In a rare moment of "getting my shit together" two months ago, I took the bus to the yonder side of the city to meet up with Mark Burgess, lead singer of the Chameleons, who now fronts Chameleons Vox, performing the old band's material. The purpose was for an interview to go up on No Ripcord.
I've been lucky to meet several people whose work I greatly admire, and Mark is certainly in that group. Putting aside personal feelings, there's always a slight anxiety when you're doing a big piece that the subject won't be forthcoming or give short answers.
Thankfully, Mark was a brilliant interviewee, offering up more than I could have asked for. Smoking like a chimney throughout the 90 minutes he generously talked to me, we covered more subjects that I could fit into one article.
You can read the result here.
Showing posts with label Music. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Music. Show all posts
Tuesday, 13 May 2014
Thursday, 13 February 2014
Rock of Aged
Freaky Trigger, a music website, has been doing a running blog of reviewing UK #1 singles for some years now, and on the most recent entry (Discotheque by U2, which I hated then and still do), one commentator noted that 1997 was the year that rock died. For him, at least.
In a way, I get where he was coming from. Emphasis on the individual, as I'm more than aware there's plenty of folk younger than me who got a whole lot out of bands like, for example, Muse. Personally, the first decade of this millennium - in which I was mostly in my 20s and should, in theory, have been most hip to what was going on - I think I only really engaged with British Sea Power and Black Rebel Motorcycle Club (first two albums only) in terms of acts whose albums I deeply loved. There were people like Idlewild and Doves who I dipped in and out of, but very little I got obsessed about the way I did about the XTC, the Cure or the Psychedelic Furs, whose extensive back catalogues I was gobbling up around the same period.
It's part of getting older for a lot of people, the losing of interest in what's going on today in music. I've wondered if, for me, it's a resentment of seeing people coming up to be young enough to be my children (in theory) jumping around.
Then again, I was avoiding the contemporary from a young age. As a stroppy teenager in my bedroom, I pretty much ignored grunge (too loud for me, at the time), Britpop (bunch of Southern ponces pretending to be working class, I thought) and anything like rave/house/techno (didn't take the drugs). From the three Danny Baker BBC4 music shows this week covering the 70s/80s/90s, it was the last that struggled to hold my attention. A passing mention to Chapterhouse aside, only the KLF brought a feeling of "yeah, that was pretty good".
In my own life, it was only a decade later, with access to the internet, that I was able to dig out the pearls from the age. Catherine Wheel, Slowdive, Giant Steps by the Boo Radleys, World Party... I remembered I owned Mansun's first album and a relisten prompted me to pick up a cheap copy of their follow up Six, leading to having my mind blown by one of the most adventurous "rock" albums to make the UK top 10 in the decade.
As I said, last year I bought no "new" albums, which strikes me as a sad state of affairs for someone who claims to have an interest in music. Last summer, I watched footage of the UK festivals where the bright young things did their thing, and mainly thought "shite". They say we all turn into our parents eventually - but then even my then 45-year-old father found value in Rage Against the Machine back in the mid 90s.
To signpost my decline into old age, the two best bits of music news I've had in recent weeks have been that Tears for Fears are planning to release new material this year, and that Slowdive have reformed. I'm really quite excited about both.
Friday, 20 December 2013
Take a Rocket Ship to Mars
Tags are so often misleading. I love a lot of the Shoegazing bands of the early 1990s: Ride, Slowdive, Lush, Pale Saints... but one band is often lumped in with them, with no real reason beyond journalistic laziness.
Sure, on a casual listen, Catherine Wheel's first album Ferment almost fit in with that. It had loud guitars that droned at moments and Rob Dickinson's vocals could at times be a little dreamy. Yet, there was plenty to separate them from that whole scene, which may explain why they outlived many of their contemporaries and also the relative success they enjoyed in the States that others didn't.
For starters, the band were from Great Yarmouth, Norfolk - hardly rock and roll heartland, and miles away from London or the then-hip Manchester or Thames Valley heartlands. Dickinson at least was well into his mid 20s by the time their debut came out in 1992, having spent time working designing for Lotus prior. Perhaps this prior experience came out in the song Black Metallic, the video for which got some play on MTV and was lyrically written about the love of a car.
Where the quartet, Dickinson alongside Brian Futter (lead guitar), Dave Hawes (bass) and Neil Sims (bass), had was the ability to properly rock out from the dream status of their contemporaries. It also helped that in their quieter moments, they were guided by Tim Friese-Green, who had helped Talk Talk make some of the most amazing music of recent history.
The band were huge fans of Talk Talk, and under his guiding hand made a wondrous entrance to the world. I Want to Touch You showed the band could do sexy and the title track put down their abilities to create quiet/loud dynamics. I've long been keen on putting that song on compilation albums for people, chuckling to myself that the innocent receiver will crank up the volume, only to kill their ears at the moment the sonic assault cuts in.
As they would frequently do, the band toured North America extensively, and perhaps toughened up their musical muscles as 1993's Chrome shoved the band as far away from any perceived roots - though those paying attention to their b-sides including covers of Husker Du might not have been surprised. Producer Gil Norton wiped away a lot of the density of their earlier work in favour of a more, well, metallic sound, though Show Me Mary was a great hit single that never was.
With the double hit of Ursa Major Space Station and Fripp, the band hit heights that surely blew any competition out of the water - Dickinson sighing that "I'll follow you through time, 'till it's not worth living" over a crescendo of guitars and drums that demand to be heard loud is a frankly sublime moment . That it never crossed over to a bigger audience seems unjust beyond words.
1995's Happy Days had a very American Alt-Rock edge to it, much more in kilter with bands like the Smashing Pumpkins. Opener God Inside My Head featured some very heavy playing and some uncharacteristic metal-eseque grunting from Dickinson.
At it's best, it was magnificent, as with the quietly fuming Eat My Dust You Insensitive Fuck, the funny Shocking and the hook-filled Judy Staring at the Sun, which featured Belly singer Tanya Donnelly on vocals, and might have done better as a single not for the fact it was about a drug addict. Another single, Waydown got some MTV notice with a somewhat literal air-crash themed video, but mainstream acceptance remained out of reach.
A tendency to place as many "new" songs as b-sides had created a fair old amount of non-album material over the years, and the compilation Like Cats and Dogs was released to warmer reviews than Happy Days. Featuring most pastoral material, it set the tone for the next album, which would turn out to be their masterpiece. They even made Pink Floyd sound good, with a version of Wish You Were Here.
Adam and Eve, out in 1997, should have been "the" album. As usual, it didn't work out that way. Not that they were getting much help - legend says Rolling Stone were all set to give them a high score in the review, only for it to get marked down in the edit. Quite why remains a mystery, as in terms of music in 1997, for me, only Mansun's Six comes close. OK Computer looks like a bunch of teenage angst in comparison, as while both have a hint of prog, Adam and Eve manages to keep things interesting, even when all but two of the 13 songs clock in at over five minutes.
I simply cannot emphasise how essential the album is. If you have an interest in rock music, alternative or mainstream, seek out Adam and Eve now. It is perhaps a complete a piece of work as can be imagined. The entire band is on top form and I can't write anymore than to suggest you go listen to it in one sitting and wonder how you did without it beforehand.
At it's best, it was magnificent, as with the quietly fuming Eat My Dust You Insensitive Fuck, the funny Shocking and the hook-filled Judy Staring at the Sun, which featured Belly singer Tanya Donnelly on vocals, and might have done better as a single not for the fact it was about a drug addict. Another single, Waydown got some MTV notice with a somewhat literal air-crash themed video, but mainstream acceptance remained out of reach.
A tendency to place as many "new" songs as b-sides had created a fair old amount of non-album material over the years, and the compilation Like Cats and Dogs was released to warmer reviews than Happy Days. Featuring most pastoral material, it set the tone for the next album, which would turn out to be their masterpiece. They even made Pink Floyd sound good, with a version of Wish You Were Here.
Adam and Eve, out in 1997, should have been "the" album. As usual, it didn't work out that way. Not that they were getting much help - legend says Rolling Stone were all set to give them a high score in the review, only for it to get marked down in the edit. Quite why remains a mystery, as in terms of music in 1997, for me, only Mansun's Six comes close. OK Computer looks like a bunch of teenage angst in comparison, as while both have a hint of prog, Adam and Eve manages to keep things interesting, even when all but two of the 13 songs clock in at over five minutes.
I simply cannot emphasise how essential the album is. If you have an interest in rock music, alternative or mainstream, seek out Adam and Eve now. It is perhaps a complete a piece of work as can be imagined. The entire band is on top form and I can't write anymore than to suggest you go listen to it in one sitting and wonder how you did without it beforehand.
But, when all came down perhaps they knew the chance had gone. It wasn't until 2000 before they reappeared. When the band took up things again, they had dispensed with bassist Hawes and got Friese-Green back in the producer's chair to make Wishville. Sadly, it was a lax effort and not long after, the band went on a hiatus from which they have not yet returned.
Subsequently, Dickinson released a solo album (Fresh Wine for the Horses) in 2005 but more recently spends his time with his Porsche 911 renovation business in Los Angeles, going back to his original trade. Video footage suggests he looks annoyingly good for his age and takes great pride in his work. On a more musical tint, he appeared on two tracks of the 2011 album These Hopeful Machines by US electro artist BT.
Tuesday, 8 October 2013
On The North Lancs Streets
Preston is a strange place. I couldn't think of any reason why you'd want to visit unless you were a student there (as I nearly was) or your football team were playing North End. Nothing wrong with the place, I guess, just nothing of interest to be found.
Except, perhaps, a gig by Go-Kart Mozart, one of the very few to support their recent album On The Hot Dog Streets. A chance to see their leader Lawrence in action on stage was not to be sniffed at.
In somewhat typical fashion, the gig had a last-day venue change. Which I didn't know about until arrival and required a somewhat desperate series of asking total strangers where we had to be. Initially it looked like we'd be late, but in a further misadventure, it was all running late anyways.
Support bands, then. Hot Vestry are a bunch of late teens types from Macclesfield who dress like they want to be in the Paisley Underground and have hair that makes mine look good. They also sounded fairly anonymous to these ears, despite some decent work from the drummer. Not that it matters, as they've already got foots on the ladder of the Manchester music scene via endorsement from Tim Burgess and a support slot with New Order. How did they get the latter? Well, it's always nice to have the right connections.
Next up were the Oreoh!s, which is a name that really needs to go. There's a difficulty in trying to be objective here, as the three of them look like they have a combined age of 40 and you don't want to be too mean to a band who are all young enough to be my children, which is in itself a depressing thought. Their set trundled along harmlessly enough, with nothing of any note to stick in the mind bar the fact the guitarist held his instrument like Bernard Sumner, and even looked like a younger version of the man. Like Hot Vestry, I'd imagine a lot of work has to be done down the line before they'll be headlining any decent sized venues on their own steam. Time is on their side, at least. My own suggestion would be that the singer ditches the bass playing and focuses more on fronting the band.
There are enough words written about Lawrence out there already - some of it due to me. On the night, he isn't happy about the venue change, states the stage lights are too bright and he has a bad cold. Despite the sparse audience, the band put on a great show. It helps to have a guy with a huge assortment of keyboards to produce all manner of sounds, and major kudos has to go out to the man behind them to some top-notch playing. The rhythm section (this version of Go-Kart Mozart is minus guitar) also do their job in solid fashion.
What Lawrence has that very few others have too is that all the songs he has written since 1980 are clearly identifiable as his, whether it be in the style of jangly indie (Felt), stomping glam rock (Denim) or novelty electro-pop (now). It's easy to say the guy deserves a hit, but he's always made even his most "mainstream" music just slightly off-kilter enough so that you won't hear it on radio. West Brom Blues from his most recent album On The Hot Dog Streets is a perfect example.
It can't be said enough that the guy is a total one-off, and worth even a night in Preston and a train journey home surrounded by Man City fans. The "tour" as it is (four gigs in four months) continues in a hometown gig in Birmingham next month, then Oxford in December and Hebden Bridge (work that one out) in January.
