Dec 042010
Mom!
You know the drill, you’re either actively or passively listening to music and a song comes on that catches your ear. It sounds like some other song you love. You’re mind starts to wander to other songs that are obviously indebted to earlier songs. Then you take note of a guest musician on a particular track, tracing that musician back to the record’s producer, engineer, and maybe even the teenage future producer who fetched them tea. Hopefullly you you run into one of your rock friends before wasting these insights on/tormenting/boring a “normal” person. Hopefully you get the chance to excitedly tell your fellow rock nerd about these unexpected connections. Tonight we make connections.
[audio:https://www.rocktownhall.com/blogs/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/RTH-Saturday-Night-Shut-In-5.mp3|titles=RTH Saturday Night Shut-In, episode 5]Download episode 5 (~34.5 MB).
Enjoyable episode. For whatever reason I have never really knowingly heard Buzzcocks until this and another recent RTH thread, and I really like what I hear! What should I pick up first?
The first thing I thought about the That Petrol Emotion song before you announced it, was that it could well be early lost XTC … it really sounds like Chambers bashing the drums, the jangular early Partridge guitar, and Moulding’s bass and voice.
Run out and buy The Buzzcocks’ legendary singles collection, Singles Going Steady, which is the Meaty, Beaty, Big & Bouncy of punk rock! It’s awesome from top to bottom. Then you can check out the individual Buzzcocks albums, which contain other goodies.
Good connection re: That Petrol Emotion. I hadn’t thought of that, but it makes sense. Babble, by the way, was produced by Roli Mosimann, who was the drummer for The Swans. I don’t know who made the tea.
When the song by That Petrol Emotion started, I thought it was Friction by Television. Check it out! I neve made the connection betwen Hot Head and that.
My feeling is that I could be granted a lifespan of infinite length and still never get what people hear in Captain Beefheart.
My experience with “connections” tends to be much more in the jazz realm, wherein collaboration and changing personnel tends to be much more frequent, and the ever-expanding spider web of so-and-so playing on this record leading to checking out his work which leads to checking out someone else’s on one of those records to …. And so on to no end. I quite like that.
Yeah, “Friction” makes sense, too! The rest of that TPE album isn’t bad, but for me nothing reaches that song’s guitar riff highs. (I never bought their first album – andyr and/or chickenfrank owned it. I remember every other song sounding like either Echo and the Bunnymen or a subpar Undertones song. I don’t think I ever heard a lick of any of the band’s following albums.)
I finally got around to listening to this and discovered it’s right up my alley. I prefer the take of Kandy Korn that’s on Strictly personal to this, but you can’t beat this song. I must admit I don’t see the similarity to the Buzzcock’s song that you do.
I see the connection between the guitar riffs on the TPE song, Friction, and Hot Head, but I think it’s just that octave notes like that are going to occur to guitar players. Suspect claims of influence, I suspect.
I was in the middle of that Mike Heron song, wondering what the hell it was, when suddenly it hit me that that was RT on the guitar. I love Henry the Human Fly too. The artist himself has never gotten over its commercial failure. It’s legendary for being WB’s lowest seller ever, though I think others have claimed that title (the 1st Randy Newman album is also a contender, I think).
I’m pretty sure the connecting link on that Heron track is producer Joe Boyd. Boyd was Incredible String Band’s producer/manager/ biggest advocate. He produced the early Fairport albums, and he ran Hannibal Records, which released Shoot Out the Lights, among other RT projects. Boyd co-produced Nico’s Desertshore with Cale, and I think they were both working out of WB’s California operation around the time of Paris 1919. Now what the connection to the Who was, I have no idea, but that’s the Heron/Cale/Thompson connection. (Thompson also played on Cale’s fear album as well.)
And btw I’ve probably said this before, but Boyd’s White Bicycles is one of the best rock memoirs I’ve ever read.
BigSteve, thanks for making connections and disputing some as well. This gets to some of the discussion I was hoping would follow.
You don’t hear the same basic melody between “Kandy Korn” and “Why Can’t I Touch It,” not to mention a similarly structured guitar jam at the end? I’m hoping to talk to a member of the band in the coming weeks, who might be able to confirm – or deny – this connection. I do know the band covered a Beefheart song early on. Same goes for That Petrol Emotion, if memory serves. Andyr and chickenfrank can confirm – they saw them in a small club in London when they first formed. I think they came back excited that the band covered Pere Ubu’s “Non-Alignment Pact” (?) and, possibly, “Zig-Zag Wanderer.”
I’ll double-check on the producer of the Heron album – I think you’re right, it’s either Boyd or another guy with a similar name who worked on a lot of those Richard Thompson albums. I’m pretty sure I remember spotting the legendary Bill Price as the engineer. I always associate Price with having produced the first Clash album, but I’ve since learned he went way back to engineering for Mott the Hoople and others. Good call about Thompson playing on Fear.
You have said that before, and I’ve noted to myself before that I need to pick up that book!
OK, you’re right, it’s Joe Boyd who produced that album, and according to Wikipedia the bassist on that track I credited to Heron being backed by The Who was Ronnie Lane, making “Tommy & the Bijoux” Townshend, Moon, and Lane. Still unusual.
The other producer I had in mind was for Thompson’s Henry the Human Fly. His name was John Wood. I’ve gotten Wood and Boyd mixed up before. They’ve both produced their share of Thompson-related stuff. Wood, I just learned, also produced Squeeze’s Cool for Cats and Argybargy, opening doors to more connections with John Cale.