Rest in peace, Damo - your sound carries on, you crazy sound carrier

I love this quote of Damo's on the back cover of 
the memoir published in 2023 - but I'd also like to
slightly disagree. Damo belonged everywhere, and
everywhere he went belonged to him!

Don't worry. I'm not reviving this moribund blog. But not giving it a coup de grace either.

Just have to add at least one more post,  to remind all about that mysterious electric disruptive delightful soul Damo Suzuki who died yesterday aged 74.

When I think of Damo I think first of all the sound he caused to be created and to hum and sing around the planet. His own version of the never-ending tour, the Sound Carrier network - hopping across oceans and continents non-stop more or less since he left Can, 50 plus years ago. 

He met music-makers and sound carriers in big cities, small towns, remote villages, the network kept on swelling and vibrating and humming, and it all somehow seemed to be infused with Damo's cosmic sense of music - whatever music is - and I find it hard to separate that from the smile on his face as he made or listened or contributed to these sounds.

Last time I saw him was at Rough Trade East in London, what three or four years ago: and I curse myself for missing him on many other occasions at easy to reach locations. On that evening, where he was talking about his days on the publication of his sort-of autobiography - titled, in a wry tribute to Mark E Smith - "I Am Damo Suzuki".

MES had of course written a song of the same name, a typically oblique bit of musical fanmail to be found on The Fall lp This Nation's Saving Grace.

Smith had died  the year before, and in a wonderfully strange tribute Damo, visiting Manchester a few months after his demise, met up with the last members of The Fall for a cheeky photo-opportunity: "I Am Mark E Smith". Only because it was Damo and the final iteration of the Salford phenomenon, could they get away with it, knowing MES would have loved it.

This delightful story is one of hundreds told in this marvellous book, which includes loads of autobiographical fragments woven into a series of in-depth interviews wwith some of the hundreds of musician and others he performed with, influenced, loved and in some cases fell out with. His joint author, Paul Woods, does a brilliant job both in the interviews and stitching thr whole thing together to make a very readable book, whether straight through or through infinite dippings-into. 

As well as assembling all those irresistible lists, discographies, and some truly priceless photos. There are also some examples of Damo's weird and cheerful artworks.

Paying tribute to a tribute: Damo Suzuki slips into the gap
 left by the Fall's founder Mark E Smith, who died in Feb 2018,
three months before this photo was taken. Damo is surrounded
by the members of the final iteration of the ever-changing band. 
Photo @ Michelle Heighway, from her documentary about
Damo's Network,  ENERGY following Damo Suzuki's
 Network over 7 years.

If you don't have this book, get a copy asap. It's available at £16.99 from publishers Omnibus Press.

That evening at Rough Trade, when Damo answered questions about his life and work, and also spoke a bit about his illnesses (which had been extremely serious, as described in gruelling detail in the book) turned out to be one of his last appearances in the Uk. 

He had recovered from the cancer which had returned decades after a first bout, but sadly it turned out this remission was only temporary. 

That night you could see he was clearly feeling the reduction in energy that such suffering have on the toughest of souls. But it did not stop him crossing the planet, carrying with him some sort of burning magical musical energy which infected, inspired so many others young, old, every type.

Thanks Damo, we love you still!

I am not Damo Suzuki - but I love this new book about his life and times

Keep forgetting this blog was set up to write about music, mainly.

While it rarely features in these bile-filled posts, music is still what keeps the old git behind microgroove sort-of alive and nearly kicking.

So it was the collision of an event - going to a book launch at Rough Trade East - and reading a brief post on thebluemoment (the blog of top music writer Richard Williams) that led to this latest stream of words.

The book launched was a sort-of biography of the charismatic Damo Suzuki, the Japanese troubador who was swept to early '70s fame after he was spotted busking in Munich by a member of the German band Can.

Anyone who saw Can perform in the years 1970 - 73 will remember Damo as the sprite-like lead-singer man with a curtain of jet-black hair, almost as long as he was tall. His diminutive form concealed the whiplash, electrical energy of a thunderbolt, once he got off on his vocal improvisations against Can's famously propulsive beats.

Half a decade later, after the punk dust had sort of settled, people who dismissed most British prog-rockers as self-indulgent were still referencing Can in hushed tones.

Mark E Smith (RIP), founder of  The Fall, wrote a song called "I Am Damo Suzuki" (after which this book is obviously named). At first I thought the song was a piss-take of a longhair, but then realised it was just as much a love song.  Glimpses of affection for the crazy man who blessed the alternative music world with his presence for a few years, then more or less vanished for a decade.

The book fills in these gaps, usually in Damo's own transcribed words.

As we learned at the delightful evening at Rough Trade, where Damo and his author, Paul Woods were gently interviewed by a man from Mojo, the young Suzuki was not really into the heavy "progressive" rock coming out of the UK at that time. Pressed to think of influences, he mentioned his liking for some Kinks songs.

Unlike so many ageing rock star interviewees, Damo was genuinely more interested in his current projects than his few years with Can, and not to be at all excited by the reverence the music he contributed to is now held.

A survivor of two mortal illnesses, Damo regained his amazing energy and for years has circled the globe, seeking out what he calls the "sound carriers" with whom he can work in cities in every continent. Every so often he lands back in London, and has staged many performances at the Windmill in Brixton, and Islington's Lexington. Go to one of these: you never know what to expect, but don't expect Can's greatest hits.

The day after this event, I happened to read a post on thebluemoment called "A thought on 'RockIsland Line'" It was a playful but erudite analysis of Lonnie Donegan's 1957 hit, explaining why it was such an influential recording in the history of British pop music.

 It took me a while to hear that heavy "click" as my dull brain registers the connection. What is it about some pieces of music that causes them to go straight to some previously dormant pleasure zone in the deepest fibres of the nervous system?

Richard Williams pinned it all down to one slight change in Donegan's voice, as he sang the words Rock Island and Line:

"The tonic is the note you hear several times as he follows “Well, the Rock Island…” — all sung on the tonic — by rising to the flattened third on the next word, sung with a heavy emphasis: “…Line…”

That particular flattened third, sung by that Glasgow-born, East End-raised boy in his distinctive, breathless deep south style, was for Williams "the first blue note most of my generation ever heard, or at least noticed, and its impact was immense. "

I'm not sure Damo Suzuki ever heard Lonnie Donegan but when he really got going he seemed to toy with the blue notes, circling them provocatively, never quite hitting them but making you know what it was he was not doing....get me? Of course!

I Am Damo Suzuki, by Damo Suzuki and Paul Woods, published by Omnibus Press, 29/03/2019, price £16.99 (paperback)