"Really awful is more interesting to listen to than pretty good" - Eno ................................................................................................................................................................................................................. welcome to the drivel blog of "music detractor, Simon Reynolds"
Nue Au Soleil (Completement) is a WAY OLD compilation - I've got a vinyl copy from circa 1987.
Easy to forget DELETION, when recent albums became unobtainable after five years.
e.g. it was impossible to find the Rough Trade era Fall albums from 1986 onwards - too old for the record shops, too recent (and valued by the owners) for the second hand shops.
You wouldn't have experienced this as a critic, but for those of us who were in our late teens in the late '80's, much essential post-punk was completely unobtainable.
I only got hold of the early Chrome albums after e-Bay came into being. I had to make do with a second hand cassette recording of "Half Machine Lip Moves" from a local record dealer because there was no chance whatsoever in the late eighties that you would come across a vinyl copy.
That said, all my workaday vinyl is probably worth a fortune now, so scarcity does have its compensations.
P.S. on the subject of Ludus, the guitar intro to "I can't swim I have nightmares" is the proto-Johnny Marr/Smiths riff, innit? Their whole career was predicated on those inital 20 seconds.
Oh right - i half wondered if it was a really old comp, but couldn't be bothered to check!
It's a great one.
when i was listening to it, there was a couple of tracks where i thought, "ooh, that sounds a bit like "This Charming Man"." I wonder if it was direct influence / copying thing (linder being so close to Morrissey) or just have similar tastes. Sometimes the Ludus poppier stuff reminds me a bit of the suaveness of Monochrome Set and I seem to remember reading that Marr and Morrissey were fans of that band.
I do remember how hard it was to find out of print records. My examples are a little bit earlier cos i'm older than you by a fair bit I think. But the big ones were - James Brown is very hip reference point circa 1980, i want to check him out, but there is literally nothing in print. So i have to buy a live album recorded in Tokyo circa 79 just to be able to hear "Sex Machine". And then Can ... referenced by some critics in re. PiL and Remain In Light, but all I can find is a compilation of the Virgin era stuff. Which is much more whimsical and light sounding. I put it on and am utterly mystified - what does this have to do with Metal Box? Sold it not long after.
On the other hand, I suppose you could argue that deletion is a necessary act of cultural hygiene. Something that a healthy culture would enact mandatorily.
i suppose in a healthy culture, it would happen naturally and organically - as a byproduct of the culture's vigour and present-focus and in a sense, its sort of narcissistic self-absorption ("now is the best time / is the only time"). It would not need to be mandated or enacted, it would just occur. Nietszche wrote about this, I think. Strong cultures are those that don't self-relativize, don't stand outside themselves and see their own historical and transient nature. How things look, is how things have always looked, is how things will always look.
You might be interested to know that Morrissey, a big Ludus fan, was working with Ian Devine on proto-Smiths songs before he met J Marr, but Devine became troubled by a sense of divided loyalty (because of his relationship with Linder). Morrissey made another approach to Devine when The Smiths were at their height about recording a solo single that never happened (as you will know).
aha, so that is a very direct connection. Question remains, how would Morrissey, a non-musician, have somehow got Marr to make Devine-like licks? perhaps he played Marr some Ludus tunes and said, 'this is good isn't it'.
7 comments:
Nue Au Soleil (Completement) is a WAY OLD compilation - I've got a vinyl copy from circa 1987.
Easy to forget DELETION, when recent albums became unobtainable after five years.
e.g. it was impossible to find the Rough Trade era Fall albums from 1986 onwards - too old for the record shops, too recent (and valued by the owners) for the second hand shops.
You wouldn't have experienced this as a critic, but for those of us who were in our late teens in the late '80's, much essential post-punk was completely unobtainable.
I only got hold of the early Chrome albums after e-Bay came into being. I had to make do with a second hand cassette recording of "Half Machine Lip Moves" from a local record dealer because there was no chance whatsoever in the late eighties that you would come across a vinyl copy.
That said, all my workaday vinyl is probably worth a fortune now, so scarcity does have its compensations.
P.S. on the subject of Ludus, the guitar intro to "I can't swim I have nightmares" is the proto-Johnny Marr/Smiths riff, innit? Their whole career was predicated on those inital 20 seconds.
Oh right - i half wondered if it was a really old comp, but couldn't be bothered to check!
It's a great one.
when i was listening to it, there was a couple of tracks where i thought, "ooh, that sounds a bit like "This Charming Man"." I wonder if it was direct influence / copying thing (linder being so close to Morrissey) or just have similar tastes. Sometimes the Ludus poppier stuff reminds me a bit of the suaveness of Monochrome Set and I seem to remember reading that Marr and Morrissey were fans of that band.
I do remember how hard it was to find out of print records. My examples are a little bit earlier cos i'm older than you by a fair bit I think. But the big ones were - James Brown is very hip reference point circa 1980, i want to check him out, but there is literally nothing in print. So i have to buy a live album recorded in Tokyo circa 79 just to be able to hear "Sex Machine". And then Can ... referenced by some critics in re. PiL and Remain In Light, but all I can find is a compilation of the Virgin era stuff. Which is much more whimsical and light sounding. I put it on and am utterly mystified - what does this have to do with Metal Box? Sold it not long after.
On the other hand, I suppose you could argue that deletion is a necessary act of cultural hygiene. Something that a healthy culture would enact mandatorily.
i suppose in a healthy culture, it would happen naturally and organically - as a byproduct of the culture's vigour and present-focus and in a sense, its sort of narcissistic self-absorption ("now is the best time / is the only time"). It would not need to be mandated or enacted, it would just occur. Nietszche wrote about this, I think. Strong cultures are those that don't self-relativize, don't stand outside themselves and see their own historical and transient nature. How things look, is how things have always looked, is how things will always look.
You might be interested to know that Morrissey, a big Ludus fan, was working with Ian Devine on proto-Smiths songs before he met J Marr, but Devine became troubled by a sense of divided loyalty (because of his relationship with Linder). Morrissey made another approach to Devine when The Smiths were at their height about recording a solo single that never happened (as you will know).
aha, so that is a very direct connection. Question remains, how would Morrissey, a non-musician, have somehow got Marr to make Devine-like licks? perhaps he played Marr some Ludus tunes and said, 'this is good isn't it'.
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