Except, perhaps, a gig by Go-Kart Mozart, one of the very few to support their recent album On The Hot Dog Streets. A chance to see their
In somewhat typical fashion, the gig had a last-day venue change. Which I didn't know about until arrival and required a somewhat desperate series of asking total strangers where we had to be. Initially it looked like we'd be late, but in a further misadventure, it was all running late anyways.
Support bands, then. Hot Vestry are a bunch of late teens types from Macclesfield who dress like they want to be in the Paisley Underground and have hair that makes mine look good. They also sounded fairly anonymous to these ears, despite some decent work from the drummer. Not that it matters, as they've already got foots on the ladder of the Manchester music scene via endorsement from Tim Burgess and a support slot with New Order. How did they get the latter? Well, it's always nice to have the right connections.
Next up were the Oreoh!s, which is a name that really needs to go. There's a difficulty in trying to be objective here, as the three of them look like they have a combined age of 40 and you don't want to be too mean to a band who are all young enough to be my children, which is in itself a depressing thought. Their set trundled along harmlessly enough, with nothing of any note to stick in the mind bar the fact the guitarist held his instrument like Bernard Sumner, and even looked like a younger version of the man. Like Hot Vestry, I'd imagine a lot of work has to be done down the line before they'll be headlining any decent sized venues on their own steam. Time is on their side, at least. My own suggestion would be that the singer ditches the bass playing and focuses more on fronting the band.
There are enough words written about Lawrence out there already - some of it due to me. On the night, he isn't happy about the venue change, states the stage lights are too bright and he has a bad cold. Despite the sparse audience, the band put on a great show. It helps to have a guy with a huge assortment of keyboards to produce all manner of sounds, and major kudos has to go out to the man behind them to some top-notch playing. The rhythm section (this version of Go-Kart Mozart is minus guitar) also do their job in solid fashion.
What Lawrence has that very few others have too is that all the songs he has written since 1980 are clearly identifiable as his, whether it be in the style of jangly indie (Felt), stomping glam rock (Denim) or novelty electro-pop (now). It's easy to say the guy deserves a hit, but he's always made even his most "mainstream" music just slightly off-kilter enough so that you won't hear it on radio. West Brom Blues from his most recent album On The Hot Dog Streets is a perfect example.
It can't be said enough that the guy is a total one-off, and worth even a night in Preston and a train journey home surrounded by Man City fans. The "tour" as it is (four gigs in four months) continues in a hometown gig in Birmingham next month, then Oxford in December and Hebden Bridge (work that one out) in January.
Thursday, 11 July 2013
Listless Age
No Ripcord has recently published their writers poll of the top 100 albums of the 1990s.I took part and was surprised that a fair number of my picks got in. I won't bore you all with the top 40 I was asked to send away, but the ten highest choices here:
10. The House of Love - Babe Rainbow
9. XTC - Nonsuch
8. Sugar - Copper Blue
7. My Bloody Valentine - Loveless
6. Ride - Nowhere
5. Teenage Fanclub - Bandwagonesque
4. World Party - Goodbye Jumbo
3. Talk Talk - Laughing Stock
2. Mansun - Six
1. Slowdive - Soulvaki
A totally unsurprising list, I'm sure the people who know me will agree. The truth is, I found it tough to think of 40 albums. There was no Radiohead, because they ceased to be relevant to me when I hit my 19th birthday, I found.
Oasis appear, naturally, though they didn't crop up in my list, because I blame them for my complete ambivalence at the time to Britpop. A lot of people here will respond here "Ah, but Definitely Maybe..." to which I can say that I listened back to the whole album recently and bar Live Forever and Slide Away remained fairly unmoved throughout.
The issue, now if probably not back then, is the total lack of groove in the band. Frankly, the rhythm section must be amongst the worst to ever grace the top of the charts. A rhythm guitarist who studied well at Johnny Ramone school of technique, a bassist who rarely strayed beyond the safety of root notes and a drummer... well, this says it best.
Yet all the same, I guess Noel Gallagher and Alan McGee deserve a wedge of credit for taking a bunch of pub players from Burnage and getting the music press to piss themselves bigging them up as the future of rock and roll. Image is everything, of course, and it is amusing in hindsight to think that they were bigged up as a bunch of lads from the hard streets of Manchester. Presumably, any journalist who bought that line had never took a walk around the pleasant (no sarcasm) streets of Burnage. Still, to a lot of London types, the second you head North of Watford, you may as well be in Bandit Country.
Manchester, I fear, has yet to recover from the shadow of Oasis. It's become a city too keen to attach labels of the past to new bands. Everyone has to be the "next Smiths" or next New Order, Joy Division, Stone Roses or Oasis. Like Liverpool, the shackles of history seem to grip tighter as we go along.
In conclusion: musically, I found the 1990s a crappy time to grow up. Thank fuck for Eric Cantona, who has more rock and roll in his small finger than Liam Gallagher every could.
10. The House of Love - Babe Rainbow
9. XTC - Nonsuch
8. Sugar - Copper Blue
7. My Bloody Valentine - Loveless
6. Ride - Nowhere
5. Teenage Fanclub - Bandwagonesque
4. World Party - Goodbye Jumbo
3. Talk Talk - Laughing Stock
2. Mansun - Six
1. Slowdive - Soulvaki
A totally unsurprising list, I'm sure the people who know me will agree. The truth is, I found it tough to think of 40 albums. There was no Radiohead, because they ceased to be relevant to me when I hit my 19th birthday, I found.
Oasis appear, naturally, though they didn't crop up in my list, because I blame them for my complete ambivalence at the time to Britpop. A lot of people here will respond here "Ah, but Definitely Maybe..." to which I can say that I listened back to the whole album recently and bar Live Forever and Slide Away remained fairly unmoved throughout.
The issue, now if probably not back then, is the total lack of groove in the band. Frankly, the rhythm section must be amongst the worst to ever grace the top of the charts. A rhythm guitarist who studied well at Johnny Ramone school of technique, a bassist who rarely strayed beyond the safety of root notes and a drummer... well, this says it best.
Yet all the same, I guess Noel Gallagher and Alan McGee deserve a wedge of credit for taking a bunch of pub players from Burnage and getting the music press to piss themselves bigging them up as the future of rock and roll. Image is everything, of course, and it is amusing in hindsight to think that they were bigged up as a bunch of lads from the hard streets of Manchester. Presumably, any journalist who bought that line had never took a walk around the pleasant (no sarcasm) streets of Burnage. Still, to a lot of London types, the second you head North of Watford, you may as well be in Bandit Country.
Manchester, I fear, has yet to recover from the shadow of Oasis. It's become a city too keen to attach labels of the past to new bands. Everyone has to be the "next Smiths" or next New Order, Joy Division, Stone Roses or Oasis. Like Liverpool, the shackles of history seem to grip tighter as we go along.
In conclusion: musically, I found the 1990s a crappy time to grow up. Thank fuck for Eric Cantona, who has more rock and roll in his small finger than Liam Gallagher every could.
Thursday, 13 June 2013
Break From The Idle
I've written the best part of nowt recently, and health reasons mean I'm not likely to do much for a little while yet. However, I did manage to put together a review of the Teardrop Explodes' superb second album Wilder a few weeks ago and No Ripcord have just published it.
Take a read, if you want.
Take a read, if you want.
Tuesday, 21 May 2013
The White Noise Revisited
It's entirely my own fault. When possible, I try to stand right at the front at a gig - in the main part, this is because I like having the barrier to lean on, so I don't get a bad back from being stood in one place too long. I also like feeling close to the music, and the people involved, observing their playing techniques and the like. Tragic as this sounds, this habit also allowed me to shake hands with Morrissey once, a moment that rakes in my all time Personal Top Ten.
Attending a gig last night, I did the same. But I wasn't watching Joan Baez or the Durutti Column here. No, I was stood right in front of Bob Fucking Mould! And that means noise. A lot of beautiful, fast noise. As a result, my ears are still ringing.
Nevermind. Bob has long been a strong proponent of the power trio, starting with Husker Du, then with Sugar and now teaming with up bassist Jason Narducy and drummer Jon Wurster to record Silver Age and embark on this current tour. The album is a return to Mould's vein of fast rock music with power-pop references thrown in. My advice would be to go listen to it if you liked the last few Husker Du albums and most of what he did with Sugar.
Prior to the main attraction, support act North Atlantic Oscillation did their 30 minute set. From Scotland (a clue being one member having the St Andrews cross on his forearm), their music is interesting enough, with enough electronic effects that you feel it must take hours to set up all the wires, their main issue is that they lack any kind of on-stage personality. I can imagine they come across a lot better on CD.
Then the main attraction. Yes, so Mould is 52 years old and looks like Alexi Sayle's skinnier brother, but that doesn't mean he still can't rock like a bastard. The band jump right in by playing the entire first half of Sugar's Copper Blue album. Another album you really, really need to hear if you haven't done already.
As stated at the start, they were loud, with pretty much no let up throughout. Mould has made albums with an acoustic or electronic slant, but this is pure power trio rock, with no slowing down throughout. If it at times the volume seems hard work for the audience, the sheer hard work the three put in up there on stage puts it in context. I don't think I've ever seen a band sweat so much - it was dripping from the guitars, the drummer's shirt was drenched by the end and Mould's glasses actually had perspiration congealing on them by the end, so that it looked like they were covered in milk.
Alongside the Sugar material, there's a fair chunk of the new album and a healthy amount of Husker Du classics. So, so what if the ringing in my ears might keep me up for a few nights? I saw Bob Mould do what he does best.
Attending a gig last night, I did the same. But I wasn't watching Joan Baez or the Durutti Column here. No, I was stood right in front of Bob Fucking Mould! And that means noise. A lot of beautiful, fast noise. As a result, my ears are still ringing.
Nevermind. Bob has long been a strong proponent of the power trio, starting with Husker Du, then with Sugar and now teaming with up bassist Jason Narducy and drummer Jon Wurster to record Silver Age and embark on this current tour. The album is a return to Mould's vein of fast rock music with power-pop references thrown in. My advice would be to go listen to it if you liked the last few Husker Du albums and most of what he did with Sugar.
Prior to the main attraction, support act North Atlantic Oscillation did their 30 minute set. From Scotland (a clue being one member having the St Andrews cross on his forearm), their music is interesting enough, with enough electronic effects that you feel it must take hours to set up all the wires, their main issue is that they lack any kind of on-stage personality. I can imagine they come across a lot better on CD.
Then the main attraction. Yes, so Mould is 52 years old and looks like Alexi Sayle's skinnier brother, but that doesn't mean he still can't rock like a bastard. The band jump right in by playing the entire first half of Sugar's Copper Blue album. Another album you really, really need to hear if you haven't done already.
As stated at the start, they were loud, with pretty much no let up throughout. Mould has made albums with an acoustic or electronic slant, but this is pure power trio rock, with no slowing down throughout. If it at times the volume seems hard work for the audience, the sheer hard work the three put in up there on stage puts it in context. I don't think I've ever seen a band sweat so much - it was dripping from the guitars, the drummer's shirt was drenched by the end and Mould's glasses actually had perspiration congealing on them by the end, so that it looked like they were covered in milk.
Alongside the Sugar material, there's a fair chunk of the new album and a healthy amount of Husker Du classics. So, so what if the ringing in my ears might keep me up for a few nights? I saw Bob Mould do what he does best.
Wednesday, 3 April 2013
Forty From Ten
Recently, I was asked to compile a list of my top 40 albums of the 1990s for NoRipcord.com. An easy task, you might think, given that decade saw me go through just about all of my teenage years.
Alas, not, but I finally managed the task to find one band conspicuous by their absence. Want to guess? Oasis? Nah - they had two good songs (Live Forever and Slide Away), plenty of average rockers and a load of shite. No, it was Radiohead that failed to make my own Pick of the Pops (1990s edition).
