Standing Over By The Record Machine: Billy Childish gets his Headcoats on again.

Thee Kings Of Medway Garage return with their first LP in 24 years, at the same time as CTMF cut the best Richard Hell and The Voidoids record Richard Hell and The Voidoids never cut.

THEE HEADCOATS – Irregularis [The Great Hiatus]/Damaged Goods UK

WILD BILLY CHILDISH & CTMF – Failure Not Success/Damaged Goods UK

“Who’ll be next in line to don the deerstalker hat?” ask Thee Kings Of Medway Garage, as they convene in a studio for the first time since 2000’s I Am the Object of Your Desire. And it’s a good question, seeing as how their leading light, the inimitable and prolific Wild Billy Childish, is a complete one-off, even if he admits on Irregularis [The Great Hiatus]’s second track to being a “Full-Time Plagiarist.” The punchline? He insists he’s still “pretty original, nevertheless.”

There was a time when you could issue at least a single by one of Billy Childish’s projects if you had his phone number, so productive has he been since fronting first-wave punk group The Pop Rivets in 1977. That’s slowed down, with the bulk of his recorded output now assigned to England’s almighty Damaged Goods collective. Good thing too, since it would be damned near impossible to accurately and thoroughly compile —  forget own — a complete Childish discography. Try imagining the sheer tonnage of vinyl he’s generated since 1979’s Pop Rivets debut LP Greatest Hits! Never mind all the paintings and books he’s done! 

“We believed the hype of punk rock — do-it-yourself — and lived it, unlike the ‘successful’ leaders of the movement,” Childish recently remarked at his label’s website. “I’ve always wanted small gigs where you're open and exposed. The same with recording – excitement, mistakes, humor, and hopefully joy. The reason to become ‘successful’ is to cut yourself from your origins and roots. In short, we’ll decide what success is, not a critic, the world, or public opinion.”

And those roots are static and carved in stone: ‘70s punk, ‘60s UK R&B, and gutbucket blues. Over time, other things have come in, including Jimi Hendrix (evident on his work with The Buff Medways) and Bob Dylan with The William Loveday Intention (although the album I reviewed last year, which was supposed to be a “country” album, sounded more like a Lee Hazlewood album to me). (It did feature a cover version of “Like A Rolling Stone,” however.) With this and his most recent LP with C.T.M.F., Childish returns to what Louder Than War scribe Ged Babey calls his "Kinks/Who/ATV sound."

Except, at least with C.T.M.F. — these days comprising Childish’s wife Juju on bass and Prime Movers/James Taylor Quartet/Buff Medways drummer Wolf Howard — Childish appears to have moved on from Dylan to Richard Hell in his obsessions. Which isn’t a significant distance to travel, if you compare footage of both in their respective primes:

No, I’m not inferring Hell either copied or was influenced by Dylan. More like both were plugged into the same source of electricity and mystery — or maybe just the same amplifier — and it pulsed through them both, consecutively. Richard was just the next in that line of wild, poetic rock ‘n’ roll shamen. Plus Childish acknowledged Hell’s influence as far back as a Creem magazine Letter From Britain column circa 1983, which I’d link you to if the Creem archives weren’t down currently. (I can, however, provide a link to a fairly interesting recent online Creem exegesis of Hell by Zachary Lipez, the writer that the mag’s newest iteration’s attempting to position as their Lester Bangs. Ah, but we shouldn’t rabbit-hole too far, should we?)

Failure Not Success begins like an alternate universe Blank Generation, down to opening with a very Billy Childish take on “Love Comes In Spurts”. This is followed by two cuts — the title track and “Beneath the Flowers Serpents" — which are so Richard Hell, they practically swagger in wearing torn t-shirts and spiky haircuts. They’re definite homages, down to the chord progressions/melodies/lyrics. All that’s missing is Robert Quine’s abstract expressionist guitar, though Childish appears to have purchased a fuzzbox just prior to these sessions, so the noise quotient is upped considerably. Then a rather Link Wray-azoid instrumental called “Walk of the Sasquatch” clomps in, reminding us just who this is, lest the weak-minded fear Hell’s spirit has completely possessed the host body. 

All that said, now having previously performed “Love Comes In Spurts” with both The Pop Rivets and Thee Headcoats, Childish feels comfortable enough with the song to write his own third verse! Which he says Hell is okay with: “Richard said he liked it a lot and told his girlfriend he only wants my tunes at his funeral. I said, ‘not too soon I hope.’ He assured me he’s well.”

And perhaps the reason for the shift of inspiration from Dylan to Hell is that Thee Bard Of Kent is somehow upset with Mr. Zimmerman? The album closes with a new recording of a 2021 C.T.M.F. single, “Bob Dylan’s Got a Lot to Answer For!” The lyrics are a litany of grievances Childish has against cultural crimes he feels Dylan’s committed, such as giving The Beatles their first joints, turning Hendrix into a rock star, and leading the Stones away from “12-bar r&b.” Then he turns it around almost as swiftly as he stomps on the fuzzbox grinding through Failure’s entirety, accosting Allen Ginsberg and the Nobel Prize nominating committee for ruining Dylan! 

