Ken Hunt News December 2000

December 2000

ReR has released a 5-CD boxed set by the German group Faust called The Wumme Years 1970-73. The set contains Faust's early commercially released (as opposed to commercial) output, beginning with their clear vinyl, eponymous album (whichever way makes it easier to remember Faust), Faust So Far and The Faust Tapes through to Elsewhere. Rounding off the set is an album of unreleased early material and a John Peel radio session. The accompanying 40-page booklet includes words of wisdom from Jean Herve Peron, Uwe Nettelbeck and Peter Blegvad. Blegvad as well as having an unplugged retrospective in preparation, has a very fine graphic book called The Book of Leviathan. British readers will be aware of blegvad's long-running, surreal and shrewd cartoon strip called Leviathan that appeared in the Independent on Sunday. The strip liberally quotes from or distorts quotes from sources such as Walter Benjamin, Nietzsche, the magazine Nature, the Observer's Book of Larger Moths and, naturally, Thomas Hobbes' Leviathan. Visit www.leviathan.co.uk, check out the book and do it soon. A snip at £12.99, The Book of Leviathan is published by Sort of Books, PO Box 18678, London, NW3 2FL and distributed by Penguin Books.

Deaths: Nazia Hussan died of lung cancer aged 35 on 13 August 2000. She was one of the first female singers to speak for her generation of diaspora Indians and Pakistanis. The music she made was the first real option to Anglo-American pop music or bhangra showband music for a whole generation. In so doing she transcended the Pakistani-Indian divide. It would be no exaggeration to say that she became a household name for people with roots in the Indian subcontinent for a while. Her star burned bright, even if outside Pakistani and Indian communities her name would have meant next to nothing. She arrived in 1980 when she contributed to the soundtrack of the film Qurbani (Sacrifice). She hit the big time with the song and single "Aaap Jaisa Koi", although then as now there was no reputable, certified chart for Indian music in Britain. She was 15 or so and her voice was everywhere. Born on 3 April 1965 into a well-heeled Karachi family, she followed "Aaap Jaisa Koi" up with the debut release from her and her brother Zoheb Hussan. Entitled Disco Deewane (1980), the title track spawned a massive hit in India and Pakistan, as well as charting in Argentina, Venezuela and the Middle East (as their press release explained in 1992). It mapped something alternative. It had the flash of the disco and it fitted perfectly into the glitz and glamour of Bollywood. Discos were something unutterably desirable and out of reach for many British-Asian teenagers given the degree of parental control exercised but Nazia Hassan brought the forbidden a little closer. The next album Boom Boom featured several smashes from the 1981 film Star. The pattern of album and film hits continued until 1987, when Nazia withdrew to concentrate on studying law and her brother business studies. She returned in 1992 with the album Camera Camera. With her brother she was active in an anti-drugs organisation called B.A.N. - standing for Battle Against Narcotics - promoting an education and awareness campaign on the hazards of drug abuse in Pakistan.

The arranger and musician Jack Nitzsche died in Los Angeles on 25 August 2000. He was somebody who certainly would not have supported B.A.N. for most of his life. Cocaine regularly fuelled his creativity. Born Bernard Nitzsche in Chicago on 22 April 1937, he was raised in Michigan. He obtained a diploma in music through a correspondence course and, like countless others before him, went west to find fame and fortune. He settled in Hollywood some time during the late 1950s. He found employment with Specialty Records. He fell in with a circle of people that included Sonny Bono, later to find fame as one half of Sonny and Cher, and when Phil Spector set up shop in the Golden State Spector and Nitzsche formed a working relationship that created the so-called Wall of Sound. Spector, an egotist supreme, coveted the accolade as creator of the Wall of Sound, downplaying Nitzsche's role. Nitzsche, for example, churned out impressive arrangements that went into pop music history. "He's A Rebel" was followed by "Do Doo Ron Ron", "Then He Kissed Me" and "Be My Baby". All were touched by his greatness and his enviable ear for what the world wanted to hear. The Crystals and Ronettes were prime recipients of his musical largesse, if that is not too grand a way of describing his work. To make ends meet he worked for other labels, helping to create some of the most memorable sounds of the Sixties. He left a catalogue of music counted among the finest the decade ever produced, including records by Bobby Darin, Jackie deShannon, the Frankie Laine, Lettermen, Bob Lind, the Monkees and the Searchers. Nitzsche was also responsible for iconic sounds such as the Righteous Brothers' "Unchained Melody", Ike and Tina Turner's "River Deep Mountain High", the Rolling Stones' "Mother's Little Helper", "19th Nervous Breakdown", "Let's Spend The Night Together" and "You Can't Always Get What You Want", and Buffalo Springfield's "Expecting To Fly". The Rolling Stones connection led to him working in 1970 on the soundtrack to the film Performance, a soundtrack that included contributions from Merry Clayton, Ry Cooder, Mick Jagger, Randy Newman and Buffy Sainte-Marie. Later projects included working on Neil Young's Harvest and Newman's 12 Songs. Nitzsche's film music work kept him in employment for years. Among his soundtracks were ones for The Exocist, One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest, Blue Collar, The Jewel of the Nile, 91/2 Weeks, Mermaids and Revenge. Perhaps his most enduring success in this genre is the title song he co-wrote with his then-wife Buffy Sainte-Marie and Will Jennings for An Officer And A Gentleman called "Up Where We Belong" (which won him an Oscar for Best Song). Later acts with whom he worked included Richard Clayderman, the Neville Brothers and Graham Parker.

Ken Hunt, December 2000