Regular - Psychedelic, Dub, Soul Hits, Loops and Sketches (2002) C90

This week I'm FFWDing to my most recent tape by John Jasper, relatively speaking, having noticed that a couple of those between this and the last one I shared seem to be mixes of stuff by John alongside albums by Singers & Players, and I was in a hurry to mow the lawn so I plugged in the computer and set up a tape which looked like it was all John, judging by the cover. As mentioned in previous posts, I have sometimes found it difficult to tell which tapes denoted as being by the Regulars are actually the work of the same and which are John cheekily taping an entire Matt Monro album and passing it off as his own work, and you will notice that the material on this one seems to be of suspiciously high quality - but fuck it, frankly I'm past caring. Whoever recorded this stuff, it's a masterpiece. Anyway, I vaguely recall John telling me he had bought a truly luxurious sampling thingie when he gave me this tape, so I assume these to be the fruits of the same.

 

To recap for anyone who wants to know but is too stupid to work out how one might go about referring to previous blog entries detailing the work of John Jasper, I met John in Chatham about 1987 and we lost touch when I moved a couple of years later, since which our respective orbits have only seldom resulted in our temporarily occupying the same boozer. This one dates from 2002, as you may have noticed. John was staying with his mum in Peckham prior to, if memory serves, moving to Northampton, or north-somewhere. We met for a pint in the pub at 90, Crystal Palace Road back when it actually was a fucking pub. I can't remember what it was called, but Geoff and Don always used to drink in there. Now it's called the Actress, serves pizzas, and Geoff is no longer with us. What a fucking world.

Anyway, that's where I last saw John. He gave me this tape and then once again vanished off the face of the earth, much like the town in Brigadoon. Actually he briefly resurfaced a few years later with a series of truly peculiar video compositions posted on YouTube. One of them was an ultra-rare Sex Pistols song called Romany Arse, which was pretty damn great, but which then vanished again along with its mysterious patron.

Just download the tape and give it a listen. It will make a lot more sense than any of this.

Download all thirty-six tracks and cover by clicking on this link.

Once again there seem to be a lot more tracks on the tape than are listed on the cover, so make of that what you will.

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Regular - Mule City (1992) C90

You may recall the work of John Jasper from Regulation Issue and this other tape. Here's a third one. I can't absolutely swear that these tracks didn't appear in some version on either of the other two tapes I've shared. In fact I can't even guarantee that this is exclusively a tape of John's work given his bewildering form for throwing the occasional piece of thievery into the mix - like the tape which turned out to be Keith LeBlanc's Major Malfunction, which I actually recognised as I'd already taped bits of it from Peel; plus I have a more recent tape which is obviously the first Leftfield album, but who fucking knows? The man was a mystery.

 

Anyway, I'm pretty sure this is all John, excepting a few samples you'll doubtless recognise. When editing I incremented the tracks, giving each one its title according to what John had written on the inlay card, then noticed that it's actually pretty hard to determine what counts as a full track on this tape, plus there are many more discreet pieces of music here than there are titles, so I gave up and assigned everything a number. The title Mule City comes from the first track according to the inlay card, which I've repurposed because it sounds better than John 1992. The scanned inlay card comes with the download so if you want to sit there and go through them, deciding which title refers to what, then please do. I seem to be credited on this tape too, as you may notice, although I have no memory of having been involved in any of these. Of course, maybe it was something from one of those many late nights fucking about with the portastudio at his house in Chatham. I have no idea. While we're here, I don't know who Jeff Smith was or recall any stage during which John had a drummer, but John Page was definitely a real person. I met him and thought he was a bit of a prick. His opening line was how he didn't realise anyone was still wearing shirts with button down collars. I was wearing a shirt with a button down collar at the time so it struck me as a knob-esque remark.

 

Anyway, if you a) enjoyed the other two, or b) have any taste whatsoever, you should also enjoy this one on account of it being fucking fantastic.

 

Madness, genius, fine lines etc.

