.
.
My Dear Teee-ummm:
After 20 full years, and due mostly to that faux-drunken Scotsman station ID/PSA by "Angus" that airs incessantly on KEXP, I’ve finally given Ned’s Atomic Dustbin a chance, which will doubtless warm the heart of your Super Promoter pal Roger Tamblyn to no end!
I even heard a song by The Farm [!] this morning in the bathroom that seemed to have a near-Bryan Adams Part, so perhaps further revelations are imminent, if not that full-fledged, long-bruited, Madchester reunion package tour!
At any rate, and upon copious soul-searching self-reflection, I have decided that I am a moderate fan of NAD’s "Grey Cell Green", which seems to have been a hit during the year of our grunge lord, 1991.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GFxVMfBfQDY
Its intro immediately put me in mind of its 1997 Brit Pop offspring, Blur’s rousingly immortal/empty "Song 2", and the [relatively] manly reverb applied to its thoroughly-affected, post-Jesus Jones, "auto-passion" vocal stylings impresses in a way that few examples of that ilk ever have, however fleetingly.
A "muscular" production….in every way!
As I listen to the YouTube recording for an eighth consecutive time here at my desk, I’m put in mind of the much-heralded, if not much remembered nor any longer enjoyed, musical sub-genre I/we snidely coined/codified around the time of our earliest, ca. 1993 acquaintance, i.e. "Dave Kendall", in honor of everyone’s all-time favorite host of 120 Minutes!
Within that peculiar, utterly circumscribed, mid-MTV realm, I have no doubt that "Grey Cell Green"’s inane chorus ["….it’s in the trees, IN THE TREES!"] vaults it toward "head of the class" stature, alongside the immortal "Postcards from Paradise", "Love Removal Machine" and my own epistemological fave, "The Motion of Love", by Flesh for Lulu, The Cult, and Gene Loves Jezebel, respectively!
Higher praise within "The Kendall (Ken Doll?) Realm", she don’t exist!
Yours in post-C86 blissfulness,
– Tom Kipp
P.S. In re: Desire, with a Capitol D–"You’re telling me it’s in the trees….it’s NOT, it’s inside ME, uh-HUH!" [1:07] That last is the master stroke, the "money shot", the very exclamation point. How’d they ever think of it? Well, ya gotta be a i’l thick, fer a start…. Anyhow, enjoy!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ned’s_Atomic_Dustbin
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dave_Kendall
********************************************
Ah, yes, the first Ned’s Atomic Dustbin. This was a big deal at that moment.
I remember thinking when the first “promo only” version of this CD5 arrived on my desk (in advance of an unprecedented carpet bombing of 25-30 individually packaged supplemental mailings of same), that it was a poor man’s Woodentops “Well Well Well,” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hASeiG02q4g , itself a poor man’s Icicle Works “Birds Fly” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZIxgHu5U1v4 .
Either way, I think you’ve hit on a minor, late-period sludge category, Bo Diddley Dance Oriented Rock Desecration.
– Tim Cook
********************************************
Thanks TC.
Re: Ned’s, I suspect I had enough trouble, ca. 1991, simply hearing the name pronounced aloud without wanting to laugh heartily in the faces of my Record & Tape Exchange customers in Fairfax, VA!
Or, as my pal Parry Tallmadge used to say, “You MUST be joking….”
Anyhow, I certainly recall that sense you’ve begun to outline below that each bi-annual batch of “new bands” from The United Kingdom [1979, 1981, 1983, 1985, 1987….] represented a further diminution of the self-evident Postpunk Greatness I’d limned from PiL, Wire, JD, Gang of Four, The Mekons, The Fall, Comsat Angels, etc.
I mean, The Three Johns, great; The Sound, gripping; pre-industrial Clock DVA, fascinating; early Red Lorry Yellow Lorry, wonderful; The Jesus & Mary Chain, occasionally transcendent; That Petrol Emotion, rousing; The Woodentops, pretty damned good; “Arena-ready” Cult, fun and games; Voice of the Beehive, mega-cuteness personified; The Primitives, insanely catchy.
My own ’80s Brit litany is of course highly idiosyncratic and far from comprehensive, but then I never particularly esteemed such UK pop “titans” as ABC, Haircut 100, A Flock of Seagulls, Culture Club, Duran Duran, Aztec Camera, The Human League, OMD, The Smiths, et many al., even when I quite enjoyed the odd single.
And although I certainly liked and respected Siouxsie, U2, Echo, The Cure, Killing Joke, The Teardrop Explodes, The Chameleons, early Death in June, and, eventually, The Pet Shop Boys, The Housemartins, The Wedding Present, The Shop Assistants, The Flatmates, and so on, I’ve never considered them artistes of the highest order either. Often very [very!] good, but nothing to compare head-on with JD, et al.
So by the time “Madchester” and its “Generation Ecstasy”-induced “rave culture” came tripping along bearing the mantle of “The Revolution” I could barely stifle a yawn, particularly once BLEACH made its way out to D.C. What was all that dull thumping avec gibberish “football choruses” anyhow?! LOL
And once K. Cobain fully bequeathed unto us his anthemic gift, from 1991-93, it was all over fer Duh Brits, Oasis eventually notwithstanding, which is how Scharpling and Wurster could so brilliantly/brutally send up the very notion of “nostalgia” for such early-’90s ephemera by the early-to-mid-’00s!
“Roger Tamblyn” Forever….
– Tom Kipp
P.S. I quite like your new Sludge construct: “Bo Diddley DOR Desecration”! Many candidates to consider, though the research [at this late date] would be, as The Itals so eloquently put it, “brutal out deh”! Which is why it may very well die wit’ “Grey Cell Green”, which is my top o’ the heap, pending further suggestions from your corner.
********************************************
TK —
for your re-consideration
In 1985, along with everything else on Factory Records that I could afford, I came into the possession of this 12″, “Delightful” by The Happy Mondays. I first heard it when it came in the KBSU “Rockpool box,” a promotional/marketing service employed at the time by British indies to service american college radio.
At the time the contents of the monthly Rockpool shipment was pretty “elite” (mostly rough trade, factory, 4ad), and it really was the only place to have access to this stuff.
I thought “Delightful” was rougher and more energetic than most of the rest of the UK pop scene, thus I liked it a lot.
The band’s second single, “Freaky Dancin'” was good, despite the bongos and wah wah, “Freaky Dancin'” was an aye-tonal, Fall-esque, MESS.
Apparently Martin Hannett had fired the group after “Delightful” and the “B-Music” team of Barney Rubble/Peter Hook recorded (and non-produced) “Freaky Dancin'” (the a side was “live,” I think).
The rest of the group’s body of work is a pile of crap, but those singles are classics in my mind. Different than anything else at the time, for sure.
– Tim Cook
********************************************
I used to read about Rockpool from time to time back in the ’80s, but given Missoula’s lack of anything resembling true “College Radio” back then [KUFM was/is tepid NPR, at best, though there is now a legitimately student-run station as well], I’m sure Moscow & Bozeman were the nearest beneficiaries of said Brit Indie largesse.
Anyhow, glad to hear the early Mondays at long last, particularly “Delightful”, which reminds me of top grade early Wedding Present. And dig the stereo-panned string scrape a mere 5 seconds in!
By the by, I was unaware that The HM’s had released records as early as 1985, and was convinced by the album of theirs I own [PILLS THRILLS….] that it was something akin to Thuh Cult o’ The Dead, i.e. largely drug-induced hippiediocy.
This stuff’s both quite muscular and more winningly pop than later permutations, thanks be to Whomever!
Thanks Teee-ummm,
– Tom Kipp
