House Is A Feeling

I read last week that John Cooper Clarke’s Zip Style Method has been re-released, which is interesting to me cos I’ve been listening to JCC a lot in the last few months. It’s not always easy to gauge just how well known an artist is when they’re in a genre you’re unfamiliar with, in this case the genre is post-punk I suppose. So some of you may be reading this thinking “yes John Cooper Clarke, tell us something we don’t know”.

But for those who aren’t, I strongly urge you to check this guy out, at least if you have an appetite for music which isn’t inclusive. John Cooper Clarke was a poet originally, in fact one of his poems came up on a mock examination I did in my final year in school, in 2001. I can’t think of any other acts I listen to who I once wrote about for school, no Michael Mayer in Maths or Liebe Detail in Latin unfortunately.

Lots of Clarke’s poems were then made into songs with Martin Hannett, the reknowned producer who also worked with Joy Division and the Happy Mondays. The sounds and backgrounds Hannett created for Clarke’s bleak city stories are daring, touching on dub, disco and funk and giving Clarke’s Mancunian drawl a weird futurist slant, like Coronation Street meeting Giorgio Moroder, so incongruous and yet so right. Check out “I Married A Monster From Outer Space” for a good taster.

Like a lot of Clarke songs it blends the grim reality of everyday nastiness with this utterly unreal lyric, and Hannett’s ethereal electronic groove just enhances the conflict. This wouldn’t sound out of place alongside Lindstrom and co.Below is a video of Clarke performing “Health Fanatic”, unfortunately there aren’t so many good videos of him out there, but this gives some idea what his weird spoken word live shows are like. The atmosphere at some of the recorded ones is akin to the World Darts Championships, lairy, people cheering JCC on riotously, can’t imagine it with Seamus Heaney can you?

You just can’t pin Clarke down though. Like most truly great pop artists, he seems as though he’s second guessed the audience and critics and made his art too forcefully different to be easily assimilated into the canon or to have his legacy murdered by adulation in print (though I’m doing my best!)

Anyway I’d end by saying to check out Clarke’s website or more of his many tracks, he has several albums out and all are pretty easy to find. Some really great stuff there.

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