Muck was asked by Faber and Faber in 1993 to write a novel. This is hardly surprising given that at the time he was widely considered to be the poet of his generation, a writer of rare insight and understanding comparable to Rimbaud and Rilke. It soon became apparent however that Muck was perhaps too drugged out of his brain to deliver a coherent book on any subject and the novel missed deadline after deadline before being released to critical disdain in February 1995.
Arachnid is notoriously impenetrable, many sentences make no sense on a literal or metaphorical level and there is no discernable plot to speak of. Griel Marcus has described the book as the "Finnegans Wake of rock n' roll." Robert Christgau was more blunt however when he described the album as "utter shite, unreadable, unreal, unread."
It is rather difficult to comprehend a novel that begins:
"Moonflake sunset on the glib highway clavicle, buckets of brawn and a narcoleptic raven, hills of mythological indifference penetrate the eyeline like the quasi-satiric ramblings of an emaciated hedge. Johann shouts 'adieu' and porn floods the wardrobe, speckled boots of chunky chatter, syphilitic windmills blight my dawn, animal my thumb, bid fairwell to the sex robot and burn your schoolbooks in the Japanese consulate bathroom..."
The book continues in this vein for 722 pages, each more absurd than the last. It finishes:
"...ho ho ho sang the glovebox moonshine hotelier, brink my brick and cogitate on a kestrel's kiss whilst painting in the pitch-black of daylight. No said Zeus, grasping a kettle with his logic, cheat clamboured colour amid dinosaur windows, Nixon frowning like a ditch in lingerie, my name is Brendan Squirm I swear on my tits, who dies for freedom(pee-dome) if treasure does not exist? Pope Chomsky? Remember the Argonauts and try to forget tomorrow, ho ho ho."
Formed by a group of Harvard students in 1998, Intelligentsia were an anomaly in a music scene still dominated by Britpop. Literate, condescending and extraordinarily pompous, the band made music so arch and abstract that the few people who understood the musical and scholastic allusions were simultaneously delighted at the breadth of their learning and disgusted by their own hideous conceit. The album is a panoply of nebbish puns, arcane references and smirky contempt, with sarcastic vocals undermining purposely redundant riffs and sublime classical references accompanied by the most deliberately vacuous lyrics ever commited to acetate. Described by John Peel as:
"A low point in human history, ten times worse than Talking Heads. Hideous, contrived, hate-filled and misanthropic. Truly, utterly demoralising. Do not listen to this album."
Paroxysm 1 - Atlas Chugged 2 - Public Domain Stream 3 - Henry Cavendish 4 - On The Aborigines of The Specious 5 - Richard Ellmann 6 - I Mill, Milieu? 7 - Recrementitious Bildungsroman 8 - Tits And Ass And Shit 9 - How Brechtian? 10 - Anaemic Arrivistes 11 - Empfindsamkeit
After the overdose deaths of Kim Bjellert and Loki McRoki, Lilian Katt retreated from public view. She re-emerged in 1999 as a calmer, more reflective individual. Gone was the agitprop popinjay of Lesbians fame, replaced by a self-possessed Earth Mother of sorts, fusing folkish solemnity with a ruthlessly irreverent sense of humour. Onomatopoeia is a total departure from Katt's previous oeuvre and draws more from the antebellum European tradition, giving the album a delightful Weimar sheen whilst also imbuing the songs with a strange, rather unearthly sense of timelessness.
Onomatopoeia 1 - Once More Unto The Beach 2 - Accidental Narcissist 3 - Catastrophes Of Nostalgia 4 - I Almost Never Don't 5 - Kissing The Floor (Alcoholism) 6 - Hapless As A Lagoon 7 - Muttering Gutteral Utterance 8 - Lunching With The Pissheads 9 - Three Quarks For Muster Mark 10 - Lunatic Fringe (Unfortunate Haircut) 11 - Bimbo Eruption 12 - Boxes In Trees 13 - Fester Under My Malevolent Glare 14 - You Cling Like A Limpet
Introduction After 3 years of heroin abuse in Vienna, which yielded some of the best and worst albums of his career, Muck went home to Minnesota to contemplate things. After a mysterious "radical epiphany" in a McDonalds car park one Sunday evening he kicked heroin for good by locking himself in a shed for 2 weeks of painful withdrawal. To make matters worse for himself he had neglected to let out the 5 families of swallows that had made a home inside and spent his days in convulsions, getting pecked in the face and covered in birdshit. Unable to distinguish between his hallucinations and reality in any case, it didn't make that much of a difference.