Download the tape and cover by clicking on this link.

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Regular - Music 1980-1988 (1988) C90

Long term inmates will already have been exposed to the work and existence of John Jasper here, here, here and possibly also here - paragraph nine onwards if you want to cut to the chase. This was one of a number of tapes John ran off for me when I first met him, something to give me an idea of where he was coming from; and, as you will hear, he was coming from somewhere roughly equidistant between PIL's Metal Box and Adrian Sherwood's On-U label, but with enough of his own thing to oblige the rest of us to at least have to work at spotting the influences. John had a weird habit of occasionally mixing his own stuff up with that which had patently been recorded by other people - notably one thing he claimed some friend had sent to him which I almost immediately recognised as Keith LeBlanc's Major Malfunction album. The last time I saw him - late nineties, I think - he passed me a tape of his work with a few tracks sounding suspiciously like something off the Leftfield album. Anyway, I'm reasonably certain this one was all John, excepting that I played the bass on February '88 (the first thing we collaborated on), and the first two tracks of side two were from a Jah Wobble record, which I haven't included here for obvious reasons; and as for recorded live at the Hope & Anchor, sure, John, whatever you say...

Frankly, this guy was funny as fuck and an artistic leviathan where his music was concerned. Had he been able to resist weaving all those weird self-defeating webs of mystery and half truth around his efforts, we might now be buying the 180gsm vinyl reissues of a massive back catalogue rather than hearing it for the first time as a download of a tape that's been sat at the bottom of a cardboard box for the last couple of decades, but never mind. If it weren't for all the bewildering subterfuge, he probably wouldn't have been John.

Download the nineteen tracks and cover by clicking on this link.

Tracks:
1 - A Joke from the Neck
2 - Scratch
3 - Version Yellow I
4 - Version Yellow II
5 - Metal West
6 - Disco (Jerk Off)
7 - Three Cat Juggle
8 - Ground Under Sound
9 - Metro (with Colour)
10 - Shortwave Globetrot
11 - (no title)
12 - February '88
13 - Absence
14 - Into Thin Air
15 - Dry
16 - Collage
17 - Mind Sweeps Back
18 - Rubberneck
19 - A Joke from the Neck II
 
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ESP Kinetic (1985) C15

Neil Campbell sent me Mission, the ESP Kinetic live album on one side of a C90 with a whole load of other stuff on the other side. I've digitised it, but I'm still engaged in the detective work of trying to deduce what the extra tracks are called, so while we're all waiting, here's something else from the same stable. This was a C15 Neil sent me featuring tracks for what would have been my third Do Easy compilation tape. I was going to use Metropoline and the tape would have been called Avanti!, but it never happened and I don't even remember why. I've a feeling I may have given the master to one of the contributors - possibly John Jasper - so he could record his thing directly onto the tape, and I never got it back.

Anyway, this is quite a nice little tape in itself, dating from what I imagine must have been near the end of ESP Kinetic's existence as a band, and which I still think would have made a great 12", but for the fact that no-one would have bought it because they'd spunked away all their pocket money on another unlistenable live Psychic TV album. There's nought so conservative as the avant-garde. Speaking of which, in case I never mentioned it before, I saw ESP Kinetic as one of those bands who sounded how Psychic TV should have sounded but didn't due to the Porridge effect - sharing certain interests with the noise weirdies but not scared of a tune or occasionally sounding happy.

...and finally, Cyril?

Finally, Esther - I should probably mention that this is a tape Neil sent directly to me, presumably a one off with a handmade sleeve - bits of photocopies glued to the front and the track list written in biro. Therefore if you see this tape for sale on eBay, sold by some bloke in Bulgaria mumbling something about how he recorded it off the radio, and if he's selling it for forty bucks, and if you buy it for forty bucks, then that's your tough shit. I mention this only as the fucking clown in question is flogging an old Opera for Infantry tape for about the same, having downloaded it from this blog; and I know this because when I digitised the tape, it came with no track listing so I had to listen to the thing and come up with names for the tracks based on Trev's vocal - and those same titles appear on his expensive collector's item, hopeless wanker.

