Do Easy - The 35th Release (1985) C60

So I'd started at Maidstone College of Art and had already been insulted by Traci Emin. I'd successfully gained entrance to a nude female lady of the opposite sex, at the same time pissing off my oldest friend who had been labouring under the illusion of her being his bird - as described in more detail here; and then in a display of irony so massive that interstellar travellers could have settled on it and started a new life, she'd dumped me for some fanzine bloke. I wasn't a happy bunny by any description of the term. Worse still I seemed to have mislaid what I regarded as my musical mojo. The tapes had dried up. I'd recorded a few things but the complete change of surroundings combined with my discovering pubs had proven confusing. Additionally, I think I may have begun to realise that my Do Easy material wasn't as amazing as I had originally thought, so I had grown frustrated with my inability to produce anything which still sounded all right the next day. Partially this was because since The Fourteenth Metal Tape and the er... singles, I'd put out a compilation, was working on a follow-up, and had also released tapes by Opera For Infantry, Trilogy, Sin, Acrobatic Champions, and Adventures of Twizzle, all of which even I could tell made my own stuff sound amateurish and poorly realised.

Anyway, by 1985 I had vaguely enough new material for a full C60, and this was it. The live recording from 1984 was mostly improvised by myself with Henry Probert and Dave Browning of the Shining, and improves substantially once I've got the pound-shop William Bennett out of my system. Dave and Henry came over to my house in Shipston the week before and we'd worked something out together, and it ended up sounding like this. The remaining tracks are a mix of things recorded as soundtrack material - a fuller account of which can be found here - and generally disappointing attempts to recapture the Do Easy magic of yesteryear. I was miserable, but not very good at articulating it without sounding ridiculous - although I still quite like What's the Fucking Point?

This ended up being the last Do Easy tape I released, the last for which I did a cover and which I sold to anyone through the post. I continued to record music as Do Easy, particularly when in the second year of the course I was granted access to the college sound studio, and although I always intended to sell tapes of that stuff, I'd stopped caring about the tape label by that point and never bothered.

This one's some way short of a masterpiece, so download at your peril. The one thing in its favour is that it almost certainly sounds worse to me than it will to anyone else. 

Download the full hour of unrelenting misery by clicking on this link.

Tracks:
1 - Green Dragon, Stratford-upon-Avon 6/8/84
2 - Nowhere Nuthin' Fuck Up '86
3 - Project
4 - Pagan Filth
5 - All in the Mind
6 - Within These Walls
7 - What's the Fucking Point?

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Do Easy - Death in a Milan Square (1984) C60

Death in a Milan Square was my live album, as distributed by Anal Probe Tapes - the label set up by Trev and Dap of Opera For Infantry who eventually became the Grey Wolves. I'd released their Hopscotch and Scumworld tapes on my label, and Trev kept asking if I had anything he could release (or at least he mentioned it a couple of times, just in case it sounds like I'm trying to give the impression of my being some kind of hot property). I sent him this cassette of two live performances because it seemed more like the sort of thing he would be into adding to his catalogue. The material was fairly noisy - unusual for me as I spent at least some of 1984 apparently trying to sound like Haircut 100. Trev came up with the title and the cover in reference to my interest in Mussolini and Fascist Italy, which had come from my interest in Futurism and was - seeing as it apparently needs spelling out - largely historical with just a pinch of pleasure taken in upsetting people, and also the fact that I find bald, fat men fairly amusing, especially when they're angry.

The live performances were both held in the afternoon in the sculpture studio at the Mid Warwickshire College of Further Education, Leamington Spa, because I was on the art foundation course at the time. I'd done a couple of performances back in November, 1983, basically just abusing the audience and calling it performance art. This was an attempt to do something similar with a vaguely more musical element, or at least something I might be able to get away with doing in a pub before a paying audience.

The first set was on Thursday the 28th of June, 1984 and featured Jez Diston on guitar, with Graham Pierce and Stephen Webb of the Pre-War Busconductors on fashionable metal percussion. The shouting, electronics, and tapes were all down to me, except I was too pissed to really get anything together - having medicated my pre-gig nerves with a lake of lager down the Star & Garter. I borrowed an amplifier from Jon Hunt of the Ideal Husbands which I think I somehow managed to blow during the proceedings, which was a bit embarrassing, but only for me as I think most of the audience fucked off after the first five minutes.

