the shamen: c/d

I'm just going to leave this right here:

https://soundcloud.com/shamen1/strange-days-dream

I'm genuinely marvelling. Everything makes so much more sense now. Like, crusty hippie-dom is completely the wrong angle to view their psychedelia through. I had too much to dream last night! I love them so much.

As others have pointed out, the Shamen were not grebos. Not remotely. The original line-up were more like mods - kitted out in blazers, polo-necks, tailored trousers etc. They were always clothes horses. The bit about the on-stage back-projections of naked women is a bit misleading. They were going for a retro-futurist thing - the music was proto-shoegaze psychedelia, but less 60s-influenced and more precise than the bands in that vein they were sharing stages with in those days. The films covered a lot of different material - old industrial and educational films etc or just abstract collages (this is dodgy memory territory btw). The naked women thing was brought up in press interviews at the time, but what it was, in my memory, were antique stag films showing semi-naked women exercising with a ball and that kind of thing. Not really titillating at all, certainly compared than many music videos of the time, which may have been the point. Mostly it was a minor part of a pretty cool light show they had as part of their well-staged indie act. They put more into it that the other bands at the time who were playing those small venues.

Oh man, I do not want to revisit the Great Feminist Sex Wars again, I still have scars from the first and the second times.

I spent a lot of time in proto-shoegaze-psychedelia, in the US about 1985-1998, and in the UK post-1998. It's something that was deeply attractive to me, and was a very native environment for me for a long time (though I grew very disillusioned with it, for similar reasons - that I very much viewed Acid House as a true heir of the psychedelic tradition, while my uber-mod and dronerock friends totally turned their noses up at it.) The problem is, that retro-futurism often leads to retro-fetishism, which included some very retrogressive ideas. Sexism was *rife* in many of the neo-mod and neo-psych scenes I inhabited, because retro sex roles were part of what some people *liked* about retro culture. I really struggled with that, even as I loved a lot of the sexy 60s imagery.

I'm not saying The Shamen as people, or their videos were part of that. I'm just saying, that was the inherent background radiation of the scene.

(In fact, the actual lyrics of the song - which BTW I like a lot! - did show a pushing back against neo-psych sexism. They were not troglodytes, they seemed pretty enlightened.)

But when dealing with the -isms of dominant culture, positionality *matters*. You just have to accept that some tropes, some words, some usages, are *not the same for you* as they are for the persons on the non-dominant end of the power gradient. It's different for me to self-describe as 'queer' than it is for someone to yell 'queer!' at me out a car window, or even for my married, heterosexual boss to say, 'oh, Branwell is one of those queers'.

You can't reclaim other people's oppression?

Like, honestly, if Jane's Addiction or Christian Death did interviews, justifying their uses of the N-word as "well, actually we're using the word to make an anti-racist point about the position of Black people within society" - do you honestly think that Dan is going to change his position from "hell to the NO" to "OK, well, that's perfectly alright then"?

I do feel the same way about a 100% cis male group trying to reclaim or make a statement about the sexism of nudie-girl imagery, by... using nudie-girl imagery. They are GOING to get pushback, they SHOULD get pushback, and they DID get pushback. (Whether it's fair that a bunch of Scottish Art School boys got pushback and not Whitesnake... well, actually Whitesnake and their ilk *did* get pushback, but pushback will always be harder against people who represent themselves as 'progressive' than against people who are clear they are completely retrograde. That's for another thread.) And Colin trying to represent that pushback as being 'British audiences are too thick!" - well, that's kind of an arrogant statement to make, clearly Colin is ~more of an expert on teh feminisms~ than I am, laddie.

(I will forgive him his arrogance, it's an absolute character flaw, but I find a touch of arrogance really sexy in an otherwise kinda nerdy shy-boy. See also: Hütter, OMG, he *is* a Scottish Hütter. Help me)

I dunno, it feels like a bit of a shame and a distraction - and I only brought it up, because I *do* think that that experience does account for the naked Jason Stathams and the presentation of sexuality in their later video work.

(Sorry, I went on a massive video binge last night - and I do feel like this was a band, to whom imagery and videos and visuals are super-important, not a distraction at all. The visuals are a strong part of what they are doing. Again, like Kraftwerk.)

