As I mentioned, signing off yesterday’s blog, I was just off to an industrial estate somewhere in Acton, west London, for what had been described to me as a ‘public rehearsal’ by Carbon/Silicon, the ‘band’ formed by The Clash’s Mick Jones and Tony James, formerly of Generation X and Sigue Sigue Sputnik. I had almost cried off going, but thankfully thought better of what would have been a calamitous decision I would subsequently regretted. It turned out to be a brilliant evening.
IN 1981, IN MILPITAS, California, a 16-year-old boy raped and murdered his girlfriend. Over the next few days, he took friends on trips to see her corpse, left lying by the riverbank.
In the early '80s, energised by hip hop and electro, New Order produced a string of acts for Factory under their short-lived studio moniker Be Music, the results of which were greeted with indifference on these shores. Quite why is hard to fathom since, as Twice As Nice attests, tracks like "Sakura" by Section 25 and "Motherland" by RFATP were taut, bewitching slices of robo-funk that still excite today. The other producers herein (Arthur Baker, Mark Kamins and Donald "Dojo" Johnson of A Certain Ratio) all had their moments, too.