Emerging alive from the shed, Muck vowed to put his long-standing drug problem behind him and record the best music of his career. Self-produced, Off The Drugs was "an excoriating crucifixion of the self" according to Bono, and garnered universal rave reviews. Muck also scored his first Number 1 single with the self-confessional "Jesus, Sorry About That, I Was Out Of It There For A While, Fucking Hell."
Unprecedented Sucess Off The Drugs won a record 9 Grammys at the 2000 Awards including Record, Album and Song of the Year. While presenting the award for Best Rock Vocal to Muck for "Makin' Amends", a tearful Bono said:
"Thank you Jakob for your light and giving. Thank you for your grace and humility. Jakob Muck is like the blind lamb who lives on a cliff but does not go over the edge because a wise man built an electric fence at the edge of the cliff to stop sheep from falling off the edge of it. The lamb keeps walking into the electric fence because it cannot see, and has no sense of direction because it is blind, but it does not go over the edge because the electric fence is in the way because the wise man put it there to stop the sheep from falling off the cliff. So even though the lamb is blind, it does not go off the edge because it can't and that is because there is a fence in the way because the wise man put it there. Jakob, lamb, you keep on walking into that fence, just keep on walking into that cliff fence."
Tracklisting 1. Jesus, Sorry About That, I Was Out Of It There For A While, Fucking Hell 2. Makin' Amends 3. Fixin' Shit Up 4. It's Good To Be Clean 5. Ditch The Junk And Then Junk The Ditch 6. Palpable Sense Of Yearning 7. McDonalds Car Park, Sunday Evening 8. Feeling A Lot Better, Thanks 9. What Was I At In Vienna 10. Shed Withdrawal Blues 11. Track Marks Of My Tears 12. Her, Eoin 13. Sunshine Is Nice
A visceral excursion into the vagaries of the female condition, Welcome Home, Darling was, according to Lilian Katt, "a fuck you to all those docile, domesticated, anything to please him, little miss perfect, trophy wife bimbos who give feminism a bad name". This pungent follow up to We Fuck Life was too vitriolic for mainstream consumption and due to a slew of heroin related deaths, proved to be the band's last album.
1 - Ain't Gonna Be Made A Maid
2 - Little Miss Pervert
3 - Tampon Soup
4 - Whorechild
5 - Alpha Ape
6 - Queen Of Shit
7 - Daddy Complex
8 - Blow Up Doll
9 - Ladies Who Lunch
10 - Sullen Girl
11 - Kiss My Other Lips
Sans-Culottes - Te Futueo Et Equum Tuum (1989)
Portland, Oregon's finest drunken sons shone brightest on this, their last album before they all died from drugs.
1 - Dan Is Going To Spew, Man!
2 - All The Girls I Love Are Other Men's Daughters
3 - Totally Stoned
4 - Epic Party
5 - Girls Are Weird
6 - I Stink Of Hot Love
7 - Ridin' On The Bus
8 - Gonna Leave This Town
9 - Nothing To Do
10 - Do Nothing
11 - Sorry Ma, I Need Money.
The Electric Chairs - Best Of All Possible Worlds (1976)
Something of a kitschy delight, Best Of All Possible Worlds is perhaps the greatest pop album ever made by a trio of Japanese teenage schoolgirls. Lead singer and keyboard supremo Matsurisha Matsurasho's songs of sexual confusion and clothes struck a chord with many a western teenager.
1 - I Like You, Maybe It Is Love
2 - Awesome Trousers
3 - I Love Clothes
4 - I Am Happy Now (I Was Sad Previously)
5 - I Want To Kiss Love Kindly
6 - I Love Clothes (Reprise)
7 - Be My Fond Boyfriend Man
8 - Party On The Street Now
9 - Please Be Special To Me
10 - Your Style Is Cool
11 - I Like Looking At You
The Junk Specifics - Needless Use (Of Brackets) 1966
1 - Specifically Junkish
2 - Blast Crash
3 - This Fucking Fucker's Fucked
4 - Dynamite Boy
The Muppets Sing Lead Belly (1984)
Though the critics initially scoffed, this collection of covers turned out to be a real eye-opener. Backed by house band Dr Teeth And The Electric Mayhem, The Muppets tear through Huddie Ledbetter's back catalogue with an admirable gusto. Kermit's frenzied take on Take A Whiff On Me is a coked-up classic and Ms Piggy's cruel vocal on They Hung Him On A Cross continues to haunt. Beaker's synth laden electro-pop take on Mr Hitler is the 80's.
