Sunday, March 15, 2009

THE WORK-THE WORST OF EVERYWHERE, TAPE, 1982, UK



Pungent barbed R.I.O. vitriol thats simultaneously seething with a lust for chaos unleashed by punk and musically advanced/unbounded enough to make ironic play and enact on-the-spot deconstructions of the internal mechanics of the collision, here brought to you by the wing of the U.K. R.I.O. pantheon that seemed more than happy to miscegenate with the post punk scene, in this case, ex-Henry Cow-er Tim Hodgkinson, Bill Gilonis (Officer!, Hat Shoes), Mick Hobbs (Officer!, The Lowest Note On The Organ) and Rick Wilson (The Momes), with periodic interventions from Catherine Jauniaux. The cassette scrapbook/odds 'n' sods pastiche nature of this tape (edited with a hacksaw for maximum jump-cut disorientation) and it's live origins guarantee that The Work's machinations here are even more astringent than those featured on their Live In Japan LP from later in the year, when Homosexuals kingpin Jim Whelton and Chris Cutler would respectively take over the bass and drum seats vacated by Mick Hobbs and Rick Wilson. This is rude and extraordinary art rock malarky, the ramped up aggressiveness and lo-fi immediacy nudging this toward Blurt/Geeks territory on one side and something that oddly enough sounds more like a product of the post-Ruins 90's Japanese hardcore avant prog scene on the other. Thanks to an anonymous blog friend for this treasure!

Get it via Rapidshare here

15 comments:

Anonymous said...

This is an awesome release, one of the BEST of this fabolous band!

I have the cassette, but have no means to rip and convert it to digital format, so thanks a lot for making it available, whosoever did that!

The cassette gives little info about date and places for the actual tracks. Does anyone have anything resembling a "tracklist" or further knowledge of where the different parts of this compilation were recorded?

And, while at it, there were some other Work cassettes released and circulating. Not only the Zürich live from Rec Rec, but also some boots. Hope they can surface!

Cheers!

Anonymous said...

I cannot thank you enough for this ! I was desperatly looking for this one.

For a-g (comment above): an excellent live recording of The Work in 1981 can be found here :

http://www.guitars101.com/forums/f90/the-work-ex-henry-cow-live-this-germany-1981-a-77091.html

or direct link :
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=HJNIRMUO

Don't miss this one

Anonymous said...

Hello,

I have the cassette also. This has a lot of good exciting music on it.

I'm looking for "Live at Zurich". Anyone ?

This is my absolute favourite blog. Thanks for all the great WORK guys!

Dirk

Anonymous said...

Thanx anon for the share! Heard it before. Sound is OK, they've made some pretty good efforts there. There are still some more Work cassettes out, I think. And also the Japan tour tapes might be circulating in some circles, tho very hard to get. Would be great to hear some of that! And, not to forget the Zürich live!

genericPlacebo said...

Another nice scape for us no-wave heads, thnx much again. Now once again I am looking up more and more from all that info...

Udi Koomran said...

a-g said:
"And also the Japan tour tapes might be circulating in some circles, tho very hard to get."

This is one of my alltime favorite live recordings
This was re issued by Ad Hoc Records and re mastered by yours truly (and what a job that was...)

Look here

http://www.adhocrecords.com/samples/HenrysCrabs.mp3

And buy it...

Anonymous said...

Hi Udi, yes I have that one - and yes - I have bought it too - as soon as it was released.

Good job, btw.

But - as I understand it - there should be some other tapes from the Japan tour as well.

Right?

Udi Koomran said...

Good job, btw.

Thanks it was extremly time consuming cause it was remastered from vinyl but I was determined not to use software in order to get rid of all the pops clicks ststic surface noise etc. etc.
Got it done eventually but my neighbors cursed me for scrubbing that audio for days on end

But - as I understand it - there should be some other tapes from the Japan tour as well.

Right?

Mmm... the only other recordings done on this tour as far as I am aware of are Amos's True Tears tape
will check with Chris C.

Anonymous said...

Hi MS , please Help me !!!
I'm looking for NIKI MONO -Contradictions Are A Luxury Lp , I know it's very hard to find , I need help , Have you the link ?
Thanks anyway !!

Anonymous said...

this is great, even better than i remember !
I bought a copy at the Recommended shop in '84 and was going to rip it for you but it got eaten in the process...this spares me the effort of fixing it.

b laner

Anonymous said...

Hi Udi, thanx much for your valuable inputs!

So - it was a vinyl "master" after all! I thought I heard some traces of it, but wasn't sure. It's not that easy to tell! You must have sat with "needle and pins" around the clock to get that done manually.

Back to the Japan tour; did they only do one single gig? "All the way from Tokyo" didn't mean they played there then?

Maybe there was some other side project?

CC will know, if anyone.

And - agreed - this is one of my absolute favourite live albums. Had the old Japan made 45 one time, great sound it was. Even bought a Sony cassette recorder as a result!

Anonymous said...

Good work ...congratulations from Chile.

Udi Koomran said...

acordig to Cutler they did 5 shows and as far as he remembers no other recordings were done

a-g said...

Thx again Udi. Hope a boot may surface of some of the other shows then. I'm quite sure someone made such on at least one of the other occasions.

Anonymous said...

"Hi MS , please Help me !!!
I'm looking for NIKI MONO -Contradictions Are A Luxury Lp"

http://www.mediafire.com/?vnwjmr4xtgo