Hard News: You've got to listen to the music
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For you who live in Auckland I need a little help on a slightly related musical note. A US member of a Neil Young list I'm on is coming to NZ for a holiday and is going to the james taylor/Carol King concert and wants to know what accomodation close to the Vector is like. he's looking mid price range. Any help would be appreciated. :)
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I'd guess perhaps I'm a bit too young to 'get' the relevant context.
No offense intended, Rich, but that line always irks me. Amongst my most loved works are the Miles Davis collection, Birth Of Cool, Elvis' Sun Collection, a couple of Charlie Parker albums from the 1940s, an Ellington collection of remastered 78s dating back to the 1920s, Coltrane's Giant Steps, a swag of of NZ 45s from 60-63, many old Chess masters, and so on..all of which predate my time as a conscious buyer of new records. I love these records and fully understand their relevance and importance, in the same way I get the relevance of Guernicia or a billion other things that predate me.
A re-release with a couple of new remixes seems to come around every few years with depressing regularity, probably around the times the bank manager calls about the mortgage on the 3rd mansion (reckon we're probably about due for one, actually).
New Order notoriously made virtually nothing from Blue Monday in the 1980s (or from their records) although I'm sure they are not short of a few quid, but as of 2009, at least two if them still live in the same street they grew up in.
Blue Monday hasn't been remixed over and over again. There was the '88 mix, and then a brace of mixes in 1995, of which the Hardfloor mix was the killer (that was reissued in 2006), but that's all.
Anything else is a bootleg mix.
When you consider their stature and huge audience, it's amazing how little they've cashed in to date.
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Changing tack, there's a rather fab piece in the Feb Vanity Fair on Disco. The best quote comes from Nile Rogers:
We wrote “Le Freak” because we were denied entry to Studio 54 on New Year’s Eve 1977–78. Grace Jones had invited us to see her show, and she assumed that since our hit “Dance Dance Dance (Yowsah, Yowsah, Yowsah)” was so big we could get in. Normally we could, but it was sold out, she forgot to leave our names at the door, and [doorman] Marc Benecke wouldn’t let us in. He politely told us to fuck off. So Bernard and I went and wrote a song called “Fuck Off”: “Awww … fuck off … ” It sounded great, but I said we can’t have a song on the radio called “Aww … Fuck Off.” So I came up with “Freak Off,” but that wasn’t sexy. Then Bernard came up with “There’s that new dance everybody’s doing called the Freak.” That was our version of “Come on baby, let’s do the Twist.”
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New Order notoriously made virtually nothing from Blue Monday in the 1980s (or from their records)
The story is that they actually lost money on Blue Monday because of the expense of printing the sleeve. Or so the typically Tony Wilson legend goes ... That might have just been the first pressing.
You'd have to say that Blue Monday was one of the game-changing -- terrible phrase, that -- electronic singles of the 1980s in a line-up that would also take in The Message, Pump Up the Volume, Voodoo Ray and/or Pacific State and probably a bunch of other, less obvious things.
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I first heard Blue Monday somewhere around 1996-97. I was in my early 20s. It blew my head off, and it's still my favourite song. Suddenly a lot of the music I really loved made sense to me: I could see where it'd come from.
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Blue Monday was the first electronic music I remember hearing. Profound impact then and since.
I'm also impressed that the first track to push the 12'' single vinyl format seems to still be its biggest seller, several decades later. Mind you, might just be that CDs came in at the right time to rescue us from any Lionel Richie or Huey Lewis ones.
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Or so the typically Tony Wilson legend goes ... That might have just been the first pressing.
It was more than that. Any dosh that Factory made from New Order (and there there are bountiful income streams beyond the 12" sales) was largely funneled back into the black hole that was The Hacienda, and countless other Factory $$$ sponges. New Order must have generated vast sums in the 1980s but it wasn't until the London /FFRR deal was done with Roger Ames, when he extracted them from Wilson in 1990, that they saw much of it.
I'm also impressed that the first track to push the 12'' single vinyl format seems to still be its biggest seller
The 12" was around and selling in big numbers way before Blue Monday, with the first coming out of NY indies like Salsoul around '75 (I can put my hand up and say I co-released the first in NZ, complete with prescient Avatar imagery in '78).
Blue Monday was the first UK hit to be released only on 12", thus it's sales, which put it as the biggest selling 12" in the UK . Records like Beat It and Planet Rock sold many more on 12" worldwide, and another English act, the now largely forgotten Junior Giscombe, outsold it in the US on 12".
