Gigantic: The Story of Young
Marble Giants Meet Young Marble Giants. A band who, at the turn of the decade, made some remarkable music with little to show for it. Not a terminal cult a la Joy Division, barely a footnote in the course of post-punk culture. Just a handful of records. Part of this obscurity might be due to the paucity of their recorded output. The entire YMG discography stands at one album, a couple of singles, and two tracks on a barely-distributed compilation album. But there was also the band members' ambivalence toward the recording industry, and their attitude that the project was only temporary anyway. They were fond of pointing out in interviews that the band could conceivably break up after a few months. You could hear it in the music, even. "Include Me Out" might seem to be about 1960s free love vs. 1980s materialism, but Alison Statton intones the chorus ("include me out, don't label me, oh no") in such a blasé manner that she might as well be talking about the band itself. You could read the same messages into the paradoxical lyrics of "Credit In The Straight World," something they weren't likely to achieve. This was not music for a mass audience, not even by punk standards. Then again, it might be that very sense of mystery and anonymity that made YMG what they were to me. On a whim, I discovered their album, Colossal Youth, in my mid-teens. It slowly became the best record I had ever heard, and still stands as such today. It also opened the door for much of the music I enjoyed since then. (It was my second independent-label record ever, right after the Dead Kennedys' Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables.) And the handful of people I've met who have heard them felt roughly the same way, albeit a little less intense about it. Hence this article. Young Marble Giants were TOO GOOD to just get buried underneath a mountain of rock history. So read. And then hear. ______________________________ YMG The roots of Young Marble Giants lie in the late 1970s in Cardiff, Wales, a place described by guitarist Stuart Moxham as full of "tremendous apathy. We were desperate to break out, but when you've lived there your whole life it seems impossible to do." Stuart learned to play guitar, inspired by a friend who could "play about four chords." So did his brother Philip, who later switched to bass. Meanwhile, Alison Statton sang in various basement bands with school friends. The three of them ended up in a band called True Wheel, which eventually metamorphosed into Young Marble Giants. The name comes from a book on classical sculpture, a "colossal statue of a youth" displayed at the Athens National Museum. The text is reprinted on the back of the "Final Day" single:
The three Giants started playing in Cardiff to general apathy. Their mainstay was a pub called the Grass Roots, a coffee bar perfect for kids too young to go to pubs. Not that this setup boosted attendance; YMG first played there to one person. The next time, attendance was up to seven. "Most of them would walk out because our music just wasn't fashionable," Stuart told NME. "People didn't know what to make of us." Eventually they recorded their live set on tape, hoping to give potential showgoers an idea of what to expect and to gain an audience. But their first real exposure came with Is The War Over? A Cardiff Compilation, an album of local groups put out by some area musicians. After years of listening to their later Rough Trade material, YMG's two contributions seem decidedly rough and demo-like, the drum machine much more to the forefront. "Ode to Booker T" is similar in many ways to Stuart Moxham's solo projects, especially the Gist; the melody is relaxed, with prominent keyboards. An early version of "Searching for Mr. Right" also appears, sloppier and less self-assured than what was to follow. A copy of Is The War Over? found its way to the Rough Trade offices, and the band was offered a contract. "We were amazed at their attitude," they admitted to NME. We were so desperate that we would have signed anything. All their other bands were so avant-garde, and we seemed really melodic -- almost old-fashioned -- in comparison." They recorded Colossal Youth in four days late in 1979 at Foel Studios in North Wales using their usual setup: guitar, bass, occasional keyboards, an almost subliminal rhythm box, with Alison's vocals hovering above. The only overdubs are a slide guitar on one track and a static-ridden voice on another. Colossal Youth was released in February 1980 to nearly uniform rave reviews, although certainly not of the same magnitude that others were receiving at the time. The press portrayed them (half-correctly) as three naive, innocent Welsh who'd made an album unlike anything before. One night, I played Colossal Youth's entire first side on my radio show. A listener who had never heard them before likened the atmosphere they conjured up to that of a frail, shy girl singing to herself on a darkened stage. Certainly