If this is yourself reading this, oh eBay retailer of my downloads, get a fucking job.

Download the five tracks and cover by clicking on this link.

Tracks:
1 - Metropoline
2 - Integrity
3 - Storekeeper Reward
4 - Absolute Relaxation
5 - Sieve

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Regular - Regulation Issue (1988) C60

Regular was the work of John Jasper, the man behind the Joneses and with whom I worked on the Illyana Rasputin tape. I already wrote plenty about him on the blog entries for those two, so please feel free to have a quick look at them so as to avoid my having to repeat myself. I can wait.

John recorded a ton of this stuff, and due to the general indeterminacy of his character, it wasn't always easy to tell when he'd run me off a copy of his new shit, or whether he'd just nicked a few bits and pieces from obscure On-U label records and failed to mention that they weren't actually by him. Anyway, the point is that he was very prolific, and this was definitely all his own work, and presumably the stuff of which he was most proud judging by the fact that he went down to that place on Rochester High Street which had a colour photocopier, ran off a load of covers, and decided it was an album. As you can probably tell, he was significantly influenced by On-U, Sherwood, Tackhead, Scientist, all of those guys, and for my money he definitely brought something new to the table.

The credits found on the insert were mostly pulled out of John's head, although let's face it, we've all been there with our own imaginary bands. I'm not credited but that's my voice you can hear on A Voice in the East, and also my cheapo Casio sampler which lived around at John's house for about a year. Glenn Wallis of Konstruktivists lived just up the road from John around this time, and I definitely remember them attempting to record something together. The voice on Naked They Go does actually sound a little like Glenn doing one of his characters, but I suspect it's something John took off the radio or another record. Janine, John's girlfriend of the time, can be clearly heard vocalising on Punjabi, but beyond that I've no idea where to draw the line between fantasy and reality. I'm not sure why Regular either - knowing John it was probably some esoteric nod to Reg Varney.

John was the most violently unreliable man on earth, but also a lovely guy and very funny, and I still sort of miss him. More than anything I wish he'd spread a few more of these tapes around, or that someone had chucked a load of money at him and forced him to put out a record; but never mind.

Download the sixteen tracks, cover and insert by clicking on this link.

Tracks:
1 - Mission Impossible (Martial)
2 - Come into the Room
3 - Ghetto Swinger
4 - Touch (dub)
5 - Echo Bass (dub)
6 - A Voice in the East (a Memory)
7 - Naked They Come...
8 - Naked They Go
9 - Touch (Seikh Massacre)
10 - Touchdown
11 - Punjabi (Vaca-Dabi)
12 - Powder Room
13 - Bone Rattle
14 - Swing Low
15 - Likrish Tash
16 - Massacre

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The Dovers - Water Pistol Filled with Beer (1991) C90

This is what rock and roll used to look like, you autotuned assholes.

Here's another Dovers tape, and definitely one of the better ones. All of this stuff was recorded on various portastudios. The first eleven tracks were recorded at Carl's flat in Bermondsey over a long, hot weekend in the late eighties, as I've written on the inlay card. He Writes the Songs through to Do the Frug were apparently recorded at John Jasper's house in Chatham on his portastudio around the same time. The rest were recorded at Carl's flat from winter to spring 1991. The aforementioned inlay card was too boring to be scanned and is thus absent from the download. As I may have mentioned before, whilst these tracks transfer to my own iTunes in the right order, they'll probably download in alphabetical order for you, depending on what you use and how you listen to them, if you listen to them, so I'd advice rearranging them in the correct sequence shown below, not least because a couple of them segue into each other. I'm primarily digitising this shit for my own entertainment, so I'm not going to give them titles like A9 Work That Body! because it offends my pedantic sensibilities. If that's annoying, screw you because it's not like I'm charging anything, unlike Radiohead and Oasis, and what you get is about a million times better than Radiohead or Oasis, so great bolshy yarblockos to thee and thine.