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I sit corrected :)
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Looks like we've finally found the PAS equivalent of an HR Bateman cartoon.
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Oh I think the equivalent statement would be "I think aspirin is overrated".
If Rich had just said "I didn't like it" I suspect the intake of breath wouldn't have been so audible.
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New Order notoriously made virtually nothing from Blue Monday in the 1980s (or from their records) although I'm sure they are not short of a few quid, but as of 2009, at least two if them still live in the same street they grew up in.
As the above video proves, they're 100% salt-of-the-earth bogans.
Betcha even Rubbery loves them. -
That's, to steal a phrase from the vid, ACE, Joe. I love the bit where Barney points to the usually emotionless Gillian and sings "I've never looked at you in a sexual way in my life before".
Never seen it before.
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blasphemy Joe!
(this is what Stephen Morris tells us of his school days:
"At school the older boys wore RAF greatcoats and carried rock LPs, (usually the Best of Cream or Deep Purple) under their arms - on display - so you could see how hip they were. Eventually music replaced my early obession with model aeroplanes and tanks and I learnt how to play the drums.I got expelled from school, got caught shoplifting and generally misbehaved - I think my parents were just relieved I didn't end up in jail.... ")
pure intelligentsia, those Macclesfield lads and lasses!
no, its the Salford boys who just let it all hang out. -
Looks like we've finally found the PAS equivalent of an HR Bateman cartoon.
"The man who didn't think Blue Monday was all that good".Well, their charms eluded me too. But I also didn't get Portishead until Portishead 3 as I had unwisely considered them to be hairstylists music. The same for Radiohead.
Maybe I have always been out of step. The Beatles have nil resonance for me as their time coincided with the time I was discovering American blues. I also liked The Pretty Things more than the Stones.I guess I should crawl into a corner and suck on a dry Weetbix.
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The Beatles have nil resonance for me
Are you all trying to kill me? Rich doesn't like 'Blue Monday', Geoff doesn't like The Beatles. What's next? Is someone going to tell me they think Little Richard was too over the top? Frank Sinatra isn't a very good interpretive vocalist? Bob Dylan's lyrics are too banal? Gene Krupa is a shitty drummer? :)
(I kid. After one of my best friends announced he thought Echo and the Bunnymen were the best band to come out of Liverpool, I think I used up all my quota of mock-outrage.)
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But I also didn't get Portishead until Portishead 3 as I had unwisely considered them to be hairstylists music. The same for Radiohead.
If you got their self-titled album first, rather than Dummy, then you can be excused. It was average. And 3 and Dummy are quite different. A couple of years ago some enlightened friends of mine were discussing that Dummy was possibly the best music to make love to.
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Are you all trying to kill me?
Never, never, never Danielle. It is not that I don't like The Beatles but I was just trying to say that they have no personal resonance for me, in terms of stirring memories, reliving old thrills, prickling hairs-on-the-back-of-my-neck. This is no commentary on your infinite good taste and judgement (Al Green et al)
In my youth I was rather snotty about Elvis too, until ( later on) I read Slow Train to Memphis and discovered his early recordings. -
The same for Radiohead.
I'm going to have to go lie down for a bit. Although I do know others who can't stand his whiny voice, but if I displayed my abject idolatry for New Order above, wait until I get started on Radiohead.
No, actually, can't be bothered.
Here's Thom Yorke and Unkle doing Rabbit in the Headlights, which for some strange reason seems apposite.
Late breaking advisory, it is not a cheery video, but it is, IMhO, a great one, and it gets better at the end.
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In my youth I was rather snotty about Elvis too, until ( later on) I read Slow Train to Memphis and discovered his early recordings.
That book is what made me go on a road trip to Memphis. I'm so glad I did, as we now have a brick from the original Stax building sitting on our bookshelf. (There was a record store there selling them for ten dollars apiece, with a certificate of authenticity!)
Personally, I'm waiting for the critical reappraisal of the jumpsuit Elvis period (early 70s, at least). Yes, he was a drugged-out cheeseball, but his bands were always absolutely cracking and on good days he could still sing just about anything. But hey, I have a high tolerance for maudlin tosh like 'Don't Cry Daddy', so what do I know?
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I'd guess perhaps I'm a bit too young to 'get' the relevant context.
