth tracking this down for the B-side alone.

Track listing:

7″:
A. Stay With Me Tonight
B. Brushing Your Hair

First published 2011; edited 2014

(c) 2014 Mat Smith / Documentary Evidence

Throbbing Gristle, Village Underground 23/10/2010

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Throbbing Gristle, Village Underground 23/10/2014 - photo source unknown

‘If you’re going to come to a Throbbing Gristle gig,’ said my friend Ian, ‘you have to expect it to be loud.’ He was gesturing in the direction of the couple next to us at their gig at the Village Underground on the Shoreditch / Hackney borders, both of whom had their fingers in their ears throughout the final song of their set.

It was a common sight. There were lots of earphones and earplugs, which we felt rather defeated the purpose. The point is that this was supposed to be confrontationally loud, because that’s what TG were always all about – confrontation. It was one of many observations made through the course of almost two hours of relentless and – mostly – structured noise. Other observations included Peter ‘Sleazy’ Christopherson (in a kimono) looking a little like Harold Bishop, and Genesis Breyer P’Orridge looking like… well, we aren’t really sure what he looks like, but he’s certainly a lot shorter than I thought he’d be.

I’m writing this on a Jubilee Line Tube the day after; my ears are still ringing. But there is something about the noise of Tube trains on this particular line which provides a useful analogy for the majority of ‘songs’ last night – leaving the stations along the line the trains depart quietly until some sections of the tunnels where the noise levels rise quickly, swiftly becoming almost distressingly loud in their dense screeching and howling; like a gong softly hammered and then hit more forcefully, only put through a massive bank of distortion. Lots of the songs were like that last night – quiet, almost dark ambient at first then rising through waves of added ferocity to create a huge bed of noise that occasionally made the tendons in my neck vibrate. Beats were not eschewed, sometimes emerging as deep bassy throbs, sometimes rattling around like an old Cabaret Voltaire vintage drum machine.

New instruments were apparently being roadtested tonight. Chris Carter chimed what looked like small bells, while P’Orridge waved an iPhone about, coaxing feedback and tones from a white electric violin, at one point standing in front of it while it was resting on its stand and bowing it with two bows at the same time. Cosey Fanni Tutti played an electronic guitar, producing sparks of feedback, and switched to cornet for one track. At times the four of them were sat at their devices like online gamers. During the cacophonous final track of the main set, Christopherson put his fingers in his ears. It tells you it must have been loud if one of the band members had to block out the sound. By the end his eyes were closed and his head swaying from side to side, much as you’d expect to see someone absorbed rapturously in a piece of classical music.

The sound came to a juddering halt and they left the stage to applause marginally louder than the racket they’d just made. A few moments later Christopherson took the mic and advised that the band were ‘all feeling a little jetlagged so there’ll be no encore tonight’. This prompted boos from some quarters and half the audience departed, but, though it was delivered in an apologetic voice which hardly encapsulated rebellion, I almost saw in it the contrarian-ness, the punk spirit, of their earliest days. When they came back on, Christopherson muttering ‘Oh, go on then,’ like he was taking a proffered chocolate that he knew he probably shouldn’t take, it almost felt like baying to the pressure of the crowd, something they’d have never done back in the day. Luckily, the unashamed confrontation and aggression of ‘Discipline’ more than made up for the doubts, P’Orridge by this stage swigging from a glass of red wine and fending off a naked stagediver, taking the evening to a powerful close.

First published 2010; edited 2014

(c) 2014 Mat Smith / Documentary Evidence
Note – the source of the accompanying photo is now unknown. I am happy to attribute the credit if the photographer can be identified.