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imomusThe Momus loudspeaker saga had a happy ending: after naming a range of ultra-hifi speakers after a lofi artist, the Ukrainian company Sound Sound followed up with the gift of a NAD amp. I then added a Technics 1210 MKII turntable, which I'd been lusting after ever since seeing one in my friend Jan's flat (a record store was going out of business on my street and had a pair to sell).
The result is that I now have the best sound system I've had in my entire life. I've been bringing up boxes of vinyl from the cellar and ranging them in my pine Trissa LP boxes, and one thing that strikes me is that there are lots of records I've owned for years but have still never heard. This is mainly because I inherited the vast collection of a music fan I used to live with in London, a girl who had to hot-foot it back to New Zealand and left me pretty much her entire collection. Amongst these unheard LPs are some classics, and I thought it might be interesting to play them for the first time and give you a running commentary of my impressions.
We start with an album I've actually alluded to in one of my songs. "Mistaken Memories of Medieval Manhattan" contains the line "on Broadway a lamb is lying down", which refers, of course, to Genesis' first album. The line is in there because I was reading Paul Stump's book about prog rock, The Music's All That Matters, at the time, and playing around with prog song structures. But the history of my non-meeting with this Genesis album goes back further; I was sharing a taxi with Edwyn Collins after a party at Malcolm Ross' house in about 1986, and as we approached my flat on Draycott Place, Chelsea, Edwyn confided that he'd heard my new LP and thought it sounded like early Genesis. For some reason (possibly the sense that this was not meant as a compliment) I never investigated. But I will now.
Putting records on my new deck is a pleasure. It's so heavy and solid, there's no lid, you examine the card album sleeve, note the secondhand sticker (the Genesis album was bought for £4 from Snooper's Paradise in Brighton), note that it's a double LP (blimey!), note the conceptual art-like imagery (a man observes a three-part scene in which he pulls himself out of a waterfall into a Room 101-type place, and then his vacant silhouette stands in a long hallway populated by what look like baby cheetahs), note that the label on the vinyl resembles the arty labels 4AD used to use.
Time to switch on! I'm not going to read any online commentaries, or even the album's voluminous sleeve notes (I glimpse a single phrase: "I will not chase a black raven"). No titles, no info; I'm just going to play the record and record my raw impressions and associations.
It starts with arpeggios, and Gabriel's rather annoying strangulated whine. It sounds very old-fashioned. The arpeggios get a bit more virtuoso and random. Gabriel sings what sounds like "I'm full of shit, I don't care who I hurt, I don't care who I wrong". Things are building up. Oh! Something quite good happens, there's a little embedded marching song, then Gabriel sings falsetto, then it goes into another new section, with organs, sort of post-Day-in-the-Life psychedelia (all those little interlocking sections). Big bass synth! Something about porcupines, strange bleated singing. I don't like the "heavy" bits, but I like the weird little Prussian songlets that come in from time to time. It seems to be ending with a gentle coda. Now there's something pacific and synthetic, a bit like Mike Oldfield.
What year are we even in here? I have no idea. I'd guess 1974? Now there's something Paul McCartneyesque going on -- "erogenous zones I love you". Actually it sounds Californian too, like Randy Newman. I hate Gabriel's voice, and the way these poppy commercial songs edge through over-complex arrangements. It's just not my cup of tea at all. The endless key and tempo changes don't take me anywhere. But then a sort of silly kazoo solo makes it all worthwhile. You can see that this music picks up where late Beatles left off. They're trying to be as creative and whacky as that, and then some.
More arpeggios, references to the Golden Fleece. I suppose this quiet number might be what Edwyn thought my first album sounded like. "You've got to get in to get out" -- that sounds familiar, this is like reading Hamlet for the first time and recognizing the quotes. Actually I quite like this one, there are recorders in the background. "The carpet-crawlers heed their callers". What is he on about? "The liquid has congealed which has seeped out through the crack... (something something) stickleback". The chorus is great, though. It's all very knife-edge, I don't know if I like this album or hate it.
More symphonic proggery, with lots of synths. Why does Gabriel harmonize in thirds so much? It neutralizes his melodies. "But the juggler holds another pack" -- I hate this sub-Dylan gaming-circus imagery. And, you know, do jugglers hold packs of cards? Come on! Conservative sentiments about trusting country men over town men, and people who work with their hands over others. Oh no, there's a "priest and a magician... and even academics searching printed word". Enough tarot! And this strangled singing style, like a bleating prog sheep! Will I make it to the end of Side One, let alone Side Four?
