Tuesday, August 14, 2012

always forget how disappointing Be Bop Deluxe are

over the decades tried several separate occasions to get into them

fooled by:

great name

cool LP and song itles (Futurama, Drastic Plastic, Live! In the Air Age, "Jet Silver and the Dolls Of Venus" / Teenage Archangel" / Between the Worlds" / "Kiss of Light" / "Hot Valves EP" / "Futurist Manifesto" / "Electrical Language" / "Surreal Estate")

cool or at least kinda-cool covers

great set of influences and reference points - Bowie-Roxy-Crimson-Floyd-Hammill-Zappa; glam meets prog; science fiction

Bill Nelson went on to do Red Noise, his pretty-cool New Wave self-make-over, and then, interesting-ish solo stuff also in a New Wave/synthpop vein

it seems so promising

but the reality music really is "exquisite nothing" (P.Morley)

not even that exquisite












here's a few from Bill N's New Wave days



1 comment:

Sam Davies said...

I really like parts of Axe Victim -- Adventure in Yorkshire Landscape, love is Swift Arrows -- but a lot of that album is just so in debt to Bowie that you practically cringe listening to it (Jet Silver and the Venus Dolls?). A friend of mine who worked for a long time in a record shop said that anyone who ever came in and asked for Bebop Deluxe smelled a bit funny, like off milk!