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Chou Pahrot was one
of Scotlands most unusual Rock Music bands of the 1970s. Originally
appearing as a 4-piece consisting of guitar, bass, drums and saxophone, the
departure of the guitar player led to his replacement by violin and a change of
name to Chou Pahrot. Home base was the
Paisley/Glasgow area, where posters on abandoned buildings (a plentiful
phenomena of recession hit 1970s West of Scotland) advertising their next gig
were a familiar sight - invariably with the band's mascot, Freddie Horse (a
demented looking grinning horse, sometimes with a monocle) either announcing in
a giant speech bubble the next gig or simply saying that month's piece of
soundbite lunacy. The influence of
Captain Beefheart was notable in their angular music, wild stage show and in
their penchant for strange stage names. Other influences included Ornette
Coleman's electric music with Prime Time, Frank Zappa, Wild Man Fischer, and The
Broons. Chou Pahrot were
late exponents of a high-energy, in-your-face strand of early-70s long-hair
music, which was overshadowed by the more bland and comfortable forms of Prog
and then swamped by Punk. Their music evolved to encompass humorous lyrics with
shades of Ivor Cutler sung in their natural Scottish accent, rather than the
mid-Atlantic drawl that was then commonplace. Through the late
1970s, Chou Pahrot continued to divide listeners at the bars and festivals of
Scotland, with occasional incursions into Germany. They were favourites of The
Rezillos, and frequently opened for them. The band eventually split, unable to
gain a permanent recording contract, but their antics paved the way for Pronk
bands that merged Prog with Punk, such as Cardiacs The YouTube
revival In recent years the band
have enjoyed a quiet renaissance thanks to YouTube, where their songs and unique
humor have become popular again.
DiscographyBuzgo Tram Chorus (Klub K.E.P.101) Chou Pahrot Live (1979 Klub LP, produced by Pete Shipton) |
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Pictures of Chou Pahrot by Andrew King
MusiciansEggy Beard (Martin McKenna) - Violin Monica Zarb (Robert Donaldson) - Bass, vocal Mama Voot (Tony O'Neill) - Guitar, sax, vocal Fish Feathers McTeeth (Dave Lewis) - Drums on EP The Amphibian (John O'Neil, no relation) - Drums on LP |
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Chou Pahrot By the polluted post-industrial banks of the River Clyde in Scotland, the late 1970s were enlivened by Chou Pahrot. They took their bizarre antics to the area's pubs and student unions, made a couple of records, and even toured Germany. Then they were gone. A look back on Chou Pahrot and their times. The dire state of music in 1975-6 passed quickly into mythology. Progrock had passed; Krautrock had died when Can had signed with Virgin Records and ceased making adventurous records. Curiously their self-justification in interview was to point to Captain Beefheart's parallel lapse into the mundane. Subcultural listening is active as well as passive and our response had been a near scorched earth ? a revaluation of all values. Out went almost all Prog - the exceptions being 1972-74 King Crimson, which held some darker purpose and some refusal of the composed. Pushing towards free jazz, then free improv., in search of a greater intensity, we were impatient and intolerant of anything tainted by older values. So when one evening we sat in The Maggie, a pub in Glasgow?s Sauchiehall St., with the sound of a band booming up from the basement bar, all I heard was a fiddle playing complex stop-start phrases, sneered ?Curved Air? and went on drinking my pint of heavy. The rightuousness of youth. Not even worth rousing myself to go and take a look. No curiosity even about who would dare play Prog in a Glasgow pub, home of Slik or Salvation? No, not even that. Rock music was bankrupt and that was that. After all, even Beefheart had stopped recording by that time. Bankrupt. I had caught the band?s name on the poster though: Chou Pahrot. Very Prog. Which just confirmed my self-righteousness. In the months which followed, friends would mention that they had seen an interesting band. Some even described it as Beefheartian, both in the music and in the use of bizarre performance pseudonyms. But sticking with my original opinion cost nothing. And to that can be added the traditional Scottish Cringe - nothing good could come from here, this outpost beyond culture, But one thing will lead to another. I was selling copies of the improv. magazine ?Musics?, firstly at a Glasgow concert by Derek Bailey and Steve Lacy. Some people were interested - even began to engage. I began to meet up with one of them, Niall, who played sax. Then a friend of his, a Tony ? another sax player. We sat in a pub while Tony described the tracks and titles