Along with our other brilliant local group - The Shapes - Swell Maps have always held a special place in my big Punk heart. They came from Solihull - place of my birth - but also had associations with Harbury & Leamington Spa. To an impressionable young lad from a nearby village – these things mean a lot.
Swell Maps were possibly the archetypal bedroom group. They’d been messing around with their collective influences: T-Rex, Mott, Dolls, 13th Floor Elevators, Can, Faust, Soft Machine, Van Der Graaf Generator, Velvet Underground, Stingray, Thunderbirds, Captain Scarlet (blending 60s Garage Punk, Glam, Krautrock - & Gerry Anderson - why not?) – on & off since 1972 - & by the time the Great Punk Rock Explosion went off in 1976 – Swell Maps were probably way more Punky in essence than many silver surfers of that epochal first wave. Just a glance at those pseudonyms says it all: these boys weren’t avoiding dole sniffers – they were taking the piss!
Swell Maps made their vinyl debut in February of 1978 with the utterly clattersome & totally indispensable “Read About Seymour” on their own Rather Records. John Peel battered the record to death on his show, offering the Maps the first of many sessions.
Swell Maps duly spent a busy first 3-months of 1979 ensconced in Johnny Rivers’ Woodbine St Recording Studios in Leamington Spa – www.woodbinestreet.com - bashing out what would eventually become “A Trip To Marineville”. The singles – “Dresden Style” & “Real Shocks” – preceded the LP – in February & June of 1979, respectively.
“A Trip To Marineville” hit the racks in July of 1979. I can still remember arriving home from Discovery Records with my copy – excited at scoring the free 4-track EP nestled enticingly inside the sleeve. The record’s cover itself – designed by Epic Soundtracks - was incendiary: an average family home with flames leaping from the windows & front door – possibly signifying the effect of Punk Rock on the avenues of suburbia – possibly not.
The LP opens with the immortal words - intoned by a disembodied female voice with an American accent: “Say, that’s a Swell Map!” The full-on quartet of “H.S. Art”, “Another Song”, “Vertical Slum” & “Spitfire Parade” duly rattle by in quick succession. The sound is rough arsed Garage Punk with an intravenous injection of ART. “Another Song”, in particular, doffs its cap in the direction of Howard Devoto’s Buzzcocks. If there were two polar opposites at the heart of Punk Rock – Captain Sensible’s working class warrior faction - & Howard Devoto’s outsider art school brigade – there’s little doubt that Swell Maps had all 12-feet firmly in the latter camp.
With the listener safely lulled into a false sense of Punk Rock security, “Harmony In Your Bathroom” begins to weird things up a tad with a darkly humorous tale of parental control, a manically stabbing single piano note courtesy of Epic Soundtracks - & the sound of it all going down the drain at the song’s close. “Don’t Throw Ashtrays At Me” features Epic’s piano dusting off the kind ghostly melody he may well have entertained his nearest & dearest with for years while the rest of the Maps chatter & clatter – evoking “The Fuast Tapes” & Can’s “E.F.S”.
“Midget Submarines” rattles along dressed in the kind of perverse percussive clatter that would have been confronted with the words: “you’re not going out dressed like that” – as it left the studio - before dissolving into the rash of feedback that is “Bridge Head (pt9)”.
“Full Moon In My Pocket”/”BLAM!”/”Full Moon Reprise” is a tour de force – a 3-song Krautrock suite spread over 6 minutes 22 seconds – that (in places) appears to poke fun at Johnny Rotten & his cohorts for their failings. “Gunboats” is another spectacular success – at the height of the passion -fuelled fashion for brevity – 8:25 was decidedly un-Punk. Powered by Jowe’s genius bass line - & featuring some marvellous incidental balloon abuse – “Gunboats” builds to a crescendo before descending into chaos. Hypnotising.
“Adventuring Into Basketry” is another long work out – 7:28, to be precise – it starts of as a glorious cacophony before breaking out for the hills with Jowe Head’s bass around the 2-minute mark – helpfully pointing the way out of the Punk Rock cul de sac for Lydon & others.
“A Trip To Marineville” closes with the 44-second “My Little Shops” – a gently strummed croon that advises:
“My little shop’s round the corner – they sell everything from greens to cheese – to clothes to TVs”
The aforementioned bonus EP featured “Loin Of The Surf”, “Doctor At Cake”, “Steven Does” & “Bronze & Baby Shoes” – offering Swell Maps take on everything from the Bonzos to The Residents. Only “Loin Of The Surf” & “Bronze & Baby Shoes” make it onto the Mute CD reissue – alongside the rollicking 13th Floor Elevators stained “Ripped & Torn” & the utterly riff-tastic “International Rescue”.
“A Trip To Marineville” still sounds like the gateway to DIY/Lo-Fi 27-years after its original release. Listening to it today, its no surprise that Swell Maps subsequently became cartographers of note for any future left-field combo scratching around in the barren wasteland betwixt Punk Rock & Roll & Art:
Are you intent on making it?
Maybe even faking it?
The you’ll see the real me
Then you’ll see what we can do
Hope some day we’ll get it down
And make the talking linger on
Hoping it’ll lead us there
Then you’ll see what we can do
Do you believe in art? X 3
If you can see right through the chance
And never take the fun away
Keep on walking to the end
Then you’ll see what we can do
Do you believe in art? X 3
H.S. art (Sudden)
Jean Encoule – tMx 26 – 09/06
http://www.trakmarx.com/2006_04/10_swell_map.htm
