Collage: Am I Willing To Surrender? / Sextet - A Certain Ratio / The Funk Punk Connection

RTomens, 2022

Another paper collage. I like working small...one day they'll be postage stamp (remember them?) size. Even if I had that fantasy warehouse studio I wouldn't know what to do on a huge canvas. The abstract Expressionists had huge studios. They didn't know what to do with all that space either, so they just splashed, dripped and dragged oils across canvases...and lo, Abstract Expressionism was born - fact! Anymore Art history lessons you want, just ask.

You might call A Certain Ratio and 'art' band. Feel free. Art Funk? Northern Funk? Industrial Funk? Whatever you call it, their album, Sextet, is 40 years old this year. 40! Christ, talk about feeling old. Not the album, me. I remember it well, that abstract sleeve...the minimalist, 'cold' funk sound that seemed so thrillingly different at the time. It's aged well, actually, unlike me. It still sounds...alien? That cool, crisp production, bouncy bass lines, sharp percussion and subtle effects. 

Getting 'funky' was nothing new in '82. Lots of white bands did it, but don't ask me to remember them all. It was a 'thing' post Punk and it was all right with me because I'd been a 70s 'funkateer'. Actually, that may have put me off, knowing what the 'real' thing was all about then hearing these 'white' versions. I mean, none of them could come close to being as Funk-y as, say, Parliament, but then to compare them would be stupid. 

We were talking about Funk nights just yesterday, how Funk club fashion carried over into early the early Punk look. Mohair jumpers, plastic sandals and peg leg trousers. There's a photo of Johnny Rotten sporting The Look (possibly not the sandals). Being the same age as us and working class, a lot of Punk's big players spent their earlier teen years in Funk clubs. I suppose most members of A Certain Ratio did too. ACR did, after all, cover Banbarra's classic, Shack Up, a mighty tune which you would only know if you'd 'been there'. Bootsy Collins once said 'If you fake the Funk your nose has got to grow' (The Pinocchio Theory). I don't think A Certain Ratio's members have outsized noses.

TTFN