Some of these tracks also appear on the album that never was. The versions on The World of the Dovers are probably mixed a little better, but there's probably not much in it. Carl, as pictured above, handled most of the vocal stylings and programming, and I played guitar and can usually be heard giggling in the background. I'm not sure about the photo, as I think that's Carl from when he was in a group called Churchill's Shoe, possibly, which was before we met.

Download tracks.

Burn to a plurality of CDRs.

Slap in car stereo and drive down to Camber Sands and eat ice creams on a hot day.

Job fucking done.

You're welcome. 

Download the twenty-five tracks by clicking on this link.

Tracks:
1 - The End
2 - Eggs, Beans & Mayonnaise
3 - Blue Moon of Kansas
4 - The Insect
5 - Sentimental Fool
6 - You Were Better When You Were Crap
7 - After a Particularly Uplifting Sermon...
8 - I Am Mr. Bennett
9 - Work That Body!
10 - When the Power Falls
11 - Fly in the Ointment
12 - He Writes the Songs
13 - Worm
14 - Sentimental Fool
15 - Beat Me Black & Blue
16 - Do the Frug
17 - Make My Flesh Crawl
18 - Do You Use Your Brain?
19 - Everybody's Got to Change
20 - Horrible Glam Thing
21 - Surfing On My Mind
22 - State of Pigs
23 - Vale of Tears
24 - John Piss-take
25 - Business Biscuits etc.


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Illyana Rasputin in Pittsburgh (1988) C60

This was myself and John Jasper, the man behind the Joneses, thirty minutes of which can theoretically be found by referring to the index. I had been recording my own stuff under the name Do Easy since about 1982 or thereabouts, the problem with which was - as I began to realise - lack of quality control and the absence of any clear idea of what I was doing. Pieces of music which were obviously rubbish were taped over at source, but unless it was completely shit, I usually stuck it on a cassette in the hope of someone buying it. Additionally there was the problem that my tapes would vary wildly in style and quality from one track to the next. I couldn't decide whether I wanted to be Throbbing Gristle, Soft Cell, Karlheinz Stockhausen, or Leonard Cohen, so it probably all sounded wildly inconsistent. By the time 1988 wheeled around I fancied a fresh go at it with a new name and efforts made to ensure that successive tracks would at least sound like the work of the same person. Illyana Rasputin was a character whom I fancied from the X-Men comics, of which I was reading a ton at the time due to having very little in the way of a sex life. It sounded vaguely exotic and not even remotely industrial, so that was what I went with. This tape was recorded on and off throughout 1988 around at John's house. I and the Village, Pure Finger Point at Earth Scum, In the Ruins of Becelaere, Waterside at 12, Let the Bayonets Speak! and Groove 1889 all came from previous incarnations as Do Easy songs, or at least demos left at varying stages of completion, but half of these compositions are John's doing, and he's the reason I can still listen to any of it without wincing too hard.

The details at which I still wince are entirely mine, and time hasn't healed the wound. Because it was the eighties and I had everything Throbbing Gristle ever recorded (including the ludicrously rare private Death Factory tapes from '76, so nyer nyer nyer all you Johnny-come-lately part-timers) I spent at least some of the time exploring controversial ideas and imagery, just like every other sad fucker with a delay pedal and a copy of that Emlyn Williams book about the moors murderers. Accordingly one of these songs is named after a painting by Adolf Hitler, and another was one of Mussolini's catchphrases, to whom there are a number of additional lyrical references for the sake of flavouring one's Riesling with just a splash of urine for sake of texture. Personally I always saw the referencing of the transgressive as roughly in the tradition of the Surrealists and their like. It honestly never occurred to me that there might actually be genuine Hitler enthusiasts out there strumming acoustic guitars whilst singing about Himmler being a bit like some nice flowers, and getting away with it because industrial music fans are generally as thick as fucking pig shit. When not making daring references to bad 'uns, I was mostly singing about how I hadn't had it off in ages. Why this should have been so is obviously a mystery to me.

