18 February 1982
"More of this sort of thing please."
— Red Starr
One of the unforeseen pleasures of doing this blog is that it has turned me on to some brilliant records that I would never have otherwise encountered. I expected to develop a heightened appreciation for the likes of Dexys Midnight Runners and The Human League but I failed to consider the lesser knowns who have fallen into my lap. From the jazz art snot of Ludus to the ghastly but beautiful deconstructionism of the Portsmouth Sinfonia, it's clear that the eighties produced a vast array of sonically deranged geniuses who never got their due — and we've only just begun.
One of musicology's most longstanding clichés is that while few bought The Velvet Underground's debut album, everyone who did so ended up forming bands. Now I don't doubt the truthfulness of this claim — even if I've never seen any survey results that confirm it — but I have to wonder if it's as remarkable an outcome as one might think. Didn't plenty of hippies and rednecks end up putting together country rock outfits when they first heard The Flying Burrito Brothers? How many literate but disaffected young people took up poetry and confrontational performance art upon listening to Patti Smith's Horses? Weren't there an entire generation of overcoat-sporting Scots that invested in fairlight synthesisers due to The Blue Nile? Smallish, cult-like acts inspire further, even smaller, even cultier groups and so on into obscurist infinity.
Locked into this chain of influence at one point or another resides Pink Industry. Their musical heroes — the ones I can hear at any rate — weren't especially well known nor were any of the groups that came along after them. It's fine that I can sit here in 2018 and see so much of indie lush industrialists Cocteau Twins in this music — and even that's just speculation considering that Liz Fraser and Robin Guthrie were likely busy ironing out their own sound while the Pinks were foisting this upon us but certainly the two groups were on to much the same audio alchemy — but naturally no one was to know who would be listening and who would be forming bands as a result back in '82.
Red Starr prefers side B opener "Don't Let Go" for its Velvets influence and vocalist Jayne Casey's wailing but I'm partial to "Is This the End" which commences the flip side. A haunting piece, it's a curious choice to kick off an E.P. and not just because of the title. It has the feel of a track that brings an album to a bleak conclusion, not unlike "Decades" on Joy Division's Closer or "The Overload" on Talking Heads' masterpiece Remain in Light. Cinematic, powerful and rich, its sheer gorgeousness is only slightly dampened by the knotty sense that few could have been listening beyond John Peel's devoted following — and what does it matter given that they all promptly went out and formed bands. For its part, "Don't Let Go" falls into similar territory. I don't hear Lou Reed and John Cale so much as those vaguely industrial groups fronted by wistful female singers doing what would eventually be called dream pop. (And, yes, Cocteau Twins are precisely who I'm thinking of)
So, just where am I going with all of this? Nowhere really. Forty Five is a remarkable work that probably was influenced by the giants of underground music and hopefully influenced plenty of figures going forward. Few ended up buying it but those who did would have quit smiling, messed up their hair and messed about with their mates over cheap instruments. What more could you want from the periphery?
~~~~~
Also Reviewed This Fortnight
ABBA: "Head over Heels"
"Oh God," Starr writes, his eyes doubtless rolling as he churned out this bit of copy, "number one for weeks and weeks." Surely his mood improved when he discovered just how wrong his prediction was. "Head over Heels" was the end of the Swedes' grip over the British charts, taking just a nominal spot in the Top 30. As Starr says, it's just another decent ABBA song in a world of much better ABBA songs and the punters agreed. They might have done better, however, to flip the record over as "The Visitors" sees them firing on all cylinders for just about the last time. Good time party bands tend to keep their melancholy hidden but this epic song of aliens being baffled by the world's madness and repression might have peaked the interest of a public that no longer had much use for them.
"More of this sort of thing please."
— Red Starr
One of musicology's most longstanding clichés is that while few bought The Velvet Underground's debut album, everyone who did so ended up forming bands. Now I don't doubt the truthfulness of this claim — even if I've never seen any survey results that confirm it — but I have to wonder if it's as remarkable an outcome as one might think. Didn't plenty of hippies and rednecks end up putting together country rock outfits when they first heard The Flying Burrito Brothers? How many literate but disaffected young people took up poetry and confrontational performance art upon listening to Patti Smith's Horses? Weren't there an entire generation of overcoat-sporting Scots that invested in fairlight synthesisers due to The Blue Nile? Smallish, cult-like acts inspire further, even smaller, even cultier groups and so on into obscurist infinity.
Locked into this chain of influence at one point or another resides Pink Industry. Their musical heroes — the ones I can hear at any rate — weren't especially well known nor were any of the groups that came along after them. It's fine that I can sit here in 2018 and see so much of indie lush industrialists Cocteau Twins in this music — and even that's just speculation considering that Liz Fraser and Robin Guthrie were likely busy ironing out their own sound while the Pinks were foisting this upon us but certainly the two groups were on to much the same audio alchemy — but naturally no one was to know who would be listening and who would be forming bands as a result back in '82.
Red Starr prefers side B opener "Don't Let Go" for its Velvets influence and vocalist Jayne Casey's wailing but I'm partial to "Is This the End" which commences the flip side. A haunting piece, it's a curious choice to kick off an E.P. and not just because of the title. It has the feel of a track that brings an album to a bleak conclusion, not unlike "Decades" on Joy Division's Closer or "The Overload" on Talking Heads' masterpiece Remain in Light. Cinematic, powerful and rich, its sheer gorgeousness is only slightly dampened by the knotty sense that few could have been listening beyond John Peel's devoted following — and what does it matter given that they all promptly went out and formed bands. For its part, "Don't Let Go" falls into similar territory. I don't hear Lou Reed and John Cale so much as those vaguely industrial groups fronted by wistful female singers doing what would eventually be called dream pop. (And, yes, Cocteau Twins are precisely who I'm thinking of)
So, just where am I going with all of this? Nowhere really. Forty Five is a remarkable work that probably was influenced by the giants of underground music and hopefully influenced plenty of figures going forward. Few ended up buying it but those who did would have quit smiling, messed up their hair and messed about with their mates over cheap instruments. What more could you want from the periphery?
~~~~~
Also Reviewed This Fortnight
ABBA: "Head over Heels"
"Oh God," Starr writes, his eyes doubtless rolling as he churned out this bit of copy, "number one for weeks and weeks." Surely his mood improved when he discovered just how wrong his prediction was. "Head over Heels" was the end of the Swedes' grip over the British charts, taking just a nominal spot in the Top 30. As Starr says, it's just another decent ABBA song in a world of much better ABBA songs and the punters agreed. They might have done better, however, to flip the record over as "The Visitors" sees them firing on all cylinders for just about the last time. Good time party bands tend to keep their melancholy hidden but this epic song of aliens being baffled by the world's madness and repression might have peaked the interest of a public that no longer had much use for them.
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