there is an omnipresent darkness surrounding the album, enveloping it in an almost unreal shroud. The cover is all black, save for three moody faces and a stark, primitive logo seemingly taken from a cave wall. It's a perfect representation of the music inside: minimalist, powerful, subtly melodic. The 15 songs blend together at first; it's only upon repeated listenings that each song takes on a life of its own, still connected to the whole. The rhythm box fades in, and a superior version of "Searching for Mr. Right" begins the album, What starts out as a simple rhyme of longing quickly becomes something more abstract: "I lie awake tonight/Lose you against the light." "Include Me Out" follows, the drum machine taking on the odd tone of a rubber ball being bounced in an echo chamber. The guitar is punchy, nearly garage-like, and the slide guitar solo, as brief as it is startling, cuts through the song like a razor. The instrumental "The Taxi" is nearly all organ, save for a fleeting, static-ridden message near the end. It's probably supposed to be the voice of a dispatcher, but it comes across more like a long-lost voice on a shortwave radio, spookily so. In "Eating Noddemix," the bass is loping, the guitar and drum machine staccato. Alison vacillates between two contrasting images: a girl at home painting her nails, and a horrible car crash, reporters swarming to the scene to photograph the mangled remains. The contrast is terrifying, and the matter-of-fact vocals make it all the more so. Suddenly Alison breaks into spoken word, ending with "...OK, that's all for now." And the song ends. "Constantly Changing" is just guitar and bass, fast and tensed, the vocals high and (again) indecipherable. This tension is finally relaxed with "N.I.T.A." Here the organ is almost church-like in its clarity, a warn rush of sound. Once again, the words start as one thing and end up quite another; first lost love, and eventually "...nature intended the abstract for you and me." Finally the title track. Side 1 is the more tense, edgy (in short, more punk) side. Side 2 is more relaxed, although its opener "Music For Evenings" is among the most pulsating of anything here. They seem to be railing against the world in general and the music business in particular. Alison repeats the last verse twice as if to make the point clear:
"Choci Loni" is voodoo-like in its rhythm, while "Wurlitzer Jukebox!" is another rock-oriented cut, the lyrics paranoid ("fingers are pointed in my direction"). By side's end, Alison is left mourning lost love, pondering a "Brand-New-Life" that's more peaceful but somehow bleaker than what went before. Finally "Wind In The Rigging," a lullaby-like instrumental whose soothing melody is undercut by a portentous background hiss and an abrupt ending. WPRB-FM used to sign off its program day with "Wind In The Rigging." The effect was terrifying. ___________________________________________ Things picked up quickly for Young Marble Giants after Colossal Youth's release. They toured Europe and came to came to America for a few select shows in New York City, Hoboken and California. Apparently their Hoboken performance was fraught with technical difficulties; according to some testimonies, they forgot that the electrical current is different in America, hence the drum machine malfunctioned. New York Rocker panned their San Francisco concert; "I didn't like folk music in the 1960s and I don't like it now, even if it comes with rhythm boxes and skinheads." Not that YMG were consummate performers. You didn't go to their shows to watch people play guitar with their teeth or sign autographs in midsong. They were a lot more composed and austere than that. Bored, some said. The band never denied it: "Everyone's said that and we know it...we're actually shit scared onstage. But what can we do? You can't even dance to our music." Alison described a London performance to the UK press: "I think they expected something. I don't know who felt more awkward -- us or the audience. People thought we were being laid back, but we were just shy and nervous, concentrating on what we were doing. Paranoid." By late spring of 1980, the band had released another record, this time a four-song single which included a live version of "Colossal Youth," and two songs, "Cakewalking" and "Radio Silents," which would have fit in nicely on Colossal Youth. But the centerpiece was clearly "Final Day," one of the spookiest songs I have ever heard and perhaps one of the best songs to come out of post-1976 pop music. "Final Day" seems to be about nuclear apocalypse, and covers the horror and finality of the subject better in 90 seconds than a thousand Crass or Dead Kennedys rants on the subject; indeed the song sounds like it was conceived after some sort of holocaust. An ominous tea-kettle siren fades up, then tense, quiet guitars, and Alison's characteristically plaintive vocal: "when the light goes out on the final day, we will all be gone, having had our say." An achingly