The actual lyrics for Knature of a Girl are fantasic, I do genuinely love them. I read them as "my girl is complicated, she has a kinda complicated sexuality, and I am *HERE* for it!"

(Hmmm, so you like complicated lovers, huh? I got some complications for ya, babe... in my pants) HA HEM. nothing to see here.

The ambiguity of the chorus is really interesting. "She plays the strangest games / but she aims to lose / that's why I love her" is operating on this double-level.

On one level, there's the obvious double-entendre - heightened by the images of dominatrixes - that the 'strange games' he is *here* for are some kind of Love Slave Bondage Games - that 'she aims to lose' indicates that she's actually the sub in the scenario. But any kind of non-superficial understanding of kink posits that the sub is (or should be, in ethical kink) the person who, although superficially 'losing', is actually the person who is in control of the scenario and exactly what happens in it. (Or, even the other way round, if the titular Girl is the dominatrix, she's 'losing' by actually being the person in *service* of the scenario that is the sub's fantasy? I love how this is unclear and the meaning is left slippery!)

But the really fascinating thing about the lyrics to me, is that that wink-wink-nudge-nudge smutty reading is actually the *superficial* one. The deeper reading, supported by Colin saying that it's actually about "how female sexuality can be distorted and abused in the name of the feminine ideal" - is that the love-slave-bondage-games are actually just a metaphor for the societal subordination of women. (This is hardly an original thought - the entire novel, Normal People, goes into this in great, and somewhat tedious, kink-shamey depth.) But Colin's doing it in a very non-kink-shamey way. "She plays the strangest games - but she aims to lose" has this undercurrent of "aiming to lose is a way of refusing to play the game". The gender binary, trying to conform to misogynist standards, the madonna/whore dichotomy, all of these things are No-Win Games. There is no chance of "win" so deliberately aiming to lose is the only rational way out of the game.

Anyway, thank you for coming to my TED talk on the Shamen's early lyrical imagery. Tomorrow's lecture will be on the inverse correlation of the quality of the Shamen song as evidenced by the goodness or naffness of Colin's hairstyle in the accompanying video ::bows and exits thread::

I guess even uptight mods loosen up sometimes. I used to go and see The Prime Movers who had emerged from garage / psych revivalists The Prisoners and they would also be wearing baggy long-sleeve t-shirts. Fantastic live band mind.

https://www.discogs.com/The-Prime-Movers-Earth-Church/master/298752

There seem to be nearly as many Prime Movers as there have been Creatures and Misfits, as I thought you were talking about the Prime Movers, the power-pop band that mutated into Dread Zeppelin - ha!

Also, I have decided that this song

I walk so tall ascending I stand so high
Earth below me revolving above the sky

I can move move move any mountain
I can move move move any mountain
I can move move move any mountain

Is basically the same as this song

Ich bin 6 meter gross und alles ist wichtig
Ich bin 9 meter gross und alles ist mehr als wichtig
Ich bin 12 meter gross und alles ist unvorstellbar

Ich bin das ganze chinesische Volk
und Yü-Gung kann Berge versetzen

Drugs can make you tall enough to move mountains, kids!!!

WS would almost certainly never have been seen dead in the kind of shorts a Grebo might have worn.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/scottishpoliticalarchive/33776332146/in/photostream/

William! Those trousers.

Ah-hah! I finally found that interview from which the above quotes are from. Apparently a video which was meant to be shown during one song only, was shown for the whole show...

Instead, a drunken projectionist showed the film through an entire gig in Manchester, much to the disgust of many women present, who saw it as pointless and gratuitous.

“But even when we used that part of the visuals properly, we were still getting lots of girls coming up to us afterwards, asking us why we used it. The point just wasn’t getting through,” says Sinnott.

I don't know, man, if the people whose sexuality you are trying to address are complaining about the way you are addressing it, maybe you could... listen? Take note? Not turn the thing being objected to, up to 11? There's a lot more in the interview, of the interviewer going, basically, you know that people trip to your shows, don't you think you have a bit of a responsibility to be careful what kind of imagery you use? Interesting.

Also, apparently Colin is from Cults. (He is still adorable.)

