The one you love is the one that should take you higher

I am always astounded by some of the groups that throw people out for taking too many drugs.  Ozzy Osbourne was one (https://wordpress.com/post/fivemilesout.home.blog/1681 ).  Guns ‘n’ Roses drummer Stephen Adler was thrown out of the band for his habit, given that this was a band that had narcotics delivered by the truckload that is a hell of an achievement.

The Gunners should not have been special.  Read Slash’s autobiography and compare it with Motley Crue’s book.  West Coast Hair Metal bands.  Children from broken homes and difficult backgrounds.  Hanging out on the Sunset Strip living in disgusting accommodation with drug addicts.  Lots of groupies and relationships/ marriages with porn stars.  All the same for both bands.  Yet the Crue are a footnote in music history and the Gunners are not only the greatest American hair metal band ever, teenagers still wear their T-shirts and they are respected by them, despite it being nearly thirty years since the band effectively ended.

In the film Terminator 2: Judgement Day James Cameron wanted to make the point that young John Connor was a badass.  So he put him in a Public Enemy T shirt and played Guns ‘n’s Roses’ You Could be Mine over his first scene.

There were originally two bands.  Hollywood Rose and LA Guns, there are albums with material from these groups available (The Roots of Guns ‘n’ Roses).  The bands merged but egos meant Tracii Guns left to reform the LA Guns and the world had Guns ‘n’ Roses.

I first heard them on the radio and I borrowed their debut album, Appetite For Destruction after one of Neil’s parties (this was pre-Dumper forming and playing at the parties https://wordpress.com/post/fivemilesout.home.blog/384 ).  I recorded the singles, but I was not really interested in yet another American hair metal band.

Later that year when they played Castle Donnington there were deaths in the mosh pit and some of the guys were there.  We were relieved that they all came home safely, though I did not expect Neil to be in the pit.  I also heard about the controversy over the album cover.  The first picture is the one that was used after the furore about the second one below.

(Official cover)

(Cover abandoned because of rape imagery)

I listed to the album properly after being on holiday in 1991 (Andy had taken a stereo and it was played) and was surprised at how good it is.  Not just the famous tracks like Sweet Child O’ Mine (I once met a woman who was in the video for that) or Paradise City, but tracks about heroin (Mr Brownstone) or groupies (Rocket Queen).

The Gunners were an example of a group who got bigger and bigger whilst they toured their material.  There was an EP of acoustic material – G’n’R Lies, which raised controversy with its AIDs references to LGBTQ+ people and people of colour.  Not views any sane person would endorse but at that time it just added to their outlaw image.

There was a weird thing in 1992 where artists released two albums on the same day rather than release a double album (Bruce Springsteen did it, though with a better thematic reason).  The Gunners released Use Your Illusion I and II.  A total of 30 songs and over two and a half hours of music.  The standard of this is absolutely awesome, yet it turns out that the recording was riven by disagreement and chaos.  Axl prevailed and there were keyboards on tracks like November Rain, whereas Slash wanted to keep the group focused on its metal agenda.  Axl got it right in my opinion.

It was always fun to play Get In the Ring on the jukebox at the Norfolk pub in Colchester – “What you pissed off cuz your dad gets more pussy than you?  Well fuck you, suck my fucking dick.”  Always caused a stir.

At the height of their powers and success it all fell apart.  There was one more album of covers, The Spaghetti Incident, and members departed in droves.  Slash, Duff McKagan and Izzy Stradlin being the important ones.  To be Guns ‘n’ Roses you have to have Axl, Izzy, Duff and Slash.

Axl recruited new members, which meant that the tours were really Axl Rose events with a backing band.  There was a rumoured album, Chinese Democracy, that was always on the verge of coming out.  Izzy, Slash, Duff McKagan and Matt Sorum formed Velvet Revolver (https://wordpress.com/post/fivemilesout.home.blog/1356 ) and that was much closer to a Guns’ n’ Roses album than Chinese Democracy was when it finally appeared in 2008, 15 years after the last album.

There have been reunions and tours – money talks (as Axl would know from his stint as substitute vocalist for AC/DC).  I am not sure that seeing them so long after they were at the peak of their powers is worthwhile.  I prefer to remember them as the most dangerous band in the world, the brilliance of their song writing and their aggressive performances.  Most hair metal bands were destroyed by grunge, the Gunners reputation stayed intact.

Their real peak lasted 6 years and involved 50 songs.  There is an argument for them being the most successful metal band ever in how far they could crossover into the mainstream (definitely more than Iron Maiden, Metallica or Black Sabbath).  Absolutely glorious music to play driving on a hot summer day.  Except for the fact that both the times my car has genuinely broken down on a journey (dirt from the petrol jamming the carburettor and failure of the fuel pump on a busy 4 lane roundabout in the rush hour) the Gunners have been playing in my car. 

Iron Maiden are my favourite metal band but I think there is a massive case for Guns ‘n’ Roses to be considered the greatest metal band ever.

This is not one of their better-known tracks.  Like a lot of songs I like it builds to a climax with several speed changes.

