What A Nice Way To Turn 17

Another unpublished piece from the prolific pen of Mr Jeremy Gluck, this time on Suicide's Alan Vega, written in 1988 and intended for issue 7 of the magazine. We've a long in depth piece on Suicide themselves which we'll put up in the next week or so. More electronic protopunk than you'll know what to do with. Rock'n'Roll is over thirty and, as the old saying goes, never trust anyone over thirty. But, on the evidence, maybe the only rock'n'rollers we can trust now are precisely those who have broken through the dreaded Big 3-0. Iggy Pop, Springsteen, Robbie Robertson et al., the old ones who can still vividly remember the roots of the music than won the West. And Alan Vega, as venerable a rocker as his richer musical blood relatives, part of the 2 nd generation to follow Lewis, Berry and Presley out of the trenches. Vega committed Suicide, sometimes still does, but equally his epic contribution has been his four solo albums: “Alan Vega”, “Collisio...

Thurston Moore (Marty Perez "Sonic Youth '88") In 1989, Mute Records put out in America “Collision Time Revisited”, a compilation CD of the very best of Swell Maps. As you'll read below, Thurston Moore had been meant to write sleeve notes for “Train Out Of It” (not...”here”.....) which came out three years earlier in 1986, but failed to meet the deadline. He got it together though in good time for this release. What he actually wrote was somewhat edited before it appeared (almost illegible) on the back cover of the CD. Here's Thurston's original typed notes with the deleted sections circled in pencil by Epic. Left: Unused artwork for unreleased US Swell Maps LP. Right: Poster for March 1980 London gig at the Moonlight. And I've transcribed the text in full as it appeared in Thurston's original........ in the punk rock 70's of nyc the name swell maps made about as much sense to me as blood pudding (still have to figure that shit out...

Woody Guthrie Another frequent contributor to What A Nice Way To Turn Seventeen was Brian Young. In the 70's he played guitar and sang with Belfast's pride and joy, Rudi, and their single "Big Time" in 1978 was the first release on Good Vibrations. Another EP on Good Vibrations and two singles on the Paul Weller funded Jamming label later, in 1983 they'd split. Since then there's been Station Superheaven, The Tigersharks, The Roughnecks and currently The Sabrejets ("Revved Up Rockabilly From Belfast!"). We first met when I interviewed him in 1983 on Rudi's last tour (supporting The Jam) and stayed in touch through the life of WANWTTS when he wrote on Marc Bolan, Johnny Thunders, Prince and this cool introduction to Woody Guthrie which appeared in issue 2 in 1984. Brian Young This Machine Kills Fascists “I hate a song that makes you think you're not any good. I hate a song that makes you think you are born to lose. Bound to lose. No good...

Dennis Duck - Gothenberg, Sweden - November 1986 Photo by Christer Stromberg    Sitting on yet another article all these years, we got hold of its writer, Pat Thomas, to see if he was happy for us to run it. Not only did he comply with our request, he volunteered to update it, making the whole thing that much more valid now that it's some 23 years since it was originally prepared. There's definitely some good folk out there and Pat's one of them. From 1983 to 1987, Pat himself was drummer with Absolute Grey, during which time they released two albums, "Green House" and "What Remains". He rejoined in 1989 for another studio album, "Sand Down The Moon" and a live album "A Journey Through The Past" was also released before the band folded in 1990. A solo album on his own Heyday label, "It's A Long, Long Way To Omaha, Nebraska" came out in 1989 and a number of others followed including, in 1995, "Fresh"...

Not strictly a WANWTTS outtake (not at all one to be honest) here's a strange little article that appeared in the now defunct weekly music magazine Melody Maker on October 31st 1992. Epic didn't get a lot of press in the UK so this was a rare joy, yet you'd read the first 100 or so words and not realise that Paphides is effectively raving about Epic's very first solo album "Rise Above". Peter Paphides went on to be music critic for The Times, a job he resigned from towards the end of 2010, and currently writes for Mojo amongst others. I'm running it as a prelude to the soon to be released 2CD set "Wild Smile", a CD of Epic Soundtracks' best songs and a CD of rare and unreleased songs. This will be on Easy Action Records and should appear in the Spring of 2011. Thanks to Andy Bean for sending me this. Little Big Music Post-punk pioneer with Swell Maps, EPIC SOUNDTRACKS has taken 14 years to release a solo album. It's out now, compl...

Another piece we'd got lined up for the never to appear issue 7 of WANWTTS, and it's the second offering from our good friend Jeremy Gluck. It's 1988, Brian Wilson had just launched his solo career with the release of the eponymous “Brian Wilson” album, and Jeremy Gluck gets to interview him - “without doubt the apex of my journalistic career” - spending several hours in his company. Some of the interview appeared in the Guardian (entitled “Good And Bad Vibrations”), some in Sounds, but there is a whole chunk that hasn't seen the light of day in the subsequent 23 years, until now.                                             Jeremy Gluck Their lengthy dialogue provides plenty of evidence of Brian's confused state of mind and his then almost total dependence on Dr Eugene La...