"We’re into psychedelic experiences and certain sexual practices," said The Shamen’s singer Colin Angus.

::breaks ILX's 4th wall and looks pointedly at camera::

Anyway, today I am really enjoying Hempton Manor. I wish I could get my brain off this one track, but here we are.

Oxygen Restriction presumably isn't about being a bit out of breath from dancing.

I actually haven't a clue what it's about. I like oxygen.

If you're not into certain sexual practices you're into them all, or none. I always say.

Oh, that's very tedious. :(

The "Colin is from Cults" link should have a trigger warning, ;-)

I was originally commissioned to put together the music for that Commonwealth Games opening ceremony. They then sacked me without telling me as someone up high decided they needed someone more famous to do it (Mylo) and they then basically re-used a ton of my work i had submitted, inc. using "Move Any Mountain".

Ah well, hopefully i'll get the commission to do the music for Scotland's independence rave and can use it again then.

Oh no I'm sorry. That sucks that they stole your work - but I'm still glad that they got played.

LOL @ Scotland Independence Rave - Colin lives in London now, so surely he'll be trapped on the wrong side of the border when they re-erect Hadrian's Wall!

(Still disappointed about the Oxygen Restriction thing, I was hoping it would be something a lot more fun.)

Which is the more tedious I ask you, silly (but accurate) pedantry or bands making vague pretentious allusions in interviews to doing some undefined weird sex stuff.

Oh that's what's tedious, I see. :)

it looks like Colin filmed it off his TV - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RDXwev39GuY

Surely silly (but accurate) pedantry is never tedious?

I dunno, I quite like bands making vague pretentious allusions to ~werid sex stuff~? At least I do, if I find them really attractive? Presenting themselves as sexual objects is definitely part of the games that pop stars play.

Oxygen restriction
Oxygen restriction

Oxygen restriction, life celebration
Love accumulation, no distraction
New destination
Oxygen restriction, love saturation
Effect a transformation
We can change this situation

Oxygen restriction
Oxygen restriction

Oxygen restriction, X-Communication
You me identification, total integration
Love recreation
Oxygen restriction, quiet revolution
Evolution is the prime motion
In our elevation, to the next situation

Oxygen restriction, no simulation
Check it out this is the real deal
The only way to feel
Reject all limitations
Oxygen restriction, slow down
Deceleration, sex-time dilation
Good vibration, all across the nation
Oxygen restriction, oxygen restriction

Oxygen restriction, life celebration
Love accumulation, no distraction
New destination

I think it is what it seems to be. How disappointing, it's a kink I really don't share. ;_;

X-posts, aw, that's almost enough to make me ~want to be Scottish~? ::wipes a tear::

OMG, Daniel Kessler's Brother reviews the Shamen's video compilation and spends the entire review talking about their clothes and haircuts, because that is EXACTLY what I want in a video review. Genius!

This video just got posted to one of my FB groups and is a track (and band) I had completely forgotten about but for the video alone probably fits in this thread

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MdIFKmhM5hg

OMG what is this teletubbies meets Stanley Unwin Ogdens Nut Gone Flake rave ?!?!?!?

OH MY GOD THERE'S A CODPIECE MINE EYES

This is both terrifying and amazing.

Our parents never should have let our generation watch so much of the Magic Roundabout, we were permanently warped by it.

OMG and the reveal at the end - it really was Stanley Unwin all along.

I went and looked up that track at Discogs and apparently there was a Seefeel Remix which is unexpected

Some debate over whether it actually *is* a remix of Petal, or a Seefeel original, but it's kinda cool in a minimal dubby way?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tN5twiu1AMY

(And I actually really seriously hope that the Moksha / Shamen social media stuff is *not* Colin because apparently whoever does it has been following me for years, and now I'm super embarrassed about crushing so hard in public. Sigh.)

I am so so sorry, I know I am being objectifying as hell, please tell me to get me to a crush thread if this has just gone over the limits of acceptable, but this is the cutest that Colin's hair has ever looked:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vltjxj33vM0

BIZARRE to see a brunette Mr C, and the guy in the back whose entire role appears to be plugging and pulling out cables on a sequencer = A++ amazing, I want his job.

