Posts by Simon Grigg
Last ←Newer Page 1 2 3 4 5 Older→ First
-
stand by for a long post on the subject from Simon Grigg - he released their stuff here back in the day (or was that just Phillips & Urlich?) before they got grabbed by the majors ...
no, a shortish one...I have a school prize giving to go to, and it was a long time ago. It was on a label owned by the three of us which I ran. Short lived...we did two albums, Princess and 8 Arms to Hold Us comp, but we had a bigger hit with Princess in NZ than PWL did anywhere else. Des'ree Hislop (that was her) was not too bright though and was managed by her brother who was less so...they fired PWL and decided they could do it alone. History is the judge....
-
But I went for Spector over Wilson as he was doing something special without looking or caring at what anyone else was up to. And his sound was highly individual.
That hothouse of competitiveness in the sixties was something special though, rarely seen since (although things got pretty fierce in Jamaica in the eighties).....and The Fabulous Ronettes Featuring Veronica is one of the ten greatest albums ever...end of....
Complete Control was written after CBS pulled Remote Control off the first Clash album as a single against the wishes of the band.
-
re Lennon...I'm having trouble thinking of anything much worse than this:
Instant Karma: The Amnesty International Campaign to Save Darfur arrives June 12 via Warner Bros.
Instant Karma:
Disc 1:
01 U2 - "Instant Karma"
02 R.E.M. - "#9 Dream"
03 Christina Aguilera - "Mother"
04 Aerosmith - "Give Peace a Chance"
05 Lenny Kravitz - "Cold Turkey"
06 Los Lonely Boys - "Whatever Gets You Through the Night"
07 Corinne Bailey Rae - "I'm Losing You"
08 Jakob Dylan [ft. Dhani Harrison] - "Gimme Some Truth"
09 Jackson Browne - "Oh My Love"
10 Big & Rich - "Nobody Told Me"Disc 2:
01 Green Day - "Working Class Hero"
02 Black Eyed Peas - "Power to the People"
03 Jack Johnson - "Imagine"
04 Snow Patrol - "Isolation"
05 Matisyahu - "Watching the Wheels"
06 Ben Harper - "Beautiful Boy"
07 Postal Service - "Grow Old With Me"
08 Jaguares - "Gimme Some Truth"
09 Avril Lavigne - "Imagine"
10 The Flaming Lips - "(Just Like) Starting Over"
11 Regina Spektor - "Real Love" -
Oh, yes, Brian Wilson...he made me cry at the Aotea. I saw him earlier (much) when he wandered on and off the stage at Western Springs circa 79...beautiful summers afternoon but Brian had no idea he was there. No, he needs to be on that short list. And not only for Pet Sounds, there is so much more
I'm having trouble dismissing Kite, as it was the prototype for so much. There is a bootleg somewhere on a shelf of mine in Auckland with the vocals in the left channel and the (mono) instrumental in the right, so you can do that trick of rotating the vox out of the mix with the balance knob....and it's an incredible piece of work. Dangermouse might have thought he was clever with the Grey Album but Lennon and George Martin did it decades ago.
But SPLHCB is not about any song, its a whole, and I would suggest should be considered as such. For me, the thing about The Beatles, and in particular Pepper, was that it meant anything was possible. Before Pepper they bent and twisted the rules, and then broke them over and over again. After the grand slam of Revolver, Strawberry Fields/ Penny Lane and Pepper, there were no more rules..hence Kraftwerk was possible. And we know Brian Wilson's reaction to Pepper.
Driving Rain...no you are right, its mostly a fine album too but I didn't personally like the production. What I liked about Chaos was that finally his songs sounded finished.
I have to say I liked both albums far more than that dreary thing Dylan tossed out last year. And I tried, I really did....
-
Complete Control
hate to be a damned trainspotter but that was not on the original album..only on the odd US re-compile.
McCartney....he's a guilty pleasure for me...last year's Chaos and Creation was a minor masterpiece of post middle age pop...Beatlesque and beautifully produced by Radiohead's Nigel Goodrich. His best album in a very very average career (with the odd highlight) since, umm, his second solo one. Generally Lennon's post Beatles world was much more interesting.
Can't argue with the producer selection but I'd add Holland -Dozier-Holland and Carl Craig to my list.
-
Dylan....yes I'm being cold. But I've seen him live twice and both times...78 at Western Springs, and a few years later with Tom Petty, he was beyond appalling and I guess it coloured my opinion of him evermore. I sold everything I had apart from Blonde & 61 after the second show and I felt like he truely was the Jokerman.
But, of recent I've rediscovered After The Flood....and I'm not sure I agree with RB on The Band, although Little Feat....nah...
Sgt Pepper, yes, should only be heard in mono..**apart** from the reprise of the title track onwards......although I respectfully disagree with the notion that A Day in The Life is Lennon taking the piss, and should perhaps add that I think that She's Leaving Home is, in my opinion of course, one of the slightermost tunes in the fab cannon.
The aural textures of The Clash are clumsy perfection......
-
Don't get me started on "poor old Bob", arguably the best poet of the 20th century;
nah that was Smokey...even Bob said so. But I'm with Peter most of the time, I like my musical poetry to be a part of the aural texture. I agree with you about Like A Rolling Stone, but that was as much to do with Al Kooper, Mike Bloomfield and Tom Wilson as it was Bob... the performance was incredible as was the way it was captured.
But the front line left Bob behind a long time ago, and plenty of songs have had the same cultural resonance since then. I hate the song but you'd be hard pushed to argue that Rapper's Delight hasn't had the same impact... or for that matter Autobahn, or One Love
-
Ok ok, you had me at King Tubby. Absolutely agree with all of that Simon. I was mainly Satanically advocating as I'm sure you know, but will confess to being a fan of sound more than lyrics. The feel of a tune is way more important to me than what is being said. Hence my targeting of poor old Bob.
Some days I'm with you, some days I'm not...myself I love Dylan circa 65-66 but not much else, mostly for the way the sound of that band intertwined with the snarls. ... the bullshit detector is going haywire when it points at the voluminous critical praise for last years album. I'd rather listen to LL Cool J, aged seventeen, intoning "I Need A Beat" over an almost metallic staccato loop...he and PE had better words than anything Dylan has done in the past thirty years.
Sgt Pepper...contrary to accepted wisdom, I think that's when it also started to go right, it was the Dylan blowback that worked. being little more than a fabulous sound and colour collage. As an album it's a wonder, still after 40 years, and I was pleased to see it's rehabiltation in Mojo a couple of months back. Sure it opened the floodgates marked ugly prog rock (and gave so many acts that should never have got beyond the garage a voice) but without Pepper no Kraftwerk.......
-
Or skipped 3 decades and gone straight to House. Imagine if 'Voodoo Ray' was released in 1962, immediately making Dylan and The Beatles and everyone else completely redundant. That would've been cool.
Yes, but, and I am of the opinion that Voodoo Ray is one of the greatest pop singles of all time, that song could not have existed without The Beatles.......to steal a phrase from Carl Craig (whose incredible new remix of the Brazilian Girls is playing as I type...very post K&D) Voodoo Ray is Little Richard pushed into an elevator with Sgt Pepper, Sly Stone, and King Tubby. Nothing happens in a vacuum
-
That whole American rock scholar thing has always got on my tits.
I have to agree, although Simon Reynolds has made a fair tilt at continuing the tradition in the UK of recent. His interview in the recent issue of Fact was ponderous in the extreme.
Americans, outside of parts of NYC, rarely get reggae, Marley excluded (and then only the watered down later era),
Then again, neither do Australians....