of songs on Captain Beefheart?s ?Bat Chain Puller?. We were interested and he had hèard it. (It would be a long wait.) And then it also turned out that he played guitar and sax in a band. The same Chou Pahrot. As 1977 began, Niall, Tony and I played some improvised music. In a conversation where we were scorning the prevailing jazz-rock, Tony was impressive at parodying the pointless fretboard sprint which was the core curriculum of jazz-rock guitar. Both played at an improv. event which we organised at the McLellan Galleries in Glasgow. Competing with a Lefebvre Traditional Catholic Mass in the other hall: meeting the priest in the toilet, he asked if we could be quieter. Had I seen Chou Pahrot yet? Possibly not. When I did eventually deign to see them, it was probably at The Amphora, again in Sauchiehall St. Well, they were great: high energy, with an uncompromising noise and aggression which dispelled all my prog. expectations and reservations. The in-your-face energy was underpinned by Monica Zarb / Bob Donaldson - an avuncular presence on bass and vocals. By contrast, Tony O?Neill / Mama Voot on guitar was a revelation. The slightly nervous talker who I had met transformed his nerves into an impetuous and unpredictable presence ? playing much of the set in an old man mask, climbing from stage, to speakers, to tables. Between these two was Martin McKenna / Eggy Beard ? a shyer presence, playing a role which, in retrospect, brought them closer to Celtic music (although it didn't seem so at the time). And at the back was the gloriously renamed Fish Feathers McTeeth ( a.k.a.Dave Lewis). His drumming had precisely the qualities of the-spot-I-cannot-scratch fidgeting multi-rhythms which I appreciate. Few are the Rock drummers who can be met at a Tony Oxley concert. We were transfixed that night and many more times over the following months. It was a curious time: a transitional moment. Punk had not yet become formulaic. Its outsider position was wide enough to encompass high-energy bands ? of whom there had lately been so few, after all. So someone seeking that energy was as likely to turn up for Chou Pahrot as walk down the road to see The Jolt (pallid imitators) ? or even to make the mistake of going to the Apollo for a parody band like The Boomtown Rats. There is something about going regularly to see a band: a shifting set of people around the same pub table; the path through the evening as the band's moves settle into familiarity. Maybe the people would be the times... A word on lyricism or its absence in Chou Pahrot. They shared with the Prog bands an evasion or refusal of meaning. But where a Caravan or a Yes escaped into twee cosmic whimsy, Chou Pahrot were coming from a specifically situation: the periphery of the periphery in fact ? out in the badlands of Renfrewshire and the Clyde coast. This specifically Scottish situation was of a voicelessness. Looking across at literature, it was a time before the publication of Alasdair Gray's ?Lanark?; Jim Kelman's first short stories were appearing in small magazines, but it would be some years before the impact of the urban Scots voice would be heard. So the choice to sing in a recognisable Clydeside accept was part of the eccentricity of Chou Pahrot. It was a world away from the Americanisms of Midge Ure and Slik. But it remained just a challenge, a refusal to say. Chou Pahrot's lyrics were fragments of childrens' songs (?Ah know a man wi' an itchy face, it's a pure disgrace?) and scenes from a Scottish sitting-room ? waxed sideboards in the gloom of a dank Scottish Sunday. The world of the Sunday Post thrown back as a defiance. The Chou Pahrot EP ?Buzgo Tram Chorus? was recorded in summer 1978 and holds up surprisingly well today. It may be a period piece, but one whose space allows it to breathe. The ?Buzgo Tram Chorus? itself is typical of Chou Pahrot?s music, featuring fluid rhythmic guitar and drum patterns underpinned by heavier Wetton -esque bass,with the fiddle rising above the brew. In comparative terms, it perhaps sits somewhere between 1973 King Crimson, and Kaleidoscope of ?Seven Eight Sweet? and Celtic folk. ?Gwisgweela Gwamphnoo? is the oddity of the EP ? an elegant sax feature over bass arpeggios. It is quieter and more contemplative, evocative of the soundtracks of Berlin Cold War films. This is not a composition which I recall from their live sets of the time - probably unsuited to a pub gig, in reality. The major feature of the EP was ?Lemons? - a live favourite and a realistic representation of Chou Pahrot?s absurdist approach. The processed Pinky & Perky vocals on the EP version may smack too much of studio zaniness, as may the Spike Jones meets British Free Improv percussion breaks. Against that, it is a spacious recording which lays down its own agenda. ?Lemons for yer face, sitting on the