It's been weird to see people try to puff up A Certain Ratio in the last few years, to make them more than they ever were during their lifetime. On the one hand, it's just a side effect of post-punk necrophilia; at some point, on or around August 2003, any remaining good (just good!) post-punk bands had finally been exhumed, renovated, rehabilitated, whatever. That's two years now of chasing up the lesser lights, dodgy one-shots, side-projects and general jerk-offery. C'mon-- those Brazilian p-punk comps are bad Cure demos with a tropical frosting.
Yes, I know the Early comp came out in March 2002. Let's just say ACR was ahead of the crap curve. The facts remain: Simon Topping still sounds like Ian Curtis Cliff's Notes. The purported funkiness will still not be backing up any asses. Their name is just more lamentable Factory Nazi-chic. And there's very little ACR did that someone (Joy Division, the Cure, Liquid Liquid, Funkadelic, your mom) didn't do better. This is not to say they didn't have their charms. The double EP that contained "Do The Du", "The Fox", their (overrated but still pretty funny) cover of "Shack Up", and "Flight" is good fun if you enjoy mooning with the blinds closed to twitchy approximations of forward momentum. (And hey, sometimes, who doesn't?)
But when they started fucking with jazz, Latin, electro, disco-- check, pleez. This is not some sort of inverse pop-snobbery talking. This is a purely functionalist argument. By 1982, the disco tradition was just that: a tradition, one where all-night, non-stop dancing was the rule of law. Plenty of other cultures had been fucking with this for years, and it showed up in things like northern soul. Even when they tried to bodyrock, ACR were still hampered by their stiffness and leftover gloom. (Let's not even get into the inherent racism in the fallback "but they had a black guy drumming for them!" argument. Rhythm != drumming.)
I'd Like To See You Again was a swiftly recorded follow up to Sextet (the only ACR release of note after the early singles and half of The Graveyard and the Ballroom and even that's pushing its essentialness). Martha Tilson's proto-trip-hop vocals on Sextet were at least pleasing to the ear, if still essentially ballast, but here they're gone. So the band goes for longer grooves, more instrumental passages, and fewer vocals. I'd call it smart if the music were better. "Touch" acknowledges the new pop that ruled '82, but refuses to deal with it head on. "Showcase" has slap bass (slap bass). They throw party whistles and P-Funk backup chants on "Saturn", and fair play, they're at least trying to have fun. But Martin Moscrop's trumpet, once the source of an amusing kind of fake electric-Miles fog (one thing they had that JD didn't), just sounds anodyne here. If you listen closely you can hear the beige Howard Jones records they would soon be making.
A year later, of course, New Order released one of the biggest 12" singles in history, tore up NYC clubs like the Funhouse, and permanently shook the Joy Division out of their hair. They even got to retain a slight creatures-of-the-night aftertaste that ACR were desperately distancing themselves from. All in all, ACR must have been pretty pissed off.
Live 1980 was from a show recorded after their fateful trip to the U.S., where they recorded their debut album, To Each, with Martin Hannett (which means it sounds exactly how you think it sounds) and had their wigs flipped by the hustle and bustle of early 80s NYC. And it shows, with a sound that has the tension between their sketchy raincoat beginnings and the good foot already breaking down. They're already straining to breath some of that American air, to suck up that mythical fonk, to banish the sooty taint of their homelands. Which pretty well killed them as a band. To make matters worse they avoid their hits in favor of album tracks, and then decide to do realt-time extended remixes, with lotsa percussion. The reissue includes two bonus tracks. If that excites you, check your pulse.
All this is not to say I didn't enjoy parts, sometimes even large parts, of both records. But I can't imagine ever listening to them again. The problem with reissue culture, like real archaeology, is that eventually you're just hitting dirt. Sometimes an arrowhead is just a rock, you know? We all have finite time on this planet; do you want to listen to fake Funkadelic or the real thing? Ready your angry emails and dismissive blog posts if you must, but just think about it the next time your survey your gigs of mp3s, stacks of CD-R's, or mounds of .99 vinyl. How are you using your time?
