From 1978. Over too soon.
Notes: I have this song on an album called Where Were You? Hen’s Teeth and other Lost Fragments of Popular Colture, which collects early Mekons’ and oddments. But it turns out Where Were You? was written about at Aquarium Drunkard a few weeks ago, by a guy with a potent thirst for mythologizing. And Googling landed me on a story about this song on Popmatters, about five years ago.
The 80s were a dark time for rock, what with hair metal and the extremism of a lot of hard core and so much poppy hit mongering by everyone else. Nena released her album early in the year. Metallica fired Dave Mustaine. Thin Lizzy was done with Phil Linott. There was Flashdance and Men At Work. Punch the Clock was Elvis Costello’s album, which epitomized the slough of despond. Bob Dylan’s Infidels flooded it. This was a year of soft hits, UB40 broke big, and forgettable late albums by punk bands trying to find a new way. Oh, and Joe Strummer fired Mick Jones. Dark.
The big moment in music in 1983 came when Marvin Gaye sang the National Anthem at the NBA All Star Game. But that’s a clip for another day.
I was thinking about what I was listening to in the time My Struggle: Book 1
takes place. Karl Ove is big on Echo and the Bunnymen, but I was not. A record I listened to a lot was by the Scottish band Aztec Camera. Roddy Frame, the lead guitarist and singer, could play, and he wrote at least an album’s worth of good songs. This was the hit, though I don’t think it had much presence in the states.
Hate to burden the night music listeners with additional tracks, but reading some stuff about Frame and Aztec Camera (on Wikipedia) revealed two facts: He used a different guitar on every song on Hard Land, Hard Rain. And, on the song Orchid Girl, a very nicely crafted song on a grand cliche, he tried to merge the style of the jazz guitar great Wes Montgomery with that of Joe Strummer. That’s a worthy project. How’d he do?
I would say that he’s great with words, ideas? Well, he’s a really good guitarist. It all works on Oblivious, which should be remembered.
We all have our likes and loves here in Remnantland.
Peter certainly has the widest palate of taste and experimentation, with Steve sticking to a core sort of set of criteria that constitute rock’n’roll, while Gene, steeped in his working class New York roots, is drawn to the arty side of music Peter, but his soul pushes more from the influence of doo wop through the Ramones, via Johnny Thunders.
I think essentially it is all good stuff.
As for me, I am drawn to the pop sensibilities, and for me, the wit of the British tongue, merged with American rhythm and blues, is what I love or gravitate to most, but I dig Beethoven and Roland Kirk, as well.
But, one of things I had been trying to do here is remember to highlight bands and artists who we tend to forget about, hence, the Moody Blues, who were, along with the Who and the Kinks, my favorite band back in 1967-69.
Before Pink Floyd, before Rush, before Yes, and before Spiritualized, there was the Moody Blues, the first real prog rock band.
The Moodys first hit in 1966 with a hit, Go Now, that featured Denny Laine (later of Wings) on vocals, in 1965, but after that tune, Laine left the band and re-emerged with John Lodge and Justin Hayward as their principles.
In 1967–the year of Sgt. Pepper–and the group produced the Days of Future Passed, a concept album that featured the beautiful cuts Tuesday Afternoon and Nights in White Satin at a time when Pink Floyd was still seeing Emily play (a song I love).
The jump in concept and realization between Go Now and Tuesday Afternoon is kind of like the leap between Radiohead’s Creep as compared to Airbag.
Featuring the flute of Ray Thomas, and the unusual and haunting mellotron keyboard of Mike Pinder, Days of Future Passed was an attempt by the band to deconstruct Dvorak’s Symphony for the New World and on the liner notes of the groups follow-up, In Search of the Lost Chord, producer Tony Clarke regarded the band as the “worlds smallest symphony orchestra.”
This all might sound hoity toity snotty, and as having nothing to do with rock’n’roll in the Moyer sense, but this was the throes of the psychadelic era and I was a 15-year old new stoner and both Days and In Search were always on the changer (as were Tommy and Blonde on Blonde) and I still am knocked out by the band’s Legend of a Mind song.
Sadly, I saw a reunion performance of the band at Red Rocks 20-years or so ago, and it was embarrassing to watch, but, I still have to acknowledge that Moody’s played a pivotal part of my life for a few years back there.
In fact, I was into the Moodys before they made it, and started losing interest in the band with their next album, On the Threshold of a Dream, and by the time To Our Children’s Children’s Children came out the band had become a favorite of those ubiquitous average Joes, and that was the last album I bought by the band, turning instead to Atom Heart Mother.
Irrespective, the song Gypsy from Children’s remains one of my favorite songs of the group.
I think of this song a lot, and that’s n0t a gimmick.
I’ve been reading the novel My Struggle, and the fictional young Karl Ove Knaussgard (not the writer, who shares his lead character’s name), is left alone for the weekend by his father. The year is 1985. On the first night alone he eats a lot of shrimp, drinks some beers, and then walks the street of his town listening to Iggy’s Lust for Life and one of the later Roxy Music albums on his Walkman. He marvels that with the music filling his head the sights he sees, the people working in stores and driving in cars, seem to be in an entirely different world than the one he’s living in. Later on that night, after perhaps a few too many more beers, he falls in the love in an earthshaking way with Hanne, a Christian girl who says she cannot fall in love with him. It is one of the three or four real loves, he recognizes, that he will have in his life.
The novel I cannot recommend highly enough. The song is a classic, but one that has become a little bit like wallpaper. Is it a car commercial? Or from a hip film? Or from a not so hip film? This is a song that has been iconized and exploited beyond redemption. But if you can cut through all that and turn it up, you will be awed. (This clip has the wackly poetic lyrics, too, which are a nice reminder of how loopy a great song can be. Just like hypnotizing chickens.)
The professor of my Latin American culture class has us listen to a song or two before every class so that we can dissect them as a group. Today’s song was featured in the motion picture The Motorcycle Diaries. I just like it, and I thought some of you might enjoy it as well.
Got a better – at least longer – post coming soon, but this for now:
Saw a picture of the RnR Hall of Fame nominees this morning including Sting. In front of the mic with his eyes closed and both his arms stretched out.
Was thinking, the first time a supposed rock ‘n’ roll singer closes his or her eyes and stretches his or her arms out, he or she should be:
a) exited stage right or left by the neck with a shepherd’s crook
b) have his or her public singing license revoked
c) shot.
Or all of the above.
While the main reason I started this site was to talk to my friends, the other was to provoke my deep thoughts about the music I loved.
I haven’t done as much of that as I expected, because (surprise), that’s hard work and takes time that isn’t compensated.
But I love the first few Stars albums, and I like the later ones. This is a fine rock art band trying to find the sweet spot, that is get popular, and I find it cool how they’ve made a career without actually making that happen.
So, for now, I offer my first Stars post. There will be more:
Live from 1969.
More from Urgh! A Music War.
Also from Urgh! A Music War, featuring what appears to be one of the Genes wearing a pointy hat.