The second set - performed because the first had failed to resemble the power electronics tour de force I had hoped it might be - was on Monday the 2nd of July, again with Jez on guitar, but with Dave Browning and Jim something-or-other of the Shining pounding the scrap metal. My diary commemorates the occasion thusly:

I spent the morning setting up all the equipment, then got some booze at dinnertime. Jez arrived after that and we had a sort of rehearsal and got drunk. At three we put on another Do Easy live performance, which seemed to go well and was enjoyed by all. We had some great percussion from Dave Browning and the other guy out of the Shining. I borrowed an amplifier and delay pedal from Dave Hirons. I am very pleased with the results and feel a bit randy.

No, I don't know, although there was probably a good reason given that I was eighteen at the time.

Both of these sets were captured on VHS video by Tim Griffiths - who can be heard asking Alan Partridge style questions at the end - and the sound was taken from the video recording. The videos still exist, but aren't that interesting even to me, and I can't be arsed to pay a million dollars to have them converted to a YouTube friendly format. Trev's cover suggests sets comprising individual tracks, following my admittedly vague plan for how each set should progress prior to performance, but it all sort of went out of the window in recording, so each set has been digitised as a single long track - also, the original C60 release chopped off the end of the first set which it then continued on side two, so I've stitched its tail back on, so to speak. The final track is Trev trying to flog other tapes from his label just like that Victor Kiam with his razors, and is included here as a snapshot of the time.

We did it all again on Saturday the 15th of September at Amesbury Sports Centre supporting the Subhumans and Opera For Infantry.

I seem to recall playing more or less the same set, but getting it right. I also seem to recall Jez being there except he isn't mentioned in my diary, which states:

Today I started off depressed for no reason I know of. At one point I was in tears but I still don't know why. Me, Grez and Anders went to Amesbury and met Opera For Infantry and their pals, that is Trev, Dap, Charlie and others. Then we played live at the Sports Centre. We also met the Subhumans and a lot of nice punks, one of whom gave me a go on his joint and said my set wasn't too bad. The Subhumans were good people, especially Trotsky and the guitarist whom I also spoke to, and Dick as well. Opera For Infantry were really good live. It was a really good day.

I'm pretty sure Charlie - whoever he was - handled the guitar for me. I'm not sure what Grez or Anders did but I suspect they were concentrating mainly on their drinking. Unfortunately no tape exists of this performance, so let's just assume it was fucking amazing, unlike the shite you've probably just downloaded. Winky face. Winky face.

Download the tape and cover by clicking on this link.

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The Shining - Green Dragon 2/8/84 (1984) C40

I don't really know much about this lot, but they were a local Stratford-upon-Avon band whom I saw live a couple of times. The line up at the time of this gig was Penny Green (vocals), Dave Browning (guitar), Henry Probert (bass), Jackie Lowe (sax), and I'm pretty sure the drummer was called Jim. Apparently they changed their name quite a few times and had previously been known as That Statue Moved after a song by Slow Children. Anyway, my diary first acknowledges their existence as the Shining in an entry dated to Friday the 30th December, 1983 as follows:
 

Sarah and Penny, who is also in a band called the Shining, came over to do some recording. Jez came over too a bit later. We watched Grez's Agfa video tape of various pop videos. The Devo one was great. Sarah and Penny did their track. I like Sarah. She is really sweet, and not one of those Bauhaus types at all. The same goes for Penny.

Yup. I fancied my best buddy's girlfriend something rotten, and it all ended in a terrible mess, none of which really relates to the Shining whose activities were next recorded in my diary on Tuesday 3rd April, 1984: 

I went to see The Fab Eight, The Shining, and Trees Kill Two at the Green Dragon with Jez, Eggy and the delightful Sarah. What a nice lass she is. I also saw Martin, Andrew Bird and some others, and I might have joined a band. I'm not sure. Glenn Wallis phoned while I was out at the gig. The Shining were great by the way.

