The clutch of artists the first comprised the Medway Poets and eventually the Stuckists (an obtuse art movement that some find surprisingly endearing), endeavored projects in just about any medium imaginable. Obviously, writing was a tremendously important part of the collective, loose as it was. However, the associated people eventually figured that music was a decent way by which to dispense its prose and poetry. That might not have been the impetus for Billy Childish, the scene’s most visible, popular and enduring figure, but in the case of Sexton Ming, there’s a greater focus on lyrics than music.
Seeing as Ming was the man responsible for founding the Medway Poets, his inclination for storytelling at the risk of rendering the accompanying music as secondary shouldn’t be the most surprising aspect of his career – musical or otherwise. He’s quite performing, but that doesn’t make his albums from the eighties any less engaging, even if it’s only as a curio.
Hearing Ming growl at the beginning of “Many Years Ago,” from the 1987 Old Horse of the Nation, should summon the image of Captain Beefheart, who can’t be said to be central to the general aesthetic put forth by Medway musicians. Oddly, enough, though, Ming’s wife is named Ella Guru (it was changed from something a bit more normal sounding, ‘natch), which is a Beefheart song. Odd confluence, true. Even with that odd connection, though, Ming’s sound doesn’t stray too far from some of the most minimal (least maximum?) work from the unwieldy Childish discography.
With the blues as a firm enough base to work from, Ming attempts to stretch out a bit, even in these sparse settings that usually count just an acoustic guitar, some percussion and a vocal. As the black sheep, “Duff You” sports some shoddy electric guitar with Ming caterwauling about his baby. There’re more musical portions of the disc to discover, but nothing gets close to melodic – but that should be assumed purposeful.
With his disassociation with Childish and the Medway folks, Ming has remained active in other spheres of the art world. That is perhaps due to his wife’s painterly pursuits. But it might just be that Ming figured there wasn’t a need to record forty or fifty albums of music that basically sound the same. That’s not a knock on Childish, Golightly or Melchior (ok, maybe it is), but Ming found different avenues of expression and different things to say over time. The only thing is, you might not want to listen.