May 092014
This week’s All-Star Jam is a Battle of the Bands! Spread the news! Tell me if you don’t think the band at the 3:26 mark is about 10 years ahead of its time! Tell us what’s really on your mind!
This week’s All-Star Jam is a Battle of the Bands! Spread the news! Tell me if you don’t think the band at the 3:26 mark is about 10 years ahead of its time! Tell us what’s really on your mind!
Any thoughts on The Idle Race, Jeff Lynne’s band before joining The Move (and then shifting that band into ELO)?
http://audiophilereview.com/audiophile-music/record-store-day-gems-jeff-lynnes-the-idle-race.html
I CAN’T STAND The Birthday Party, the band’s one and only album. To my ears it sounds like the canned “groovy” music that would come out of Greg Brady’s transistor radio. Maybe I can play the album and discuss it with you on this weekend’s Saturday Night Shut-In.
My bad attitude aside, thanks to the Townsman who shared this story on our Facebook page!
I’ve never heard the album before – giving it a listen now. But what I thought was interesting was the way the article hones in on rock schism that is on the radar of so few people, cultists basically, all of whom have chosen their side. I personally lean toward team Wood, but it has less to do with my impressions of what happened between the two, but that I simply am not really much of a fan of Lynne’s music or production. A third through this album, though, it might already be my favorite of any of the Lynne stuff I’ve heard.
And… this “Lucky Man” is going to make me crazy, it sounds like something else… but what?!
I’d heard the Idle Race album many years ago on a tape of a tape of a tape. I wasn’t impressed but attributed it to the fidelity of what I was listening to.
I recently bought the album in one of those 5 packs of Original Album Classics that was entitled Psychedia and featured five albums by different bands, one of which was Idle Race.
It wasn’t the fidelity…
I love The Move both before Jeff joined and after. And I love Roy Wood. And I’m a pretty big ELO fan. I don’t think you can argue that they weren’t a fantastic singles band but there’s a lot more than that as well. And I don’t mind Jeff’s signature production sound. It’s a classic sound so how can you mind it that much.
But this?
I don’t understand the love for this. I don’t know if it’s hipsterism, Kool-Aid, or what but to me the emperor has no clothes. It sounds cliched in a contradictory way; they are trying too hard to sound different and cool and avant-garde and just end up sounding by numbers to me. I should give it another listen to be fair but I can’t bring myself to do it.
As RTH vets know my two favorite artists are Dylan and Sinatra and they converge with Bob’s latest release:
http://blogs.citypages.com/gimmenoise/2014/05/listen_bob_dylan_frank_sinatra_cover.php
I can only hope that this new album is an all Sinatra album.
Newer RTHers will think I’m joking but I’m not.
That’s wild!
He was a great…man. Nash the Slash has died:
http://www.billboard.com/articles/news/6084880/nash-the-slash-mysterious-canadian-experimental-musician-dead-at-66
CAN’T DECIDE IF THIS ANDY PARTRIDGE INTERVIEW IS DEPRESSING OR EXTREMELY DEPRESSING DEPT:
http://featuresblogs.chicagotribune.com/entertainment_popmachine/2009/05/the-ever-melodic-adventurous-underappreciated-british-band-xtc-had-just-come-off-1984s-coolly-digital-low-selling-th.html
Really? I enjoyed that one enough and felt that Partridge’s bad attitude was nothing that couldn’t be relieved by him getting a little more structure in his life. He sounds like how I often feel, but in my case with no disappointed, pining fanatical fanbase. Because I don’t have the twice-yearly forum to whine to a journalist about my lack of critical acclaim and modest riches, I have to go to work, get my kids off to school, coach indoor soccer, play in an old man’s baseball league, do chores, remember to buy my wife flowers now and then, and write and record songs in between all that everyday stuff. As a result, I’m desperate enough to not only complete my musical activities, but I’m eager to [dump] them on an uncaring public whenever I am able. Hopefully Andy will find a collaborator or two, again, to get him over what sounds like a sincere and understandable hump. I’m sure he could still deliver some great songs that mean a lot to his select worldwide fanbase. As much as he would dread seeing me appear on his front step, I would still love to hang with him for a week and give him a loving kick in the pants. We need all the good fertilizer we can get.
An added bonus in this interview was him slamming “Sgt Rock (Is Going to Help Me),” which I agree is probably the most overrated XTC song for all the reasons he states!
Thanks for finding and sharing that, HVB.
Given the choice, I’ll pick extremely depressing. Everything I’ve read by/about Partridge for the last 20 years has been depressing. This is extremely depressing if only because it is extremely long.
Andy may be in a class by himself when it comes to the “what ifs” of rock & roll. There’s your overdose category (Jimi, Janis, etc.). There’s your acid casualty category (Brian Wilson, Syd Barrett). But Andy is alone in a sort of “unrecognized genius / tortured artist / asshole” category. Beefheart may be close as a unrecognized genius / tortured artist but he wasn’t an asshole (excepting maybe to the Magic Band).
Normally I’d have sympathy for UGs/TAs but Andy is such that he forces you to have no sympathy for him at all.