Gentle readers, I believe that we need now in the run up to the festive season is a return to good, jolly, wholesome family values to give us the strength and stability not only to cope, but to thrive in such uncertain times as these.
I commend the Moonlandingz Interplanetary Class Classics to you all today.
Kanye West's got a glory hole Paul McCartney's got a glory hole Bobby Geldof's got a glory hole Sigmund Freud had a glory hole The Sleaford Mods have got a glory hole The BBC has got plenty of holes Every Tory has got a glory hole Even my daddy's got a glory hole!! (Glory Hole)
The fact that the track features Randy The Cowboy from, office Christmas party favourites, the Village People surely only ramps up the inherent festivity in this tale of a stray who falls into the nurturing hands of a dominant* in a German leather bar.
This is surely the true meaning of Christmas? love in all its myriad, and often alarmingly tooled, forms. Oh and the message that everyone’s got one. The fact that ‘Glory Hole’ is set to a thumping sleazoid country-tinged disco stomp can only make it better.
The Moonlandingz are of course an entirely fictional band**, formed by shadowy Sheffield-based electronic nutters Eccentric Research Council, together with moonlighting Fat White Family chaps. Add in Sean Lennon, his mum, Philip Oakley, Randy and Rebecca Taylor and you have a pallet load of freaks to truly conjure with.
Interplanetary Class Classics was an impulse buy in Probe Records on 28 March 2017. Unholy deviance just radiated from it like a thrice accursed relic of eldritch times and so I unselfishly bought it to keep it out of unsuspecting, impressionable hands.
It’s a corker.
From the opening fucked-up milking machine glam rock beat of ‘Vessels’ to the closing Yoko-fuelled yowls of ‘This Cities Undone’, Interplanetary Class Classics is not like other LPs – I rather suspect it doesn’t talk to the other albums in my collection. Good.
The driving Stooges-go-gay-disco ‘Sweet Saturn Mine’, featuring John Lennon’s Farsifa organ is the true blackened gnarled heart of the album. To follow it up with the catchy-as-flu ‘Black Hanz’, is a stroke of programming genius. Plus it has a faux Vincent Price-y bit and I love a song that bends that way^.
The insane (then) Tory minister-referencing ‘I.D.S’ is a rare motorik treat, coupled with some synthed-up slightly Eastern-sounding frills and some scathing politics. Basically ‘Telstar’ for a hopeless council estate generation.
To segue this into the gorgeous ‘The Strangle Of Anna’, all JAMC and Velvet Underground stylings is great, Rebecca Taylor^^ adds her tones here to great affect to this cynical tale of the girlfriend of a ‘wannabe weekend Lou Reed‘. The music is a pitch-perfect pastiche of all sorts of things I love and I don’t care that they’re mocking me for it!
The second side of Interplanetary Class Classics comes over all harsh disco with ‘The Rabies Are Back’, a superb track about media scaremongering and intolerance – the most danceable thing on here too. Rarely have sound, if arty politics combined so well with the groove.
It’s all good here but the wistful ‘Lufthansa Man’ is a real fave, touching on depression, awful tragedy and real feelings; some lovely Mellotron work from young Lennon on there too. Coming straight after ‘Glory Hole’ it is an act of rebalancing … speaking of which:
I rode the leather bar every night But Gunther can't be found I had to settle for a stein of beer While that cheap, cheap techno pounds
The closer on Interplanetary Class Classics is the Yoko-tastic ‘This Cities Undone’, which sounds like nothing short of an attack on a futuristic domed city mounted by Valkyries on anti-gravity bikes. True story. I love it and the sense of oddness inherent in the whole enterprise is harnessed to great effect here as it all sounds somehow very important and true.
I have absolutely no idea if more Moonlandingz are planned, or whether it would even be wise to try. It doesn’t matter at all when they leave an artefact as groovy, squelchy and downright unique as Interplanetary Class Classics. It is flippant at times, delightfully/offputtingy prurient at others, joyfully perverse and tetchy in outlook BUT even so there are some hard-won secrets and emotions locked down tight in these here grooves.
Plus, you know, what more do you need than Randy the cowboy?
The gatefold contains some impossibly tiny credits, the song lyrics, more body-writing and a photo of a guy tucking his business between his legs – which, little known fact, is technically called a gatefold.
Not a bad metaphor either for an album that although it is about picaresque lowlife is ultimately far more ball sack than Balzac. True story.
1040 Down.
PS: apologies to Faster Pussycat for stealing this post title from one of their later unappealing electro albums.
PPS: The band go through the songs in their own words here, better than all the drivel above, obviously.
*Gunther the giver. And what is Christmas about, if not giving?
**it’s complicated. Most of my favourite bands are essentially cartoons anyway, so fictional ones are just par for the course.
^the way he declaims the word ‘thrice’ is worth the price of the LP alone:
The dawn is on fire Bacteria divides A black collosus gallops Across the three shires Sacred seed or subtle sperm Seize the snake, cast out thy worm Your morning God Your knackered Christ Castrate yourself not once but THRICE!!!
^^of Slow Club, possessor of a beautiful voice and a 1537 crush.
This does sound rather fun, though I am unwilling to thank you for making me admit it. “Catchy like flu” indeed.
Btw, that para beginning “flippant”, did you lift that from your CV?
Yup, every word from my CV. It explains why I am poised at the very top of my chosen career as well as a sought after dance partner at office do’s.
“More ball sack than Balzac,” indeed. Where do you find these things?
Probe Records in Liverpool, during my lunchtimes. Now there’s a thing from the past – 9 months since I was last in Liverpool.
This year’s been ALL screwed up. I haven’t been in an actual record store since… well, it’s longer than 9 months. Mike and I didn’t even go to Taranna last year. Bollocks.
I’m at a loss for words with this one.
That’s okay, don’t worry – deep breaths. Just wait until your pulse is only double what it should be.
An LP that should only be handled with protective gloves.
I am out of protective gloves, dang it.
I think the fact that Faster Pussycat called an album that is the most transgressive thing about this. Moonlandingz need to up their game.
Taime Downe was never photographed with his trunk tucked back between his legs though, to my knowledge?
I’ve got the only photo. Was from behind though. If he stops sending the money, I’ll show you it.
I loved Faster Pussycat so much when I was 18. I briefly considered a tattoo of the logo.
Any regrets? Where were you going to put it?
None at all, I was a moron. It would have been a big one across my bicep. I would also have got an AC/DC back tattoo if I wasn’t a coward, again I’m grateful.
My lilywhite skin is unblemished by art.
You made the right decision. I wish I hadn’t got Enuff tattooed on my left butt cheek and Znuff on the right one.
I must have told you about the friend of a guy I worked with who had Suicidal Tendencies misspelled across his shoulders? I love that so much.
That’s totally cyco
That’s tricky for a self-tattoo as well – nice.
What happened to the FP gig in a village hall in Wales somewhere we were downe to go to?
Hi fella, they cancelled the tour. Shame that I’d have loved to have seen them again, even a sad old version without all the original parts – just like us!
To bad the real Vinnie Price wasnt available. I would buy it.
I think he was more of a flamenco dude, in any case.
Vinnie could do anything. I even seen him in a duster
I have nothing but admiration for your bravery in buying this. I think we all need a to be bought recommendation list.
Thanks Neil. Are they not huge in Oregon? I always assumed they would be, what with the whole leather disco cowboy vibe going on up there.
That’s faux leather I will have you know and it’s disco rodeo with donut holes not glory holes. Now we have legalized the therapeutic use of psilocybin all bets are off.