"Punk promised that you could become a new person," according to Greil Marcus' praise-laden liner notes to this collection. Sure, why not? Saxophonist Susan Whitby did. Following in the steps of pseudonymous punks like Rat Scabies and Iggy Pop, Whitby joined Poly Styrene's X-Ray Spex and transformed into Lora Logic. And when she was ousted from the group just before the 1978 release of the band's classic debut Germ-Free Adolescents, she took full advantage of punk's promise and began making her own noises-- sounds that echoed the influx of influences that infected the British post-punk scene. But where many of her contemporaries found their music continually celebrated in critical and fanatical circles 25 years after the fact, Logic's music was left to wallow in dusty records bins with only a few scattered admirers, like Marcus, willing to champion her contributions. It would be nice to say that this new collection of Lora's music gives her work the fanfare it deserves.
Unfortunately, there are two critical problems with this compilation. Marcus takes note of the first: after mentioning an "overwhelming version" of "Wake Up" from the EP of the same name, he reveals that this particular version isn't included here. In fact, that entire EP (originally released by Virgin Records) is conspicuously absent. Granted, this could be attributed to the inability of Virgin and Kill Rock Stars to come to an agreement regarding the rights to those tracks, which would be all fair and good, if disappointing. But it doesn't help explain why six other tracks from recordings ably represented on these discs (four Essential Logic songs, and two of Lora's solo efforts) are also MIA. In the interest of those of you fond of downloading or hitting the local record fair, here are the names and locations of those 10 missing tracks:
"Wake Up", "Eagle Bird", "Quality Crayon Wax OK", "Bod's Message" (from Essential Logic's Wake Up EP)
This brings to light Fanfare in the Garden's second problem. Instead of offering listeners a complete set of recordings from Logic's short-lived reign as one of post-punk's most notable atypical girls, Kill Rock Stars have given space to some of Lora's output following her heyday. There are 12 of these tracks in all-- eight from two Internet-only EPs (issued in 1997 and 1998), and four unreleased from 1983, 1985 and 1991. As Marcus mentions in the liner notes, Lora Logic "joined the world of Hare Krishna" sometime in the early 1980s, and unfortunately, it shows. The synth-laden music for "Stay High" twinkles and hovers like rank patchouli smoke in a new-wave head shop, while Lora softly whimpers, "Time is kicking like a mule/ Time doesn't care if you're a woman or a man/ Time will engage you on the surface/ You should be alarmed now; she has a plan."
The lone track from 1985 ("Do You Believe in Christmas?") has Lora and the Krishna Kids Choir lending their voices to a Band Aid knock-off. In 1991, she copped moves from A Certain Ratio (the post-good A Certain Ratio, even) in penning a song about her former band. By 1997, Lora sounds anesthetized, regardless of her accompaniment striking a trip-hop pose ("Under the Great City") or balancing piano scales ("Marika"). The next year finds Lora cutting sub-par tracks about the Internet and Barbie that are as bland and stiff as anything offered by a barely functional punk rock outfit. All you need to know: "On the Internet" actually features the sound of a dialing modem. And then there's the re-recording of "Martian Man", here renamed "No More Fiction".
"No More Fiction" is slow and steady, and unmistakably leaden. The version recorded 16 years earlier flies free atop tribal drumming and Lora's fluttering saxophone. Where Lora's voice in 1998 is clipped and hushed, 1982 finds her gleefully trilling and cooing about these made-up superheroes. All over Disc 1, Lora careens joyously between spastic screeching ("Aerosol Burns", "Collecting Dust") and considered crooning ("Wonderful Offer") as her bandmates splice together ska, disco, various world musics, and that good old fashioned DIY what-have-you. Such an amalgam could be just another reiteration of the sound of many of Lora's musical peers (cf. Gang of Four, This Heat, The Slits) were it not for her indomitable presence. It's her unfettered sax, and her unfettered voice, that make the recordings on this collection's first disc essential.
Unfortunately, this set attempts to smoothly connect the dots between those fantastic skronk-happy aerosol bur-oins and Non-Essential Enya, going so far as to sandwich the post-1982 work between tracks from her solo record and her collaboration with the Red Crayola. Perhaps the compilers were hoping some goodness from the superlative tracks would rub off on the superfluous ones. As presented, there's a lot left to be desired regarding the stuff stuck between "Horrible Party" (Disc 2, Track 3) and "Stereo" (Disc 2, Track 14), and then to follow the irreverent Red Crayola track ("Born in Flames") with both the Hare Krishna Christmas song and the sacrilegious "Essential Logic" does no one any favors.
Were this collection culled to include only the work worth a damn, it would be 88 minutes long, which is just long enough to not fit on one CD. Given the exclusion of certain tracks from this double-disc set (as noted earlier), perhaps more editing would have been beneficial to limit this collection to one firm and fully-packed disc. As is, the collection does a fine job telling the story of the former Susan Whitby, but it comes at the expense of her music.
