Digital Collage: New Time Structure / Rip, Rig & Panic Time / Two Synths, A Guitar (And) A Drum Machine - Soul Jazz Records

RTomens, 2021

Time flexes like a whore, as our David said...you know the rest, yes, 'his trick is you and, boy'! Because as Rip Rig & Panic reaffirmed, 'time is a trick of the mind'...

Mind you, I can't condone getting 'a wall with a spray can /You know whenever you can' as Neneh also sings in Storm The Reality Asylum because I don't like graffiti (yeah, yeah, I know, hip-hop 'til you don't stop tagging New Yawk subway trains - very 'hip' back then in '82, presumably) - so call me old-fashioned but all the graffiti I see in London just makes a bridge or wall look uglier than it would if left alone (I like unblemished metal and the textures of walls!) and don't get me started on 'street art' - I said DON'T. 

Time was when Rip Rig & Panic were very hip, right? I saw them 'live' a few times. They were so right for a time when we were all fondly remembering no-so-distant Funk, discovering Jazz and craving (without knowing it) an eccentric fusion of the kind RR&P delivered. Time dictates that next year the I Am Cold album will be 40 years old but miraculously their music only ages if you were there and in the sense that it always conjures up the times we lived, the times we eagerly bought their new albums and saw them on stage. Objectively, it's time-less because it doesn't sound like anyone else. Thankfully, they burned brightly for just three years rather than dragging on long after the spirit had been doused.

There were more of time's tricks earlier today when I listened to Two Synths, A Guitar (And) A Drum Machine on Soul Jazz Records. I just played it with no info and actually thought I was listening to obscure post-Punk bands - doh! You know the way labels dig up obscurities from the past. Yeah, they fooled me. 'Damn!' I thought. 'This is good'. Imagine my shock when checking in at the label's site to discover they were all 'current D-I-Y post-punk bands' - what? You mean there's contemporary music which I like? How can this be? For years now I haven't listened to contemporary music - yes, dear reader, I am of the age when none of it matters - I have spent enough time on the planet to not care about being up-to-date in my listening - so there!