 Hard to believe that Clinic have now been with Domino for something just short of a decade, in which time we’ve had 5 albums, four EPs and good bakers-dozen or so singles. Not prolific exactly, but not a long, drawn out protracted affair by any means, especially given this Liverpool band’s skill in redefining their sound at every interval and with every outrageous chord-progression. They always were and always will be a twisty turny affair, ostensibly cut from the same garage-rock template that gave us the likes of the Velvet Underground and Sonic Youth, but re-thought and re-crafted with post-punk posturing in mind, lo-fi aesthetics and just a dab of ethereal (and surreal) romance. Like architecture without the morality. Like Gothic without the eyeliner. Like grunge without the gimmicks. Like punk without the pogo-ing. If surf-sound and Phil Spector had arrived just as the last copy of ‘Never Mind The Bollocks’ had slipped from the stacks in Woolworths and just as ‘Tilt’ had begun to take shape in the mind of a young Scott Walker – Clinic are perhaps what they would have sounded like. All of which makes their appearance at 1999’s Walker-endorsed Meltdown festival all the more pertinent.
Justified re-release? Even if you are only half a fan of the band, having a release that pulls together all their deliberately obscure and reckless flights of fancy has to be a bonus, doesn’t it? Eerie, disfigured and available with or without acid-tabs, 'Funf' is a collection of b-sides from the first ten years of Clinic. Roy Orbison was a vampire. Release the bats!  Jerky Versions of the Dream, Howard Devoto’s debut solo album, was released in July 1983 just as the first Ninetendo system was released in Japan, Return of the Jedi opened in the states and the last episode of M*A*S*H tore Hawkeye and Hotlips from the bosom of our cosy, sitcom hearts. It was also the year that U2 released 3rd album ‘War’, Culture Club released Karma Chameleon and the year The Police bored us silly with grating, terminal, marathon single, ‘Every Breath You Take’. But it wasn’t all bad, ‘Orange Juice’s ‘Rip It Up’ scored a hit, so too did REM’s ‘Radio Free Europe’ and if it wasn’t for 1983, we wouldn’t have had This Mortal Coil’s seminal (and ad hoc) ‘It’ll End In Tears’ from 4AD – and which featured, incidentally, Howard Devoto’s perfectly hammy take of Big Star’s magical ‘Holocaust’. Remember Sounds? Well they declared the album ‘a scorcher in the very best Magazine fashion’ (Magazine being the band Devoto fronted shortly after leaving the Buzzcocks). Featuring Magazine members Dave Forumla and Barry Adamson, ‘Jerky Versions of the Dream’ was a pop album – of sorts. On the surface the melodies were upbeat and the music funky, but Devoto was searching, inward looking, sloughing off the past.
Justified re-release? Today, the arrangements seem a little inexpert, a little superficial and a little lacking in focus; the album flirting shamelessly with all the production wizardry and styles preponderant in the studio at the time, sharing the same ignominious fate of Bowie’s ‘Let’s Dance’ and Joe Jackson’s ‘Steppin’ Out’ – full of good intentions yet whoring itself mercilessly to the gimmicks of the time. This special edition re-issue includes the single-only tracks and Devoto’s sessions for John Peel. Without it’s broader and more complex context, the reissue loses something somewhat.  David Bowie - Glass Spider Tour DVD & 2CD Edition. At the time of its conception, many thought the 'Glass Spider' tour offered a fairly unequal measure of style over substance. The tour cost a fortune to produce and became noted for it’s excess. It was also notoriously pretentious. But in the context of England at the time, its presence seems entirely logical. It was a period of excess. Margaret Thatcher had just been elected Prime Minister for a third time, the Zeebrugge Disaster left the ferry flood-doors open on full-on media hysteria, and deranged loner Michael Ryan took the lives of 16 innocent individuals in Hungerford. It was a deranged time, a crazy time, a time balanced by economic euphoria and wanton cruelty. All of which rather niftily sums up the ‘Glass Spider’ tour, rolled out as it was just after the Dow Jones Industrial Average closed above the 2,500 mark for the first time, at 2,510.04. So if you couldn’t take Mohammed to Wall Street, you could at least bring Wall Street to the Entertainment Centre in Sydney. And this is what happened on 7th and 9th of November 1987, when Bowie and his cast of thousands brought this rather nonsensical and overblown concept to the stage. Bonkers, pseudo sci-fi dialogues provided interludes between songs, goofy dancers provided stage dressing and a celebrity-vs-reality concept provided the gags. But at the end of the day it’s still Bowie up there doing his thing and a thoroughly necessary precursor to U2’s equally absurd ‘PopMart’ tour.
Justified re-release? Could any additional re-release by this man ever really be justified? We must have had the whole damn gamut now several times at least and this must be no exception. To it’s credit, it’s not unattractively presented even if the liner notes are shockingly thin on the ground – but then this kind of spectacle really best speaks for itself. In terms of audio, Glass Spider featured both Dolby Digital 5.1 and DTS 5.1 soundtracks and comes supported with two audio CDs recorded live at the Olympic Stadium in Montreal. Dig those electric drums. Not.
Alan Sargeant for Crud Magazine 2007©
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