It actually took me a couple of years to get around to shoving this tape out under the banner of Runciter Corporation, a name stolen from a Philip K. Dick novel under which I also produced various comics and fanzines. I ran off about fifty or so copies, so far as I can tell, although I'm not sure how many of those I actually sold. The tape was also released by Carl Howard's Audiophile Tapes in the US. I'm not sure how many Carl sold, but from what I can tell by looking at his facebook page, he doesn't appear to own a yacht, so US sales may not even have hit single figures. I probably should have recorded a better tape, I suppose, although for all its innumerable flaws, I've heard worse - even if I do say so myself. I only wish the good bits had been my fault.

Whilst I'm here, I feel I should mention Space Patrol!, Carl Howard's net radio show for which there is a facebook page to be found here, and a dedicated group here. It seems like something worth supporting, so you know what to do.

Download the eleven songs and cover by clicking on this link.

Tracks:
1 - Rorschach Love Song
2 - I and the Village
3 - Sad Fascination February 1988
4 - Pure Finger Point at Earth Scum
5 - In the Ruins of Becelaere
6 - Scavenger
7 - Waterside at 12
8 - Let the Bayonets Speak!
9 - Musik in My Gasmask
10 - Pittsburgh
11 - Groove 1889


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The Joneses - Keeping Up With The Joneses (1989) C30

The Joneses were John Jasper, just one bloke with a portastudio who lived around the corner from me in Chatham, Kent. John was musically prolific, recording his own rhythmic dub material heavily influenced by Adrian Sherwood and the On-U sound under the name Regular. We also collaborated on a cassette recorded as Illyana Rasputin, and then there was all his other stuff - things which just never quite seemed to fit in anywhere else. Foremost amongst this most severely mutated material was one side of a cassette he gave me containing these fourteen tracks. The Joneses were unlike his other imaginary bands, particularly in terms of the raw force of sarcasm utilised during recording - assuming it was sarcasm, because frankly it was sometimes difficult to tell what the hell he was playing at. The Joneses most obviously rips huge streaks of piss out of the Smiths, but also seems to take sideways potshots at Mark E. Smith, the Cocteau Twins, and possibly Alan Bennett. The other side of the tape appeared to be taken up by something called Reg Varney's Mobile Coconut Shy.

John was a lovely guy but a pain in the arse, one of the least reliable, most pathologically flaky people I've ever met. He would lend me tapes of Keith LeBlanc albums and swear blind they had been recorded by a friend of his, some guy who lived in Devon. Then he was going on tour, playing bass with Wolfgang Press - really he was. He would fail to show if you arranged to meet him at the pub, or you would go around to his house and he'd pretend he wasn't home. He seemed, at times, a bit mad, and thus provided some evidence in support of that equation about the thin line dividing madness from genius, as expressed in his music. The Joneses, with all its deliberate mistakes, tape distortion, pointed crash edits, and armpit farting noises is a long way from the Barron Knights tradition of satire, comic send up and note perfect pastiche, so far in fact that it exists more or less on its own terms and as such predates Chris Morris and Blue Jam by nearly a decade.

I don't know how well this stuff will translate. Maybe you had to be there. All I know is that the Joneses still make me cry with laughter a quarter of a century later.

He sometimes likes to lie in his bedroom and remove his trousers,
But sometimes his trousers remove him...

Download the fourteen songs and cover by clicking on this link.

Tracks:
1 - Edwardian Trout Feef
2 - Reg
3 - Tossing and Turning
4 - Bending Down, Naturally
5 - Don't Eat Sausage
6 - Cor - Strewf!
7 - Night-time Biscuit Horror
8 - Walnuts
9 - Horror in the Office
10 - Spoons
11 - I 'Ad a Ake
12 - Ronnie Rowe
13 - Bedtime Cigar Interruption
14 - Fluffy Fluffy Big Pink Man

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