simple guitar solo. Peace outside. And its over. During the autumn of 1980, before their American shows, the band got together to write some new songs. However, Alison was ill for awhile," according to Stuart in New York Rocker, so the Moxham brothers recorded some instrumentals to pass the time. The result was Testcard EP, released in the beginning of 1981. Testcard EP was meant to be an experiment, a re-creation of the background music heard on British television. "We think it's great," they told the NME. "Any kind of ambient music just isn't listened to seriously but it has its own merits." They're not talking about "The Syncopated Clack," either. The EP is fun to listen to, a form of hip Muzak that goes well on answering machine tapes and the like. It's easy to visualize "Posed By Models" and "This Way" as full band numbers. But without Alison's trademark vocals and the other traits that characterized the group's work to that point, it seems now like a missing link between "Final Day' and Stuart's solo projects. It sure feels like a swansong effort, right down to the acknowledgements: Thanks to all who made the Young Marbles Giant." And in fact, the band did break up not too long afterward. They always said the band wouldn't last forever, and it didn't after all. ----------------------------------------- Solo Projects Weekend took on a decidedly swing-pop-bebop sound, predating similar efforts by Working Week, Everything But The Girl, Style Council and the like. (Members of Weekend, in fact, went on to EBTG and Working Week.) Their first two singles, "The View From Her Room" and "Past Meets Present," were both in this vein, one that could have been rendered fey and contrived if not for Alison's clear vocals and the band's debt to modern pop music (and punk), off of which were balanced with just enough understatement and eloquence to make this work. Their only full-length LP, La Variete, took this approach in various directions, from straight jazz instrumentals to rock-oriented cuts. The jazz improvs are the most aimless cuts on the album, but the rest is fine. "Drumbeat for Baby" uses a straight rock progression with hints of jazz; "Women's Eyes" is a joyous, fiddle-driven romp. Three slow, portentous songs on side two may be the highlights of the entire disc. "Sleepy Theory" portrays a nightmare in vivid detail, with mournful strings detailing fright and paranoia. "Nostalgia" is even more harrowing, with Alison taking on the bitterest, most mature vocal of her career; it's enough to make your heart stop. Overall, a very good record; unfortunately, they retreated almost entirely to cocktail-jazz textures for their final release, 1983's Live at Ronnie Scott's. The band does a few songs from La Variete and some chestnuts, but everyone sounds so tentative that it just doesn't work. Whether it was a one-off project or the way they would have progressed, it seems a bit anti-climactic for an ending. The Gist, meanwhile, continued as a group of musicians revolving around Stuart Moxham. Their first single, "This Is Love," seemed a continuation of YMG melodically, but the arrangements were a lot more conventional. They recorded two more singles, "Love at First Sight" and "Fool for a Valentine," and one album, Embrace the Herd, all in 1982. Embrace included contributions from members of Essential Logic, Swell Maps and other ex-YMGers, among others. It's an uneven disc; much of it is just Stuart messing around with half-finished song fragments, while others are bogged down in weak vocals and half-thought-out arrangements. But when it's good, it's good. "Dark Shots" makes use of heavy percussion and inventive time signatures, while "Public Girls" is quite catchy in an appealingly low-budget way (nice vocal from cover artist Wendy Smith, too). "Clean Bridges" might as well be a Young Marble Giants reunion; Alison sings harmonies, Philip plays bass, and Dave Dearneley shows up as wall. Stately, uplifting and strangely beautiful, "Clean Bridges" is not only the LP's high point, but possibly the highlight of all post-Young Marble Giants solo projects. This, effectively, is the end of the story. Philip played with Everything But the Girl for a short time; that's his bass on the "Native Land" single. Since then, each has kept to themselves in relative obscurity. Apparently, they are still playing music amongst themselves, according to Alan Korn's piece a little further down. Considering the spate of punk rock reunions over the past few years, it's not entirely out of the question that they could return one day, but maybe that's more wishful thinking than anything else. In the meantime, YMG's sense of minimalism and unadorned dynamics can be heard in a vary few strains of modern music. There's the descending guitar and insistent bass line that permeates Spiral Jetty's "Big Downhill Racing:" the low-tech, less-is-more approach of Beat Happening and the rest of the K Cassette International Pop Underground (as epitomized by the Cannanes, Go