nightandday
New Member
I find all of Morrissey's reviews of Ludus very interesting to read. Here's an excerpt from another one of his reviews, this one from mid 1981 (this one is also quoted in the Ludus biography that I provided the link to):
"Ludus perch uneasily on the fringes of all things bright and avant-garde. Being the only sensible recipe for the culturally damaged, theirs is a name destined to be in everyone's mouth, should justice prevail. Knowing that it very rarely does, Ludus are out to at least stretch their patience with the world to the very elastic limit. And it is never denied that their music is unlike almost anyone else's."
He also wrote reviews full of praise of their live shows, from the time when 'Steven Morrissey' worked Record Mirror. "Severed Alliance" mentions his review of their first gig with Ian Devine (who replaced guitarist Arthur Kadmon and bassist Willie Trotter in mid 1979): "Morrissey ensured that the ensemble's lengthy three-song set was documented extensively in the pages of Record Mirror and praised 'scene veteran' Linder for delivering 'a wild melange od ill-disciplined and extraneous vocal movements apparently without effort'. New boy Devine was deemed 'tragically anonymous, but probably prefers to be', while Toby, like many drummers in Morrissey's firmament of fame, simply 'cannot be faulted'. "
And this review of a Depeche Mode concert with Ludus as the support (22 August 1981 - Record Mirror ) is amusing because Moz is so passionate in his musical hate as well as in his love:
"Depeche Mode may not be the most remarkably boring group ever to walk the face of the earth, but they're certainly in the running. Their sophisticated nonsense succeeds only in emphasising just how hilariously unimaginative they really are. At once we recognise four coiffured Barry White's (a nauseating version); "cain't get enough of your lerve" they profess too dull to be even boring. They ressurect every murderouly monotous cliche known to modern man, and "New Life" looms as nothing more than a bland jelly-baby. Still the man from 'Jackie' was impressed, knowing that, at leat, these boys have nice hair... and the conveyor belt moves along. Ludus, plainly wishing they were elsewhere, hammered out a passionate set to an audience possibly hand-picked for their tone deafness. But Ludus like to wallow in other people's depravities and therefore their music offers everything to everyone. Linder was born singing and has more imagination than Depeche Mode could ever hope for. Still Depeche Mode get the Jackie spread. No justice!" "
Depeche Mode ar one of my favourite bands, but only for their output from 1986 onwards - I have to say I'd agree with Moz if I heard them in their early days, I hate "I Just Can't Get Enough" and most of their early synth-pop stuff!According to "Songs That Saved Your Life", he also wrote a "factual resume 'Let's Look at Ludus' - a press release for Linder's post-punk/jazz outfit. In it, he refers to them as being 'flower-like', a figurative simile borrowed from Oscar Wilde which would again reappear within the lyrics of 'Miserable Lie' to describe Morrissey's own 'flower-like life."
But the most interesting texts he wrote about have been in the recent years - in the sleevenotes for his compilation "Under the Influence":
"Gliding in without oars, Ludus belong to the sea. Linder comes into position against the light, at double-sail, holding her words prepared. The weight of despair lifts like a deceptive fog only because the voice sings. “Breaking the Rules” might appear to be a statement, but like all Ludus songs, it is really a question laid out like a statement. This is the delightfully recurring now-that-you’ve-got-me-where-I-want-you Linder trick. I want to be caught. Linder’s tags of verse offer advice, strength, warmth, sustenance and inspiration, as she sings – not roughly, but firmly. I want to be caught twice. My mouth cannot close whilst “Breaking the Rules” plays... "
and in the essay he wrote for Linder's monograph "Linder Works 1976-2006, which you can read in my earlier thread:
http://forums.morrissey-solo.com/showthread.php?t=64515&highlight=monograph
"I first saw Linder as she introduced Buzzcocks onstage at the Lesser Free Trade Hall in Manchester during the summer of 1976. A few months later, I would spot Linder sitting on a table during the soundcheck for the Sex Pistols third Manchester gig. I was 17, and biologically inferior to everyone else. Linder was a bit older, with terrifying hair. I decided to approach her, specifically to prove to her that I had no viewpoint whatsoever about anything. Some 30 years later, that conversation has yet to pause.
Most tormentedly aware, Linder seemed to know something that I knew. We both spoke in cinematic language, and we both somehow knew that our presence on earth was trouble enough for those around us. How had we endured?
From a rented room in Whalley Range Linder's art supplied the unspoken. She led me by the lapel to Janice G. Raymond's The Transsexual Empire, Calvin C. Hernton's Sex and Racism, and to Philippe Aries' Western Attitudes Towards Death. To me, her life, then, was messianic. Linder took up the pen, the brush, the chalk, and stood as if behind a machine gun, perceiving danger swiftly and more keenly than the shell-suited mutants of surrounding Manchester.
In 1980, Linder's art spoke of the delusions of possession, your life - your body! - does not belong to you. She seemed to have a need to sing that went further than revenge.
I did not know or hear anyone at all across human civilisation who was like Linder. The vital centre of Linder's songs was the failure to find personal gratification, for which the singing of these songs momentarily restored the balance. In live performance, Linder carried tales that allowed us to glimpse the abyss, against a backdrop of tough and boyish bog-water guitars and thunderous drums. Linder tore the lyrics out with her teeth, every song addressing the self, or asking: Is your life enough?
The first single by Linder zapped into the then hollowed independent chart in March of 1980 at number 32. All of our suffering seemed to be temporarily over. Although the songs read as screams, Linder moved smoothly like a brooding Julie London. The women of punk sang in clipped and chopped no-moral-code regional accents, while Linder's angry voice was soft and soothing. However, the musical mood throughout England during this time was of sociability and savage ignorance. Post-punk major labels had reinstated the blank aspect that would protect them, as if to tell us that we had had our fun, after all.
Squeezing through, Linder's Single Of The Week status in the reasonably respected Sounds magazine, was chased a week later by the most hateful and paranoid rail against her very being; concern with female desire was seen as a sexual transgression (of some kind). The bad killed the good.
Visually, Linder's protean quality suggested a female Eugene Sandow; the body a vehicle of... unwillingness; a naturally beautiful woman with the ideal of everything, who physically embodied the ideal, yet who sang in temporal terms of forces of containment. 'Would you like to unlock me?' Houdini provided source material for Linder's live presentations.
In 1982, her best album, Riding the Rag, was buried without ceremony by the press. One triumphant review on the NME battleground could not quite provide enough oxygen. Late in 1983, Linder stopped singing. 'I'm by nature / soli-tary'.
The Linder of the Second Period intensified her artistic endeavours. 'A bag of tricks / is my poli-tics.'
In my view, Linder's life is a docudrama, potent and therefore lethal. She is aware of the inevitable punishment for those who seek to kick against the enforced limitations of their lives, and she is aware of the price you pay for exposing restraints. The 1990s had Linder and me replacing the dead white greenish cast of unforgiving Manchester with the bright catacombs of El Paso, Los Angeles and Phoenix; Linder armed with her cameras, and me with a despair long past explaining.
In time a tale will be told."
