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LOST TREASURES – Captains of Industry

Posted on 15 July 2016

CAPTAINS OF INDUSTRY

“Roomful of Monkeys”

by Peter Marston

In the late ’70s, I played briefly in a punk band called The Onlys. We had pressed a self-financed EP and got some spins on KROQ here in Los Angeles, including a couple on Rodney Bingenheimer’s show. With stars in our eyes, we submitted the EP as a demo to a handful of record labels (we eventually went with tiny Zipp Records—the only taker, to be honest—though they folded long before we completed our album). The biggest disappointment, though, was the rejection letter from Stiff Records that arrived in my college mailbox. I idolized Stiff—it seemed more like a club than a label. I loved how the artists on Stiff popped up on each other’s records and how the musicians would appear in various recombinations on the Stiff Live tours. Captains of Industry came together well after the halcyon Stiff days and their sole album, Roomful of Monkeys, was not even released on Stiff, but when I read that the band was fronted by Eric Goulden (aka Wreckless Eric) and included half of Ian Drury’s Blockheads, I fell once more in the thrall of the spirit of Stiff. (I must confess that this is a very romanticized view—as far as I can tell, no one in the band has any fond recollections of the group or even likes the record, which likely explains how it became a Lost Treasure).

Unlike The Onlys, when Eric Goulden submitted a cassette of his songs to Stiff, the label brought him in and promptly snapped him up. They were struck by the rawness of his music, his no-frills pop sense and the bite of his social observations. Against his better judgment, he was given the name Wreckless Eric in line with the current punk aesthetic (cf. Sid Vicious, Rat Scabies or The Skid’s Alex Plode). It seemed to fit the controlled chaos that informed Goulden’s approach to both recording and live performances, but eventually, it became a character he had to play and rather than play it out, he shed the identity, seeking a new start in Captains of Industry. Working with his manager at the time, Johnny Green (who also represented The Clash), Goulden auditioned dozens of musicians, but several attempts to build a cohesive line-up failed and somewhat out of desperation, Goulden and Green decided to simply hire Blockheads bassist Norman Watt-Roy and keyboardist Mickey Gallagher and get on with it. Drummer Dick Adland (hopefully not a punk pseudonym) was the only member to survive from the previous auditions. As Goulden had actually been signed by Go! Records before hiring Watt-Roy and Gallagher, the foursome quickly went into the studio to record their debut (and only) LP, Roomful of Monkeys, released in April, 1985.

The music on the album is more or less what one would expect from the line-up: Goulden and Adland play in a fairly shambling style while Watt-Roy and Gallagher keep it tight. As such it lies almost precisely between the last Wreckless Eric album on Stiff, Big Smash (all tight) and the next Wreckless Eric album, released nearly a decade later, Le Beat Group Electrique (all shambling). The record opens with “Land of the Faint of Heart”—it’s classic Wreckless Eric, with lean pop hooks and incisive, even biting, lyrics. It’s a little cluttered with sound effects, but as solid as most of his work on Stiff. “Our Neck of the Woods” leans a little closer to Goulden’s later record, The Donovan of Trash: the song is clever minimalist folk-punk, but sabotaged by seemingly deliberate murky production. “Julie” is a smart slice of Farfisa-fueled garage-rock with a spooky, affected (and effective) guitar solo. “The Lucky Ones” deconstructs early-’60s beach blanket pop in a way that is at once charming and subversive, melodic and dissonant. “Reputation” is a ska-ish swinging number with bitter lyrics that may reflect, although obliquely, Goulden’s unease with his Wreckless Eric persona. “Lifeline” alternates minor-key verses with big pop choruses, though the lead vocal is obscured by double tracking and a lot of reverb. “Lady of the Manor” sounds like Goulden is trying to write an Elvis Costello song, circa 1978. Still wholly original, it is perhaps my favorite song on the record. The album closes, appropriately, with “Playtime is Over,” a song that recalls Wreckless Eric’s classic “Brain Thieves.”

The only single pulled from Roomful of Monkeys was “Lifeline” b/w the non-LP side “Girl in a Million” (it was actually released a few months before the album, in October 1984). There was a brief tour, but just a few weeks after the album’s release, the band had split up and Watt-Roy and Gallagher had returned to The Blockheads. Goulden went on to form the Len Bright Combo, before reclaiming the Wreckless Eric name in 1989. His most recent release is 2015’s AmERICa, an album that continues to attest to his unique vision of both human relations and pop music.

Roomful of Monkeys has never been reissued on CD or in the digital domain. Used copies of the original LP seem to go for about $15-20. Needledrops are also available from various file-sharing sites. Fans of the Stiff stable and Wreckless Eric completists (OK, that might just be me) will not want to miss this one!

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Pop Pioneer and “Lost Treasures” writer, Peter Marston is the leader of long-running power pop band, Shplang, whose most recent album, “My Big Three Wheeler” has been described as “the Beatles meet Zappa in pop-psych Sumo match.” Peter has a new project in 2015 under the name MARSTON. Marston have a track on the latest “Power Pop Planet – Volume 5” compilation just out now and available at: www.PopGeekHeavenStore.com.

CHECK OUT SHPLANG out at this link: http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/shplang

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