1 post tagged “copy”
Back in 2003, Radiohead fan Mrs. Veneer got me a little on board the Radiohead bandwagon by steering me toward a handful of songs that were near-perfect matches for my personal music receptors (Airbag, Electioneering, Idioteque). So I picked up Hail to the Thief in its first week of release, brought it home and listened to it with Mrs. V., and we were completely underwhelmed. She called it "unlistenable" and decided that Yorke and company had made it that way on purpose; I found it simply unmemorable, with not a single song calling out for a second listen. I've just been revisiting it, though, and I've found a few songs to like on it, and one in particular that really grabs me:
The reason "Where I End And You Begin" appeals to me is its similarity to (or ripoff of, depending on your point of view) "Theme for Great Cities" by Simple Minds (from the Steve Hillage-produced Sons and Fascination): same beat, same warbling synthetic organ sound behind it all. "Theme," a grand instrumental, was one of the handful of songs I would wait for on WHFS in the year of my New Wave conversion (academic year 1981-82); when the trumpet-synth comes in for the chorus, and the key turns major, it's a masterful release of the tension built up in the preceding passages:
I was lucky to find a used copy of Themes for Great Cities (at College Park's late, great Record and Tape Exchange), a
best-of collection released by Stiff in November 1981; it became one of
my most-played records. The sheer muscle and modernity of Simple Minds
in their early years was aesthetically intoxicating, and even now those
early works retain much of their power. They managed to capture in music society's struggle with the accelerating speed of technology better than anyone else except perhaps John Foxx's Ultravox. The New Gold Dream
album, with its lighter sound and Christian themes and imagery, was
slightly disappointing but still enjoyable; I saw them on their tour
for that album, at Ritchie Coliseum in College Park, with China Crisis
opening. (China Crisis ended their set early: it was raining outside and water was dripping onto the stage from the leaky ceiling, and when guitarist Eddie Lundon got a shock he took off his guitar and left the stage, followed by the rest of the band.) Unfortunately Simple Minds continued their charge toward the mainstream, losing all artistic credibility once and for all by recording the Keith Forsey-penned "Don't You (Forget About Me)" for The Breakfast Club, thereby becoming yet another victim of The Curse of John Hughes. Simple Minds closed out the 80s with so much bombastic dreck that few people even know about the forward-looking music they created between 1979 and 1981. See Saltyka's blog for an excellent, comprehensive look at this heyday period. Dikkii has some valuable insights as well. Finally, Simple Minds' 1998 album, Neapolis, was touted as a return to their early sound. No such luck. Jim Kerr is still stuck on "big-issue" songwriting, and the rhythms sound like trite, run-of-the-mill late-90s loops. It's not all bad news, though; the instrumental track "Androgyny," while no "Theme for Great Cities," could pass for a 1981 B-side:
