0012 - 5uu's

It's almost too easy to mock prog-rock/avant-rock/experimental-rock/whatever you want to call it, so I'm going to try not to. However, if we have a look at the track listing from 5uu's first album, Bel Marduk & Tiamat:

1. Theme From Marduk & Tiamat
2. Birth Of The Scale Of Life 
3. Birth Of The Compromisation 
4. Birth Of The Loyalty To Creation 
5. The Birth Of Ancient Internationalism  
6. Birth Of The Fear Of Life  
7. Birth Of Contemporary Global Friction 
8. Birth Of Sporting 
9. Birth Of Magic, Dogma And Faith 

There really isn't much needs to be said - as the old joke goes: Pretentious? Moi? I've got three of the tracks from the album - 2, 3 and 5 - but before I talk about them, a bit of background.


5uu's were formed in Los Angeles in 1984 by drummer Dave Kerman and were strongly influenced by the pan-European Rock In Opposition movement, founded by 70s proggers Henry Cow.

Pretentious song titles or not,
I like the cover.

Rock In Opposition was on the face of it, a pretty cool thing - bands were chosen to play the first Rock In Opposition festival for musical and social reasons, rather than for their commercial viability. However, the festival tagline of "FIVE ROCK GROUPS THE RECORD COMPANIES DON'T WANT YOU TO HEAR" rings a bit hollow when you consider that all the bands on the festival bill had released at least one album, although organisers Henry Cow had recently been dropped by Virgin because they were losing the label money.

This is what bothers me most about prog - the smug self-importance and arrogance of it all. That a band (in this case, Henry Cow) can deliberately produce challenging, uncompromising music that's avowedly uncommercial and then complain that somehow there's a conspiracy to prevent them being heard, rather than considering that the public might perhaps prefer to boogie to Baccara or rock out to Rainbow, just defies belief. FIVE ROCK GROUPS THE PUBLIC DON'T ACTUALLY WANT TO HEAR was probably much closer to the truth.  Also, get a haircut, granddad.

Anyway, having said all that, 5uu's are actually OK. Not really my thing, but I do appreciate the musicianship (the drumming especially), and their songs are at least quite un-challengingly short. Birth Of The Scale Of Life is by far my favourite song of the three I have. It's actually a fairly uptempo and poppy number, for all its stops and starts, discordant piano and jazzy time signatures. Birth Of The Compromisation veers too close to self parody to be an entirely comfortable listen and The Birth Of Ancient Internationalism is a little bit worthy but dull, westerners-play-world-music for my tastes.

That wasn't too nasty, now, was it?