Team, Mecca Normal at al); Hugo Largo's drumless setup (albeit used for a much more orchestral effect than YMG ever did). They were an influence, although a minor one. There isn't really much more to be said except: search out these records. Colossal Youth and La Variete have been re-released on Base Record as imports, and Embrace the Herd has also bean reissued on import, this time by Celluloid. The albums are still available for anyone willing to look around a bit; and it's a search well rewarded, for once you enter the world contained in Young Marble Giants' music, it's almost hard to go back. -------------------------------------- Since I finished this article, Alan sent me a tape of some unreleased YMG solo stuff in exchange for some spare limbs that I really didn't need (hey, only need two fingers to type, right?), and so I have a few more things to say. First of all, there's the Ronnie Scott's show from which Weekend culled their live EP. I stand by my earlier assessment of the EP tracks, but there are places here where the expanded, jazzy texture really works, in addition to some raw moments (a spectacular "Woman's Eyes" and "Summerdays") that make me wish I was there on March 20, 1983. The set list: Weekend Stroll/Midnight Slows/Past Meets Present/Nostalgia/Woman's Eyes/The View From Her Room/Carnival Headache/A Life In The Day Of/Leaves of Spring/Where Flamingos Fly/Winter Moon/Weekend Off/encore: Summerdays. The band included Alison Statton, Philip Moxham on bass, Dawson Miller on percussion, Roy Dodds on drums, Spike on guitar, saxophonist Larry Stabbins, pianist Keith Tippett. Now, about the Stuart Moxham unreleased demo tracks: I didn't have time to check the dates, but they seem to have been recorded fairly recently. Most of the six songs follow more in the pop motif of, say, "This Is Love" or "Public Girls" as opposed to the Gist's more experimental stuff, with Stuart's trademark breathy, melancholy voice and choppy guitar a constant through these songs of love and desire. "Being True" has a neat garagey melody that makes it a standout, but all the songs are good, from the acoustic "I Wish" to the heavily electronic "That's My Love." Gotta say that listening to these tracks makes me even more anxious for the individual Young Marble Giants to come out of whatever hibernation they've been in and start releasing some music, or even play live. If I had Bill Graham's or Don King's finances, I'd be in negotiations and renting out concert halls right now. Music this unadorned and direct is hard to find these days. ---------------------------------------------------- YMG testimonies by Adam Potkay This is what I mean. The Gang of Four represented the last serious attempt to give rock music a public voice. Rock music, traditionally, has been addressed to some fairly well-delineated social group -- teenagers in love, greasers, hippies, punks, etc. But in the late 1970s, when all those broad-based audiences were dead or dying, the GOF tried to address us all (lyrically, at least) as a larger group: members of commercial society. Their songs, while being eggheadedly nasty rather than preachy, addressed the commodification of the body ("the body is good business"), the corruption of public office ("last thing he'll ever do, act in your interest"), and the will to fascism ("outside the trains don't run on time"). Needless to say, not many of us listened very hard the first time around, and the GOF ended up moaning to a cynical disco beat, "We live as we dream, alone." It took a nation of millions to hold them back. Alternately, the ironically-titled Young Marble Giants (one can hardly imagine a less gigantic-sounding band) represented something totally new: a celebration of totally private experience. Lead singer Alison Statton possessed a quaint sense, from the start, that "we live as we dream, alone," only she wasn't complaining. She took this as a creative premise. In contrast to the GOF, YMG sung about applying for bank loans, eating noddemix, thinking about old boyfriends. In contrast to the GOF's shout and call, Alison Statton just kinda mumbles. She doesn't sing to you. Listening to her sing is like overhearing your sister singing in the shower when she thinks no one is home. Like the early Feelies, YMG have undramatic lyrics (which obliquely reflect their quiet lives), delivered in a talky, uninspired voice, self-effacingly buried in a mix dominated by "quirky" and soulless rhythm. Which isn't to imply that either band is dumb about what they're up to: both the Feelies and YMG carried their alienated premises to high art through sheer nervous sensibility and a deadpan sense of humor. But unfortunately, it's hard to create compelling music from a glorification of tedium -- hence, the YMG spinoff groups, the Gist and Weekend, are more often than not just plain tedious. Though they're never as boring as nine-tenths of all the pop bands who have, wittingly or unwittingly, adhered to the YMG aesthetic (and believe me, Hoboken