No offense intended, Rich, but that line always irks me. Amongst my most loved works are the Miles Davis collection, Birth Of Cool, Elvis' Sun Collection, a couple of Charlie Parker albums from the 1940s, an Ellington collection of remastered 78s dating back to the 1920s, Coltrane's Giant Steps, a swag of of NZ 45s from 60-63, many old Chess masters, and so on..all of which predate my time as a conscious buyer of new records. I love these records and fully understand their relevance and importance, in the same way I get the relevance of Guernicia or a billion other things that predate me.
Well, as Sacha has pointed out, I seem to have conflated "I didn't like it" with "It's overrated". Which may say something interesting about my ego, but I'm too busy telling myself how awesome I am to bother spending time examining that.
When I was growing up, my parents spent a lot of time trying to drum an appreciation of classical music into me. My dad was also a massive jazz fan, so I got exposed to a lot of that as well, including a whole bunch of the stuff you mention. Naturally, as soon as I hit my teens, I turned into the worlds biggest metalhead (I was 6-7 years too late for punk).
Intellectually, I 'get' the context. Since you mention 'Guernica', I'll note that I spent some time last year reading Anthony Beevor's 'Battle for Spain', along with Orwell's 'Homage to Catalonia'. Plus the first two of the three Richard Evans books you mentioned in the Nazi thread.
And as I type this, I'm listening to tracks by Curtis Mayfield, Aaron Neville and Sly Stone. When they were first released, I was probably more likely to be listening to 'sing a song of playschool', if the album I salvaged from my parents collection is any indication.
I do actually like 'Blue Monday' (but not that much). I just...think it's overrated. But that's just my opinion and clearly I'm heavily outnumbered. So perhaps 'get' should be replaced with 'feel'. Or 'dig', or 'groove to', or somesuch. Intellectually, yes, fine, they changed the face of music. But it doesn't bypass my brain, hit my gut and set my toes a tapping. Same as The Beatles. I know what they did. But I'm probably not going to be sticking 'The White Album' on for a spin any time soon. I just don't like them that much (there. I said it).
Incidentally, since I'm intent on destroying all remaining traces of my musical cred, at the same time as I heard 'Blue Monday' for the first time, the same friend also played me this. Guess which one I liked more?
Blue Monday hasn't been remixed over and over again. There was the '88 mix, and then a brace of mixes in 1995, of which the Hardfloor mix was the killer (that was reissued in 2006), but that's all.
I know that. It just seemed to be omnipresent when I was growing up. In memory, just as it would start to fall of the radar, up pops another remix! A bit like Madonna's 'Holiday'. I was just having a wee troll.
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3410,
Yes, he was a drugged-out cheeseball, but...
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As for the third party remixes, that's like putting a $50 spoiler on a Ferrari. You could, but why would ya?
Well, 99% of the time I'd agree with you. Same with cover versions. But 1% of the time you get a glorious reinterpretation that puts a beautiful new twist on things.
Like this slab of aural delight: Kruder and Dorfmeister remixing Depeche Mode's 'Useless'.
Original here for purposes of comparison
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Yes, I'm a big fan of the 1% principle also, along with Depeche Mode.
To mention Johnny Cash doing Hurt would seem almost so obvious as to be irrelevant.
But I suspect some people don't like that either. Do I need to take another nana nap?
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I think Johnny Cash is the exception to the 1% cover version rule, since he's done so many good ones.
I prefer his version of 'personal jesus', though, staying on the Depeche Mode tip. The Marylin Manson version....not so much.
Incidentally, I reckon Johnny Cash is a gateway drug to country music. I used to be able say I liked all types of music, except Country and R'n'B. Since Johnny turned me on, only one of statements is true. I'm happily snorting up thick lines of Johnny Cash, CC Adcock, Martina McBride and Jace Everett.
Still, I'll know I've hit rock bottom when I start mainlining Luther Vandross.
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Oh, you... those Pretty Things!
I also liked The Pretty Things
more than the Stones.that's serious street cred Geoff!
...hell I think Phil May and the boys
may still be banned from most major
metropolitan centres in New Zild
See: Pretty Things in ListenerThe Pretty Things featured heavily in the playlist of The Basket Cases at the Gresham in Chch in the late '70s, various members went on to other bands: Toy Love, The Playthings, The Bats, The Androidss, The Gordons / Bailter Space, amongst others...
Beep! Beep! See...
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