3 posts tagged “scotland”

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:

With a name like The Haggis Horns, they'd better be from Scotland, and indeed they are.  You can always trust a band with "Horns" in their name; horns make everything better!  Rather than paraphrase what little I know about them, I'll just quote from their booking agency:

More recently than that, they've released a full-length CD, also called Hot Damn!, on First Word Records.  The Haggis's specialty is their Afrobeat angle; "Tribe Vibes" is almost straight-up Afrobeat, while Afrobeat-style guitar lines run through several of the other songs on the album.  They also use more wah-wah on the rhythm guitar than other deep funk bands, for that special 70s action movie feel.  The track on the album that grabbed me the most is the last one, "Who's Gonna Take the Weight":

It's probably no coincidence that "Weight" is reminiscent of the godfathers of Scottish funk, the Average White Band:

I get jealous when I google Haggis Horns and find someone's blog entry that says "Went to the Jazz Cafe in London last night with my friend Pete. We saw Haggis Horns & Speedometer, both were awesome and some new CDs will be finding there way into my shopping cart soon."  I wanna see shows like that!  Waaaaa!  At least I've got the Rozatones in town, if only they'd play out more.

That's the opening line of the second album, Change of Heart (1982), by Glasgow band Positive Noise, another lost band of the 80s.  The album title is significant: their first album was called Heart of Darkness, but frontman/songwriter Ross Middleton left before the second album, and the band's sound changed from competent, angular, mildly political punk-lite to bass-heavy danceability.  I think it was a change for the better, except for the lyrical content, which went from vaguely principled to catchy but practically meaningless.   ("I feel the fear / someone whispers in my ear / and I feel the fear right now," or "Get up, get up / Get up, get up up up/ Get up, get up and go.")  But they have great beats and hooks, and that's enough in my book.

Change of Heart was one of the few divisive albums between me and my college pal/housemate, Mike.  He couldn't stand it, saying it sounded like all the other "dance crap" that was coming out; I countered that since this album actually came out a few years ago (at the time), Positive Noise were ahead of the times and should be revered rather than penalized for being visionary.  I've since backed off the "visionary" claim, but I still enjoy the album as I would a confection full of empty calories.

After twenty-odd years of having Heart of Darkness in my collection, I finally got around to listening to it yesterday.  The standout is the title track, an epic song full of "jungle drums," a vein I wish they had explored further.  Of the three Positive Noise albums, all on Statik Records (a great lost label of the 80s), only Change of Heart got a US release, on Sire.  I have never seen or heard the third album, Distant Fires; I am still curious to hear how they sound as produced by Gang of Four's Dave Allen.