Otherwise, Failure Not Success sounds like any Billy Childish album. Which isn’t a dig — it’s a strength! One of the major reasons he can do things like issue C.T.M.F. and Headcoats albums is his penchant for repeatedly recording his own songs, such as “Bob Dylan’s Got a Lot to Answer For.” How many times has he remade The Mighty Caesars’ “You Make Me Die”? Thee Headcoats’ “Davy Crockett”? The Headcoatees’ “Come Into My Life”? Well, add one more of the latter on the C.T.M.F. album, as well as three songs previously done by The William Loveday Intention now nicely garaged up: “Hanging By A Tenuous Thread”, the title track, and “Becoming Unbecoming Me.” And if you need a handy bridge between the C.T.M.F. and Headcoats albums, a new limited edition single features each band’s take on a song featured on The Headcoats’ album, “Full Time Plagiarist.” (Link to the C.T.M.F. version here.)

My guess is the roots of “Full Time Plagiarist” go back to the hilarious feud between Childish and Jack White. Once a Childish disciple, he wrote Billy’s name on his forearm for a White Stripes Top Of The Pops appearance. White got upset when Billy wouldn’t reciprocate his admiration in a profile in GQ’s US edition: "I can't listen to that stuff. They don't have a good sound ... Jack's half into the sound and music, but then he wants to be a pop star as well, so you've got a big problem." White’s bitter reaction to the rejection was to accuse Childish in the  NME of bitterness himself, adding, “When you take someone else's music and put your own lyrics on top of it, it's still called plagiarism.” Among Childish’s many hilarious rejoinders was, “I follow stringent music industry standards and only plagiarize 50% of my music.” And apparently, 18 years later, he now writes “Full Time Plagiarist,” where he accuses himself of being “a lazy poet you can’t resist/A John Lee Hooker evangelist/A Louis Ferdinand Celine apologist,” “a Robert Johnson pathologist,” “a cultural appropriationist” and “a Bob Dylan ventriloquist.”

Thing is, the first Headcoats album in 23 years proves Childish plagiarizes himself more than anyone, he’s written so many songs over the years. This is actually a time-honored blues tradition — ever notice how Muddy Waters’ “Mannish Boy” was just  “Hoochie Coochie Man” with more balls? Or play Chuck Berry’s “School Days”  and “No Particular Place To Go” side-by-side? (Actually, Chuck’s got a lot more duckwalk-alikes in his repertoire than those two.) For that matter, didn’t Elmore James and Jimmy Reed just have one song each, and every version they produced sounded wonderful?

Truth be told, whenever he gets with Thee Headcoats, Childish acts like garage punk’s Marcel Duchamp. In essence, he hands drummer Bruce Brand and bassist Johnny “Tub” Johnson readymade musical beds he’s used before, retrofitting his latest batches of lyrics atop. Hence, in their rough, garage-recorded, damned near mono fashion, Thee Headcoats open with “The Baker Street Irregulars,” a Sherlock Holmes-themed cousin to Thee Mighty Caesars’ “Wily Coyote,” while their “Full Time Plagiarist” could be a cross-fertilization of two 23-year-old Headcoats classics – “Ballad Of The Fogbound Pinhead” and “All My Feelings Denied,” from their best album, 1991’s The Kids Are All Square (This Is Hip). For that matter, they close this set by finally giving that golden oldie a title track, “The Kids Are All Square.” It was worth the wait, as Billy yells at a buncha modern culture to get off his damned lawn, including a woman “wearing a t-shirt that says the Ramones/while listening to Beyonce on busy headphones!”

“The weirdest thing for me was how weird it wasn’t,” Brand remarked of the Irregularis sessions. “It was like time compressed, but to the ‘good old days’, early on. I was wary that it ‘wouldn’t be like Thee Headcoats’, but it was.” Which means it’s raw slabs of guitar filth that sound like 1964 lil’ green amp Kinks outtakes, but with Childish’s confessional lyrics and healthy dollops of humor. While the noisy eclecticism of the C.T.M.F. record is very enjoyable, there’s something about Thee Headcoats that brings out the best in Childish’s creativity. Probably because, while Wolf Marshall’s very Ginger Baker-esque drumming is fantastic, there’s something about Brand’s Carlo Little/Bobby Elliot-style bashing that does Childish’s tunes just right. But really, any Childish is good Childish, and is always welcome.

What would I do without you, Napalm Nation?

First of all, many apologies for posting nothing since last week’s second installment in our Jesse Dayton interview. This past week has been spent finishing revisions on the ‘70s punk book, which will end on Saturday! After that, I have to write some other material for it, then it goes to the printer! We will be announcing it soon and begin taking preorders!

I want to thank all of you for hanging in there while I write my first book. This is something I have carried in my head since I was 15, and I am amazed and humbled to see it finally become a reality. I hope this is the first of many books I will write, and I appreciate everyone’s direct support.

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See y’all next week.

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