I know that his clothes were better during his 'silver pleather trousers and a pile of synths' look but that ponytail just kinda looked like an Essex wide boy who overcharges you for dodgy pills. The wedge haircut was just so classic, slightly Kraftwerk, slightly Postcard-records-indie, just really suited his facial shape and pointy nose.

Matt DC!!! You were right, except it wasn't Glasto, it was TOTP Christmas Special:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RRr8j8Z94Bc

Alice in Wonderland, swing, Mad Hatter, everything.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nzBPt1Y7i8k

D's Mellow Dub of Phorever People is a sunkissed delight! Heard this on a resolutely unsunny day in Montpellier a few years ago.

...the absolute pure giddy JOY of it...

Of all the improbably things I have seen on this thread and in inexplicable psychedelic videos featuring Braveheart wigs and Oiled-Up Dancing Jason Statham, I think the most improbably yet is...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fLT9JH67LKU

The Shamen cursing out hecklers at the Bull and GRATE.

This is not a world I understand. Does not compute, that's like seeing the Pope at your local cornershop.

To think I bothered going to see arena shit like Prince and The Cure that was happening on my doorstep.

It's very Camden 80s I suppose.

That video for Wubble-U is quite a piece of work. I was half expecting to find out some now big bucks director did it but couldn't find out who was responsible. There was an earlier video before they got money from a major but having had a quick look at that it seems unlikely it was made by the same people.

*when that..

Oh, Williampaws

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z3gFSqC0ynE

The really gentle jingle-jangle guitar on the original version of Possible Worlds is really reminding me of one of the tracks on New Order's Technique (especially the way it kind of wends in and out of the 303-bass-solo) but I cannot for the life of me remember which one? (maybe Dream Attack)

There are so many places on the orig mix of En-Tact where I'm like... "did this sample something I know; or did something else I know sample this?"

Coz I'm always like "hey, this is a TGU song" or "hmmm, this is an 808 State song" - but maybe it's not, they just shared members or remixers or something. (Or is it just that I spent too many nights tripping to all these records together, that they have just merged in my memory into one thing.)

((But I swear there is a Transglobal Underground song that uses the *exact* same bassline as Evil Is Even.)

THAT'S A KRAFTWERK SAMPLE YOU FUX0RS!!!! (how did they not get sued into the next galaxy for that?)

You absolute fanboy little fucker (j/k ILU ILU ILU)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pBHvG3zdRXU

https://www.discogs.com/artist/124853-Gobo-Loco

(Did I say Hütteresque somewhere upthread?)

Alice in Wonderland, swing, Mad Hatter, everything.

Also the Jack of Clubs!

I have just finished listening to UV for the first time, and erm... I... erm... I DEMAND TO SPEAK TO THE MANAGER.

(I am so sorry, but I can't seem to stop falling down this particular rabbit hole, in fact I only seem to be falling faster the more I find out, sorry if this is very tedious for any other readers. This is just what happens when a band happens to hit about 20 autistic ~special interests~ all at once.)

So what is the deal with UV? The band went UFO-spotting in the Peruvian Andes, and decided to just go the full Hawkwind? This is genuinely *bonkers* - and I say that with a lot of affection, because I obviously do have a very high degree of tolerance for many kinds of esoteric nonsense from alchemy to Ophites and gnosticism to megalith-hunting, so I find it very charming. But I genuinely cannot tell if a song like "I Do" is them taking the piss out of themselves, or a genuine declaration of belief - or even both at the same time? (Their self-piss-taking is relentless, like I genuinely burst out laughing when Drug Star came on at the end.)

It genuinely feels like a (sympathetic) portrait of a moment - all of that millennial weirdness and woo, UFO-chasing and crystals and Kabbalah. I'm amused by how many of the references I "get". And listening to it, knowing what is just around the corner - like, culturally, it feels like on 1st January 2000 every single person who had formerly been into any kind of esoterica just collectively put down their druid robes and decided to join the Skeptic Movement, debunking anything that smelled like spirituality or religious imagery. (It's interesting, how early Colin Angus was super-super-anti-Christian in a proto-skeptic way - but it seems like he went completely the opposite direction into full-on Neoshamanism? Or did he? Is he dropping Castenada references in the full knowledge of how completely he was debunked and pwned?)

