The All-Star Jam is a place to pass along links of interest, news, and all sorts of things that just happen to be on your mind and that don’t have an outlet in your daily social circle.
You may recall our excellent interview with producer/engineer Roger Bechirian (Elvis Costello, Nick Lowe, The Undertones, Dave Edmunds, Graham Parker, and the rest of the core two thirds of my teenage record collection). I’m proud to say we were way ahead of the curve in probing the depths of this man’s mind. Recently my favorite music magazine, Tape Op, followed our lead and interviewed the man. A Tape Op web exclusive bonus bevy of photos from Becharian’s personal archive of these legendary recording sessions is available here. Check it out! Of special interest for more than a few of you, I bet, are some excellent photos showing the mic set-up on drum kits for the likes of Pete Thomas and Terry Williams.
Townsman Al passed along a link to an interesting post from musician Robbie Fulks‘ website, a piece entitled “too much goddamned music.” As Al has mentioned before, Fulks would make a great participant here in the Halls of Rock. Let’s give a shout-out to this guy! Here’s just one of many great passages from his thoughts regarding the all-too-well-known process of attempting to cull a gigantic record collection:
If only we who produce music could trim the dross before it goes to market. We can’t, because it takes money and luck and a lot of trial-and-error to come up with the quantity of music from which good is likely to emerge, and even then the good may only stand out in the fullness of time. Meantime, we need the resources to experiment and to fail, repeatedly. The Cloud serves us admirably here. The artiste can put his efforts in the public square more quickly and cheaply than ever, and his followers can choose to subsidize the art without taking on the clutter. Attractively designed physical media can store and memorialize the small edge of this that proves valuable. That is, the songs fight out the first few rounds in the digital realm, and some time later are crowned with the honor of preservation in a more permanent and sensually appealing format. At first glance it may look cruel to consign a lot of effortful music to a likely digital oblivion. But most of our 78s and 45s are gone and forgotten, along with the devices on which we played them; and of course no music in human history before the late 19th century is on record — a loss that is philosophically mournable but that we all live with easily. And reducing the plasticware leads to elegant gains. Long after the Beatles are dead, your shelf may display a dozen playable Beatles objects but only one by Ringo Starr. The rest of Ringo’s songs will have magically vanished into the nether-regions of the Cloud, or somehow turned to water and nourished an arid subcontinent.
I know we’ve got our Facebook pages, our Twitter accounts, and telepathic apps on our smartphones. That’s all great, but finding such nuggets through our assorted social media streams can be a chore. For every rock nugget posted on our social media streams I might have to sift through 99 photos of the healthy, exotic meal one friend ate last night; how adorable another friend’s kid is; or how outrageous a statement a public figure recently made in public.
Mmm!
Adorable!
Outrageous!
Now, let’s rock.
To our friends across the pond here’s a direct quote from an e-mail I received through the Undertones’ mailing list:
Hopefully this will be available to view over the web shortly thereafter.
I want to know why this video exists:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XAWtAPDvp_c
Where would it have been shown? Would it have really achieved its promotional intent, ie to expose the song to a person who otherwise wouldn’t have seen it, leading them to purchase the album? WHY?
It’s kind of funny. I remember the first album the two of them did together being pretty good.
Your question is a good one. Would this have been after Herbie Hancock’s “Rockit” (sp?)? Who would have thought an instrumental could have been a hit in the MTV video age. Maybe this was an attempt at getting through that perceived crack in the door?
And it goes without saying that our dearly missed tonyola would know the story behind this video.
Clearly this was a prototype for a 1980’s David Lynch dream sequence Downton Abbey. Carson has surely aged well.
The video is more interesting than the aural doodle it accompanies, although even at two and a half minutes it seemed overlong.
Never really understood the appeal of the Undertones, don’t dislike them, just never found them in any way interesting, and couldn’t understand why Peelie got so excited about Teenage Kicks – although the moment at the end of his funeral when the bomber flew over the cathedral and Teenage Kicks started to play was as emotional as any I’ve experienced.
Not sure why. There was an documentary made about them 10 years ago that pretty much covered everything. Not sure what else they might be able to cover or reveal.
Yes, I wondered if the actor was his father.