and Athens alone have produced quite a number of them). In the dawn of the 1980s, Young Marble Giants were, indeed, in ways unforeseeable to them or that Village Voice reviewer, the Next Big Thing. And their disbanded lives are only a logical extension of the choices they made early on: working in small woolen shops or whatever in Wales, unable to believe they once made a record that changed at least a few lives. It was so long ago, and such a private thing. Adam Potkay currently lives in Williamsburg, VA with his wife and son. He is the lead singer and guitarist of New Brunswick, NJ Spiral Jetty, a band that still occasionally regroups. ---------------------------------------------------------- by Alan Korn When Cabaret Voltaire and Young Marble Giants appeared in the Bay Area in Fall 1980, I was fortunate enough to catch two of their three local performances. Unfortunately I don't remember much of the Berkeley Keystone set, as the odd combination of drugs and beer I ingested prior to the show somehow screwed up my long-term memory of the evening. While I was especially appreciative of Young Marble Giants set, a bad case of the swirleys later put me into a frightening mood while Cabaret Voltaire churned out an electro-sludge version of "No Escape." What little I can recall involved how the club took on a dark and foreboding gloom I hadn't noticed during YMG's performance. As is customary in these circumstances, the crowd writhed as one as the pulsating electronic rhythms and washes of white noise carried them (or myself, I could no longer recall) into some whirling, demonic vortex. My face began melting rather rapidly, so I quickly took leave for the air and solitude of the street. In retrospect, the Cabaret Voltaire set made a lot of sense under those conditions, and my appreciation of the evening has only increased with time. Anyway, I swore off Rainier Ale the next morning and caught a ride up the peninsula with another group to see Young Marble Giants, Cabaret Voltaire, and Palo Alto locals the Sleepers (who were headlining the bill). The club was the Keystone Palo Alto, a cavernous dump notable primarily for its poor acoustics and hostile fratboy audiences. The turnout was predictably light, something not uncommon at this club. While I can still recall few specifics, I do know we were enthralled by the YMG set, which was in many ways similar to the Berkeley set. They performed a majority of the tunes off their Colossal Youth album, some stuff off the "Final Day" single along with a couple of tunes I don't recall having heard before. The rhythm box (actually just a primitive cassette deck on a stool) cranked out the basic rhythms off their records. The Moxhams fiddled with the tape deck before and after each tune, sometimes fading out the box, other times ending the tune in sync to the beatbox. With Stuart Moxham alternating between guitar and organ they were able to accurately recreate their recorded. I don't usually consider this an admirable trait, but in this instance it was fascinating to watch. Even a "rockin"' tune like "Include Me Out" displayed a very controlled musical economy. The focal point of the set was naturally Alison's voice, a voice I'm even now deeply in love with. Mostly I remember her impressionist lyrics turning each song into a sweet and fragile haiku, hinting at melancholy and apocalypse. Not many people danced; everyone just stood around kind of slackjawed. I think they were all impressed. Except for the odd (fratboy) heckler or two. After the show, several of us groupie types spoke with Alison and the Moxham brothers. We told the band of their cult following at our college station and we pestered them with questions about their recording career ( 'Ode to Booker T" and "Searching for Mr. Right" on an old compilation entitled Is The War Over? A Cardiff Compilation). Alison mentioned that an EP of instrumental-only tracks (the Testcard EP) was soon to be released, and explained that the reason for the muffled kind of tune on the Rough Trade 45 was due to a mastering error that they decided they liked enough to release. She also told us of her career as a schoolteacher and about the band's trip down the coast to Monterey with the Cabs. We probably embarrassed them with our enthusiasm, but they seemed to enjoy the attention. Anyway, that's my story. I'll finish by saying that Colossal Youth remains one of my favorite records. Hopefully the vague murmurings I sometimes I hear about a reunion will one day come to pass. My friend met Stuart Moxham while in England. She told me she showed up at soundcheck and chatted with him, sez he was impressed that she knew who she was. He copied a demo tape of unreleased stuff) for her, and I think mentioned that the 3 were possibly going to get together again to record a couple of tunes. Alan Korn is an entertainment attorney living in the Bay Area. He has performed in various bands, most notably the Cat Heads, and written about music for various publications. |