I kind of *want* to read "I Do" as a pisstake, because otherwise the level of appropriation and ick (that rasta accent? my dude, you are from Aberdeen!) is gross. Similar to Drug Star, like "if this is what you think I am, I will dial it up to 11 and play it to the hilt". But the level of knowledge displayed is very much - he's not taking the piss out of something he knows nothing about, this evinces far more than a casual interest in the subject matter.

But that is the kind of trickster imagery they always played with - you simply cannot tell what is joke and is real belief and what is a flight of "what if" imagination because he was really inspired in a creative way by things he saw and read about, and maybe it doesn't matter. I don't think that they were *stupid* - obviously someone doesn't go plugging DNA amino acid sequences into a music sequencer if they have no brains. But... was this for real or just play?

I am puzzled and intrigued.

I've also done some more research, and I'm actually starting to doubt that Oxygen Restriction is really about autoerotic asphyxiation at all, I think it's actually about Pranayama breath control techniques?

On the one hand, stupid tricky hippie making me think he's talking about something sexy and kinda kinky, when he's really just on about *yoga*. (Is there a sexy kind of yoga? I think maybe there is, but I know nothing about yoga.) OTOH, autoerotic asphyxiation is such an absolute hard nope from me, I'm quite relieved there is another potential meaning to that song.

I know it's ridiculous to look for double meanings in what are essentially incredibly silly pop songs, but the more I listen and investigate, so many double-references appear?

Like, I'm seriously trying to imagine their record company's response - after a year of begging "Come on, Col, please - can you stop mucking about botanising in South America long enough to give us another hit. You know, a nice boshing choon with some drug references to make it ~controversial~ enough to sell?"

And they go off and knock out Hempton Manor in 5 days, and the record company are like "Hemp? Is it about drugs again?" and they're like "ha ha ha, no, it's a concept album about all the different technological uses of the cannibis plant in the production of rope, canvas, textiles and paper, ha ha ha ha, drugs ha ha ha."

(I mean, I like this best, being an archaeologist when it comes to music, digging through long-lost fandoms, trying to put these fractured shards back together. But I do wish I'd paid more attention to this at the time, because it seems like it was very funny.)

I'm going to be completely gutted when I find out that Hyperreal isn't about Baudrillard at all, and it's not about climbing, ascending, rising to the ultimate level of the truly free-floating a-semiotic signifier with no relationship to reality at all, and no matter how intensively I do any kind of hermeneutics on the lyrics, they will never get back to truth at all.

This made me laugh, though...

I fell backwards into Baudrillard from Judith Butler: "There is no original or primary gender a drag imitates, but gender is a kind of imitation for which there is no original"

I still haven't worked out on what level "I Do" operates, if it's "This is what I am" or if it's a "this is what you say I am" simulacrum, but these lyrics...

Shamanise I do, fantasise I do
Creatise I do, ritualise I do
Harmonise I do, dowa-eyaya
Extasise I do, dowa-eyaya
Hyperrealise I do, dowa-eyaya
Womanise I do, dowa-eyaya

The tiny breath and a skipped beat he takes before he sings "womanise" introduces the element of irony, like a knowing wink. Is he just singing "womanise" as in yeah, like Mr C chatting up girls during the rave portion of the evening. Or is he singing ::wink:: "womanise" as in that *other* thing that... well, ANY FULE KNO that Shamans can fly - but what's that other really important thing that Shamans and trickster gods are often supposed to be able to do?

...

(He's definitely said he can fly, but has he mastered the shamanic trick of being able to change gender at will? that's what I want to know.)

I am definitely thinking too much about what really are very silly lyrics which should not be thought on so deeply.

I think the band made their feelings towards the label pretty clear when you read the first letter of each track title...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hempton_Manor

Ha ha ha omg they are such anarchic chias elves, I love them even more.

Would have loved to see the record company’s faces even more, too!

What is a chias elf, and I should not post while sleeping, must put something on my phone to stop that.

Botanising, apparently.

https://i.pinimg.com/originals/db/34/08/db3408e72a30f790e83f3fb98353a2aa.jpg

Salvia Hispanica, no less!