Strange, in a way, as I love me a bit of what I will call "miserable bastard music": Joy Division, the Smiths, Depeche Mode and the Cure all provided a soundtrack that made my mother worry that I was bound to hurtle myself off St Bees Head one day. Radiohead were in there too - after all, isn't Creep the perfect adolescent boy song? At least, those of us who scored no luck whatsoever with whoever we fancied. Tough times. But Pablo Honey was an average album at best and somehow its famous song hasn't aged very well, especially when compared to something like Boys Don't Cry, which works perhaps due to a charming simplicity. The line "you're so fucking special" merely sounds derisory 17 years on from the first time I heard it.
The Bends was better and got a fair few playings, then there was OK Computer, which is widely praised to this day. Yet, something must have happened as I've not listened to either album in a decade. The latter has too much I find too self-indulgent, the latter I just seem to have grown out of.
Seems strange that I would do so, given all the other bands I mentioned still get a good blast on the MP3 player on a weekly basis.
Going back to my top 40, I expect very few of them to make the NoRipcord total, bar a few obvious exceptions. After that goes up, I may well print up my list for the sake of completion.
Alas, not, but I finally managed the task to find one band conspicuous by their absence. Want to guess? Oasis? Nah - they had two good songs (Live Forever and Slide Away), plenty of average rockers and a load of shite. No, it was Radiohead that failed to make my own Pick of the Pops (1990s edition).
Strange, in a way, as I love me a bit of what I will call "miserable bastard music": Joy Division, the Smiths, Depeche Mode and the Cure all provided a soundtrack that made my mother worry that I was bound to hurtle myself off St Bees Head one day. Radiohead were in there too - after all, isn't Creep the perfect adolescent boy song? At least, those of us who scored no luck whatsoever with whoever we fancied. Tough times. But Pablo Honey was an average album at best and somehow its famous song hasn't aged very well, especially when compared to something like Boys Don't Cry, which works perhaps due to a charming simplicity. The line "you're so fucking special" merely sounds derisory 17 years on from the first time I heard it.
The Bends was better and got a fair few playings, then there was OK Computer, which is widely praised to this day. Yet, something must have happened as I've not listened to either album in a decade. The latter has too much I find too self-indulgent, the latter I just seem to have grown out of.
Seems strange that I would do so, given all the other bands I mentioned still get a good blast on the MP3 player on a weekly basis.
Going back to my top 40, I expect very few of them to make the NoRipcord total, bar a few obvious exceptions. After that goes up, I may well print up my list for the sake of completion.
Thursday, 31 January 2013
Put Your Head Back In The Clouds
In a rare spout of doing some actual writing, I was asked and agreed to write a review of the reissue of Julian Cope's 1987 album Saint Julian. Read it here.
Sunday, 28 October 2012
Closer to the Truth?
As a fan, it's been strange seeing the rise of Joy Division from cult act to existing in the mainstream. In 1997, it was hard to find out much about them. In 2012, they are rightly considered one of the seminal bands of British pop music, influencing countless others and being the topic for endless dissection.
There's been films, documentaries and plenty of books. In the print camp, there's another, albeit one with a greater deal of authority than the others. Unknown Pleasures - Inside Joy Division is bassist Peter Hook's record of the lifetime of the band, following on from his account of the Hacienda nightclub through the 1980s.
When writing his own memoirs, the wrestler Mick Foley relates some advice he was given about it not being about settling scores. Well, our Hooky has elected to disregard that, leaving us a book that could be subtitled Why Bernard Sumner is an Arsehole, such is the amount of petty potshots at his one time close friend.
Which is a shame, actually, as the other vast majority of the book is a really enjoyable read for fans of the band. There's plenty of information I'd not heard about before and the writing style flows well through a story where (you'd imagine) everyone knows the ending. Where it scores best is the tales of being in a band on the make: there's the off-told tale of Hooky buying his first bass the day after seeing the Sex Pistols at the Lesser Free Trade Hall, but also plenty of the struggles of writing material, finding the right people and then scraping for gigs in the ultra-competitive Manchester punk scene.
The fascinating aspect of Joy Division is how everyone fell in place in the manner it did. Hook and Sumner are both struggling nobodies in 1977, self-taught and fired up. Within two years, they end up with an enigmatic frontman, one of the best drummers around, the perfect manager, the perfect producer and the one label who'd let them all get on with the job.
It's not just the band and the other well-known figures who Hook regales. Friends Terry Mason and Twinny act as roadies and mischief makers, figures from Hook and Sumner's Salford roots there to keep their toes on the ground when the plaudits start rolling in.
The figure of Ian Curtis looms large over everything, understandably, and Hook is at pains to point out the man he knew, in contrast to the bad husband of his widow's only account, Touching From a Distance. As many have done, Hook questions who the real Curtis was, and whether all the people in his life were players in some grand piece he was conducting.
A little note from the ending also tells its own tale - in the list of those mentioned no longer with us (sadly way too long) is "New Order". Hook's conflicts with his former bandmates have been all over the media for a while now, but one point from the Joy Division history backs him up: the surviving three never considered continuing under that name as they had long understood that if anyone left, the name would be scrapped. You may wonder why New Order weren't the same, and that they had best been left in the past after their initial split in the mid 90s.
Unknown Pleasures is a more than worthwhile read, then. Some great pics too! The question is, how do the others remember the same events?
There's been films, documentaries and plenty of books. In the print camp, there's another, albeit one with a greater deal of authority than the others. Unknown Pleasures - Inside Joy Division is bassist Peter Hook's record of the lifetime of the band, following on from his account of the Hacienda nightclub through the 1980s.
When writing his own memoirs, the wrestler Mick Foley relates some advice he was given about it not being about settling scores. Well, our Hooky has elected to disregard that, leaving us a book that could be subtitled Why Bernard Sumner is an Arsehole, such is the amount of petty potshots at his one time close friend.
Which is a shame, actually, as the other vast majority of the book is a really enjoyable read for fans of the band. There's plenty of information I'd not heard about before and the writing style flows well through a story where (you'd imagine) everyone knows the ending. Where it scores best is the tales of being in a band on the make: there's the off-told tale of Hooky buying his first bass the day after seeing the Sex Pistols at the Lesser Free Trade Hall, but also plenty of the struggles of writing material, finding the right people and then scraping for gigs in the ultra-competitive Manchester punk scene.
The fascinating aspect of Joy Division is how everyone fell in place in the manner it did. Hook and Sumner are both struggling nobodies in 1977, self-taught and fired up. Within two years, they end up with an enigmatic frontman, one of the best drummers around, the perfect manager, the perfect producer and the one label who'd let them all get on with the job.
It's not just the band and the other well-known figures who Hook regales. Friends Terry Mason and Twinny act as roadies and mischief makers, figures from Hook and Sumner's Salford roots there to keep their toes on the ground when the plaudits start rolling in.
The figure of Ian Curtis looms large over everything, understandably, and Hook is at pains to point out the man he knew, in contrast to the bad husband of his widow's only account, Touching From a Distance. As many have done, Hook questions who the real Curtis was, and whether all the people in his life were players in some grand piece he was conducting.
A little note from the ending also tells its own tale - in the list of those mentioned no longer with us (sadly way too long) is "New Order". Hook's conflicts with his former bandmates have been all over the media for a while now, but one point from the Joy Division history backs him up: the surviving three never considered continuing under that name as they had long understood that if anyone left, the name would be scrapped. You may wonder why New Order weren't the same, and that they had best been left in the past after their initial split in the mid 90s.
Unknown Pleasures is a more than worthwhile read, then. Some great pics too! The question is, how do the others remember the same events?
Monday, 15 October 2012
The Man Who Was Not With It
In terms of hits, the most popular post I've made on this here blog was the one about Felt. They're a band that never sold anything in their lifetime, but whose legend grew. As I wrote about a couple of weeks ago, I found out that the documentary about their frontman, Lawrence of Belgravia, was being shown in Manchester and I'd got tickets.
So along I went to the Museum of Science and Industry (a fine attraction, for anyone visiting this wonderful city), which it turned out was the only place willing to show it. So thanks for fuck all, the Cornerhouse, the supposed "cutting edge" cinema in Manchester.
Dave Haslam, well known DJ from his times at the Hacienda, had put the event together and thus kudos must go to him. Charlatans front man and Felt fan Tim Burgess brought his newly bleached locks down to do an introduction of sorts and then it was onto Paul Kelly's film, sometime in the making. Not so much a documentary about Lawrence's life as a whole (Felt fans will be disappointed if they expect to see much of that band, though drummer Gary Ainge appears), but more of the past few years as the man tries to get by despite problems with substance abuse, finances and apparent mass indifference to his craft.
It's a beautifully made piece which anyone with any interest in the man should see. There's laughs to be had at the way Lawrence carries on (and I wonder if he's totally aware of this and plays up to it) but also plenty of pathos: at the start, he's being evicted from his flat and later on, he sells a precious guitar to raise some funds. Throughout, he comes across as a man in love with being in a band and who believes someday he'll reach his goal of being famous and not have to use public transport to get around.
There is some biographical detail on him - passing references to a brother and sister and how he never understood why original Felt member Nick Gilbert left because he thought the band put a pressure on their friendship. Lawrence thought the band was worth sacrificing a friend for.
Whether he's right or not is left for us to decide. The man himself just seems to follow whatever ideas he has - from jangling indie guitars in the 80s, glam rock stomp with his second band Denim and subsequently leading "the world's first b-side band", Go-Kart Mozart. It's to his credit that he states that while he likes the idea of being a millionaire, he'd never reform Felt, even for huge sums of cash, and you believe him.
Afterwards, there's a short Q&A with Lawrence and Kelly, during which we learn the former has been signing on the dole pretty much throughout his whole career in music, having never made any kind of fiscal rewards that his talent doubtless deserves. He's also resigned himself to never having a relationship again as "girlfriends get jealous of the band" and Kelly states that instead, he sees a girl somewhere he finds attractive and lives out the whole relationship in his head before conceding it would never have worked out.
With luck, there will also be a DVD release next year, so that other Lawrence fans can view this entertaining flick. As a little bonus on the day, I also got a Go-Kart Mozart key ring. Ace!
So along I went to the Museum of Science and Industry (a fine attraction, for anyone visiting this wonderful city), which it turned out was the only place willing to show it. So thanks for fuck all, the Cornerhouse, the supposed "cutting edge" cinema in Manchester.
Dave Haslam, well known DJ from his times at the Hacienda, had put the event together and thus kudos must go to him. Charlatans front man and Felt fan Tim Burgess brought his newly bleached locks down to do an introduction of sorts and then it was onto Paul Kelly's film, sometime in the making. Not so much a documentary about Lawrence's life as a whole (Felt fans will be disappointed if they expect to see much of that band, though drummer Gary Ainge appears), but more of the past few years as the man tries to get by despite problems with substance abuse, finances and apparent mass indifference to his craft.
It's a beautifully made piece which anyone with any interest in the man should see. There's laughs to be had at the way Lawrence carries on (and I wonder if he's totally aware of this and plays up to it) but also plenty of pathos: at the start, he's being evicted from his flat and later on, he sells a precious guitar to raise some funds. Throughout, he comes across as a man in love with being in a band and who believes someday he'll reach his goal of being famous and not have to use public transport to get around.
There is some biographical detail on him - passing references to a brother and sister and how he never understood why original Felt member Nick Gilbert left because he thought the band put a pressure on their friendship. Lawrence thought the band was worth sacrificing a friend for.
Whether he's right or not is left for us to decide. The man himself just seems to follow whatever ideas he has - from jangling indie guitars in the 80s, glam rock stomp with his second band Denim and subsequently leading "the world's first b-side band", Go-Kart Mozart. It's to his credit that he states that while he likes the idea of being a millionaire, he'd never reform Felt, even for huge sums of cash, and you believe him.
Afterwards, there's a short Q&A with Lawrence and Kelly, during which we learn the former has been signing on the dole pretty much throughout his whole career in music, having never made any kind of fiscal rewards that his talent doubtless deserves. He's also resigned himself to never having a relationship again as "girlfriends get jealous of the band" and Kelly states that instead, he sees a girl somewhere he finds attractive and lives out the whole relationship in his head before conceding it would never have worked out.
With luck, there will also be a DVD release next year, so that other Lawrence fans can view this entertaining flick. As a little bonus on the day, I also got a Go-Kart Mozart key ring. Ace!