Speaking of the BBC, I don’t know if anyone has brought this up before, but there was a really good three part doc. (one hour each) called “Punk Britannia”, which was aired in the UK back in June, I think. It covers, as you might guess, the periods before, during and after the first wave of UK punk bands. My fave is #1, “Pre-Punk ’72-’76”, which covers the pub rock groups that hit right before the safety pin brigade…previously, a grossly neglected period as far as these docs go. The second part covers the more well documented time period of ’76-’78, but there are still some acts/people included that haven’t been flogged like the proverbial dead horse. The third installment covers the post-punk years of ’78-’81, and is also full of neglected (as far as rock docs go) artists. The whole thing is really well worth a look. Here ya go:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IEzbcDnrTUY&feature=colike
http://youtu.be/57plvR2XPhc
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wCG6gMvz1HY&feature=colike
Can’t wait to watch this, thanks!
While the whole thing is very good, I’m thinking you’ll really dig that first episode, Mod; it’s a corker!
Just wonderin’ Mr. Moderator if we will ever get closure on that Mystery Date from August. Did I miss something on that??
Jeez, I need to make time for that. One of the members of that band kindly agreed to an interview and then my summer got even more hectic. I’ll try to wrap that up this week. Thanks for your patience.
Excellent clip of the two main Go-Betweens guys, passed along from ladymiss:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mNQRBEXr2bE
I don’t know the economics of music video creation and placement in that time period, but as perhaps a Hall expert on this song (wait, is this the Shock Me thread?), I have a few notes to contribute.
This is the first song from the Summers/Fripp collaboration’s second album, “Bewitched”. Their previous album “I Advance Masked” is the better of the two.
I’d describe the first album as good or great or at least interesting to a Summers or Fripp fan on almost every track, and is a thoroughly analog album, with great guitar interplay — some quiet and delicate, some noisier — and a smattering of the warm Roland GR-300 guitar synth styles that Fripp used and that Summers used on a few Police tracks. Check out the Amazon page and click “preview all songs” to get a taste of the full album in 6 minutes: http://amzn.com/B000002GGJ
The second album, however, reeks of too much digital — reliance on the (at the time) bleeding edge TR-909 drum machine and the notorious (*) GR-700 guitar synth which was basically the sound module of the cheezy JX-3P keyboard synth triggered by guitar. But I noticed in reviewing the tracks now that it’s really only the first three tracks that are spoiled by this. The rest are closer in tone to the first album, and so the album is still good if you skip straight to track 4.
There’s a low-quality video capture linked from that page that seems to show rehearsal of this (2nd) album, specifically track 2. http://youtu.be/oFpZ8zCaNBc Just listen to what simple stuff Fripp is playing while Summers triggers dorky marimba sounds on the futuristic looking G-707 guitar.
(*) The first generation analog Roland guitar synth is very playable because the note tracking is fast and meshes with the analog sound module. The second generation digital ones track too slowly (a tiny delay between hitting a note and hearing it) to play anything staccato, and were usually paired with commonplace synth modules that lacked the warmth and uniqueness of the first gen sounds, in favor of generic 80’s keyboard synth sounds.
Happy birthday, I believe, to our very own Bobby Bittman! Let us not forget his sterling collaboration with an equally young chickenfrank, as presented on our My First Band feature from a few years ago, track #12: “(I Still Drive My) Mother’s Car.”
Play Track 12:
https://www.rocktownhall.com/blogs/index.php/my-first-band-rock-town-hall-s-talent-less-search/#comment-41306
Here’s chick’s history of this legendary recording:
https://www.rocktownhall.com/blogs/index.php/my-first-band-rock-town-hall-s-talent-less-search/#comment-41306
Thanks, Mod, I appreciate the mention! Also, I just added a little more info to Chick’s “(I Still Drive My)Mother’s Car”: Behind The Music” post.
Yes. Happy Birthday! Thanks for reminding me about that “anger” story. Too funny.
The guy who played Carson was damned good as the repressed dad in “The Singing Detective”. I think he’s the saddest English actor available in most cases.
That video seems like a three minute vamp for a song that’s probably more forgettable and therefore better than most 80s songs.At least they didn’t start singing.
Thanks, man! Any chance you’re gonna be heading up this way in the near future?
THAT was an excellent feature! It makes me nostalgic because it was posted very shortly after I joined RTH.
We should do a new one of Hallers’ more current music.
Thanks for the tip. Just watched the first episode. Lots of good stuff there.
Dylan’s Tempest (to be released 9/11) is streaming for free today (9/5) on iTunes.