SPOOK ROCKER WAS THE PRINCE OF POST PUNK DARKNESS

I cant remember a time when I ever had a lot of time for punk rock or what came either side of the punk revolution of 1977,
the seminal pioneers of angst rock which inspired the advent.of punk in the late 70`s, never more better incarnated than Iggy Pop and the Stooges, or the post punk acts which were just about always a bad imitation of what come out of London in the glory years of punk, like the Sex Pistols, The Ramones or The Clash.

I just never had a lot of time for distorted three chords from a guitar that didn`t have the slightest degree of melodic emotiveness to it. 

The closest I got to punk.up until now is the rather more hard rock orientated late 80`s
Iggy Pop album called `Brick By Brick`, maybe if I look harder I will find the first Stooges album on vinyl, I think I got it somewhere, and if some of Lou Reed`s stuff passes as as prototype punk then I definitely do have a punk collection, even though I
dont own a single Sex Pistols or Clash album.

Really I hate the stuff lol, but I guess what a lot of punk rockers lack in musicianship they make up for with enthusiasm. 

Why do you think the punk rockers of the late 70`s were calling Led Zeppelin`s stuff
dinosaur rock? Not every second generation Stooge band was in the mould of the garage noise which you associated with the London punk scene.

Tom Waits, who has made a career out of
mumbling his way through a mountain of songs from anything from blues, ragtime and alternative folk has quite often done
a few diversions which border on punk rock angst.

He is kind of like Iggy Pop, except he has no personality, not even when drug induced. An interview on TV which Tom Waits done with

Don Lane many years ago is best remembered for the fact that Waits turned up stoned and unable to string a few sentences together on the show. 

In Australia, the post punk rock scene never threw up any mainstream successes, maybe now is the time that I should point out that post punk music has a few very distinct variations to the original form of punk rock. 

But I'm going to cheat this time by introducing you to the late australian indie
rocker Rowland. S. Howard, formerly of Nick Cave`s crazy son of a bitch band of the early 80`s, `The Birthday Party`. 

If ever there was a unique and bizarre practitioner of dark and spooky.rock who come from Australia, it had to be either one of these two figureheads of DEATH ROCK, which is a spin off genre in the vein of GOTHIC ROCK. 

If it wasn`t for the hot chick who I met down at the dentist, and if she wasn`t into all this weird and wonderful spook rock, as I call it, then there is no way you would be reading this blog, because Rowland. S. Howard would not have even crossed my mind.

I was that naive that I thought my dental assistant babe was talking about Shane Howard who was of course the foundation member of Australian mainstream rock band Goanna. 

So apart from looking at quite a few clips of
Rowland. S. Howard on You Tube, I am still a raw prawn who is still really trying to work out just what category you would put Howard`s music in.

It is apparently post punk to his many fans,
so that`ll do me, because it ain`t punk in the true sense, it definitely ain`t pop or blues, in fact it ain`t like anything I have ever heard before.

Then again, I have never even picked up one
CD in the indie rock section of a music shop, maybe there are plenty of Rowland. S. Howard soundalikes, and I just haven`t met enough hot dental assistants to flirt with who are into all this SPOOOOOOOOOKY rock. 

The Birthday Party was what gave Howard his big break, the band was made up of Howard himself, Nick Cave, who would form the ever so slightly more mainstream Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds by the mid 1980`s,
Tracey Pew, Phil Calvert and the much underrated drummer Mick Harvey. 

The band quickly relocated to London in 1980 after forming, and relocated again almost as quickly to West Berlin. 

Conflicting artistic directions between Cave and Rowland. S. Howard would spell the end of the band within a few years, but not before they scared the wits out of many a live audience with some maniacal theatrics from the voice box of Nick Cave and some brooding and morbidly melodramatic guitar playing from Howard. 

Howard went on to form a band of musical piracy called `These Immortal Souls`, that resulted in two albums, 1987`s `Get Lost, (Dont Lie!)` and `I`m Never Going To Die Again`, from 1992. 

I have not had the opportunity to listen to these albums, but apparently both of them were reasonably well received by all the underground music connoisseurs. 

Howard also corroborated with obscure
indie queen Lydia Lynch on more than a few occasions, the two best results of this partnership was `Hollywood in Red`, an album released under Lynch`s name, and the rollicking `Shotgun Wedding`, which was released under both their names.

Shotgun Wedding would certainly have to be one of the more accessible and straightforward rock albums that Howard had anything to do with, it featured cover
versions of Led Zeppelin`s `In My Time of Dying` and Alice Cooper`s `Black Juju`, very different in their own way from the originals but nonetheless it never got any
more mainstream than this from Rowland. S. Howard.

In 2000, Howard released an album with a very questionable title, `Teenage Snuff Film`, I haven`t listened to it and judging by the title I dont think I want to, the term `snuff film` quite eerily refers to pornographic movies where the actors (or most probably actresses) actually get killed in the movie, FOR REAL. 

Knowing the cocktail of drugs that Howard was on throughout his life, I would have to say that most probably it was just grossly poor judgement on his part to give an album a moniker like that. 

Then again, I haven`t seen the album, so maybe someone will end up telling me the album is riddled with sado-masochist depravity.

Eight years would pass before he would release his second solo album `Pop Crimes`, which like `Snuff Film`, was well received by both critics and his fans.

It is rather ironic that two of his most popular songs on You Tube is one of the first he wrote `Shivers` and one of the last he wrote, `Pop Crimes`. 

Howard nearly made it back on stage with Nick Cave in 2009 when he played at the All Tomorrows Rock Festival, Cave &
the Bad Seeds were simply the compares for the day, had they known Rowland. S. Howard would be dead from liver cancer by the end of the year they might have jumped on stage for one last blast from the past.

But it wasn`t to be. Rowland. S. Howard died on the 30th December, 2009, from liver cancer, at the age of 50. 

He was a weird cat, he was musically offbeat
and his private eccentricities were always on public display for all to see. I cant say I like his music, but then again i cant say I hate it all either. 

What I can say is that most of what I have heard so far defies all the rules of music, it is probably what you would call a very unholy and unmelodic brew of discorded musical brinkmanship and a growling lyrical delivery that makes Hannibal Lecter sound like Julie Andrews. 

If you crossed Tom Waits, Iggy Pop, Bryan
Ferry, and Perry Farrell from Jane's Addiction together, then you might have the same ambiguous and spaced out character like Rowland. S. Howard was. 

Have a listen to one of the more mainstream
sounding songs that I dug up of his on the link below. Better wear earplugs if you`re an AC/DC fan.



YouTube - Rowland S Howard -Life's What You Make It-