Sunday, 30 September 2012
Question Time
In a stroke of good luck, I happened upon mention of Lawrence of Belgravia finally getting a showing in Manchester. Naturally, I moved quickly to snap up tickets.
I've heard plenty of the documentary, about the Lawrence of Felt/Denim/Go-Kart Mozart non-fame, to know I wanted to see it. It's being shown in various cities across the country, and it's about time it made it to Manchester. By all accounts, it's a very well made film.
But what's this? Lawrence himself will be at the screening and fielding questions afterwards? Cue much excited jumping up and down.
So, do I become a total fanboy and take all my Felt vinyl LPs (and Ballad of the Band EP!) down for him to sign, along with getting pictures of him looking slightly annoyed with me grinning like a total arse? October 13th will reveal all.
(Incidentally, if any Lawrence fans read this before then and can think of any decent questions to ask, let me know, as all my journalistic training will doubtless abandon me and leave my mind blank.)
I've heard plenty of the documentary, about the Lawrence of Felt/Denim/Go-Kart Mozart non-fame, to know I wanted to see it. It's being shown in various cities across the country, and it's about time it made it to Manchester. By all accounts, it's a very well made film.
But what's this? Lawrence himself will be at the screening and fielding questions afterwards? Cue much excited jumping up and down.
So, do I become a total fanboy and take all my Felt vinyl LPs (and Ballad of the Band EP!) down for him to sign, along with getting pictures of him looking slightly annoyed with me grinning like a total arse? October 13th will reveal all.
(Incidentally, if any Lawrence fans read this before then and can think of any decent questions to ask, let me know, as all my journalistic training will doubtless abandon me and leave my mind blank.)
Tuesday, 25 September 2012
When the Soul Rebels Grow Up
Everything comes back round again, they say. Such it is for the critical verdict on the career of Dexys Midnight Runners and their unique leader (and only constant) Kevin Rowland.
Starting out playing soul music with a Midlands slant in the post-punk years, Rowland managed to antagonise just about everyone he could (record label, bandmates, the press) over three albums in the first half of the 1980s. The last of those, Don’t Stand Me Down, managed to kill stone dead a career that just a couple of years prior had seen them top of the singles chart both here and the States.
What followed was a spell in the wilderness for Rowland, personal issues not helped by a crippling drug habit. When he finally got it together to record a fine album of covers of songs that held special significance to him, he shot his chances down in flames by insisting on promoting it while wearing clothes generally seen on women. Legend (doubtlessly incorrectly) has it sales of My Beauty were counted in the hundreds.
In the new century, several “greatest hits” type tours under the Dexys name helped pay the bills and the media decided to grant both the debut Searching For The Young Soul Rebels and Don’t Stand Me Down the genius label they deserve. Come On Eileen, meanwhile, remains the wedding disco standard of all time.
A new album, therefore, was always going to get plenty of attention, especially with Rowland deservedly becoming a icon of English (Irish) eccentricity of sorts. On Some Day I’m Going To Soar, he’s teamed with Mick Talbot (ex-Style Council) and veterans of the Young Soul Rebels line-up Pete Williams and Jimmy Paterson. Talbot was originally in the band long enough to play on a chart-topping single (Geno) back in 1981.
With an album tends to come a tour, with the Manchester stop being at the Bridgewater Hall, more suited to Dexys’ more theatrical stylings. Prior to the band, we’re treated to a burlesque show, to which I was a bit ambivalent. Perhaps that’s just me living in the post-internet age where you can see all manner of naked flesh in a heartbeat, so the idea of mild titillation left me reading a magazine instead. She was a fine looking woman, no doubt, but perhaps I was additionally disconcerted when the act was performed to the theme tune from Perry Mason.
Then the band itself, now called just "Dexys" for some reason, and the larger part of the gig is set out as blasting through the whole album in sequence. The material itself works better on stage: Williams, who played bass on the album, gets someone else to do that job and instead takes the role of Rowland’s foil, reacting to his lyrics and throwing in the odd line/backing vocal himself. It’s all a bit like a show by James Brown or Bruce Springsteen – Williams taking the Bobby Byrd role and Jimmy Paterson being like Clarence Clemons, the “Big Man” whose solos (there’s more on stage than on the album) get some of the biggest receptions of the night.
As a concept, the music works well: middle aged man questions his life, gets infatuated with a lady, proclaims his love, which is then returned. Unfortunately, he then decides he’s “incapable of love” after all, leaving her somewhat annoyed. Nothing too new, perhaps, but Rowland does it well. The whole package may well bring heckles of “self-indulgent”, but Kev has never been one to shy away from such matters: after all, he has that ultra-conviction going back over 30 years from the days he was belting out covers of Northern Soul tunes.
What certainly is self-indulgent is getting a young lady to play his love interest for the music. Although Madeline Hyland may look the part, the bottom line is that she’s not a great singer and it’s just as well the most she has to do is engage in some dialogue.
Once she’s gone, the rest of the album (both on album and stage) does fade away a tad and the night doesn’t pick up again until the encore, when they blast through Tell Me When My Light Turns Green, Come On Eileen and This Is What She’s Like. The second of those was drawn out to perhaps too long a length, and I'd rather have had them give us Let's Make This Precious instead. But nevermind, a great gig and always nice to see a band make an effort with presentation.
Starting out playing soul music with a Midlands slant in the post-punk years, Rowland managed to antagonise just about everyone he could (record label, bandmates, the press) over three albums in the first half of the 1980s. The last of those, Don’t Stand Me Down, managed to kill stone dead a career that just a couple of years prior had seen them top of the singles chart both here and the States.
What followed was a spell in the wilderness for Rowland, personal issues not helped by a crippling drug habit. When he finally got it together to record a fine album of covers of songs that held special significance to him, he shot his chances down in flames by insisting on promoting it while wearing clothes generally seen on women. Legend (doubtlessly incorrectly) has it sales of My Beauty were counted in the hundreds.
In the new century, several “greatest hits” type tours under the Dexys name helped pay the bills and the media decided to grant both the debut Searching For The Young Soul Rebels and Don’t Stand Me Down the genius label they deserve. Come On Eileen, meanwhile, remains the wedding disco standard of all time.
A new album, therefore, was always going to get plenty of attention, especially with Rowland deservedly becoming a icon of English (Irish) eccentricity of sorts. On Some Day I’m Going To Soar, he’s teamed with Mick Talbot (ex-Style Council) and veterans of the Young Soul Rebels line-up Pete Williams and Jimmy Paterson. Talbot was originally in the band long enough to play on a chart-topping single (Geno) back in 1981.
With an album tends to come a tour, with the Manchester stop being at the Bridgewater Hall, more suited to Dexys’ more theatrical stylings. Prior to the band, we’re treated to a burlesque show, to which I was a bit ambivalent. Perhaps that’s just me living in the post-internet age where you can see all manner of naked flesh in a heartbeat, so the idea of mild titillation left me reading a magazine instead. She was a fine looking woman, no doubt, but perhaps I was additionally disconcerted when the act was performed to the theme tune from Perry Mason.
Then the band itself, now called just "Dexys" for some reason, and the larger part of the gig is set out as blasting through the whole album in sequence. The material itself works better on stage: Williams, who played bass on the album, gets someone else to do that job and instead takes the role of Rowland’s foil, reacting to his lyrics and throwing in the odd line/backing vocal himself. It’s all a bit like a show by James Brown or Bruce Springsteen – Williams taking the Bobby Byrd role and Jimmy Paterson being like Clarence Clemons, the “Big Man” whose solos (there’s more on stage than on the album) get some of the biggest receptions of the night.
As a concept, the music works well: middle aged man questions his life, gets infatuated with a lady, proclaims his love, which is then returned. Unfortunately, he then decides he’s “incapable of love” after all, leaving her somewhat annoyed. Nothing too new, perhaps, but Rowland does it well. The whole package may well bring heckles of “self-indulgent”, but Kev has never been one to shy away from such matters: after all, he has that ultra-conviction going back over 30 years from the days he was belting out covers of Northern Soul tunes.
What certainly is self-indulgent is getting a young lady to play his love interest for the music. Although Madeline Hyland may look the part, the bottom line is that she’s not a great singer and it’s just as well the most she has to do is engage in some dialogue.
Once she’s gone, the rest of the album (both on album and stage) does fade away a tad and the night doesn’t pick up again until the encore, when they blast through Tell Me When My Light Turns Green, Come On Eileen and This Is What She’s Like. The second of those was drawn out to perhaps too long a length, and I'd rather have had them give us Let's Make This Precious instead. But nevermind, a great gig and always nice to see a band make an effort with presentation.
Sunday, 16 September 2012
In a Special Place
Anyone who knows me can tell you I have a thing about "epic" music. It's not a matter of size so much, more ambition and scope of vision. After all, No Bleeding by the Wild Swans has only been released as a Peel Session track, yet is one of the most glorious bits of music I've ever heard.
Head Swan Paul Simpson is someone who went in for writing epic paeans to the cosmos and I've recently got into the music of someone else who had similar goals - Mike Scott, leader of the Waterboys, whose desire to make "The Big Music" eventually brought the exceptional 1985 album This Is The Sea.
Raised in Edinburgh and Ayrshire, Scott turfed up in London and eventually got a deal with the Enigma label, who were expecting to release solo albums. Instead, he created the Waterboys name, saxophonist Anthony Thistlethwaite also signed up, bringing drummer Kevin Wilkinson to play on the sessions for the debut self-titled album.
However, it was the follow-up A Pagan Place that Scott began hitting his pace. Half recorded in 1982, half in 1984, the latter saw new recruit Karl Wallinger join to play piano. Completing the core line-up were Wilkinson back on drums and Roddy Lorimer helping out on trumpet. Naming a song The Big Music, Scott was setting the template of what he was looking at.
On the next album, This Is The Sea, he realised his ambitions. A gloriously "huge" album, it took all the best aspects of the previous albums and amped them up. In the lead single, The Whole of the Moon, there's a real "throw in everything" vibe that matches the lyrics, where Mike Scott tries to fit in as many words as possible at the climax - and yet it works incredibly well in the same way early Springsteen does. Allusions to the Boss are helped along by Thistlethwaite being able to bang out a huge sax solo in true Clarence Clemons fashion.
In a time where huge rock sounds made by Celtic lads seemed in vogue (Big Country and Simple Minds were having hits, U2 had broke into the big time), the Waterboys fit to a degree and This Is The Sea was their first album to make the top 40. It may have done better if not for Scott's insistence on not miming on Top of the Pops and a general reluctance to embrace "fame" the way Bono or Jim Kerr did.
Shortly after the album was released, Wallinger left. Full of his own music, he took the name World Party and did his own thing. Steve Wickham took his part as full-time Waterboy and encouraged Scott to move over to Ireland, where the local music would flavour his subsequent Fisherman's Blues album. Perhaps after realising what the Big Music could be so perfectly, it was natural to go back to the roots, as had been hinted at by the title tracks of the two previous albums.
A coda to the Big Music period came in 1991, when a compilation of the band's work was released - The Whole of the Moon was also re-issued and hit #3. More recently, Scott released the album An Appointment with Mr Yeats in 2011 under the Waterboys banner, putting his music to the prose of top Irish poet, W.B. Yeats - a man whose work ended up having a big impact on my own life. This Is The Sea, however, acts as a high water mark of just how bloody huge British rock music could sound.
Head Swan Paul Simpson is someone who went in for writing epic paeans to the cosmos and I've recently got into the music of someone else who had similar goals - Mike Scott, leader of the Waterboys, whose desire to make "The Big Music" eventually brought the exceptional 1985 album This Is The Sea.
Raised in Edinburgh and Ayrshire, Scott turfed up in London and eventually got a deal with the Enigma label, who were expecting to release solo albums. Instead, he created the Waterboys name, saxophonist Anthony Thistlethwaite also signed up, bringing drummer Kevin Wilkinson to play on the sessions for the debut self-titled album.