Oh, thank Christ, it's ended! I don't think I'm going to flip it over, this has gone on long enough.
Update: Okay, I looked at the Wikipedia entry on Genesis and this was actually their sixth album. I was right about the date, though: 1974.
Update 2: I also seem to have been listening to Side 2 thinking it was Side 1. In my day, when you put all the song info on one label and a picture on the other, the picture side was Side 1.
The result is that I now have the best sound system I've had in my entire life. I've been bringing up boxes of vinyl from the cellar and ranging them in my pine Trissa LP boxes, and one thing that strikes me is that there are lots of records I've owned for years but have still never heard. This is mainly because I inherited the vast collection of a music fan I used to live with in London, a girl who had to hot-foot it back to New Zealand and left me pretty much her entire collection. Amongst these unheard LPs are some classics, and I thought it might be interesting to play them for the first time and give you a running commentary of my impressions.
We start with an album I've actually alluded to in one of my songs. "Mistaken Memories of Medieval Manhattan" contains the line "on Broadway a lamb is lying down", which refers, of course, to Genesis' first album. The line is in there because I was reading Paul Stump's book about prog rock, The Music's All That Matters, at the time, and playing around with prog song structures. But the history of my non-meeting with this Genesis album goes back further; I was sharing a taxi with Edwyn Collins after a party at Malcolm Ross' house in about 1986, and as we approached my flat on Draycott Place, Chelsea, Edwyn confided that he'd heard my new LP and thought it sounded like early Genesis. For some reason (possibly the sense that this was not meant as a compliment) I never investigated. But I will now.
Putting records on my new deck is a pleasure. It's so heavy and solid, there's no lid, you examine the card album sleeve, note the secondhand sticker (the Genesis album was bought for £4 from Snooper's Paradise in Brighton), note that it's a double LP (blimey!), note the conceptual art-like imagery (a man observes a three-part scene in which he pulls himself out of a waterfall into a Room 101-type place, and then his vacant silhouette stands in a long hallway populated by what look like baby cheetahs), note that the label on the vinyl resembles the arty labels 4AD used to use.
Time to switch on! I'm not going to read any online commentaries, or even the album's voluminous sleeve notes (I glimpse a single phrase: "I will not chase a black raven"). No titles, no info; I'm just going to play the record and record my raw impressions and associations.
It starts with arpeggios, and Gabriel's rather annoying strangulated whine. It sounds very old-fashioned. The arpeggios get a bit more virtuoso and random. Gabriel sings what sounds like "I'm full of shit, I don't care who I hurt, I don't care who I wrong". Things are building up. Oh! Something quite good happens, there's a little embedded marching song, then Gabriel sings falsetto, then it goes into another new section, with organs, sort of post-Day-in-the-Life psychedelia (all those little interlocking sections). Big bass synth! Something about porcupines, strange bleated singing. I don't like the "heavy" bits, but I like the weird little Prussian songlets that come in from time to time. It seems to be ending with a gentle coda. Now there's something pacific and synthetic, a bit like Mike Oldfield.
What year are we even in here? I have no idea. I'd guess 1974? Now there's something Paul McCartneyesque going on -- "erogenous zones I love you". Actually it sounds Californian too, like Randy Newman. I hate Gabriel's voice, and the way these poppy commercial songs edge through over-complex arrangements. It's just not my cup of tea at all. The endless key and tempo changes don't take me anywhere. But then a sort of silly kazoo solo makes it all worthwhile. You can see that this music picks up where late Beatles left off. They're trying to be as creative and whacky as that, and then some.
More arpeggios, references to the Golden Fleece. I suppose this quiet number might be what Edwyn thought my first album sounded like. "You've got to get in to get out" -- that sounds familiar, this is like reading Hamlet for the first time and recognizing the quotes. Actually I quite like this one, there are recorders in the background. "The carpet-crawlers heed their callers". What is he on about? "The liquid has congealed which has seeped out through the crack... (something something) stickleback". The chorus is great, though. It's all very knife-edge, I don't know if I like this album or hate it.
More symphonic proggery, with lots of synths. Why does Gabriel harmonize in thirds so much? It neutralizes his melodies. "But the juggler holds another pack" -- I hate this sub-Dylan gaming-circus imagery. And, you know, do jugglers hold packs of cards? Come on! Conservative sentiments about trusting country men over town men, and people who work with their hands over others. Oh no, there's a "priest and a magician... and even academics searching printed word". Enough tarot! And this strangled singing style, like a bleating prog sheep! Will I make it to the end of Side One, let alone Side Four?
