JC's Godlike Genius #1
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JC's Godlike Genius #1
You know what I like about this? It's basically rock and roll - 4/4 beat, strong, elemental guitar riff - but all the wild stuff they add actually improves on that old template. They go in the right direction.
I swear I've been addicted to the song ever since I first heard it 30 years ago, and every time I hear it I want to throw things up in the air.
I mean, yeah, Pere Ubu had a career and multiple albums and they're still going, and DT did all that avant-garde wailing sailor solo shit - but this, in all its thrashing, keening lunacy, is really something close to genius.
Matt 'interesting' Wilson wrote:So I went from looking at the "I'm a Man" riff, to showing how the rave up was popular for awhile.
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Re: JC's Godlike Genius #1
Their first two albums are must haves...(The Modern Dance, Dub Housing)
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Re: JC's Godlike Genius #1
I bet they wouldn’t play it if they were headlining a festival though
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Re: JC's Godlike Genius #1
They didn't play it when I saw them a couple of years ago...
Matt 'interesting' Wilson wrote:So I went from looking at the "I'm a Man" riff, to showing how the rave up was popular for awhile.
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Re: JC's Godlike Genius #1
That's the best track off their debut album, no doubt, but there's just a little something lacking about it for me, that stops it being properly great. I think there's all the elements there, but I think I just want Dave Thomas to go that bit wilder, or that synth backing to really push out and go somewhere. It just feels like they restrained themselves a touch.
Like fast-moving clouds casting shadows against a hillside, the melody-loop shuddered with a sense of the sublime, the awful unknowable majesty of the world.
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Re: JC's Godlike Genius #1
HEN wrote:You know what I like about this? It's basically rock and roll - 4/4 beat, strong, elemental guitar riff - but all the wild stuff they add actually improves on that old template. They go in the right direction.
I swear I've been addicted to the song ever since I first heard it 30 years ago, and every time I hear it I want to throw things up in the air.
I mean, yeah, Pere Ubu had a career and multiple albums and they're still going, and DT did all that avant-garde wailing sailor solo shit - but this, in all its thrashing, keening lunacy, is really something close to genius.
Yes to all of that: I would lob in some of the Hearthan singles, too, as signs of genius, but I do tend to see most bands as getting their best stuff out early in their careers: speaking of which, John, I expect you're familiar with that Rocket from the Tombs double – some storming, raw, early versions of some songs that turned up on The Modern Dance.
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Re: JC's Godlike Genius #1
It is genius. Totes amazeballs.
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Re: JC's Godlike Genius #1
Early singles, collected. Probably their finest moment(s).
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Re: JC's Godlike Genius #1
Darkness_Fish wrote:That's the best track off their debut album, no doubt, but there's just a little something lacking about it for me, that stops it being properly great. I think there's all the elements there, but I think I just want Dave Thomas to go that bit wilder, or that synth backing to really push out and go somewhere. It just feels like they restrained themselves a touch.
You know what, I think that's where the genius lies with something like 'N-AP' - it treads that line between wild and out there and traditional rock and roll sounds and structure PERFECTLY. Any fuckers can push the board into the red, go nuts with sound effects or try and be a whacky Chick Corea on the keys, but keeping it all dialed in and serving a great tune and songs - that's hard.
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Re: JC's Godlike Genius #1
Precisely.
Matt 'interesting' Wilson wrote:So I went from looking at the "I'm a Man" riff, to showing how the rave up was popular for awhile.
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Re: JC's Godlike Genius #1
Rayge wrote:HEN wrote:You know what I like about this? It's basically rock and roll - 4/4 beat, strong, elemental guitar riff - but all the wild stuff they add actually improves on that old template. They go in the right direction.
I swear I've been addicted to the song ever since I first heard it 30 years ago, and every time I hear it I want to throw things up in the air.
I mean, yeah, Pere Ubu had a career and multiple albums and they're still going, and DT did all that avant-garde wailing sailor solo shit - but this, in all its thrashing, keening lunacy, is really something close to genius.
Yes to all of that: I would lob in some of the Hearthan singles, too, as signs of genius, but I do tend to see most bands as getting their best stuff out early in their careers: speaking of which, John, I expect you're familiar with that Rocket from the Tombs double – some storming, raw, early versions of some songs that turned up on The Modern Dance.
Yeah, love it all. I don't play it too often tho' because the sound quality is pretty bad. And that stuff's important.
Matt 'interesting' Wilson wrote:So I went from looking at the "I'm a Man" riff, to showing how the rave up was popular for awhile.
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Re: JC's Godlike Genius #1
fange wrote:Darkness_Fish wrote:That's the best track off their debut album, no doubt, but there's just a little something lacking about it for me, that stops it being properly great. I think there's all the elements there, but I think I just want Dave Thomas to go that bit wilder, or that synth backing to really push out and go somewhere. It just feels like they restrained themselves a touch.
You know what, I think that's where the genius lies with something like 'N-AP' - it treads that line between wild and out there and traditional rock and roll sounds and structure PERFECTLY. Any fuckers can push the board into the red, go nuts with sound effects or try and be a whacky Chick Corea on the keys, but keeping it all dialed in and serving a great tune and songs - that's hard.
Listen, sunshine, what did I say about wanting your opinion?
I'm saying the genius isn't in pushing the dials into the red and going nuts with the sound effects, but just opening up more when you have a traditional song structure. I'd give X Ray Spex's "Oh Bondage! Up Yours!" as a good example of where not having such a good tune, but pushing the boundaries of taste a bit more create something great.
Like fast-moving clouds casting shadows against a hillside, the melody-loop shuddered with a sense of the sublime, the awful unknowable majesty of the world.
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Re: JC's Godlike Genius #1
Another vote for the early singles and the first two albums. Nobody else really sounded like Ubu, did they? Every time one of those songs comes up on my iPod I gotta crank it.
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Re: JC's Godlike Genius #1
That’s a brilliant track. I love those first two albums with my favorite being Dub Housing (don’t hate me).
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Re: JC's Godlike Genius #1
Yes to all that. It’s very much part of a rock n roll continuum. Futuristic, weird, definitely but very definitely still rock ‘n’ roll. It’s not something you hear these days of course. I get something similar from Roxy. What was that Ian MacDonald line? Retro rock from the future? You can hear the eternal wildness of something like Surfin’ Bird in there plus some 70s factory noise and cobwebs.
Great song. Fabulous album. One of those goto records for kids who want the power and electricity of rock n roll but with added lashings of weird. As Monty Burns would say, “excellent”.
Great song. Fabulous album. One of those goto records for kids who want the power and electricity of rock n roll but with added lashings of weird. As Monty Burns would say, “excellent”.
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Re: JC's Godlike Genius #1
Modern dance is an American classic very much in the same mould as The Modern Lovers, Blank Generation and Marquee Moon. peerless records. It never ceases to thrill.
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Re: JC's Godlike Genius #1
Michael, how come you give the Americans a pass with all that punk stuff, yet condemn the Clash and Pistols?
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Re: JC's Godlike Genius #1
yomptepi wrote:Blank Generation
Matt 'interesting' Wilson wrote:So I went from looking at the "I'm a Man" riff, to showing how the rave up was popular for awhile.
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Re: JC's Godlike Genius #1
I thought you liked that album, John.
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Re: JC's Godlike Genius #1
Matt Wilson wrote:I thought you liked that album, John.
He does. It's just a Pavlovian response: when presented with any list or group of things, he feels compelled to seize upon something and label it shite.
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