I've a feeling the Fab Eight were some sort of conceptual side project involving Henry Probert, Dave Browning and six cabbages arranged around a microphone like backing singers. You probably had to be there, and I was, but I can't really remember what happened. Anyway, on to Saturday 12th May 1984...

Today I had a letter from Maidstone: I'm in! I also had post from Gordon Leitch and also from Doublevision who want to see my video work! Later I went to see the Shining and the Fab Eight at the Green Dragon, which was ace. Jez, Martin, Jane, Grez, Louie, Eggy and Sarah were also there. I sold Sarah a copy of Five Track Compact Cassette. I will be supporting the next time the Shining play live. The Shining are fucking good.

Yeah. It was all happening for me, apparently. Five Track Compact Cassette was a tape by Do Easy, the name under which I had been recording vaguely underwhelming experimental music for about a year, and by this point I was beginning to think about the possibility of gigs. Word of this got back to Dave and Henry of the Shining who promptly offered to help out, and thus, following something you wouldn't quite call a rehearsal at my house, aided in my vaguely improvising some sort of noisy efforts, initially at college in Leamington Spa - no Henry, but with Jim banging bits of washing machine (yer trendy metal percussion at least beating sodding Depeche Toad to the party, if admittedly no-one else); and with Jez playing guitar because I hadn't yet pissed on my chips by entering his girlfriend.

This was Monday the 2nd of July, 1984. Jim is wearing the plaid shirt as Dave bashes something powerfully and Jez rocks out on the right. Those paintings of life size cut-out figures in the background are by my famous friend Jason Pierce of Spacemen 3 and later Spiritualized. He was on my art foundation course, at my college, and he wasn't at your college, therefore nyer. One day he said to me, 'I would like to form a band, but I don't have any inspiration. What would you recommend, Lawrence Burton, my close personal friend and mentor?'

'Have you tried that skag?" I quipped.

He seemed thoughtful. 'I'll look into it, but I can't very well form a famous pop band without a name - that's my other problem.'

'How about Spacemen 3,' I suggested, smiling beatifically.

That's how it happened, or would have done except I didn't know the guy and apparently he was asleep for most of the year. Henry, Dave, and Jez - but no Jim - augmented my pitiful Genesis P. Orridge impersonations at another Do Easy performance, this time at the Green Dragon on Monday the 6th of August, 1984, the recording of which will probably be digitised and posted on this blog when I really start to run low on decent stuff. This was, I suppose, a sort of postscript to Thursday the 2nd of August, 1984:

Today was the usual shit except that I saw the Shining supported by the shitty Magus weak disco. The only good records they played were Killing Joke's Eighties and the first Public Image Limited single, and it kind of spoiled the night. It was the last Shining gig, which is a great pity. I saw Jez, Grez and Sarah - who cheered me up with a letter. I hate cult weirdos.

I think this last reference, along with the one to Bauhaus types made earlier, comes from a general dislike of fashion victims, this being before anyone had coined the term goth. The Shining would probably have been described as goth had they endured, but at the time I never really thought they required whatever descriptions were available - either post-punk or positive punk or whatever it was that month. They reminded me a little of a couple of bands I already liked, notably Siouxsie & the Banshees, yet had something of their own thing going on, particularly with that wonderful saxomaphone, and I still think the lyrics were great. I'm guessing this tape was from the last gig. For some reason I never bothered to write the date on the cassette inlay card, but I probably wouldn't have thought to tape the first one I saw back in April, not having any idea what they sounded like, and the first thing you tend to notice about any cassette recording made in the presence of Eggy is the aforementioned presence of Eggy gurgling and squeaking away next to the microphone, so I doubt it was the May gig.

Thanks to Penny for this pic...

Anyway, I've derived much pleasure from this recording over the years, not least whilst drunk and melodramatically inclined; and it's been a very pleasant surprise to revisit this thing and to realise what great quality the recording was; so er... you've probably never heard of them, and none of this will mean anything, but this be some good shit. Enjoy.

...and also this one.

Download the eight tracks by clicking on this link.

Tracks:
1 - The Back Room
2 - Twentieth Century
3 - Infatuation
4 - Embarrassment
5 - My Cindy Doll is a Transvestite
6 - Whispering Blades
7 - Oubliette
8 - The Girl

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