Oh, thank Christ, it's ended! I don't think I'm going to flip it over, this has gone on long enough.
Update: Okay, I looked at the Wikipedia entry on Genesis and this was actually their sixth album. I was right about the date, though: 1974.
Update 2: I also seem to have been listening to Side 2 thinking it was Side 1. In my day, when you put all the song info on one label and a picture on the other, the picture side was Side 1.
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(no subject)
Date: 2008-11-15 12:04 pm (UTC)Kudos, though!
(no subject)
Date: 2008-11-15 12:08 pm (UTC)I wish I could read more music reviews done this way.
By the way, is that an ONO box right below the turntable?
Filippo
(no subject)
Date: 2008-11-15 12:37 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-11-15 12:38 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-11-15 01:25 pm (UTC)Try, Nursery Crime ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nursery_Cryme ).
Really enjoy this "no prior knowledge" reviews. Like the listening interviews on The Wire.
Loving The Lamb
Date: 2008-11-15 02:58 pm (UTC)Re: Loving The Lamb
Date: 2008-11-15 03:40 pm (UTC)About the arpeggios: Could it be that Tony Banks uses them as an intentional reference to minimalism?
The pictures which accompany this blog entry almost cry out to be clickable and bigger!
FrF
Re: Loving The Lamb
Date: 2008-11-15 03:42 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-11-15 03:45 pm (UTC)Re: Loving The Lamb
Date: 2008-11-15 03:52 pm (UTC)FrF
Re: Loving The Lamb
Date: 2008-11-15 03:52 pm (UTC)I can certainly empathize with this sentiment. But maybe the band's future stains its past to someone listening to this for the first time now. When Gabriel sings "Something solid forming in the air" you can't help but hear a pre-echo of "I can feel it coming in the air tonight, oh Lord!"
selling england by the pound
Date: 2008-11-15 03:58 pm (UTC)Needless to say I had an "experience" with this album.
Most of it is well OTT even for Genesis.
The band always had a madrigal like tune hanging around.
Gabriel was a Motown copyist in his early days. How big a hand Jonathan King had in their development is yet to be discussed.
What I liked was the story that it had been rehearsed at Stargroves, Mick Jagger's home, which was used by Led Zeppelin for their luscious mid period albums and The Stones for Sticky Fingers. A piece of trivia is that it was the first place in Britain to receive cable TV, installed by the guy who broke the "Paul Is Dead" story on American radio. Phil Collins was quoted as saying he thought the place was haunted.
Have you heard Jeff Buckley's demo cover of the track "Back In New York City" from this album?
Those last two minutes...
(no subject)
Date: 2008-11-15 04:05 pm (UTC)Wry Whimsical Sophisticated Theatrical Restrained Dramatic Elaborate Literate Epic Sprawling Eccentric Cerebral Stylish Manic Witty Poignant Rousing Sentimental Wistful Eerie Ambitious (wot, no "Pretentious"?)
Momus gets tones:
Eccentric Literate Provocative Campy Quirky Witty Irreverent Confident Cynical/ Sarcastic Wry Sophisticated Stylish Poignant Ironic Cerebral Sexual Silly Sleazy Acerbic Rousing
So we're both eccentric, cerebral, literate, wry, witty, sophisticated, stylish, poignant and rousing. But the men who wear animal heads on stage aren't as silly, sexy or confident as me!
Re: selling england by the pound
Date: 2008-11-15 04:16 pm (UTC)At the end it sounds like someone ready to walk into a river just for the raw experience.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-11-15 04:54 pm (UTC)Should I link you in prog_lolz? IDK if it's funny enough, but we do like laughing at Genesis.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-11-15 04:57 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-11-15 05:04 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-11-15 06:46 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-11-15 08:06 pm (UTC)I'm trying to think of albums that really shine on good speakers... Laurie Anderson's Big Science and Mr. Heartbreak come to mind.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-11-15 08:28 pm (UTC)easylover
Date: 2008-11-15 08:33 pm (UTC)open your box
its so fly
it could piss on a foxes ear
(no subject)
Date: 2008-11-15 09:04 pm (UTC)...and this:
Don't know if you're a fan, but have you heard his latest album, Harps and Angels? There's a very Brechtian thing going on on several of the tracks, especially (and most transparently) on "Piece of the Pie."