However, it was the follow-up A Pagan Place that Scott began hitting his pace. Half recorded in 1982, half in 1984, the latter saw new recruit Karl Wallinger join to play piano. Completing the core line-up were Wilkinson back on drums and Roddy Lorimer helping out on trumpet. Naming a song The Big Music, Scott was setting the template of what he was looking at.
On the next album, This Is The Sea, he realised his ambitions. A gloriously "huge" album, it took all the best aspects of the previous albums and amped them up. In the lead single, The Whole of the Moon, there's a real "throw in everything" vibe that matches the lyrics, where Mike Scott tries to fit in as many words as possible at the climax - and yet it works incredibly well in the same way early Springsteen does. Allusions to the Boss are helped along by Thistlethwaite being able to bang out a huge sax solo in true Clarence Clemons fashion.
In a time where huge rock sounds made by Celtic lads seemed in vogue (Big Country and Simple Minds were having hits, U2 had broke into the big time), the Waterboys fit to a degree and This Is The Sea was their first album to make the top 40. It may have done better if not for Scott's insistence on not miming on Top of the Pops and a general reluctance to embrace "fame" the way Bono or Jim Kerr did.
Shortly after the album was released, Wallinger left. Full of his own music, he took the name World Party and did his own thing. Steve Wickham took his part as full-time Waterboy and encouraged Scott to move over to Ireland, where the local music would flavour his subsequent Fisherman's Blues album. Perhaps after realising what the Big Music could be so perfectly, it was natural to go back to the roots, as had been hinted at by the title tracks of the two previous albums.
A coda to the Big Music period came in 1991, when a compilation of the band's work was released - The Whole of the Moon was also re-issued and hit #3. More recently, Scott released the album An Appointment with Mr Yeats in 2011 under the Waterboys banner, putting his music to the prose of top Irish poet, W.B. Yeats - a man whose work ended up having a big impact on my own life. This Is The Sea, however, acts as a high water mark of just how bloody huge British rock music could sound.
Wednesday, 29 August 2012
Waiting for the Rainbow
As I've said before, when I get into a band or singer, I jump right in. Buy all the albums I can find, read every bit of information online, watch all the videos. The newest of these has been World Party, the creative outlet of one of Britain's most talented songwriters, Karl Wallinger.
Wallinger got his break in the early 1980s when he got a job playing with the Waterboys, whose leader Mike Scott was striving towards creating "The Big Music". His new recruit, talented on a large number of instruments, was a massive step in that direction and 1985's sublime This Is The Sea remains a wonderful slice of epic rock 27 years on, and I'll be writing about it sometime in the near future.
However, Wallinger had plenty of his own ideas and there wasn't too much room in the Waterboys for them. Instead, he handed in his cards and formed his own project, named World Party. A song of the same name, written by him, would actually appear on the next Waterboys' album, Fisherman's Blues.
From the start, the project would frequently reflect Wallinger's strong pro-environmentalism slant. The single Ship of Fools and it's parent album Private Revolution both went top 40 in the States, but it was 1990's Goodbye Jumbo that really showcased the knack for strong hooks that show World Party at their best. Way Down Now and Put The Message in the Box should have been huge hits while And I Fell Back Alone remains one of the most affecting break-up songs I've ever heard. It's telling that when the first World Party "Best Of" was released, half of Goodbye Jumbo was featured.
Commercial success in the UK would come in 1993, when Is It Like Today? went top 20 and the album Bang! hit #2. Wallinger's biggest success, however, would come via reflected form at the end of the 1990s when Robbie Williams took his version of She's the One to the top of the pops. Guy Chambers, who had co-written and produced the one-time fat dancer's most successful work, had been given a break of sorts as a touring member of World Party, co-writing a couple of tracks on Bang!
Whatever the merits of William's reading, it would soon be a very important issue for Wallinger when, shortly after releasing fifth album Dumbing Up in 2000, he fell seriously ill from a brain aneurysm that put him out of action for six years. The cash from She's the One kept the ship floating, including his own recording studio where he did most his World Party work.
Now recovered enough to commence touring and recording work, Wallinger hasn't quite made a new World Party album, but he has brought us Arkeology, a five album set of out-takes, live tracks and unreleased recordings dating as far back as 1985. Brilliantly, it's packaged as a kind of diary: dates alongside pictures of the various World Party members, (too) brief details on the songs and quotes from writers and philosophers. Certain dates Wallinger believes are important are also marked, the good point of which is that you can put your own in to "personalise" the set. However, Karl should be informed that he's put Eric Cantona's debut for Manchester United incorrectly, putting it down as his first start against Norwich City, rather than him coming off the bench in a Manchester derby the week before. The pedant in me insisted on me putting that in there.
In terms of the music, there's plenty to love. Wallinger obviously has a high degree of quality control to not include some of the songs here on the albums thus far and there's some great covers, especially the rocking run through of Little Richard's Lucille. For me, it only goes a little astray when he indulges his love of Prince a bit too much .
Arkeology is a wonderfully packaged set of, in the main, superb songs that cause you to reflect that World Party have never got the respect they deserved, a Q award for "Best Album" with Goodbye Jumbo notwithstanding - which reminds me, would any mainstream magazine give such an award to something that barely made the top 40 now? Fans should buy this collection, and even the uninitiated who have £30 to spare could do worse to have a listen.
Wallinger got his break in the early 1980s when he got a job playing with the Waterboys, whose leader Mike Scott was striving towards creating "The Big Music". His new recruit, talented on a large number of instruments, was a massive step in that direction and 1985's sublime This Is The Sea remains a wonderful slice of epic rock 27 years on, and I'll be writing about it sometime in the near future.
However, Wallinger had plenty of his own ideas and there wasn't too much room in the Waterboys for them. Instead, he handed in his cards and formed his own project, named World Party. A song of the same name, written by him, would actually appear on the next Waterboys' album, Fisherman's Blues.
From the start, the project would frequently reflect Wallinger's strong pro-environmentalism slant. The single Ship of Fools and it's parent album Private Revolution both went top 40 in the States, but it was 1990's Goodbye Jumbo that really showcased the knack for strong hooks that show World Party at their best. Way Down Now and Put The Message in the Box should have been huge hits while And I Fell Back Alone remains one of the most affecting break-up songs I've ever heard. It's telling that when the first World Party "Best Of" was released, half of Goodbye Jumbo was featured.
Commercial success in the UK would come in 1993, when Is It Like Today? went top 20 and the album Bang! hit #2. Wallinger's biggest success, however, would come via reflected form at the end of the 1990s when Robbie Williams took his version of She's the One to the top of the pops. Guy Chambers, who had co-written and produced the one-time fat dancer's most successful work, had been given a break of sorts as a touring member of World Party, co-writing a couple of tracks on Bang!
Whatever the merits of William's reading, it would soon be a very important issue for Wallinger when, shortly after releasing fifth album Dumbing Up in 2000, he fell seriously ill from a brain aneurysm that put him out of action for six years. The cash from She's the One kept the ship floating, including his own recording studio where he did most his World Party work.
Now recovered enough to commence touring and recording work, Wallinger hasn't quite made a new World Party album, but he has brought us Arkeology, a five album set of out-takes, live tracks and unreleased recordings dating as far back as 1985. Brilliantly, it's packaged as a kind of diary: dates alongside pictures of the various World Party members, (too) brief details on the songs and quotes from writers and philosophers. Certain dates Wallinger believes are important are also marked, the good point of which is that you can put your own in to "personalise" the set. However, Karl should be informed that he's put Eric Cantona's debut for Manchester United incorrectly, putting it down as his first start against Norwich City, rather than him coming off the bench in a Manchester derby the week before. The pedant in me insisted on me putting that in there.
In terms of the music, there's plenty to love. Wallinger obviously has a high degree of quality control to not include some of the songs here on the albums thus far and there's some great covers, especially the rocking run through of Little Richard's Lucille. For me, it only goes a little astray when he indulges his love of Prince a bit too much .
Arkeology is a wonderfully packaged set of, in the main, superb songs that cause you to reflect that World Party have never got the respect they deserved, a Q award for "Best Album" with Goodbye Jumbo notwithstanding - which reminds me, would any mainstream magazine give such an award to something that barely made the top 40 now? Fans should buy this collection, and even the uninitiated who have £30 to spare could do worse to have a listen.
Thursday, 2 August 2012
State of the Independents
C86 was a keystone moment in whatever British "indie" music was, even if brought about a huge backlash against many of the bands involved. Listened to today, a lot of it doesn't hold up, as the ease of home recording today makes some of the rough-and-ready numbers look stone age.
Only a handful of 22 bands on it crossed over to the mainstream. Most prominent was Primal Scream, who only hit the charts after an extreme makeover that saw them shift from jangling guitars to dance beats. The Soup Dragons did the same and scored a big hit with a cover of an old Stones song, and the Wedding Present enjoyed some success in the 1990s without really changing their approach. Best of all, Half Man Half Biscuit have kept bringing us sublime observations on modern life after stating on C86 that they hated Nerys Hughes.
As an aside, it's a shame Glossop's finest, the Bodines, never got their rewards. Therese is a cracking little single which suggests they could have made it, but instead they were condemned to cult status.
One of the key bands of the London scene at that time, the June Brides, didn't appear on C86, perhaps wisely given the stigma attached to many of the bands who did. But it didn't help them much in the long run and by 1987 they were gone. Singer/songwriter Phil Wilson went on to record on Creation but never seemed to top the fab pop rush of In The Rain, one of his old band's earliest songs. It sounded like it was made on a budget of £10, but it's frantic violin and so-obvious-it-works-brilliantly "ba ba ba" section means it still gets played at chez Harrison.
Over a quarter of a century after that one sublime moment, the band is back together and they've made a rather brilliant single. A January Moon is guitar pop in the vein of it's best exponents, the Go-Betweens. Wilson uses his voice's limitations as a strength (weakness = vulnerability) and it's an actual delight to listen to.
A single worth your time, then. Even more so if you order from the label (www.occultation.co.uk), because then you get a ten track CD for your cash, featuring the single and songs including Phil Wilson solo work.
On top of that, the band are playing with the also newly-reformed Distractions up in sunny Salford on August 31st and September 1st. As part of the "End of the Pier Shows" at the Kings Arms, they'll both be joined by Factory Star, led by ex-Blue Orchids and Fall man Martin Bramah. I'll be making an effort to be there.
Only a handful of 22 bands on it crossed over to the mainstream. Most prominent was Primal Scream, who only hit the charts after an extreme makeover that saw them shift from jangling guitars to dance beats. The Soup Dragons did the same and scored a big hit with a cover of an old Stones song, and the Wedding Present enjoyed some success in the 1990s without really changing their approach. Best of all, Half Man Half Biscuit have kept bringing us sublime observations on modern life after stating on C86 that they hated Nerys Hughes.
As an aside, it's a shame Glossop's finest, the Bodines, never got their rewards. Therese is a cracking little single which suggests they could have made it, but instead they were condemned to cult status.
One of the key bands of the London scene at that time, the June Brides, didn't appear on C86, perhaps wisely given the stigma attached to many of the bands who did. But it didn't help them much in the long run and by 1987 they were gone. Singer/songwriter Phil Wilson went on to record on Creation but never seemed to top the fab pop rush of In The Rain, one of his old band's earliest songs. It sounded like it was made on a budget of £10, but it's frantic violin and so-obvious-it-works-brilliantly "ba ba ba" section means it still gets played at chez Harrison.
Over a quarter of a century after that one sublime moment, the band is back together and they've made a rather brilliant single. A January Moon is guitar pop in the vein of it's best exponents, the Go-Betweens. Wilson uses his voice's limitations as a strength (weakness = vulnerability) and it's an actual delight to listen to.
A single worth your time, then. Even more so if you order from the label (www.occultation.co.uk), because then you get a ten track CD for your cash, featuring the single and songs including Phil Wilson solo work.
On top of that, the band are playing with the also newly-reformed Distractions up in sunny Salford on August 31st and September 1st. As part of the "End of the Pier Shows" at the Kings Arms, they'll both be joined by Factory Star, led by ex-Blue Orchids and Fall man Martin Bramah. I'll be making an effort to be there.
