The enduring appeal of Rema-Rema

WHAT YOU COULD NOT VISUALISE directed by Marco Porsia (Canada, 2022)

It takes a special kind of music obsessive to contemplate making a documentary about an obscure indie band who released just one four-track EP and only played about a dozen live shows. There are no videos or live footage of Rema-Rema. Even in Simon Reynolds’ definitive study of post-punk, ‘Rip It And Start Again’, the English band are only mentioned in passing to say that Marco Pirroni played with them.

Rema-Rema’s ‘Wheel In The Roses’ EP was the first release on the esteemed 4AD label jointly founded by  Ivo Watts-Russell and Peter Kent. On the 4AD website, Watt-Russell describes hearing the band’s demo for the first time as a kind of epiphany: “It was the first point I knew that we were actually doing something serious.”

The distinctive cover shot of African tribesmen was the main reason why many bought the EP in the first place. The sleeve gives no other information other than to list the musicians: Gary Asquith (guitar/vocals), Marco Pirroni (guitar), Mick Allen (bass/vocals), Mark Cox (keyboards) and Dorothy Max Prior (drums).

Rema-Rema were apparently named after a Polish machine manufacturer (don’t ask!) although it’s probable that it was picked because had same catchy resonance as The Kingsmen’s rock standard ‘Louie Louie’.

Turin-born director Marco Porsia (now based in Canada) has already gained the esteem of serious music lovers through his brilliant documentary charting the rise and rise of  Michael Gira and Swans – Where Does A Body End? (2019). It was no coincidence that Swans were playing in Bologna the day after his attendance at the screening of ‘What You Could Not Visualise’ at the city’s Cineteca. (Swans’ drummer Phil Puleo was sitting in front of me in the audience!)  

In the film, guitarist Marco Pirroni is the off-stage villain of the piece. Pirroni left the band abruptly to seek fame and fortune with Adam & The Ants. The remaining four members could not contemplate carrying on without him. Their story could have ended there but in researching this film, Porsia found to his surprise and delight that he was not alone in regarding Rema-Rema’s 1980 EP as a treasured artefact; a kind of holy grail of post-punk.

Haunted by the death of Mark Fisher

Mark Fisher – 11th July 1968 – 13th January 2017

Today is Blue Monday according to the depression experts. Apparently, if you’re going to feel low any time this year, today’s the day.

I never set great store by such notions, more often than not such stories amount to nothing more than clickbait.

But the post festive gloom descended heavily upon me this morning when I woke to the sad and shocking news that music critic and modern culture guru Mark Fisher has passed at the ridiculously young age of 48.

The prettiest stars of Glam Rock

The

SHOCK AND AWE – GLAM ROCK AND ITS LEGACY by Simon Reynolds (Faber & Faber,2016)

“Got your mother in a whirl ‘cos she’s not sure if you’re a boy or a girl” – David Bowie (Rebel Rebel)
“Even the greatest stars live their lives in the looking glass” – Kraftwork (Hall Of Mirrors)
“There’s something in the air of which we will all be aware yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah” – Sweet (Teenage Rampage)
“Whatever happened to the heroes?”- The Stranglers (No More Heroes)

It’s fair to say Glam Rock has never really been taken all that seriously. Being casually dismissed as a joke genre is partly what drove Simon Reynolds to write this impressively weighty tome.

In so doing, he proves that this musical phenomenon deserves to be more than just an amusing footnote in the story of popular music. The author doesn’t claim that all the music tagged as Glam (or Glitter is you’re American) is of a universally high standard yet, even at its most crass and commercial, Reynolds endorses the viewpoint of Noel Coward who once wryly observed : “It’s extraordinary how potent cheap music is”.

2011 IN REVIEW : BOOKS

Cover image of Retromania - my favourite book of 2011.

This was the year when Tory minister Michael Gove pronounced that, from the age of 11 up, we should read at least 50 books a year. I only managed to read about 40 this year – does that make me a dumbass?

These are the best books I read this year, needless to say, not all were published in 2011 and I wrote blog posts about them all:

Best fiction :

A Visit From The Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan

Freedom by Jonathan Franzen

Point Omega by Don DeLillo

One Day by David Nicholls

Winter’s Bone by Daniel Woodrell

The Hunger Games (parts one + two) by Suzanne Collins

THIS RIDICULOUS WEAKNESS FOR LIFE

After Kurt Cobain killed himself a woman wrote to the Guardian, irritated about how so called  ‘slackers’ were represented in the press.

She wrote : “ours is not a generation that won’t do anything. Ours is a generation that has trouble finding anything to do”.

It is 20 years since the album that summed up this state of mind was released. Nevermind is an album that forced to record industry to do a massive reappraisal of what ‘underground rock’ meant given that its massive success was on a par with the ‘overground'(mainstream).

Its iconic status, like that of Nirvana’s intense MTV Unplugged show was doubly assured by Cobain’s suicide. The nostalgia junkies are all over this of course but when I see photos or footage of Cobain, I wish we still had him around rather than this memorabilia.

I wish that Kurt had taken on board these words of Voltaire from ‘Candide’ : “I have wanted to kill myself a hundred times, but somehow I am still in love with life. This ridiculous weakness is perhaps one of our most melancholy propensities; for is there anything more stupid than to be eager to go on carrying a burden which one would gladly throw away? To loathe one’s very being and yet to hold it fast, to fondle the snake that devours us until it has eaten our hearts away”

Related links:
In search of Nirvana – 20 years on (Guardian.Co:Uk)
Why we should let Kurt Cobain rest in peace by Simon Reynolds (Slate.Com)