Breakdown

Playlist:

  1. Reckless Life
  2. Welcome to the Jungle
  3. Paradise City
  4. Sweet Child O’ Mine
  5. Mr Brownstone
  6. Rocket Queen
  7. My Michelle
  8. Think About You
  9. Used to Love Her
  10. One in a Million
  11. Right Next Door to Hell
  12. Dust ‘n’ Bones
  13. Live and Let Die
  14. Back Off Bitch
  15. Double Talkin’ Jive
  16. November Rain
  17. Coma
  18. Civil War
  19. Get In the Ring
  20. Shotgun Blues
  21. Pretty Tied Up
  22. Breakdown
  23. Locomotive (Complicity)
  24. Estranged
  25. You Could Be Mine
  26. You Can’t Put Your Arms Around A Memory

Just hold your heading true

I like Mike Oldfield, but you have to weigh up the legacy of his music against the fact that without him Richard Branson would probably be an obscure ex-Hippie and not the annoying utter twat that he is.  Without the phenomenal success of Tubular Bells there would have been no Virgin Music, Virgin Airlines, Virgin Galactic or any of the other million and one ventures he has inflicted on the world (the vast majority of which lost money) while tax dodging on his own island.  Asking for money for the government for Virgin Airlines in the pandemic, having paid no tax for years and sitting on a fortune.

It is hard to say much nice about the USA these days, but they have a better attitude to taxing their citizens.  They get taxed on their income wherever they are in the world.  Britain allows citizens to be non-domiciled and pay minimal tax (King of these hypocrites is Viscount Rothermere, owner of the Daily Mail who advocates all kind of crap for the UK but barely pays tax here).

I heartily dislike Alan Sugar, but he at least has the decency to be UK resident and pay tax (unlike his US counterpart the mound of orange seeping vile pus that is Donald Trump).  If you are not domiciled in the UK should you be allowed to vote?  Or own media companies that have a huge influence on opinion and government direction?  You do not have to deal with those outcomes.  The Daily Mail campaigned furiously for Brexit, yet its owner does not have to deal with the ramifications.

I was aware of Mike Oldfield due to Tubular Bells (the music used in The Exorcist) but it was a trip to Royston in 1982 when Graham played me Five Miles Out that I really got into his music.  The track was the lead single from the album with the same title, yet took as long to record as the rest of the album put together, even though it is less than 10% of the running time.  It is the true story of the Oldfield being on small plane that flew into a storm.  Musically it is extremely complex and repays repeated listening.

Oldfield’s earlier music was long instrumentals – most famously Tubular Bells, but also Hergest Ridge and Ommadawn.

From 1980’s QE2 the albums became split between longer form pieces (usually one side of a vinyl album) and a selection of shorter songs.  Singles success was sparse, though Family Man from Five Miles Out as a hit for Hall & Oates, though the Oldfield version is much better.  QE2 is a strange album, with covers of tracks by Abba and the Shadows (as well as his own tracks) but done in Oldfield’s multi-instrumental quasi-Celtic style.  I am probably over fond of it as it was a background to so many good times with guys from Royston.  Of the longer form pieces Oldfield thinks Crisis is the best and I am not going to argue with him – it is a stunning piece of music (the playlist below is the longest in running time of any).

Moonlight Shadow was the most successful single from this era (it is about John Lennon’s death).  Other singles were sadly not hits, despite the musical quality being very high.

He returned to Tubular Bells in the 90s with Tubular Bells 2, recording a new version.  In many ways it is better than the original.  I am not sure that we needed further versions like Tubular Bells 3 or The Millennium Bell.

The experience of discovering Five Miles Out with Graham, as well as John Bonney, Alan Curtis and Paul Ashby, people who really appreciated music and how well music can be put together rather than just as background noise, was just one wonderful thing about that group of friends.

Five Miles Out

Playlist:

  1.  Tubular Bells
  2. Hergest Ridge
  3. In Dulci Jubilo
  4. Taurus I
  5. Wonderful Land
  6. Taurus II
  7. Five Miles Out
  8. Orabidoo
  9. Crises
  10. Moonlight Shadow
  11. Foreign Affair
  12. Taurus III
  13. To France
  14. Poison Arrows
  15. Tricks of the Light
  16. Tubular Bells 2

To describe the way I feel

Without the Stone Roses I probably would not be writing this blog (take that as a good or bad thing depending on your opinion of it).  I was thoroughly not enamoured with the music scene of the late 1980s.  Following Punk, New Wave and the New Romantics nothing happened in popular music.  It got blander and blander, culminating in the rise of Stock Aitken and Waterman, Bros and other bland music. 

The arrival of Madchester and Rave changed that.  There was finally an injection of creativity into the British music scene (that would later be extinguished by the creation of boy and girl bands then the karaoke pap of Simon Cowell – totally destroying the dominance of British music in the USA).

It was heavily influenced by the Byrds (https://wordpress.com/post/fivemilesout.home.blog/1669 ) with a jangly guitar sound.  I was pretty sure that it was not the “She” track I was looking for (https://wordpress.com/post/fivemilesout.home.blog/2104 ) but She Bangs the Drum could have been the one so I tried it.  I am so glad I did – from the opening bars of I Wanna Be Adored to the inspiring crescendo of I Am the Resurrection the album is not only one of the greatest debuts ever it is one of the greatest albums ever.

Tracks were played by local bands in Essex, especially the King Cut Groovers, who were Brightlingsea’s premier band, until surpassed by Dumper (https://wordpress.com/post/fivemilesout.home.blog/384 ).  The Groovers had an energetic live act mixing ska tracks with rock music, always a good night out.

I wanted more and scoured shops for the singles that were not on the album.  Their debut single Sally Cinnamon is beautiful (and its flip side, Mersey Paradise, ranks as a classic as well).  The non-album single, Elephant Stone, is a masterpiece.  I also got the singles from the album for the B sides – now they are all compiled into an album so are easier to find.

The Roses had signed a terrible record deal and after two-post debut album singles (Fool’s Gold and One Love) they tried to leave for Geffen records and it all went quiet.  They had been poised to be massive as the leading Madchester band, but they were away and the Happy Mondays and the Charlatans became the most visible faces of the movement.

The two singles had shown the band moving in a new direction, with a focus on the rhythm section of Mani and Reni.  I first heard One Love in a pub on the way from Newmarket to Southwold (I was taking my widowed grandmother out for the day and we stopped half way for a coffee.  The, mostly, older people in the pub were shocked at the jukebox coming to life.  The day was not a success as we had lunch when we got to Southwold, then she decided she wanted to go home, we had been there barely 90 minutes).  I am pretty sure their second album (or, rather, their lost second album) would not have been as good as their first.

My life had completely changed by the time the second album did come out – commuting to London and not having the music community that was in Compact Music.  Portentously titled Second Coming it seemed like guitarist John Squire had made the album with three other session musicians.  His guitar is far more dominant and straight forward rock. What made them interesting had gone.  There some good tracks and it is a nightmare following up a classic, but this was a different band.

The band floundered on with members leaving.  Their legacy was not only one of the greatest albums ever and being the voice of a generation, they also ran the defining gig of the era at Spike Island.  The Woodstock of the ecstasy generation, fusing rock and dance into a night that must have had a million attending if everyone who claims to have been there was.

Like a supernova they shone so bright, but for such a short time.

She Bangs the Drum

Playlist:

  1. Sally Cinnamon
  2. Mersey Paradise
  3. Elephant Stone
  4. Where Angels Play
  5. I Wanna Be Adored
  6. She Bangs the Drum
  7. Made of Stone
  8. Shoot You Down
  9. This Is The One
  10. I Am The Resurrection
  11. One Love
  12. Breaking Into Heaven
  13. Tenth Storey Love Song
  14. How Do You Sleep?

My life’s a vain pursuit of meaningless miles

On the same program that Paul Gambaccini played the Beatles (https://wordpress.com/post/fivemilesout.home.blog/2177 ) he played Jackie by Scott Walker.  He admitted that Walker was actually an American and, as this was meant to be a show about his favourite British artists, that this was a cheat.  Walker had lived in the UK for twenty years by then which was his get out clause.  Walker was almost a lost figure, but he was promoted heavily by DJ Mike Read and Julian Cope (https://wordpress.com/post/fivemilesout.home.blog/1024 ) – both big fans.

 Given that he was not a big name there was not even a CD release of his best songs until 1990, when Boy Child came out.  This remains a great place to start for anyone interested in Scott as it covers the period of his five best solo albums and ignores the MOR work that he did in the 70s.

Walker’s first three solo albums were all very successful.  He was a big enough star to have his own Saturday night TV variety show.  Admittedly he played standards rather than the more varied material on his albums (a combination of self-penned songs, covers of Jacques Brel songs which tended to focus on the seamy side of life and other covers of less well known material).

Scott 4 was his first all self-written album.  It bombed completely and that affected him for years.  It should not have failed – it is one of my favourite albums ever.  It is full of beautiful songs even if they have titles like The Old Man’s Back Again (Dedicated to the Neo-Stalinist Regime).  The best track is The Seventh Seal, based on the Ingmar Bergman film of the same name.  In a plague stricken Middle Ages a knight plays Death for the souls of the dying.  Watching the film opened my eyes to foreign films, something I had not had time for since leaving university.

(The Seventh Seal)

I once put a tape on in the car with passengers on the way back from a Rotoract event which started with The Seventh Seal – the response was unfriendly to say the least.  It is not a song for someone who wants a standard pop song.  The counterpoint between his deep crooner’s voice and the material is a part of the success of the track.

The next album returned to success but was co-written for the most part.  It is still good, including the insanely beautiful Thanks For Chicago Mr James.  The rest of the 70s were filled with albums of MOR covers and a two album Walker Brothers revival.  The latter was totally different from their output in the 60s – gone were the standard pop covers and the screaming fans – instead it was deeper and more introspective, even with a hint of disco.

After that there were long gaps between his albums Climate of Hunter, Tilt, The Drift and so on.  These are really fan material only as they are pretty inaccessible without a major effort.

He died of cancer in March 2019 and has been described as one of the most influential musicians of the twentieth century.  He has a legion of fans amongst active musicians and his influence has been titanic.

The greatest voice ever in popular music.

The Seventh Seal

Playlist:

  1. Montague Terrace (in Blue)
  2. Angelica
  3. The Lady Came From Baltimore
  4. Such a Small Love
  5. Always Coming Back To You
  6. Jackie
  7. Best of Both Worlds
  8. The Amorous Humphrey Plugg
  9. Plastic Palace People
  10. We Came Through
  11. It’s Raining Today
  12. The Rope and the Colt
  13. Mathilde
  14. The Plague
  15. The Seventh Seal
  16. Boy Child
  17. Hero of the War
  18. The Old Man’s Back Again (Dedicated to the Neo-Stalinist Regime)
  19. Duchess
  20. World’s Strongest Man
  21. Get Behind Me
  22. The Rhymes of Goodbye
  23. Thanks for Chicago Mr James
  24. ‘Til the Band Comes In
  25. The War is Over (Sleepers)
  26. Three
  27. Angels of Ashes
  28. Farmer in the City (Remembering Pasolini)
  29. Cossacks Are

Those were the best days of my life

Whilst our first couple of nights in Kos 1991 had been good, it had really just been drinking excessively and dancing to heavy metal.  Dave thought that there had to be more and found out that, whilst Bar Street was the hangout of choice for the Scandinavians, most of the British tourists went out at night somewhere else.

The next night we struck out away from the harbour and were a bit sceptical walking down darkened streets (streetlights were only in the busiest areas), then cutting off the main road towards the sea.  It was right though, a few hundred yards further on was a row of incredibly lively bars.

Our favourite was Club 69, though we also liked Garage next door.  As can be seen from the second picture there was not a lot to these places.  A bar which could be locked up and some seats outside.  Plenty of people drinking in the street (though the police did not like that if they came past – but that was rare).  The toilets were not much to write home about – they did not even qualify as sheds.  Oddly the male and female toilets switched half way through the holiday.  (The toilets at Heaven club just up the road were better but the first time I went in I saw the hilarious scene of every toilet, urinal and sink in use one guy looked round and started using the waste bin –  well it was hilarious after a lot of Amstel).

(Me, Neil and Andy at Club 69)

(Dave, me and Andy at Club 69 with it looking more prosaic in daylight)

All the bars had kamackis – usually men – outside trying to lure customers in, often with drink discounts or vague promises about how lively it would be.  Then there were the waitresses (and the bars were all waitress service), uniformly dressed in skimpy black outfits and there to attract the men in.  They had to have good memories and be adept at avoiding unwanted hands.

(1992 at Club 69)

Club 69 was rocking in 1991 and it became our bar of choice (except for the weekend which was the UK changeover flight time and it was very quiet).  We got on well with Demu, who was the chief kamacki;  we nicknamed Jason (the other kamacki) as Justin, as when he had sex he was only just in (I didn’t say it was comedy genius).  Miriam and Mandy, the waitresses, went to town on us the last night as we were polite and good tippers.

For most days we would get up and lounge by the Cosmopolitan pool, about 2km walk from our apartments, playing American Football in the water or diving in (in Dave’s case swimming huge numbers of lengths).  We even played tennis at the court next to it, though that was hard in the heat.

(Andy’s burn meant that he had to take safety measures, Neil is not sympathetic)

Evenings would involve a meal and a sleep to recharge the batteries for a long night out.

(By the pool – me at the front reading a book about banking, John, then Neil and finally Andy – Dave took the picture.  Tie dyed shorts were in fashion)

Opposite Club 69 was a sandwich bar that had the widest range of ingredients that I have ever seen – including cold omelette.  Never had a holiday like this one – definitely the best days of our lives.

This song was originally written about a young man’s first sexual encounters, but as it was developed evolved into a song harking back to youth.  In the final version of the song the title seems to harken back to 1969, in the original the meaning was very different.  Obviously this was the theme tune for Club 69.  Bryan Adams always found it strange that this was not a hit in the UK, yet it was the song most requested and cheered for it at gigs.  The amount it is played on the radio and video channels would suggest that it was huge.  Sometimes the audience just get it wrong as this a wonderful track, a soft rocker that is easy to sing along to, with the lyrics about a lost innocent childhood when responsibilities were less.

Summer of 69

This means nothing to me

There was something about Berlin.  At school I did not understand how the Soviet Union blockaded Berlin as I assumed that it was on the border between East and West Germany as it was split between the NATO powers and the Warsaw Pact nations.  When I finally saw a map then I realised how it had happened.  The fact that West Berlin was an isolated enclave within another country, surrounded by a wall and the most vulnerable point in the Cold War gave it a “live for now because tomorrow it could be over” feeling.

Berlin had become the in place to record after David Bowie’s trilogy of albums in the late 70s (Bowie is yet to come on the list).  Ultravox had been fronted by John Foxx (https://wordpress.com/post/fivemilesout.home.blog/1461 ) for some unsuccessful albums.  He was replaced by Midge Ure, formerly of the Rich Kids and a mover in the New Romantic music scene.  He was part of Visage – the New Romantic supergroup – at least for their first album.

They recorded the album Vienna, which is possibly the ultimate early 80s synth album.

It is austere, even cold in its musical design.  That is not to say that all the songs are like the title track.  Some are almost like rock tracks, just played with electronic instruments.  The start of side 2 has the first three tracks mixed together – the very downbeat Mr X (the only track Midge Ure is not the vocalist on), merging into the much more rock Western Promise, ending with the cold beauty of Vienna.  The integrity of this as a listening experience (along with many other albums) is what is so disappointing about modern streaming where the emphasis is on tracks, quite apart from the fact that I can curate my own playlists and do need someone telling me what to listen to.  The title track is a classic, but the album builds (on both sides) both musically and thematically, with track sequencing being very important (Black Sabbath’s Mob Rules has two different running orders and the there is a different feel to them).

The song Vienna is about a lost love but the image I got of it was of that post World War 2 reconstruction of the cities on the front line of the Cold War, as Vienna was.  The type of thing you can see in the film The Third Man.  (I used to think Orson Welles was overrated and then I actually saw Citizen Kane and realised that he was a grand talent).

Ultravox released another album recorded in Berlin later in 1981 – Rage in Eden.  Nothing wrong with it, but it did not touch the heady heights of its predecessor.

Like the music scene in general in the mid-80s Ultravox got a bit blander and less individual with the album Quartet, though controversy was stirred by a video of the single Visions In Blue with ample nudity (a cheap way of getting publicity with two topless women soaping each other down).  Lament is their best post Vienna album and gave them their second biggest single – Dancing With Tears In My Eyes – a depiction of  a man trying to get home after a warning about the start of a nuclear attack (a common fear of the eighties – see post like https://wordpress.com/post/fivemilesout.home.blog/1965 ).

There was another album before Ure left for a solo career; then a post Ure album that passed almost unnoticed.

Like a lot of eighties bands they reunited in the 21st century for the nostalgia tours.  Ultravox made a new album and bucked the trend of these being rubbish by releasing Brilliant (and that name is a hostage to fortune) which was very good.

The best song to reach number 2 that never made number 1?  It was voted that.  For one week it was kept off the top by the recently deceased John Lennon’s Woman and for three weeks by the awful Shaddup Your Face by Joe Dulce.  Undoubtedly.  Distinctive, with an atmospheric video recorded in Vienna and London. 

Vienna

Playlist (21 & 22 by Ure solo, 23 by Ure & Mick Karn):

  1. Astradyne
  2. New Europeans
  3. Passing Strangers
  4. Sleepwalk
  5. Mr X
  6. Western Promise
  7. Vienna
  8. The Voice
  9. We Stand Alone
  10. The Thin Wall
  11. Reap the Wild Wind
  12. Serenade
  13. Mine For Life
  14. Cut and Run
  15. We Came to Dance
  16. White China
  17. One Small Day
  18. Dancing With Tears in Our Eyes
  19. A Friend I Call Desire
  20. All Fall Down
  21. If I Was
  22. Call of the Wild
  23. After a Fashion

Let bitter silence infect the wound

It is hard to imagine how much grief Marillion got in the music press when they started out.  A prog rock band in 1981/82?  The music press thought that punk had killed off prog rock and now this band appear who are playing a 17-minute track based on Anglo-Saxon folklore called Grendel.  What did Sid Vicious die for they asked?  (Well heroin obviously but that is not the point).

Each of their albums revolves around a concept.  This was terminally unfashionable but adds strength and theme to each one.  The band were an uncomfortable fit for their time and Fish, the lead singer, not the best adjusted to a rock and roll lifestyle.

Their first album, Script For a Jester’s Tear, is a concept album. Just six tracks over about 47 minutes, including Garden Party about privilege, The Web about a breaking down marriage and Forgotten Sons about a soldier in Northern Ireland.  The album is not complete without the single Market Square Heroes and its B sides Three Boats Down From the Candy and Grendel.  These take the running time to nearly 70 minutes, a full length album even for the CD age.

The follow up is more inconsistent.

The cover pf the second album, Fugazi (American military slang for everything is all fucked up) was voted 29th best album cover ever for its unflinching vision of a drug overdose.  In fact it is the dead Jester from the first album (as can be seen by the reflection in the mirror where the body is still wearing the costume) and other hints about tracks.  It is an inconsistent album, but the half made up of Fugazi, Assassing and Incubus is stunning.

Marillion are most famous for the single Kayleigh from their third album, Misplaced Childhood.  This is loosely based on the youth of the lead singer, Fish (https://wordpress.com/post/fivemilesout.home.blog/1474 ).  Kayleigh is typical of how rock bands would do one softer track on an album to get a hit – the twist with this is it is Fish’s apology to all the women he had mistreated in his past rather than just a straight love song.

The fourth album, Clutching at Straws is very depressing.  The concept of a man failing at his life, retreating into alcohol and hotel bars (supposedly a descendent of the earlier Jester).  The lead single, Incommunicado, summed up Fish’s attitude to life on the road and this was his last album with the band.

Marillion continued as Fish went solo.  They got a new lead singer but have admitted that they should probably have changed their name, but there is value in group names.  That is why there are multiple versions of all bands from the 60s, 70s and 80s touring to extract money from their fans.

Seasons End is as almost as good an album as what had gone before, though Fish’s lyrics would be missed.  The title track is prescient for an album from the late 80s as climate change was not a subject that was being covered.  Like Fish’s solo career the second album is not as good and shows that it really is a different band now (though the single Cover My Eyes (Pain and Heaven) is a classic).

I haven’t followed the group since then and, unlike Fish, no one I know has ever really said that I should.

Criminally overlooked, the main line up of the first four albums produced some incredible music that repays close attention to the lyrics, while being musically complex.

Assassing

Playlist:

  1. Market Square Heroes
  2. Three Boats Down From the Candy
  3. Grendel
  4. Script For a Jester’s Tear
  5. Garden Party
  6. Chelsea Monday
  7. Forgotten Sons
  8. Assassing
  9. Incubus
  10. Fugazi
  11. Cinderella Search
  12. Lady Nina
  13. Freaks
  14. Heart of Lothian
  15. Lords of the Backstage
  16. Childhoods End?
  17. White Feather
  18. White Russian
  19. Incommunicado
  20. The Last Straw
  21. The King of Sunset Town
  22. Seasons End
  23. Hooks in You
  24. Cover My Eyes (Pain and Heaven)
  25. Holidays in Eden

You’re dangerous ‘cos your honest

What was going to come after New Wave and the New Romantics?  It seemed like there would be a glacial, Celtic music from Simple Minds (https://wordpress.com/post/fivemilesout.home.blog/2247 ), Echo and the Bunnymen (https://wordpress.com/post/fivemilesout.home.blog/436 ) and later Big Country (https://wordpress.com/post/fivemilesout.home.blog/746 ).  The band that seemed least likely to succeed from the group was U2.  In 1980/81 it was widely held in the music press that they were very talented, but would never be commercial enough to be a success.

(Edge, Bono, Larry & Adam)

These days they get a lot of criticism, some focusing on Bono being a do-gooder, some on the hypocrisy of their tax arrangements.  I think that their biggest problem was that they became too successful.  For a group that was formed in 1976, had their first top 10 UK single in 1983, that is a long time at the top and they have been a stadium level band since the late 80s so if you do not like them that is a long time to be around with their music being treated reverently and loved so much by so many.

I had heard them on evening Radio 1 and in the summer of 1981 they released Fire (which was about burning down the fictional village their first album was based in). It scraped into the Top 40 and earned them a summer appearance on Top of the Pops but that was it.  The follow up, Gloria, which is still hugely popular live, was not a hit and nor was the non-album single A Celebration!

This was all during the era of their difficult second album, October, when they temporarily split up with all of them, apart from Adam, joining a strict Christian community.  October is a difficult album, but a lot of second albums are.

Then the dam broke and New Year’s Day (about the Polish Trade Union Solidarity – famously Thatcher hated unions in the UK but loved Solidarity as it was against the Communists) was a top 10 hit, the piano counterpointing the normal guitars.  They only released two singles from War, something that endeared them to proper music fans, the obvious single Sunday, Bloody Sunday was not released for to avoid controversy I assume– though Bono was at pains live to point out that it was not a rebel song.  There was a video of the concert at Red Rocks in Colorado that had excerpts played on Channel 4’s trendy music show The Tube for several weeks.

It looked like the dam would break and that they were ready for superstardom.  Instead of a commercial LP they released The Unforgettable Fire.  Side 1 is mostly fine, most of side 2 is experimental.  The lead single about Martin Luther King even more firmly nailed their earnestness to the mast, though the second single (and title track) about the first atomic bomb did the same, but less people understood what it was about. 

In 1987 The Joshua Tree sent them to superstardom and during the tour they recorded Rattle and Hum.  Part live album, part covers and part new material.  It involved blues legend BB King on one track.  This was materials based on the American roots of popular music.

At the end of a Christmas mini tour in Ireland Bono said they had to go away and dream it all up again (I may have only seen them a couple of times live but I have heard hundreds of their concerts).

Reading U2 At the End of the World is fascinating about the era that came after this.  Not just their return with a far more industrial sound and the loss of their earnestness on Achtung Baby, or the bacchanalian nature of the tour (with Adam dating Naomi Campbell and being intoxicated a lot) but also the creative process.

It is clear that working with Brian Eno and Flood, combined with the change in direction inspired a massive surge of creativity.  So much so that while on a two-year tour supporting the album they recorded Zooropa, which is even more experimental than Achtung Baby.  They also used Paul Oakenfold to remix tracks into much more dance friendly versions and used him as a s DJ to open for them on tour.

There was even the non U2 album Passengers with a lot of external collaborators (most famously Miss Sarajevo – the group were very high profile in protesting what was happening in the former Yugoslavia https://wordpress.com/post/fivemilesout.home.blog/2123 ).

The evidence of the book even points to the fact that some, if not a lot, of the ideas were still being used on 1997’s Pop.  An album the band were unsatisfied with but had to get out for a tour deadline.  On compilation albums the tracks from Pop are always remixed.  I expect the twentieth anniversary release will include at least two version of the album – original and the one they wanted.

I see the next pair – All You Can Leave Behind and How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb linked in the same way (led by Beautiful Day and Vertigo respectively).  I saw them tour both of these.  The first was at Earls Court and intimate.  The second in 2006 was at Twickenham in a gig where we queued from mid-afternoon to get in and they were not on stage until 8.30pm (it was Midsummer’s Day and they wanted it dark).  Even worse it was live on Radio 1 from 9pm – so they pretended to start again and played Vertigo for a second time.  At a cost of over £100 per ticket, plus merch and food and drinks and travel I had hoped the audience would be the priority.  I managed to smuggle two water bottles in – which was lucky as it was 90 minutes back to mine and at after 11pm nowhere en route to get drinks – that lukewarm water may have the best taste of anything that I have ever drunk.  The ticket prices were already steep and for the 2015 following tour they were to be over £150 each.  I sold mine on stub hub as I was not well.  Even I thought that price was greedy.

After these two albums there have been three more and I cannot really recommend them.  Maybe it is a sign that once you reach 50 you can record new material, but it will not be as good as when you were young.  Then they do something lovely.  In Paris, not long after the terrorist attack at the Bataclan, they brought The Eagles of Death Metal on stage to finish their gig, playing as backing musicians.  I thought that that was classy.

I still think that they have produced an immense body of work and they are my favourite band.  Some people may be surprised I haven’t got a song placed higher, but they have so many good songs – it is that consistency that elevates them.

It’s pretty crap when your favourite band does not actually seem to like your favourite track they have made.  They did play an instrumental version of this at a sound check as we queued outside Twickenham – I hoped that it would be on the set list.  It wasn’t.

Who’s Gonna Ride Your Wild Horses?

Playlist (47-49 by The Passengers, 61 with Green Day):

  1. Boy/Girl
  2. Pete the Chop
  3. 11 O’Clock Tick Tock
  4. I Will Follow
  5. Stories For Boys
  6. A Day Without Me
  7. Out Of Control
  8. Fire
  9. Gloria
  10. Tomorrow
  11. A Celebration
  12. Treasure
  13. Electric Co. (live)
  14. Party Girl (live)
  15. Sunday, Bloody Sunday
  16. New Year’s Day
  17. Like A Song
  18. Surrender
  19. A Sort of Homecoming
  20. Pride (In the Name of Love)
  21. The Unforgettable Fire
  22. Indian Summer Sky
  23. Wire
  24. Where the Streets Have No Name
  25. With or Without You
  26. Red Hill Mining Town
  27. In God’s Country
  28. One Tree Hill
  29. Van Diemen’s Land
  30. Desire
  31. Hawkmoon 269
  32. Silver and Gold (live)
  33. Bullet the Blue Sky (live)
  34. When Love Comes To Town (Live from the Kingdom mix)
  35. Dancing Barefoot
  36. Zoo Station
  37. Until the End of the World
  38. Who’s Gonna Ride Your Wild Horses
  39. The Fly
  40. Ultraviolet (Light My Way)
  41. Even Better Than the Real Thing (Perfecto Mix)
  42. Salome (Zooromancer Revisited Mix)
  43. Where Did It All Go Wrong?
  44. Zooropa
  45. Lemon
  46. The Wanderer
  47. United Colours
  48. Your Blue Room
  49. Miss Sarajevo
  50. Discotheque
  51. Last Night on Earth
  52. Wake Up Dead Man
  53. The Sweetest Thing
  54. Beautiful Day
  55. Walk On
  56. New York (Nice Mix)
  57. Vertigo
  58. Yahweh
  59. City of Blinding Lights
  60. Electrical Storm
  61. The Saints are Coming
  62. Magnificent

To flow inside the spiral tide

John Bonney had introduced me to Stephen King with ‘Salems Lot.  I caught up with his back catalogue by the time I got to university, buying the books second hand for a fraction of the new price.

The Stand left a big impression on me.  It was the story of the world after a massive pandemic that almost wipes out the human race (COVID-19 has nothing on Captain Trips that kills over 99.99% of the population in short order).  It was not horror with monsters, though you can see the early signs of King’s overarching continuity it is not off-putting.  It is a monster of a book and even that has had chunks excised as the publisher said that it was too long to publish.  These cuts are very noticeable when you read the revised version that was issued in the early 90s.  I was surprised when I read the original that it included a line from the Blue Oyster Cult song (Don’t Fear) The Reaper.  I had heard it a few times on evening radio and it is a stunning song, but it was like they had never done anything else.  I was surprised that a writer I liked was into the same music I was – especially one from so far away and that much older.

There is a new TV version of The Stand showing – possibly the worst timing ever (pandemic on TV and pandemic in real life?) but that is the second version.  King’s work does not appear to adapt well to TV or the cinema.  The only total success was The Shawshank Redemption, based on a novella rather than a longer work and not horror at all.  Some have been ok.  The first series of Mr Mercedes was ok, but they really screwed up the second.  Dolores Claiborne had a good cast but lost so much of the depth of the book.  The Body, filmed as Stand By Me (from the same collection as Shawshank) and Carrie are ok too – but are like a child’s simplified version of the stories.

I thought The Outsider and The Dark Tower were unwatchable.  The two-part cinema version of It has been acclaimed (second go at the latter again) but it is poor and lacks any of the characterisation that makes King’s work rise above other writers in the genre.  It loses what makes the book great.  It is also too short – King’s novels are like doorsteps, but that is because he spends time with the characters and builds up the mundane world.  Four hours of film would never do it justice.  It would need to be a 20-part TV show to have a chance – let alone deal with some of the more unpleasant elements that the book dealt with but the film could not.

King has been one of my favourite authors for nearly 40 years and he continues to produce high quality fiction.  Not all of it is horror – books like Dolores Claiborne or Gerald’s Game are strictly not supernatural.  I always try and make sure I have a King novel or collection to read on holiday ever since 1991 when I took the revised version of The Stand.  Four Past Midnight is not recommended if you are flying though, the first story is The Langoliers and is an aeroplane catastrophe (not a crash or explosion – far more odd than that) – Andy warned me not to read it on the flight..

King almost died in a car accident at the start of the 21st century which prompted him to finish his Dark Tower sequence.  Some of his books around this time show a greater bitterness of character – Dreamcatcher and Cell feel different to his work both before and after.

Since then he has returned to exceptional form.  11/22/63 is a time travel story about the Kennedy assassination (and much more complex than the TV version) and I love time travel novels; Under the Dome is a typical King story about a cut-off community and how things break down and Mr Mercedes is very accessible for a newbie, with a story about catching a serial killer – though it does become more and more horrific.

He can still be genuinely chilling.  Revival seems very slow but builds to an absolutely horrifying climax (I read this on holiday in 2018 – the first half in four days, the second in 24 hours).  Not one to read if the prospect of death is already scary for you.

Joyland is a much shorter book and may be more manageable to many.  Set at a theme park in the early 70s it shows hardly anything in the way that one would expect but still properly scared me with a well-chosen scene that was not even shown “live”.

King remains an active presence online and an all-round good egg since he overcame his addiction issues 30 years ago.  I hope there are a few more novels in him.

I am not a big expert on Blue Oyster Cult.  I have four albums – Agents of Fortune, Fire of Unknown Origin, The Revolution By Night and Club Ninja.  Fans hate Club Ninja.  The band hates Club Ninja. Just really loathe it.  So of course that is where my favourite track is from.  I have posted the video on Facebook before as I think it is the kind of track that a lot of people would like, but either will never hear it or would never listen to Blue Oyster Cult.

Perfect Water

Playlist:

  1. (Don’t Fear) The Reaper
  2. ETI (Extra Terrestrial Intelligence)
  3. Debbie Denise
  4. Sinful Love
  5. Fallen Angel
  6. Fire of Unknown Origin
  7. The Revenge of Vera Gemini
  8. Burnin’ For You
  9. Joan Crawford
  10. Sole Survivor
  11. Vengeance (The Pact)
  12. Veteran of the Psychic Wars
  13. Perfect Water
  14. Dancing In the Ruins
  15. Make Rock Not War
  16. White Flags

Rain keeps falling

The very last of the Oscar entries is about the 1980s.  A decade when the arrival of video tapes and rental stores meant that you could see a lot more films.  For me going to university and then access to transport meant more chances to see first run movies too.

I am pretty disappointed with the 80s Oscar films.  1980’s Ordinary People is dull as hell and seeing Donald Sutherland then shows that age has actually improved his looks.  I never liked Raging Bull, so of the nominees Tess is the best, but you can live without any of these films.

In 1981 I am surprised that Raiders of the Lost Ark was nominated – despite the heavyweight duo behind the film and its almost perfect modern recreation of the 1940 movies serials, it is a lightweight story by Oscar standards.  Totally at the other end of the spectrum is the nomination of Warren Beatty’s Reds, worthy and interesting, but not exactly an easy watch about communism in the USA.

The deserved winner is the British film about the 1924 Olympics, particularly the story of the Christian evangelist Eric Liddell and the Jewish outsider at Cambridge Harold Abrahams.  It is everything the British do best in films – period drama, class and privilege, though the iconic music is from Greek genius Vangelis.

1982 continues the populist nominations, with ET, a film I really hate (see https://wordpress.com/post/fivemilesout.home.blog/1126 for why).  Dustin Hoffman’s cross-dressing comedy Tootsie is a much better film but also seems lightweight (this was incredibly popular with public school boys at university, I could not possibly comment on why).

The other three firms are serious.  The Verdict stars Paul Newman as an alcoholic lawyer suing a Catholic hospital for malpractice.  Missing is an incredibly powerful film set around the time of the 1973 coup in Chile when an American sponsored right-wing dictator came to power.  Sissy Spacek and Jack Lemmon star as wife and father-in-law looking for their lost husband/ son with the latter having to come to terms with the USA’s culpability.

These two were beaten by Gandhi, the epic story of one of the great figures of the first half of the 20th century.  From his experiences in Africa to his non-violent protests in India that contributed to independence.  A deserved winner but Missing is a must watch film too.

I am not sure how Terms of Endearment won in 1983- maybe a reward for Shirley MacLaine?  It is a mostly weak field.  The Dresser and Tender Mercies are okay, but The Right Stuff seems to be just a Reagan America piece of self-aggrandizement.

Undoubtedly The Big Chill should have won.  It is one of the best films of the decade.  It is about a group of Baby Boomers reuniting 15 years after they left university, catching up on the triumphs and tragedies of their lives after one of them commits suicide.  Not one for people who like action.

1984 is a year no one understands how the winner emerged – how the hell did Amadeus win?  It is not even a good film, let alone of Oscar quality – now considered one of the worst missteps in the Academy’s history.  That it beat the beautiful Passage to India or the heartrending The Killing Fields about the Khmer Rouge rule of Cambodia is even more shocking (in some ways the Blue Peter appeal for Cambodia when the country was liberated marked the end of my childhood as it was so shocking – Blue Peter was a children’s magazine program in the UK)..

In 1985 Out of Africa wins – great period drama plus Meryl Streep.  It beat Witness (which I am surprised was nominated as it is not much more than a generic thriller) and Kiss of the Spiderwoman which I found dull.  Prizzi’s Honour is John Huston’s last film, good but not one of his best. 

The Color Purple should have won for so many reasons – definitely the most important film of the year, if not the decade.

1986 and another underwhelming year.  Platoon won – but there have been a lot of better Vietnam films in the 80s.  There is Hannah and her Sisters, probably Woody Allen’s best film but that does not say a lot.  A Room With the View continues the 80s obsession with Ismail Merchant period films, but that is the best of the year.

1987 is better and the epic The Last Emperor wins, it is a good film and interesting to watch but a great film?  I think not.  Moonstruck is fun and Cher is a revelation, whilst Fatal Attraction is a defining film (though its sexual politics look awful now).

The best is Broadcast News, a film that is as relevant now on the dumbing down of the media as it was when it was released.

I like Rain Man – a touching film about how his autistic brother gets Tom Cruise to connect to his humanity again but the winner?  The Academy likes touching stories about people with problems.  Working Girl is Melanie Griffiths’ best film but the sexual politics look horrible now.

Mississippi Burning, about the deaths of Civil Rights activists in the South is the best film by a mile and everyone should watch it.  By today’s standards it does look a bit like white saviours, focusing a film about Southern racism on Caucasian characters, but it is powerful.

The decade closes out with Driving Miss Daisy wining – interesting that a race film would be focusing on an old white woman wins, rather than Mississippi Burning.  There is another disability nominee with My Left Foot and Robin Williams’ in a major serious role with Dead Poets Society.

This is one of the better Vietnam films and it is Tom Cruise again (throughout the decade the differently abled issues are portrayed by the able bodied, apart from Children of a Lesser God).  A searing inditement of what happened to Vietnam vets I defy anyone to walk away unaffected.

The Breakfast Club may not have been nominated for an Oscar, but its theme tune is possibly the most famous film theme ever.  I like it because it shows how a disparate group can bond in a short time.  Simple Minds were from Glasgow, part of the post New Wave scene like Big Country (https://wordpress.com/post/fivemilesout.home.blog/746 ).  After limited success in the UK they broke the USA and their sound become quite bombastic.  Their album New Gold Dream is a classic of the era.

Don’t You Forget About Me

Playlist:

  1. Love Song
  2. Theme For Great Cities
  3. The American
  4. Someone Somewhere in Summertime
  5. New Gold Dream (81-82-83-84)
  6. Glittering Prize
  7. Waterfront
  8. Speed Your Love To Me
  9. Up on the Catwalk
  10. East at Easter
  11. (Don’t You) Forget About Me
  12. C Moon Cry Like a Baby
  13. All the Things She Said
  14. Ghostdancing
  15. Sanctify Yourself
  16. Belfast Child
  17. Mandela Day
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