Friday, 27 July 2012
Non-Hit Parade
The singles charts of today are of absolutely no interest to me whatsoever. This is almost natural: after all, I'm 31 years old and pop music (in the main part) is for people a lot younger than I.
That doesn't mean I'm not interested in stuff that happened in the past. How did Laurie Anderson get something as weird as O Superman to nearly top the charts in the UK? Were Frankie Goes to Hollywood all a matter of hype, or are the songs any good? (Not really, to my ears)
Then there's the songs that sound like they were born to boom out of a million radios but went absolutely nowhere. Here's a few songs that, to me, should have been hits but never were. And by hit, I mean reached the top 40 of the singles charts in either the UK or the US.
The Comsat Angels - Will You Stay Tonight?
The Comsats started out as a great moody post-punk outfit who peaked with the brilliantly bleak Sleep No More album in 1981. However, they moved from the darkness (perhaps understandably so) and by 1983, were pushing for a chart breakthrough.
This song should have been it, given it's got all the right ingredients: hooks galore, great chorus, tight pop structure. Instead, it didn't even make the UK top 75, the latest in a series of disappointments that began when their first record label failed to send out enough copies of an album to satisfy demand that would have put them into the charts.
Not long after Will You Stay Tonight? failed to set the world on fire, they came the closest they ever would to a hit when a re-recording of early single Independence Day made the dizzy heights of #71.
Nowadays, they've gained some level of recognition, with film critic Mark Kermode hailing them as his favourite band.
Psychedelic Furs - All That Money Wants
In a way, the Furs have only themselves to blame for this. At the start of the 80s, they were a post-punk six piece with a cult following. As the decade wore on, they shed members as they got more popular. Fourth album Mirror Moves just about managed to keep on the right side of the line, but by 1987 and the Midnight to Midnight album, it was all daft haircuts and bad production values. All the same, it became their biggest hit album and provided their only US top 40 hit with Heartbreak Beat.
Lead singer Richard Butler gave himself a mild case of heart trouble due to feeling so stressed by this straying from what the band used to mean and soon got rid of the bad clothes as well as the bad songs from the setlist. Naturally, this pissed off all the new fans on top of all the old fans who'd long moved onto bands like the Cure, Depeche Mode and U2 - all less perceived to have "sold out". So, when they brought out this single to support the All Of This and Nothing compilation in 1988, it's failure to hit made some kind of sense.
On the other hand, it was their best song in years, as well as being produced by Stephen Street, then hot from working with the Smiths and on Morrissey's solo stuff. It's the sound of a band really giving it everything again, with Butler's old angry croak returning to form after a few years signing more vapid poptones - indeed, the title alone may reflect his views on the band's chasing of commercial success at the cost of their souls. "I don't believe that I believed in you" could be a line to the band from an old fan.
No matter that it sounded amazing, had a brilliant b-side in Birland and saw them back using guitars properly, it went nowhere and the band's career in terms of a popular act was over, which was a shame as their next two albums were also excellent.
New Order - Bizarre Love Triangle
New Order's first chart peak had been in the wake of Blue Monday selling by the shedload. Both Confusion and Thieves Like Us had hit the top 20 at home, but by 1986, they couldn't buy a decent hit. Perhaps Factory was going through one of their 'slump' periods.
But all the same, BLT was born for radio play, was superbly produced and featured an atypical straightforward lyric from Bernard Sumner. I can't find any fault with this perfect pop song, and yet it only made #56 in the UK charts in September 1986. Perhaps if it had come out two years later, when the band were scoring big hits everywhere and topping the album charts, it might have got the contemporary recognition it deserved.
Time, however, has been kind to the song and it's gained status as one of the New Order's classics.
XTC - Great Fire
What a difference a year makes. In 1982, XTC seemed to have finally made the big time. Their fifth album, English Settlement, and it's lead single, Senses Working Overtime, had cracked the UK top 10 and their well-deserved success seemed assured.
But then years of non-stop work caught with with singer/songwriter Andy Partridge. Add to that a harsh withdrawal from Valium, and a nervous breakdown was no surprise. He decided playing live was just too much, and the band retreated into a studio-based existence they never really came back from. Naturally, record company and related sales plummeted and XTC wouldn't get a sniff of a hit for a decade.
Of course, the whole fire/love metaphor is as old as time itself, but Partridge still makes it sound fresh, in particular during an absolutely glorious middle eight where he sings "I've been in love before, but it's never been as hot as this", his feelings for a new beau seeing "memories of loves crack and blister". Perhaps it was bad timing: 1983 was a period of synths and big hair, and some guy from Swindon playing a simple guitar riff perhaps didn't find what was happening on Top of the Pops...
The Go-Betweens - Pretty much everything
I mean, really, how the fuck did the Go-Betweens not get a hit? People say Morrissey/Marr were the Lennon/McCartney of the 80s, but it doesn't really hold up as a comparison. No - Robert Forster and Grant McLennan were the true heirs to the "genius songwriting partnership" throne. They looked the part too, and had strong musicians in the band
Yet somehow, they spent years struggling along, bringing out albums of sublime pop songs. OK, so their early stuff could be rough around the edges, but come on: Bachelor Kisses, Spring Rain, Bye Bye Pride and just about everything on 16 Lovers Lane scream "hit". And what was the best they got? Streets of Your Town made it to #80. I can't really explain that one at all.
And you Australians aren't off the hook. You gave birth to this amazing band, with the best songwriters your fair isle has ever produced and they couldn't buy even a minor hit down there either? People are idiots!
That doesn't mean I'm not interested in stuff that happened in the past. How did Laurie Anderson get something as weird as O Superman to nearly top the charts in the UK? Were Frankie Goes to Hollywood all a matter of hype, or are the songs any good? (Not really, to my ears)
Then there's the songs that sound like they were born to boom out of a million radios but went absolutely nowhere. Here's a few songs that, to me, should have been hits but never were. And by hit, I mean reached the top 40 of the singles charts in either the UK or the US.
The Comsat Angels - Will You Stay Tonight?
The Comsats started out as a great moody post-punk outfit who peaked with the brilliantly bleak Sleep No More album in 1981. However, they moved from the darkness (perhaps understandably so) and by 1983, were pushing for a chart breakthrough.
This song should have been it, given it's got all the right ingredients: hooks galore, great chorus, tight pop structure. Instead, it didn't even make the UK top 75, the latest in a series of disappointments that began when their first record label failed to send out enough copies of an album to satisfy demand that would have put them into the charts.
Not long after Will You Stay Tonight? failed to set the world on fire, they came the closest they ever would to a hit when a re-recording of early single Independence Day made the dizzy heights of #71.
Nowadays, they've gained some level of recognition, with film critic Mark Kermode hailing them as his favourite band.
Psychedelic Furs - All That Money Wants
In a way, the Furs have only themselves to blame for this. At the start of the 80s, they were a post-punk six piece with a cult following. As the decade wore on, they shed members as they got more popular. Fourth album Mirror Moves just about managed to keep on the right side of the line, but by 1987 and the Midnight to Midnight album, it was all daft haircuts and bad production values. All the same, it became their biggest hit album and provided their only US top 40 hit with Heartbreak Beat.
Lead singer Richard Butler gave himself a mild case of heart trouble due to feeling so stressed by this straying from what the band used to mean and soon got rid of the bad clothes as well as the bad songs from the setlist. Naturally, this pissed off all the new fans on top of all the old fans who'd long moved onto bands like the Cure, Depeche Mode and U2 - all less perceived to have "sold out". So, when they brought out this single to support the All Of This and Nothing compilation in 1988, it's failure to hit made some kind of sense.
On the other hand, it was their best song in years, as well as being produced by Stephen Street, then hot from working with the Smiths and on Morrissey's solo stuff. It's the sound of a band really giving it everything again, with Butler's old angry croak returning to form after a few years signing more vapid poptones - indeed, the title alone may reflect his views on the band's chasing of commercial success at the cost of their souls. "I don't believe that I believed in you" could be a line to the band from an old fan.
No matter that it sounded amazing, had a brilliant b-side in Birland and saw them back using guitars properly, it went nowhere and the band's career in terms of a popular act was over, which was a shame as their next two albums were also excellent.
New Order - Bizarre Love Triangle
New Order's first chart peak had been in the wake of Blue Monday selling by the shedload. Both Confusion and Thieves Like Us had hit the top 20 at home, but by 1986, they couldn't buy a decent hit. Perhaps Factory was going through one of their 'slump' periods.
But all the same, BLT was born for radio play, was superbly produced and featured an atypical straightforward lyric from Bernard Sumner. I can't find any fault with this perfect pop song, and yet it only made #56 in the UK charts in September 1986. Perhaps if it had come out two years later, when the band were scoring big hits everywhere and topping the album charts, it might have got the contemporary recognition it deserved.
Time, however, has been kind to the song and it's gained status as one of the New Order's classics.
XTC - Great Fire
What a difference a year makes. In 1982, XTC seemed to have finally made the big time. Their fifth album, English Settlement, and it's lead single, Senses Working Overtime, had cracked the UK top 10 and their well-deserved success seemed assured.
But then years of non-stop work caught with with singer/songwriter Andy Partridge. Add to that a harsh withdrawal from Valium, and a nervous breakdown was no surprise. He decided playing live was just too much, and the band retreated into a studio-based existence they never really came back from. Naturally, record company and related sales plummeted and XTC wouldn't get a sniff of a hit for a decade.
Of course, the whole fire/love metaphor is as old as time itself, but Partridge still makes it sound fresh, in particular during an absolutely glorious middle eight where he sings "I've been in love before, but it's never been as hot as this", his feelings for a new beau seeing "memories of loves crack and blister". Perhaps it was bad timing: 1983 was a period of synths and big hair, and some guy from Swindon playing a simple guitar riff perhaps didn't find what was happening on Top of the Pops...
The Go-Betweens - Pretty much everything
I mean, really, how the fuck did the Go-Betweens not get a hit? People say Morrissey/Marr were the Lennon/McCartney of the 80s, but it doesn't really hold up as a comparison. No - Robert Forster and Grant McLennan were the true heirs to the "genius songwriting partnership" throne. They looked the part too, and had strong musicians in the band
Yet somehow, they spent years struggling along, bringing out albums of sublime pop songs. OK, so their early stuff could be rough around the edges, but come on: Bachelor Kisses, Spring Rain, Bye Bye Pride and just about everything on 16 Lovers Lane scream "hit". And what was the best they got? Streets of Your Town made it to #80. I can't really explain that one at all.
And you Australians aren't off the hook. You gave birth to this amazing band, with the best songwriters your fair isle has ever produced and they couldn't buy even a minor hit down there either? People are idiots!
Wednesday, 11 July 2012
Sowing The Hurting Songs From The Big Chair
Seeing Curt Smith appear in the "Shawn 2.0" episode of Psych a few weeks ago made me go back and listen to the work of his band Tears for Fears, something I'd not done for a few years. A wise decision, as it turned out, as I'd forgotten how great they were and later found out how they'd managed to do their best work years after their supposed peak.
Smith (bass/vocals) made up half the band along with Roland Orzabel (vocals/guitar) - both had grown up in Bath, children of separated parents, a factor which would influence Orzabel's songwriting in the future. Initially, they played in mod-revival band Graduate, scoring a hit in Spain with Elvis Should Play Ska, that being Costello rather than Presley. It wasn't happening on the home front, though, and the duo fronting the band weren't happy with band dynamics getting in the way of their ideas.
Therefore, they quit and formed Tears for Fears to ensure the direction lay entirely with them, and idea made a lot easier by technological advancements such as drum machines, synths and sequencers allowing them to dispense with having other people involved, though local musicians drummer Manny Elias and keyboardist Ian Stanley would soon be recruited, existing somewhere between being in the band (their names were listed as so on albums) and sidemen (Smith and Orzabel would do most of the interviews and photo-shoots).
Taking a name from Arthur Janov idea of 'Primal Scream' therapy set a tone of where the songs were going: their debut single in November 1981 was titled Suffer the Children, though the lyrical tone was helped along by a strong pop tune. It went nowhere in the charts, though, and the same fate befell Pale Shelter a few months later.