sideboard?. Chou Pahrot's opportunity to record an LP, came on the back of one of the most collectively embarrassing episodes in recent Scottish history: the over-expectation of the Scottish football team?s chances in the 1978 World Cup in Argentina. That hysteria was encapsulated in Andy Cameron?s single ?Ally?s Tartan Army? ? its topical novelty status is emphasised by the ?I Want to be a Punk Rocker? B-side. But the bizarre byproduct of the come-down following the team?s scandal-ridden failure was that the record placed Klub Records in a position where they could release a Chou Pahrot LP. The band chose to record a live LP. Perhaps there was some reaction to the produced elements of the ?Buzgo Tram Chorus? EP? Possibly too they may have been enticed by the back-to-basics zeitgeist, leading to a desire to capture the raucous energies of Chou Pahrot?s live sets. Maybe so. Unfortunately ?Chou Pahrot Live? fails to deliver. The first cause of this failure is undoubtedly the disconnected crowd noise, which carries all the non-authenticity qualities of the official ?13th Floor Elevators Live? LP. The story at the time was that the Chou Pahrot recording was indeed live but that some failure of the recording technology had occurred. On finding a lack of recorded audience sound on the tape, a decision had been made to overdub audience sound from a recording of an entirely different concert (by the mid-70s prog. band Greenslade at Glasgow City Hall, so I heard). The artifice fails and leaves something hollow at the heart of the LP. Other changes rendered ?Chou Pahrot Live? less interesting than the EP. ?Fish Feathers McTeeth? had provided fine fluid polyrhythmic drumming at performances and on the EP. Subsequently his place had been taken by ?The Amphibian?, a more straightforward rock drummer. Something of the playful had been lost. This is especially noticeable in comparing the EP and LP versions of ?Lemons?. The LP version is much more reliant on bass riff and fiddle glissando than the EP version. Prominent performance pieces of the time, such as the characteristic ?Pantomime Shrub? get a faithful outing on the LP. Other tracks like ?Mary Submarine? carry on from ?Gwisgweela..? on the EP and again recall the Wetton era King Crimson. Overall though, there is an increasing sense of being out of time. A new orthodoxy had by then swept away any hint of received progrock (even as its better aspects were reentering through Wire, ATV, etc.). As Robert Fripp has noted [Amsterdam sleeve], this was a period when any progrock gestures were wholly anachronistic and unacceptable. Much of the Chou Pahrot repertoire was now bumping along on that scorched earth. During that period, recall a discussion with Bob Donaldson at a friend?s flat, anticipating the forthcoming New York double-header concert by the Magic Band and Prime Time. These were his and our favourite bands - bands which seemed close in instrumentation, energy and motivation. I recall the Chou Pahrot contingent at the Glasgow concert by The Slits and Don Cherry. That was almost an emblematic night - several old friends encountered there were never seen again. Partly a post-student diaspora, such as occurs for everyone sometime, but in retrospect it seems the point when an era was slipping away - the era in which a Chou Pahrot could operate at the margins. Chou Pahrot plowed on, with a German tour and a re-release of their LP there. Eventually they seemed to fade away. And after that? Chou Pahrot and its residues slid into sight several times... Socially there was the presence of a semi-Chou Pahrot as The Yund at a benefit party in Paisley Student Union. More honed down without the fiddle, more aggressive in songs such as ?Why Don?t You Hump Me Baby?? and ?For the Hippies?. Of McTeeth, there was possibly involvement in the Stirling-based weird band Ege Bamyasi - remembered with bemusement by all who saw their performances. Then there was a reformed Chou Pahrot who played at Glasgow?s Kelvingrove Festival in 1987. An aggressive noise-based performance: ?defies description? says the DJ who played it on Radio Clyde. The performance features a reprise of the old favourite ?Lemons?, as well as two pieces which I don?t recall being in their 70s repertoire: ?The Ghosties in ma Heid? and ?Ma Hauf Pint of Ale?. These represent a confrontational reconciliation with Celtic folk musics. Sadly there will be no more such reunions. When I first noticed the invisibility of Chou Pahrot on the net and put out initial appeals aiming to write this article, there was nothing out there. Subsequently I heard from two sources that Tony O?Neill / Mama Voot died in a car crash a couple of years ago. That news finally convinced me that it was time to begin. So this article forms some kind of tribute to Tony O?Neill and to those times which have passed us by. |