Salacious Protrusion Continental Confusion From the psychobabble in the Tower of Babel To the mystic fits of Cain and Abel It is simple to see what the cause is.
Salacious Protusion Cold Fusion Why do you reckon we sit and think? Why do women sometimes slowly blink? Come on, surely you can see what the cause is.
Salacious Protrusion War Delusion Why did Hitler do what he did? Why make the jar if not the lid? It’s obvious what the cause is.
Salacious Protrusion Atrocious Allusion Did Copernicus get his shit together Because there was some cloudless weather? We all know exactly what the cause is.
Salacious Protrusion Erotic Illusion Why do people drink in bars What’s the symbolism of cigars Oh come on, you know what the cause is.
Salacious Protrusion Psychedelic Diffusion There is a Sistine Chapel Because there is an Adam’s Apple You cannot help but see what the cause is.
Salacious Protrusion Genital Intrusion Why is there the cunning hair flick Or that deep red ruby lipstick You know what the cause is.
Salacious Protrusion Foregone Conclusion Paris has the Eiffel Tower Georgia O’ Keeffe has her flower Lets just all agree on what the cause is.
Life Is Odd - Y'all Stay Away Now, Ya Hear (1957) Never Odd Or Even - No X In Nixon (1973 Supercomputer - Fatal Fractal Void (1965) Dweebs - Laika The Space Dog (1983)
Washington DC's Dweebs were the ultimate college band, adored on campus and a critical favourite. Laika The Space Dog used the titular mutt as a symbol of the lost innocence of the Cold War.
1. To Space, Dear Laika
2. Bark Away Boy or How The Cold War Came To Pass
3. The Paranoid Style in American Politics
4. Space Race Blues
5. Apollo And Zeus
6. A Configuration Of Sorts
7. Floating In A Tin Can
8. Laika Dies Humanoid - Thought Transmission (1978)
Officially the heaviest album ever made, Thought Transmission is a masterpiece of riffage and screaming. Lead singer Bill Charbert and lead guitarist Sunn "Thunder" Moon spent 6 months in a disused warehouse crafting the album, eating stray rats and drinking piss to "get down to the dregs, man, really see what it's like down there in the filth, man" according to Moon. Muck described the album thus: "It's a vision, man, there's some visionary shit in that bodacious songset, it's just wild fucking gravity, man, with primo heaviosity".
1. Suck My Gland, Faggot
2. World Of Vomit
3. Trapped In The Clown Forest
4. Lemme See Them Tits, Maw
5. Maximum Heaviosity Forever
6. Rock (Featuring Roll)
7. Duh Nuh Nuh Nuh, Duh Nuh Duh Duh Nuh Nuh
8. Pisschild
9. Get An Abortion, Bitch
10. C.U.N.T.
11. Sweet Way Of Love
Muck was asked in 1997 by Spin Magazine to list his 10 all-time favourite albums.
This is part 1.
Prior to his involvement with Winona Ryder, Muck dated Lilian Katt, singer and guitarist for acerbic riot grrl ensemble Lesbians. The band name was a caustic mockery of manhood and its attendant inanities and reflected the group's militant sapphism. Asked why she was dating a man at the time of the albums release, Katt said:
"you know, it's like purely for the sake of degradation and shit, you know what I mean, i'm not even following your, like, phallic agenda and stuff and your Y chromosome and sports and shit like that, it's like, what i'm saying is just, you know like fuck Nixon and Copernicus with their dicks and stuff and like you know, Marie Curie, you know, like why am I never hearing about her and stuff and the war machine so totally is man stuff and you know thats what I want to change and shit, it's like Joan Jett is cool but like men are so, kind of, wrong, you know, and like, yeah you know..."
Katt was known to use shock tactics to great across her point, often using her used tampons as plectrums to highlight "how men have got like, dicks, and that's fine, that's ok, you know, but, you know, so what, you know, kind of, like." The other members of Lesbians were Kim Bjellert, Loki McRoki and a young Courtney Love, who didn't actually play on the album but antagonised ceaselessly on its behalf.
1. We Fuck Life
2. Sapphic Agenda
3. Nihilist Rage Slut
4. Menstrual Retardation (Menopause Song)
5. Man + Man = War
6. Snide Vulva
7. Oversized Check Jacket (Hidden Lesbian)
8. Domestic Abuse Is So Not Cool
9. Marie Curie
10. Sisters Are Doing It For Themselves
11. Doll Persona
12. I'm Not Your Plaything
Prescott Parsley and Alfonso Chump formed Apotheosis Of The Negroid in Fallopia, Alabama in 1987. The band's sound was initially sparse and intricate, but grew in time to be spare and complex. Though an underground success, it was the release in 1991 of When The Hurlyburly's Done that truly catapulted the band to international attention and critical acclaim.
Described by Audrey Hepburn as "gutteral, sonic and implicitly ionic", the album was the causecélebre of the chattering classes with its roccoco flourishes and neon postulations, entheogenic spiritualism and bestial somnolent gravity, proto-specific anarchism and dim, corpulent spleneticism, its spectral ambivalence and caterwauling pseudo-morality, its sultry languor, its elemental intransigence, its allusive fascism, its rabid, ribald mellifluous conceit, its overbearing hauteur, its sagacious inaccessibility, its..... oh fuck off.
1. Sarcastic Marauder
2. Only The Great Negate
3. Banquet Of Grotesques
4. Pry, Minister?
5. Is, Was, Am
6. Mollify My Soul
7. Goof Loon Boogie Bonk
8. Erotic Glimpses
9. Amalgamated Genitals
10. Sly Hallway Fuck
11. And Now.... Eternity
12. Not My Cup Of Tea
13. Why Do I Smell Like Mud In The Morning?
14. Goatscape
After the success of Yeah, Come On, Yeah, David Elvish linked up with Prescott Parsley of Apotheosis Of The Negroid to form Marsupial Oblivion and release Elvish Parsley. The band name was supposed to be the album title and vice-versa but the duo got romped up on glue during the design process and only realised their mistake after some 15,000 copies had been pressed. Elvish was devastated to learn that the convenient pun derived from their surnames would be limited to one release and fell into a deep depression which sadly culminated in him recording with Sting.
1. Spirito Santy 2. I Nearly Shat My Pants In Anticipation 3. She's A Beaut 4. The Vagaries Of Social Conservatism 5. Hyphenated Children 6. Roam And Cat Lick 7. You're A Fucking Bastion (National Treasure) 8. I Love You (From Behind The Bushes) 9. Sweaty Palms Of Lust 10. Hiroshima Farmers' Market
One evening, it must a been jus’ around 6 O’ Clock cause I could hear the church bells wailin’, I was wanderin’ round this strange, strange town and… a lot of strange things were going on and I kept some of those thoughts with me and one day, a while later, I sat them down and wrote this song and, ah, I hope you like it, it’s called Everything Is Totally Fucked Altogether.
The insipid diplomat implied
That Mother Nature’s lover died
The governor had his body fried
And the corpse was turned to compost
In hallways prim with snarling portraits of queens
The muck-rakers sit and count their beans
They do it all with faces so serene
It makes you ill to see it
On empty highways just about dawn
The uncivilised desist to spawn
And slumber after putrid yawns
In pick-up trucks, jalopies
In the antiquated Laundromat
A lonely woman strokes an ugly cat
It snarls at a passing bureaucrat
Who is heading towards the courthouse
I’m wandrin’ around a strange, strange town
Everything’s the right way up but also upside down
Everything is totally fucked, fucked forever, yeah
Everything is fucked altogether. (Sing It, Mama)
An angry drunk with his eyes on fire
Calls the moon a fool and the sun a liar
And mumbles out of tune with the children’s choir
Who are singing a song about oceans
A man wearing a Ronald Reagan mask
Sips cold soup out of a warm hip flask
And thinks about how he can solve the task
Of makin’ sense of something
Johnny the queen and Judy the prince
Try to remember the time that has past since
Either of them had a good hot rinse
At the Turkish baths at the docks
A smoked cigarette lying used in the gutter
Is heard by a drugged man to sardonically mutter
“I played professional golf without the use of a putter
What in god's name have you done?”
I’m roamin’ around a strange and eerie town
Nothing is the right way up but nothin’s upside down
Everything is totally fucked, fucked forever, yeah
Everything is fucked altogether. (Come on, baby)
A window is smashed by an aggravated doctor
Whose patent’s been stolen by Gamble and Proctor
His wife is now crying because he’s locked her
In the bathroom ‘til she washes her hands
Two lovers kiss, caress each other’s faces
But they are in two completely separate places
And neither will admit that after all the chases
They have been chasing someone else’s dream
A man in a club is in for a brawl
Another man will get riled by his harsh, cutting drawl
“I could easily have her, but you couldn’t at all”
Are the words he should never have spoken
In the mind of a sickly, consumptive nun
God is holdin’ his hands up, Satan’s holding a gun
Says “it’s about time I had me some fun”
And starts makin’ the fucker dance
I’m ramblin’ around a strange and ugly town
Everything’s the wrong way up but never upside down
Everything is totally fucked, fucked forever, yeah
Everything is fucked altogether. (Take it away, boys)
In the didactic ocean, the puppet cowboy sighs
“If a kiss a milkman, a fire engine dies”
Then his shipmates crowd round and all yell surprise
And throw him into a cave full of whores
The drug dealer quilts with a HIV pos’
No-one exactly knows the reason because
They sit in silence and watch The Wizard of Oz
But the TV is facing the wrong way
Why says to something where exactly is what
Something says “ I don’t know, you better ask not”
Not says he’s sittin' by the old coin-slot
But that doesn’t even make any sense
Guinevere dreams about psychedelic trees
It’s an abstract allusion to the birds and the bees
She equates nature with erotic unease
So she strokes the bark rather coyly
I’m amblin’ around a strange, curious town
Everything’s the right way up but also upside down
Everything is totally fucked, fucked forever, yeah
Everything is fucked altogether. (Take it on home now)
A ragged man sings with his hat on the ground
A few drunks ask if he can sing something profound
He says “my profundity is internationally renowned”
So they weigh him down and throw him in the ocean
The bishop on the altar puts a blindfold on his eyes
Say’s “there’s only one thing in this life I despise”
He rubs down deep between his chasuble’d thighs
And then proceeds to say absolutely nothing
Texas McGill and The Jack of All Trade
Are slumpin’ round the backstreets, tryin’ to get laid
If that’s gonna happen, someone needs to be paid
The scene is all too harrowing to witness
A cop, he stares at me with a hideous frown
Says “round here you’d better keep your dirty head down
What are you even doing in this strange, strange town?
Best find some other hovel in which to dwell”
I said I’ve seen many places,
Regarded many faces,
Left my fair share of traces,
Always strapped up my laces,
Always stepped to proper paces,
Never insulted no races,
Solved quite a number of cases,
Never kissed a girl with braces
Dealt my share of aces
Strummed a multitude of basses...
And never did I ever put on no earthly airs or graces
He grinned and spat and laughed and stared hard down at his laces
Said “That really ain’t the type of guy that this here town embraces”
I’m wandrin’ around a strange, strange town
Everything’s the right way up but also upside down
Everything is totally fucked, fucked forever, yeah
Heavens Above! Rock's most "misunderstood" artiste decamps to Vienna and records the most coherent, though hideously contrived, albums of his career. Muck has an almost imperceptible sincerity that expresses itself in tidy, abstact bass-lines. His overweening arrogance expresses itself everywhere else.
The most convivial of the "pentology" (oh, for the days of WC Handy) is Lapsed Chasm, which has a druggy somnolence thats slyly ingratiates itself with the listener. Apart from opener "Freight Train Be Comin'", a shameless, embarrassing shout out to the Mississippi Delta and environs, the album saunters indiscriminately along, mixing high jive "Throw Them Hands Towar's Day Lord", skiffle "I'm But A Binman" and electronica "EuropaFunkSludge" to agreeable effect. A-
"Antediluvians" The portentous quotation marks are warning enough. Muck has made his contribution to the unlistenable "art rock" performance piece disaster (see Metal Machine Music: Reed, Lou). Usually the sign of a contractual squabble, it appears that this offering is, somehow, a serious effort at making music, which renders the subsequent sprawl of noise infinitely more amusing. "Soundscape 1" is mesmerizing in it's awfulness, lapping loops of hideous feedback "qualified" by a dour unchanging drum machine beat. The transmogrified piano on "Noise-scape 1492" is more berzerk and unsettling than anything by Beckett. Perhaps something of a glorious disaster? C+
Down To My Last Bollock Nobody knows you when you are down and out. Except, of course, if you are a world famous musician like Jakob Muck. Is this album sardonic? Mostly acoustic and "confessional" in tone, with all vocals set to anguished yelp, Last Bollock is a monument to self obsession. It starts badly, the minor chord ravages of "Winona, Why?" segueing into the turgid 9 minute solo piano of "Shot At Redemption", and only gets worse. A special place in hell should be reserved for "Last Will And Testament", the cello-led finale. D
No Cure For Curiosity Yes there is and this is it. E-
Canals Of Europe Like the final flailing swings of a falling boxer, Canals Of Europe has a strange dignity all of its own. Muck has always been an exceptional songwriter, his personality and demeanor just got in the way. "Anarcho" is a good start, and "Kiss My Grits" is even better, but the five song flourish that comprises "Moscow, 1917", "When I Were A Young 'Un", "May I Caress Your Soul, Madame"(eat your heart out, Jacques Brel), "Narcoleptic Janitor" and "Pancake Moon" is the best work of Muck's career. Closer "Retrospective Haircuts", with it's eviscerating fiddle and mournful trumpet, comes perilously close to High Art. A+
Muck was the subject of frenzied speculation following his split from Winona Ryder and this intense attention reached fever pitch upon the release of Onslaught in late 1994. Dogged by drug rumours, behaving erratically and forced to promote an abrasive double album that confounded critics, the Pan-Dimensional Orifice frontman was starting to crack up.
The October '93 issue of Rolling Stone featured a controversial interview with Muck in which he addressed the drug rumours that had dogged him since the Vanity Fair piece the previous February. He had started dating actress Winona Ryder during the summer of 1993 after they met at the premiere of her film "Modern Urban Malaise" which co-starred Ethan Hawke.
The bands first foray into out and out pop is a jaunty number about the trappings of the rock star lifestyle. The x-rated lyrics and controversial video brought the song attention but the track itself is a Pan classic and a fan favourite.
Sample Lyric: "Get down on your knees, baby/get down on your knees, girl/ open your mouth wide/ so I can get inside/ until the silk flood starts to swirl."
Oh Happy Day Oct '95 1. Oh Happy Day 2. River Deep, Mountain High 3. He Hit Me (It Felt Like A Kiss)
Released only 3 weeks after Accoutrements, this collection of covers sold poorly and raised concern over the well-being of Jakob Muck. The previously joyous Oh Happy Day is here a discordant atonal dirge dripping with hateful sarcasm. This weirdness is accentuated by the recurring sounds of doors closing and the outro which consists of snatches of Hitler's Nuremberg Address interwoven with the sound of lamb slaughter. Scott Walker's production does nothing to help. A later, cleaner Muck described the sound as "heroin fucking crack behind a bin on the Reeperbahn at 4:17 on a February morning." It would be churlish to disagree.
The Martin Keown EP Dec '95 1. Box Prowler 2. Keown Keown Keown 3. He's Gunner Fuck You Up
After his hospitalisation in October and subsequent stint in rehab, Muck was encouraged by friend Michael Stipe to write about his ordeal in uncompromising terms as a means of showcasing the terrible depths of drug addiction for the public at large. Muck refused and instead wrote 27 songs about Martin Keown. He planned to release the songs as a double album but was stopped by his record company, who sensed such a move would be career suicide. To placate the burnt-out singer they quietly released a Norway only 3 track EP as a limited edition 1,000 copy collectors item. The original EP now changes hands for as much as £700. The EP has been re-evaluated over the years and is now considered to be quite a cogent appraisal of the abilities of the Arsenal defender. The 23 other songs planned for the double album have been extensively boot-legged, most commonly as "Keownly You", but never officially released.
Synopsis The group released a number of esoteric stand alone singles in 1995 during what was a strained period for inter-band relations. The critical mauling that greeted Onslaught upon release in late 1994 devastated Muck, whose already bizarre behaviour became more and more absurd. The nadir came at the following year's Glastonbury when Muck sung while cowering behind the drums in a burka. Pianist Reg McMurphy was fired in early 1995 after an argument over a cheese-board in Copenhagen, ending his 15 year friendship with Muck. McMurphy took drummer David Elvish and bassist Nwonkwo Achumba with him and formed Trans-Dimensional Appendage who would come to eclipse The Pan with their 12M selling debut Yeah, Come On, Yeah. The singles released in 1995 by The Pan are a fascinating glimpse into the drug-besotted mind of Muck and could be considered as solo records.
Muck was asked by Faber and Faber in 1993 to write a novel. This is hardly surprising given that at the time he was widely considered to be the poet of his generation, a writer of rare insight and understanding comparable to Rimbaud and Rilke. It soon became apparent however that Muck was perhaps too drugged out of his brain to deliver a coherent book on any subject and the novel missed deadline after deadline before being released to critical disdain in February 1995.