Luckily, just when it may have been looking grim, third single Mad World cracked the charts and made it up to #3, either helped or not by a video that saw Orzabel do a strange dance that brings to mind a more angular Ian Curtis. Despite it's pop verse/chorus structure, it's hookline of "the dreams in which I'm dying are the best I've ever had" still made them strange pop stars, though Smith's good looks doubtless helped get them in the pages of Smash Hits.
With the band now up and running, their debut album The Hurting went to the top of the British album charts. It's not a set with many laughs, hence the title, but it's a great listen, especially if you're an angst-ridden 17 year old, as I was when I first heard it. I imagine it sold well with teenagers who would have been listening to Joy Division four years earlier: indeed, the closing Start of the Breakdown uses mental illness as a theme in the same way Ian Curtis did on Closer.
Change and a re-recorded Pale Shelter both went into the top five of the singles chart, making the band one of the biggest in the country at the time.The album and Change also both made #73 in the US top 100 charts, further adding pressure to build on these successes with the next album.
Initially, the signs weren't good. A stand-alone single The Way You Are stalled at #24 in the UK: an attempt at repeating a formula that had worked so far, it's weird rhythms and weak lyrics weren't likely to make for a big hit. Doubtless it was this relative failure that led to the subsequent changes that 1984/85 would bring.
Working again with producer Chris Hughes, the band looked to create a huge, commercial sound. The hard funk-tinged Mothers Talk snuck them back into the top 20, but it was the epic anthem Shout that put Tears for Fears back on the map.
The album that followed, Songs From The Big Chair would become one of the defining albums of the era. Orzabel, writing with Ian Stanley on several songs and Smith on Head Over Heels, carried across some of the themes from the début album but looked to tinge them with a more adult approach. It also sounded made to crack the States.
Which it did, big time. The lead single over there, Everybody Wants To Rule The World, went to the top of the charts and Shout followed suit. Suddenly, they were one of the biggest bands in the world: Songs would go onto the sell five million in the US and Head Over Heels became the third massive hit from it. Of the eight songs from the album, five were released on a single, which exposes the sets biggest flaw: it's lack of songs. Broken is essentially only a lead into Head Over Heels - sharing as it does a central riff.
More recent re-issues address this by including some excellent b-sides: Pharaohs uses the shipping forecast to create an atmospheric number while When In Love With a Blind Man shares a riff with The Working Hour (from the album proper) but improves it with a sensitive Smith vocal, cutting out the slightly indulgent sax and making it a lot shorter.
After becoming mega-stars beyond their imaginations, Orzabel and Smith did the understandable thing and took an extended break. Sessions for a follow-up eventually started in 1987 but become problematic - recordings with Chris Hughes were scrapped and a new man, Dave Bascombe, was brought in. Ian Stanley and Manny Elias had left the band, though keyboard player Nicky Holland, who played with the band on the Songs tour stayed around to co-write a fair chunk of what would become The Seeds of Love, which finally arrived in September 1989.
It was led on by the single Sowing the Seeds of Love, which threw away the synth aspects that had made their name in favour of a Beatles-esque approach that Lennon and McCartney themselves would have proud to write. Making lyrical jabs at Margaret Thatcher ("Politician granny with your high ideals, have you any idea how the majority feels?") and, strangely, Paul Weller ("Kick out the Style, bring back the Jam!"), it was a huge hit both sides of the Atlantic.
But the album failed to build on this. There was too much self-indulgence (not surprising from a band cooped up in the studio for so long with access to a huge budget) on songs like Year Of The Knife and not enough strong tunes. Woman In Chains was saved from dodgy production by the presence of American singer Oleta Adams, who the duo had seen in the bar of their hotel while on tour. On the back of this profile-boosting, she went on to have a few hits in the early 90s. But the album did have one other major ace: Famous Last Words was a touching closing song, a cheery tale of a couple facing the end of the world. It sounded great and Orzabel has rarely sound better.
Bigger problems were afoot, however. Curt Smith wasn't happy and tensions between him and Roland Orzabel were getting serious: perhaps understandably, as the two had been in bands together for over ten years. Smith may also have been aggrieved at his role in the band - while he sung half the songs on The Hurting (including all the hits), by The Seeds of Love he only had lead on one song.
With the album somewhat of a failure in context (it still went Platinum in the States, but only produced one big hit single), tensions may have come to a head faster than might have otherwise. By 1991, Smith had quit and Orzabel decided to keep the name for his future work, perhaps reasoning that he was singing the vast majority of the band's new songs anyways. Signalling a new rockier direction, Laid So Low (Tears Roll Down) got the band back in the top 20, promoting the Tears Roll Down (Greatest Hits 82-92) compilation that was a big hit at home and in Europe.
While Smith moved to New York for work on a solo album he hated, then with his band Mayfield (bad pun alert), Orzabel brought out the albums Elemental and Raoul and the Kings of Spain to diminishing commercial returns, though the lead single from the former album, Break It Down Again provided a last hit single, and a worthwhile one at that. For the main part, however, the songs were hampered by some stodgy AOR production.
All of which seemed to be the end of that. Orzabel dropped the name and produced some weird experimental electro album in an attempt to get away from lyric-heavy music, Smith moved out to LA and kept doing his thing. Negative feelings towards each other - which may have been understandable given they'd been together since they were teenagers - dripped away with time and distance. By the start of the next decade, the two began talking and plans were put afoot to maybe work again.
Around the same, by pure coincidence, their stock rose to it's highest point since the mid 80s when the film Donnie Darko used Head Over Heels and a cover of Mad World on the soundtrack. The latter, by Michael Andrews and Gary Jules, ended up being an unlikely #1 single in the UK.
At the same time, Tears for Fears, working with Smith's writing partner Charlton Pettus, was slowly crafting away. Writing for the first time largely as a unit, songs came together and following some messing around with labels, Everybody Loves a Happy Ending came out in 2004.
Surprisingly, or not, the "comeback" album turned out to be the best thing they'd ever made. Taking Sowing the Seeds of Love as a starting point of sorts, it had plenty of Beatles-tinged pop like the title track and Closest Thing to Heaven - though Who Killed Tangerine? has the biggest (and best) Hey Jude style singalong outro you could wish to hear.
There was also Big Star-tinged power pop on Call Me Mellow, 70s soul smoothness on Last Days On Earth and all round epics like Secret World. Working with Smith again seemed to shed Orzabel of his more indulgent tendencies, as well as given him a strong voice to harmonise with.
Sadly, it didn't enjoy the chart success it deserved, failing to crack the top 40 on the US or UK. A crime. If you have a love of beautifully written pop music, you should go and buy it now. Really.
Since then, the duo have sporadically played gigs around the world, but are yet to bring out another album, perhaps feeling there's a lack of interest from the public. A shame if so - one of the best groups of their time deserve a better legacy and a proper critical re-evaluation.
Smith (bass/vocals) made up half the band along with Roland Orzabel (vocals/guitar) - both had grown up in Bath, children of separated parents, a factor which would influence Orzabel's songwriting in the future. Initially, they played in mod-revival band Graduate, scoring a hit in Spain with Elvis Should Play Ska, that being Costello rather than Presley. It wasn't happening on the home front, though, and the duo fronting the band weren't happy with band dynamics getting in the way of their ideas.
Therefore, they quit and formed Tears for Fears to ensure the direction lay entirely with them, and idea made a lot easier by technological advancements such as drum machines, synths and sequencers allowing them to dispense with having other people involved, though local musicians drummer Manny Elias and keyboardist Ian Stanley would soon be recruited, existing somewhere between being in the band (their names were listed as so on albums) and sidemen (Smith and Orzabel would do most of the interviews and photo-shoots).
Taking a name from Arthur Janov idea of 'Primal Scream' therapy set a tone of where the songs were going: their debut single in November 1981 was titled Suffer the Children, though the lyrical tone was helped along by a strong pop tune. It went nowhere in the charts, though, and the same fate befell Pale Shelter a few months later.
Luckily, just when it may have been looking grim, third single Mad World cracked the charts and made it up to #3, either helped or not by a video that saw Orzabel do a strange dance that brings to mind a more angular Ian Curtis. Despite it's pop verse/chorus structure, it's hookline of "the dreams in which I'm dying are the best I've ever had" still made them strange pop stars, though Smith's good looks doubtless helped get them in the pages of Smash Hits.
With the band now up and running, their debut album The Hurting went to the top of the British album charts. It's not a set with many laughs, hence the title, but it's a great listen, especially if you're an angst-ridden 17 year old, as I was when I first heard it. I imagine it sold well with teenagers who would have been listening to Joy Division four years earlier: indeed, the closing Start of the Breakdown uses mental illness as a theme in the same way Ian Curtis did on Closer.
Change and a re-recorded Pale Shelter both went into the top five of the singles chart, making the band one of the biggest in the country at the time.The album and Change also both made #73 in the US top 100 charts, further adding pressure to build on these successes with the next album.
Initially, the signs weren't good. A stand-alone single The Way You Are stalled at #24 in the UK: an attempt at repeating a formula that had worked so far, it's weird rhythms and weak lyrics weren't likely to make for a big hit. Doubtless it was this relative failure that led to the subsequent changes that 1984/85 would bring.
Working again with producer Chris Hughes, the band looked to create a huge, commercial sound. The hard funk-tinged Mothers Talk snuck them back into the top 20, but it was the epic anthem Shout that put Tears for Fears back on the map.
The album that followed, Songs From The Big Chair would become one of the defining albums of the era. Orzabel, writing with Ian Stanley on several songs and Smith on Head Over Heels, carried across some of the themes from the début album but looked to tinge them with a more adult approach. It also sounded made to crack the States.
Which it did, big time. The lead single over there, Everybody Wants To Rule The World, went to the top of the charts and Shout followed suit. Suddenly, they were one of the biggest bands in the world: Songs would go onto the sell five million in the US and Head Over Heels became the third massive hit from it. Of the eight songs from the album, five were released on a single, which exposes the sets biggest flaw: it's lack of songs. Broken is essentially only a lead into Head Over Heels - sharing as it does a central riff.
More recent re-issues address this by including some excellent b-sides: Pharaohs uses the shipping forecast to create an atmospheric number while When In Love With a Blind Man shares a riff with The Working Hour (from the album proper) but improves it with a sensitive Smith vocal, cutting out the slightly indulgent sax and making it a lot shorter.
After becoming mega-stars beyond their imaginations, Orzabel and Smith did the understandable thing and took an extended break. Sessions for a follow-up eventually started in 1987 but become problematic - recordings with Chris Hughes were scrapped and a new man, Dave Bascombe, was brought in. Ian Stanley and Manny Elias had left the band, though keyboard player Nicky Holland, who played with the band on the Songs tour stayed around to co-write a fair chunk of what would become The Seeds of Love, which finally arrived in September 1989.
It was led on by the single Sowing the Seeds of Love, which threw away the synth aspects that had made their name in favour of a Beatles-esque approach that Lennon and McCartney themselves would have proud to write. Making lyrical jabs at Margaret Thatcher ("Politician granny with your high ideals, have you any idea how the majority feels?") and, strangely, Paul Weller ("Kick out the Style, bring back the Jam!"), it was a huge hit both sides of the Atlantic.
But the album failed to build on this. There was too much self-indulgence (not surprising from a band cooped up in the studio for so long with access to a huge budget) on songs like Year Of The Knife and not enough strong tunes. Woman In Chains was saved from dodgy production by the presence of American singer Oleta Adams, who the duo had seen in the bar of their hotel while on tour. On the back of this profile-boosting, she went on to have a few hits in the early 90s. But the album did have one other major ace: Famous Last Words was a touching closing song, a cheery tale of a couple facing the end of the world. It sounded great and Orzabel has rarely sound better.
Bigger problems were afoot, however. Curt Smith wasn't happy and tensions between him and Roland Orzabel were getting serious: perhaps understandably, as the two had been in bands together for over ten years. Smith may also have been aggrieved at his role in the band - while he sung half the songs on The Hurting (including all the hits), by The Seeds of Love he only had lead on one song.
