STOOGE YOUR ENTHUSIASM (18)
By:
November 22, 2023
One in a series of 25 enthusiastic posts, contributed by 25 HILOBROW friends and regulars, on the topic of proto-punk records from the Sixties (1964–1973, in our periodization schema). Series edited by Josh Glenn. Also check out our proto-punk playlist (a work in progress) at Spotify.
ENO | “NEEDLES IN THE CAMEL’S EYE” | 1973
Eno? Proto-punk? That pandit of ambient, deviser of Oblique Strategies, and sought-after studio conceptualist and sonic soothsayer?
Remember that Brian Eno was Roxy Music’s “non-musician.” He was enamored with the amateur aesthetics of the Scratch Orchestra and Portsmouth Sinfonia, given to disregarding the manuals to the machines he adopted as his instruments, and inclined to combining musicians whose sounds he thought would conflict. Add to that the perspective Eno gleaned from one of his totemic tomes, Morse Peckham’s 1965 study of biology, behavior, and the arts, which propounded that the activity of art was “to break up orientations, to weaken and frustrate the tyrannous drive to order.” Peckham’s proto-punk title: Man’s Rage for Chaos.
“Needles” wastes no time getting under your skin. Guitarists Phil Manzanera and Chris Spedding barrel along in a driving 1-4-5 progression. There is a Velvet Undergroundian reverberation, created in part by Eno’s thwacking the tremolo bar of Manzanera’s Fender Stratocaster as it was being played. Spedding’s Duane Eddy-inspired solo contributes a little filigree to the turbulence with twangy climbs and convulsive stops and starts. Eno likened the guitar part to “a cloud of metal needles.” For the NME’s Nick Kent, it was “guitar thrashing synthesized through a metal gauze of sound.” Singing the praises of the album Here Come The Warm Jets in The Quietus, Gaz Coombes of Supergrass described the guitars on “Needles” as “big, filthy, dirty, and horrible things.”
From the onslaught of these guitars and propulsive double-tracked drums laid down by Hawkwind’s Simon King, Eno’s voice rings out. An “instrumental with singing on it” was how the singer synopsized the song. His fluorescent wail blazes like a flare in the miasma. The vocal here could be summed up in Dylan Thomas’s line from “Altarwise by Owl-Light”: “My camel’s eyes will needle through the shroud.”
“Needles” is among the songs Eno termed his “idiot energy” songs. Directives: Boisterous, Impetuous, Exultant, Inane. Prodromes of punk. Of the many cover versions of the song, I am most taken with the idiot energy frequencies emanating from those by Volcano Suns and the Hickoids.
Despite Eno’s regarding his “inexplicable lyric” as “written in less time than it takes to sing,” let’s thread our way through “Needles.” The title riffs on Matthew 19:24, the precept that gives long odds on the likelihood of a rich man entering God’s kingdom. This song is about shedding not possessions but explanations. The singer is receiving odd signals, possibly messages, arising from everywhere — looks from knowing people who won’t let in on their subliminal intel, fateful weather patterns, birds of prey (what — or who — are they?) with too much to say. Eno’s frenetic canticle closes by questioning our need to ask questions:
Why ask why
For by the by and by
All mysteries are just more
Needles in the camel’s eye
Accept the unanswerable. Mysteries produce a cosmology of chaos. That dromedary’s pupil is getting to be a pincushion.
STOOGE YOUR ENTHUSIASM: INTRODUCTION by Josh Glenn | Mandy Keifetz on The Trashmen’s SURFIN’ BIRD | Nicholas Rombes on Yoko Ono’s MOVE ON FAST | David Cantwell on ? and the Mysterians’ 96 TEARS | James Parker on The Modern Lovers’ SHE CRACKED | Lynn Peril on The Pleasure Seekers’ WHAT A WAY TO DIE | Lucy Sante on The Count Five’s PSYCHOTIC REACTION | Jonathan Lethem on The Monkees’ YOUR AUNTIE GRIZELDA | Adam McGovern on ELP’s BRAIN SALAD SURGERY | Mimi Lipson on The Shaggs’ MY PAL FOOT FOOT | Eric Weisbard on Frances Faye’s FRANCES AND HER FRIENDS | Annie Zaleski on Suzi Quatro’s CAN THE CAN | Carl Wilson on The Ugly Ducklings’ NOTHIN’ | Josh Glenn on Gillian Hill’s TUT, TUT, TUT, TUT… | Mike Watt on The Stooges’ SHAKE APPEAL | Peter Doyle on The Underdogs’ SITTING IN THE RAIN | Stephanie Burt on Pauline Oliveros’s III | Marc Weidenbaum on Ornette Coleman’s WE NOW INTERRUPT FOR A COMMERCIAL | Anthony Miller on Eno’s NEEDLES IN THE CAMEL’S EYE | Gordon Dahlquist on The Sonics’ STRYCHNINE | David Smay on The New York Dolls’ HUMAN BEING | Michael Grasso on the 13th Floor Elevators’ YOU’RE GONNA MISS ME | Holly Interlandi on Death’s ROCK’N’ROLL VICTIM | Elina Shatkin on Bobby Fuller’s I FOUGHT THE LAW | Brian Berger on The Mothers of Invention’s WHO ARE THE BRAIN POLICE? | Peggy Nelson on The Kingsmen’s LOUIE LOUIE.
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