(no subject)
Date: 2008-11-15 09:34 pm (UTC)THERE ....I SAID IT
-A
(no subject)
Date: 2008-11-15 09:40 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-11-15 11:04 pm (UTC)I took a photo of my album collection, artifacts from long before the current vinyl craze called compact discs. I was wanting to pick up a momus album, but I noticed all of his album covers are that awful "color" thing and thought better of it, that is like sooo 20th century.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-11-15 11:42 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-11-16 12:09 am (UTC)I can see why you reacted in the way you did, though. If you don't have a feeling for a certain set of references and ideas, this music is indeed far more likely to enrage than engage. Maybe it's just too *English* for you (it would have been too English for me, once).
(no subject)
Date: 2008-11-16 12:37 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-11-16 12:41 am (UTC)arty vacant silhouette
Date: 2008-11-16 03:49 am (UTC)i never knew that whacky had a 'h' in it..this blog is littered with ghold
Date: 2008-11-16 07:17 am (UTC)Re: Loving The Lamb
Date: 2008-11-16 08:47 am (UTC)Your post has given me the stimulus to attach my own turntable and start listening through the vinyl that's been slowly piling up on top of it these last few months, unplayed until now.
starting off with Brassens and Brokeback (alphabetical ordering illusory/coincidental)
Keep up these posts! it will be interesting to see what else you have in there
love bomb
Date: 2008-11-16 09:38 am (UTC)a box full of cassettes though
found on the sidewalk.
Most of it unlistenable u2 and phil collins shit.
(the only good thing about phil collins:
pronounce his name in a south european way
and you get field recrodings)
but there was also the tubes:love bomb
i knew todd rundgren had a hand in it.
and then i listened to it.
side 2 is absolutely fantastic,
rundgren sound goes eighties disco,
no breaks, just continuous dancing and singing:
maybe i will play it at the end of my next show.
greetings from blu skied berlin.
rinus
ps
you can always walk around the corner
with some albums under your arm
and propose to dj an evening at O.T.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-11-16 04:33 pm (UTC)looking forward to your DJ career!
btw your wikipedia entry doesnt even mention you are a musician anymore
(Occupation: Author, Journalist, Songwriter)
Intentional?
Best from Tokyo
Antonin
(no subject)
Date: 2008-11-17 01:35 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-11-17 01:54 am (UTC)When I was a teenager, I used to scour Liverpool's second hand record shops in search of anything vaguely interesting musically, as a kind of antidote to the top 40's ubiquitous banality. I would generally buy any albums which had tracks way over 3 or 4 minutes long, as a kind of rebellion against the daily onslaught of the likes of madonna, george michael, bananarama etc.
I managed to get the first 'real' Genesis albums (on charisma, after their Jonathan king era): Nursery cryme and foxtrot. Loved three quarters of them. I remember I always wanted to get 'the lamb lies down...', but being a double, concept album and harder to come by for cheap, it wasn't until a good few years later when I found a copy. And my reactions were exactly the same as yours - some interesting arrangements, odd moments, just when you think it it drawing you in, it is spoilt by pretentious and often corny lyrics and Gabriel's voice. I will always remember it as one of the big let-downs!
Haven't listened to any genesis for years now - still in my parents' garage back in the UK. maybe I will dig 'em out at xmas.
One day I might even tackle Yes' 'Tales from topographic oceans' which I picked up around he same time!
Gabriel
Date: 2008-11-17 10:14 am (UTC)A flower?
Date: 2008-11-18 09:23 am (UTC)But the main reason why I thought you might be a fan is The Guitar Lesson, which bears a certain resemblance to the How Dare I Be So Beautiful? section of Supper's Ready.
As it happens, I heard your song before the Genesis epic from 1972, but the similarity struck me immediately.
If you don't have a copy of Foxtrot sitting in your unplayed file, perhaps you might find a moment to hear that section of Supper's Ready, by one means or another. If it surprised me, it should at least have an interesting effect on you!
Let me get this right, Nick
Date: 2008-11-30 07:23 pm (UTC)It's about breaking out of the forms of Rock ("the most conservative art form", remember?) and letting songs flower in ways unrestrained by the length of a 78 RPM record, the Folk structure of verse/chorus/verse etc. and the limitations of the pentatonism of Blues.
Speaking as someone who hold Genesis (pre-Abacab) and you (pre-Stars Forever) in equally high regard, I think you really should do yourself a favor and make an actual effort here.