With the album somewhat of a failure in context (it still went Platinum in the States, but only produced one big hit single), tensions may have come to a head faster than might have otherwise. By 1991, Smith had quit and Orzabel decided to keep the name for his future work, perhaps reasoning that he was singing the vast majority of the band's new songs anyways. Signalling a new rockier direction, Laid So Low (Tears Roll Down) got the band back in the top 20, promoting the Tears Roll Down (Greatest Hits 82-92) compilation that was a big hit at home and in Europe.
While Smith moved to New York for work on a solo album he hated, then with his band Mayfield (bad pun alert), Orzabel brought out the albums Elemental and Raoul and the Kings of Spain to diminishing commercial returns, though the lead single from the former album, Break It Down Again provided a last hit single, and a worthwhile one at that. For the main part, however, the songs were hampered by some stodgy AOR production.
All of which seemed to be the end of that. Orzabel dropped the name and produced some weird experimental electro album in an attempt to get away from lyric-heavy music, Smith moved out to LA and kept doing his thing. Negative feelings towards each other - which may have been understandable given they'd been together since they were teenagers - dripped away with time and distance. By the start of the next decade, the two began talking and plans were put afoot to maybe work again.
Around the same, by pure coincidence, their stock rose to it's highest point since the mid 80s when the film Donnie Darko used Head Over Heels and a cover of Mad World on the soundtrack. The latter, by Michael Andrews and Gary Jules, ended up being an unlikely #1 single in the UK.
At the same time, Tears for Fears, working with Smith's writing partner Charlton Pettus, was slowly crafting away. Writing for the first time largely as a unit, songs came together and following some messing around with labels, Everybody Loves a Happy Ending came out in 2004.
Surprisingly, or not, the "comeback" album turned out to be the best thing they'd ever made. Taking Sowing the Seeds of Love as a starting point of sorts, it had plenty of Beatles-tinged pop like the title track and Closest Thing to Heaven - though Who Killed Tangerine? has the biggest (and best) Hey Jude style singalong outro you could wish to hear.
There was also Big Star-tinged power pop on Call Me Mellow, 70s soul smoothness on Last Days On Earth and all round epics like Secret World. Working with Smith again seemed to shed Orzabel of his more indulgent tendencies, as well as given him a strong voice to harmonise with.
Sadly, it didn't enjoy the chart success it deserved, failing to crack the top 40 on the US or UK. A crime. If you have a love of beautifully written pop music, you should go and buy it now. Really.
Since then, the duo have sporadically played gigs around the world, but are yet to bring out another album, perhaps feeling there's a lack of interest from the public. A shame if so - one of the best groups of their time deserve a better legacy and a proper critical re-evaluation.
Monday, 14 May 2012
Duck
Bass players rarely get the credit they deserve, unless they're frontmen like Sting or Paul McCartney, and even then it's rare their actual musical part is applauded. No, in the main, it's only their fellow bassists that take note of a fine piece of work and understand what they bring to the song.
As one of those sad, lonely doe-eyed drifters that often hang about with musicians, I was therefore saddened to hear of the death of one of our legends. Donald "Duck" Dunn passed away in Tokyo yesterday shortly after playing a gig alongside his musical partner of many decades, Steve Cropper.
Together, with Booker T. Jones and Al Jackson Jnr, they made up Booker T and the MGs, he played on songs anyone with a vague awareness will have heard. Sam & Dave, Otis Redding and Eddie Floyd all benefited from his rocksteady playing, as did John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd when they asked him (and Cropper) to join their Blues Brothers Band. Duck starred in the subsequent film, puffing away on his pipe while bashing through Everybody Needs Somebody To Love.
When I was learning to play as a 16/17 year old, he was one of those players whose work I aspired to be like - not a guy you instantly notice but when you listen carefully, he's there holding down the groove and making the song as good as it can be. Coming from Memphis, he was exposed to and became proficient in many styles - he, along with Jones and Cropper (Jackson was murdered in the mid 70s), worked with Neil Young as well as the usual soul suspects. And all that is before you get into the large number of frankly superb Booker T and the MGs songs - cricket fans will have heard him on Soul Limbo, for many years the theme music for BBCs coverage.
Thanks for the tunes, Duck.
As one of those sad, lonely doe-eyed drifters that often hang about with musicians, I was therefore saddened to hear of the death of one of our legends. Donald "Duck" Dunn passed away in Tokyo yesterday shortly after playing a gig alongside his musical partner of many decades, Steve Cropper.
Together, with Booker T. Jones and Al Jackson Jnr, they made up Booker T and the MGs, he played on songs anyone with a vague awareness will have heard. Sam & Dave, Otis Redding and Eddie Floyd all benefited from his rocksteady playing, as did John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd when they asked him (and Cropper) to join their Blues Brothers Band. Duck starred in the subsequent film, puffing away on his pipe while bashing through Everybody Needs Somebody To Love.
When I was learning to play as a 16/17 year old, he was one of those players whose work I aspired to be like - not a guy you instantly notice but when you listen carefully, he's there holding down the groove and making the song as good as it can be. Coming from Memphis, he was exposed to and became proficient in many styles - he, along with Jones and Cropper (Jackson was murdered in the mid 70s), worked with Neil Young as well as the usual soul suspects. And all that is before you get into the large number of frankly superb Booker T and the MGs songs - cricket fans will have heard him on Soul Limbo, for many years the theme music for BBCs coverage.
Thanks for the tunes, Duck.
 |
| Top bass playing, top pipe smoking |
Monday, 16 April 2012
Family Values
Books about rock bands can be incredibly dull, especially if you’re a fan. Long drawn out descriptions of how everyone met, dry descriptions of how dull the recording process is and lists of chart placements. If you’re lucky, you get the various members calling each other names over who had the last brown M&M backstage in Kansas in 1980.
The exceptions tend to be about those bands/singers with unique personalities: the Smiths and the Clash spring to mind. To that, we can add British Sea Power, who have the advantage of their one-time manager Roy Wilkinson also being a journalist. Also, he was the older brother of two of the band, perhaps putting him in the ideal position to write Do It For Your Mum - a kind of memoir of his time pushing them onwards through the dodgy world of being a fairly successful band.
To this listener, British Sea Power may well have been the only band of the first decade of this century that really mattered. Their albums were superb, their live performances usually compelling. I remember first seeing them somewhere in London not long after they’d signed to Rough Trade, having known one of the people who did their press. She’d told me they were “from your way”, though we only caught the last 15 minutes of their show. However, this involved them stomping their way from a one-chord glam/drone rock affair, with their guitarist climbing the lighting rig and their keyboard player arming himself with a military drum, leaving the stage to march through the crowd. Clearly, I thought at the time, this was a band worth getting into. Wilkinson’s book has tales of people who thought the same, but to the extremes. There are fans who cover hundreds of miles to see a show on the other end of the country before turning up for their job the next morning – typical of a lot of bands, I would imagine.
But the crux of the story contained in Do It For Your Mum is around another member of the Wilkinson family.
Even as the band forms in the late 1990s, Ronald Wilkinson is a World War Two veteran well into his 70s, having brought up his six children in the small Cumbrian village of Natland. When his two youngest sons Scott and Neil form a band, he suddenly takes a deep interest in both them and indie rock in general. Nick Cave becomes a firm favourite - the only other musician to his ears who can be ranked higher than British Sea Power.
Indeed, it’s the tales of Wilkinson Snr that make up the best parts of the book. He’s constantly questioning Roy about the band, wanting to know every aspect of their development and why things aren't moving faster. He tells his son that he’s tried to contact U2 about getting a support slot, reasoning that even though the Irish supergroup are “charlatans, everyone knows that” it’ll be “good exposure”. Reading every text source he can get his hands on, he also urges his sons to further heights with the words “do if for your mum, do it for the Butthole Surfers”, having decreed the heroes of 80s Underground Indie to be a A Proper Band.
As stated, the book works due to Roy Wilkinson’s skill as a writer. The band themselves don’t really appear all that much: having interviewed Neil “Hamilton” Wilkinson and guitarist Martin Noble many years ago, I can confirm they’re lovely chaps, and the feeling in the book is that the whole band are a bunch of laid-back types who deal with the madness of being in a rock band with some ease. For the main part, at least - eventually, the road takes it toil and crankiness turns to quasi-revolt towards their manager's ideas.
Pressures begin to tell on him as well. There’s a touching moment where he reflects that while working with the band has brought him much closer to his dad (to the degree it actually begins to annoy him), it causes him no shortage of understandable angst at causing his relationship with his daughter to suffer.
There's also his frustration at not being able to push the group to the heights enjoyed by former support acts like the Killers and the Libertines. It's an understandable position: the band were hardly death metal and many of their singles had both the melodic strength and anthemtic nature of, say, Mr Brightside. Yet it appears that British Sea Power will have to be content with what they have. A shame, but there's always the music and there's always family: Do It For Your Mum is a worthy tribute to the values of both.
The exceptions tend to be about those bands/singers with unique personalities: the Smiths and the Clash spring to mind. To that, we can add British Sea Power, who have the advantage of their one-time manager Roy Wilkinson also being a journalist. Also, he was the older brother of two of the band, perhaps putting him in the ideal position to write Do It For Your Mum - a kind of memoir of his time pushing them onwards through the dodgy world of being a fairly successful band.
To this listener, British Sea Power may well have been the only band of the first decade of this century that really mattered. Their albums were superb, their live performances usually compelling. I remember first seeing them somewhere in London not long after they’d signed to Rough Trade, having known one of the people who did their press. She’d told me they were “from your way”, though we only caught the last 15 minutes of their show. However, this involved them stomping their way from a one-chord glam/drone rock affair, with their guitarist climbing the lighting rig and their keyboard player arming himself with a military drum, leaving the stage to march through the crowd. Clearly, I thought at the time, this was a band worth getting into. Wilkinson’s book has tales of people who thought the same, but to the extremes. There are fans who cover hundreds of miles to see a show on the other end of the country before turning up for their job the next morning – typical of a lot of bands, I would imagine.
But the crux of the story contained in Do It For Your Mum is around another member of the Wilkinson family.
Even as the band forms in the late 1990s, Ronald Wilkinson is a World War Two veteran well into his 70s, having brought up his six children in the small Cumbrian village of Natland. When his two youngest sons Scott and Neil form a band, he suddenly takes a deep interest in both them and indie rock in general. Nick Cave becomes a firm favourite - the only other musician to his ears who can be ranked higher than British Sea Power.
Indeed, it’s the tales of Wilkinson Snr that make up the best parts of the book. He’s constantly questioning Roy about the band, wanting to know every aspect of their development and why things aren't moving faster. He tells his son that he’s tried to contact U2 about getting a support slot, reasoning that even though the Irish supergroup are “charlatans, everyone knows that” it’ll be “good exposure”. Reading every text source he can get his hands on, he also urges his sons to further heights with the words “do if for your mum, do it for the Butthole Surfers”, having decreed the heroes of 80s Underground Indie to be a A Proper Band.
As stated, the book works due to Roy Wilkinson’s skill as a writer. The band themselves don’t really appear all that much: having interviewed Neil “Hamilton” Wilkinson and guitarist Martin Noble many years ago, I can confirm they’re lovely chaps, and the feeling in the book is that the whole band are a bunch of laid-back types who deal with the madness of being in a rock band with some ease. For the main part, at least - eventually, the road takes it toil and crankiness turns to quasi-revolt towards their manager's ideas.
Pressures begin to tell on him as well. There’s a touching moment where he reflects that while working with the band has brought him much closer to his dad (to the degree it actually begins to annoy him), it causes him no shortage of understandable angst at causing his relationship with his daughter to suffer.
There's also his frustration at not being able to push the group to the heights enjoyed by former support acts like the Killers and the Libertines. It's an understandable position: the band were hardly death metal and many of their singles had both the melodic strength and anthemtic nature of, say, Mr Brightside. Yet it appears that British Sea Power will have to be content with what they have. A shame, but there's always the music and there's always family: Do It For Your Mum is a worthy tribute to the values of both.
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