Earlier in the week we raved a little bit in honour of the sad passing of Alan Vega of Suicide and followed up with a super good quote about how people ripped his shit. Of course it didn’t take Vega to pass to make us love up on his group – we’d done that before just because..., well just because we love them. In case you didn’t notice.
That old piece didn’t pimp Neneh Cherry’s free jazz take on Suicide’s “Dream Baby Dream” with Norweigian crazy babies 'The Thing' but it should have because that’s dope too. And we skipped that tune as well when we pimped on Neneh so now it should finally get the Guernsey as it's kind of cool -
Which now takes us full circle because although Neneh was a little one, she was part of a Ladbroke Grove squat scene that gave birth to bands like the Slits. You can read about it in a book we loved by ex Slit Viv Albertine. Now that’s a book we love, and you’ll find in it that the Slits talk Neneh’s dad Don’s band out on the road which freaked a lot of people out. Anyway, we digress … but a den mother in that scene whilst Neneh was hanging with Ari Up was Vivien Goldman, best known for her writing for the NME at the time. And her friendship with P.I.L. Vivien made a couple of cool singles at the time which have been collected on this lovely little reissue which you’ll dig if you like your music left and odd and feminist -
Here's the brilliant agit-funk of Launderette from the album, which sounds so good now, it’s a shame she didn’t record more. -
But she did write more and lo-and–behold her tribute to Alan Vega turned up today .. and that’s well worth a read.
So there you go! We've come full circle.
Fuck, you cant say we don’t stick to our guns.
-TH
Bonus pic: