By the polluted post-industrial banks of the River Clyde in Scotland, the late 1970s

were enlivened by Chou Pahrot. They took their bizarre antics to the area's pubs and
student unions, made a couple of records, and even toured Germany. Then they were
gone. A look back on Chou Pahrot and their times.
The dire state of music in 1975-6 passed quickly into mythology. Progrock had passed;
Krautrock had died when Can had signed with Virgin Records and ceased making
adventurous records. Curiously their self-justification in interview was to point to
Captain Beefheart's parallel lapse into the mundane.
Subcultural listening is active as well as passive and our response had been a near
scorched earth – a revaluation of all values. Out went almost all Prog - the exceptions
being 1972-74 King Crimson, which held some darker purpose and some refusal of the
composed. Pushing towards free jazz, then free improv., in search of a greater
intensity, we were impatient and intolerant of anything tainted by older values.
So when one evening we sat in The Maggie, a pub in Glasgow’s Sauchiehall St., with
the sound of a band booming up from the basement bar, all I heard was a fiddle playing
complex stop-start phrases, sneered “Curved Air” and went on drinking my pint of
heavy.
The rightuousness of youth. Not even worth rousing myself to go and take a look. No
curiosity even about who would dare play Prog in a Glasgow pub, home of Slik or
Salvation? No, not even that. Rock music was bankrupt and that was that. After all,
even Beefheart had stopped recording by that time. Bankrupt.
I had caught the band’s name on the poster though: Chou Pahrot. Very Prog. Which
just confirmed my self-righteousness.
In the months which followed, friends would mention that they had seen an interesting
band. Some even described it as Beefheartian, both in the music and in the use of
bizarre performance pseudonyms. But sticking with my original opinion cost nothing.
And to that can be added the traditional Scottish Cringe - nothing good could come
from here, this outpost beyond culture,
But one thing will lead to another. I was selling copies of the improv. magazine
‘Musics”, firstly at a Glasgow concert by Derek Bailey and Steve Lacy. Some people
were interested - even began to engage. I began to meet up with one of them, Niall,
who played sax. Then a friend of his, a Tony – another sax player. We sat in a pub
while Tony described the tracks and titles of songs on Captain Beefheart’s “Bat Chain
Puller”. We were interested and he had hèard it. (It would be a long wait.) And then it
also turned out that he played guitar and sax in a band. The same Chou Pahrot.
As 1977 began, Niall, Tony and I played some improvised music. In a conversation
where we were scorning the prevailing jazz-rock, Tony was impressive at parodying the
pointless fretboard sprint which was the core curriculum of jazz-rock guitar. Both
played at an improv. event which we organised at the McLellan Galleries in Glasgow.
Competing with a Lefebvre Traditional Catholic Mass in the other hall: meeting the
priest in the toilet, he asked if we could be quieter.
Had I seen Chou Pahrot yet? Possibly not. When I did eventually deign to see them, it
was probably at The Amphora, again in Sauchiehall St. Well, they were great: high
energy, with an uncompromising noise and aggression which dispelled all my prog.
expectations and reservations.
The in-your-face energy was underpinned by Monica Zarb / Bob Donaldson - an
avuncular presence on bass and vocals. By contrast, Tony O’Neill / Mama Voot on
guitar was a revelation. The slightly nervous talker who I had met transformed his
nerves into an impetuous and unpredictable presence — playing much of the set in an
old man mask, climbing from stage, to speakers, to tables.
Between these two was Martin McKenna / Eggy Beard – a shyer presence, playing a
role which, in retrospect, brought them closer to Celtic music (although it didn't seem so
at the time). And at the back was the gloriously renamed Fish Feathers McTeeth (a.k.a.
Dave Lewis). His drumming had precisely the qualities of the-spot-I-cannot-scratch
fidgeting multi-rhythms which I appreciate. Few are the Rock drummers who can be
met at a Tony Oxley concert.
We were transfixed that night and many more times over the following months. It was a
curious time: a transitional moment. Punk had not yet become formulaic. Its outsider
position was wide enough to encompass high-energy bands – of whom there had lately
been so few, after all. So someone seeking that energy was as likely to turn up for
Chou Pahrot as walk down the road to see The Jolt (pallid imitators) – or even to make
the mistake of going to the Apollo for a parody band like The Boomtown Rats.
There is something about going regularly to see a band: a shifting set of people around
the same pub table; the path through the evening as the band's moves settle into
familiarity. Maybe the people would be the times...
A word on lyricism or its absence in Chou Pahrot. They shared with the Prog bands an
evasion or refusal of meaning. But where a Caravan or a Yes escaped into twee
cosmic whimsy, Chou Pahrot were coming from a specifically situation: the periphery of
the periphery in fact – out in the badlands of Renfrewshire and the Clyde coast. This
specifically Scottish situation was of a voicelessness. Looking across at literature, it
was a time before the publication of Alasdair Gray's “Lanark”; Jim Kelman's first short
stories were appearing in small magazines, but it would be some years before the
impact of the urban Scots voice would be heard.
So the choice to sing in a recognisable Clydeside accept was part of the eccentricity of
Chou Pahrot. It was a world away from the Americanisms of Midge Ure and Slik. But it
remained just a challenge, a refusal to say. Chou Pahrot's lyrics were fragments of
childrens' songs (“Ah know a man wi' an itchy face, it's a pure disgrace”) and scenes
from a Scottish sitting-room – waxed sideboards in the gloom of a dank Scottish
Sunday. The world of the Sunday Post thrown back as a defiance.
The Chou Pahrot EP “Buzgo Tram Chorus’ was recorded in summer 1978 and holds up
surprisingly well today. It may be a period piece, but one whose space allows it to
breathe. The “Buzgo Tram Chorus” itself is typical of Chou Pahrot’s music, featuring
fluid rhythmic guitar and drum patterns underpinned by heavier Wetton-esque bass,
with the fiddle rising above the brew. In comparative terms, it perhaps sits somewhere
between 1973 King Crimson, and Kaleidoscope of “Seven Eight Sweet” and Celtic folk.
“Gwisgweela Gwamphnoo” is the oddity of the EP — an elegant sax feature over bass
arpeggios. It is quieter and more contemplative, evocative of the soundtracks of Berlin
Cold War films. This is not a composition which I recall from their live sets of the time -
probably unsuited to a pub gig, in reality.
The major feature of the EP was “Lemons” - a live favourite and a realistic
representation of Chou Pahrot’s absurdist approach. The processed Pinky & Perky
vocals on the EP version may smack too much of studio zaniness, as may the Spike
Jones meets British Free Improv percussion breaks. Against that, it is a spacious
recording which lays down its own agenda. “Lemons for yer face, sitting on the
sideboard”.
Chou Pahrot's opportunity to record an LP, came on the back of one of the most
collectively embarrassing episodes in recent Scottish history: the over-expectation of
the Scottish football team’s chances in the 1978 World Cup in Argentina. That hysteria
was encapsulated in Andy Cameron’s single “Ally’s Tartan Army” — its topical novelty
status is emphasised by the “I Want to be a Punk Rocker’ B-side. But the bizarre by-
product of the come-down following the team’s scandal-ridden failure was that the
record placed Klub Records in a position where they could release a Chou Pahrot LP.
The band chose to record a live LP. Perhaps there was some reaction to the produced
elements of the “Buzgo Tram Chorus” EP? Possibly too they may have been enticed by
the back-to-basics zeitgeist, leading to a desire to capture the raucous energies of
Chou Pahrot’s live sets. Maybe so. Unfortunately “Chou Pahrot Live” fails to deliver.
The first cause of this failure is undoubtedly the disconnected crowd noise, which
carries all the non-authenticity qualities of the official “13th Floor Elevators Live” LP.
The story at the time was that the Chou Pahrot recording was indeed live but that some
failure of the recording technology had occurred. On finding a lack of recorded
audience sound on the tape, a decision had been made to overdub audience sound
from a recording of an entirely different concert (by the mid-70s prog. band Greenslade
at Glasgow City Hall, so I heard). The artifice fails and leaves something hollow at the
heart of the LP.
Other changes rendered “Chou Pahrot Live” less interesting than the EP. ‘Fish
Feathers McTeeth” had provided fine fluid polyrhythmic drumming at performances and
on the EP. Subsequently his place had been taken by “The Amphibian”, a more
straightforward rock drummer. Something of the playful had been lost. This is especially
noticeable in comparing the EP and LP versions of “Lemons”. The LP version is much
more reliant on bass riff and fiddle glissando than the EP version.
Prominent performance pieces of the time, such as the characteristic “Pantomime
Shrub” get a faithful outing on the LP.
Other tracks like “Mary Submarine” carry on from “Gwisgweela..” on the EP and again
recall the Wetton era King Crimson.
Overall though, there is an increasing sense of being out of time. A new orthodoxy had
by then swept away any hint of received progrock (even as its better aspects were re-
entering through Wire, ATV, etc.). As Robert Fripp has noted [Amsterdam sleeve], this
was a period when any progrock gestures were wholly anachronistic and unacceptable.
Much of the Chou Pahrot repertoire was now bumping along on that scorched earth.
During that period, recall a discussion with Bob Donaldson at a friend’s flat, anticipating
the forthcoming New York double-header concert by the Magic Band and Prime Time.
These were his and our favourite bands - bands which seemed close in
instrumentation, energy and motivation.
I recall the Chou Pahrot contingent at the Glasgow concert by The Slits and Don
Cherry. That was almost an emblematic night - several old friends encountered there
were never seen again. Partly a post-student diaspora, such as occurs for everyone
sometime, but in retrospect it seems the point when an era was slipping away - the era
in which a Chou Pahrot could operate at the margins.
Chou Pahrot plowed on, with a German tour and a re-release of their LP there.
Eventually they seemed to fade away.
And after that? Chou Pahrot and its residues slid into sight several times... Socially
there was the presence of a semi-Chou Pahrot as The Yund at a benefit party in
Paisley Student Union. More honed down without the fiddle, more aggressive in songs
such as ‘Why Don’t You Hump Me Baby?” and “For the Hippies”.
Of McTeeth, there was possibly involvement in the Stirling-based weird band Ege
Bamyasi - remembered with bemusement by all who saw their performances.
Then there was a reformed Chou Pahrot who played at Glasgow’s Kelvingrove Festival
in 1987. An aggressive noise-based performance: ‘defies description” says the DJ who
played it on Radio Clyde. The performance features a reprise of the old favourite
“Lemons”, as well as two pieces which I don’t recall being in their 70s repertoire: “The
Ghosties in ma Heid” and ‘Ma Hauf Pint of Ale”. These represent a confrontational
reconciliation with Celtic folk musics.
Sadly there will be no more such reunions. When I first noticed the invisibility of Chou
Pahrot on the net and put out initial appeals aiming to write this article, there was
nothing out there. Subsequently I heard from two sources that Tony O’Neill / Mama
Voot died in a car crash a couple of years ago. That news finally convinced me that it
was time to begin. So this article forms some kind of tribute to Tony O’Neill and to those
times which have passed us by.