2 posts tagged “brian eno”
Have you seen "24 Hour Party People"? You should, it's pretty good. It's about the rise and fall of the legendary Hacienda club in Manchester and the entwined Factory Records which was home to acts like Joy Division, New Order, The Happy Mondays and Cabaret Voltaire amongst others.
Anyway, the reason why I'm proselytizing the film is that it's not a bad introduction to the Madchester/Baggy scene that sprung up in Manchester at the start of the nineties - a weird and heady blend of rave, indie rock, psychedelia and hip hop.
The movement, as well as bringing the phrase "You're twisting my melon, man" into common parlance, provided a second coming from a relatively obscure band called James. James had previously had two minor hits around '89 with "Sit Down" and the more stereotypically Baggy "Come Home" which had both done well in the indie charts but got more mainstream recognition when they released "Gold Mother" around the same time as musical press attention turned north.
Singles "How Was It For You" and re-released "Come Home" and "Sit Down" did well (the latter was only kept off the top spot by Chesney Hawkes) but the eponymous single from the album "Laid", released in 1993, was the one that 'broke' in the US.
Released as three different versions of the same video (of which I can only find two)
"This bed is on fire with passionate love, the neighbours complain about the noises above, but she only comes when she's on top"
meaning that, although it 'only' got to number 23 in the UK charts and peaked on the US Billboard charts at #61 its cult status on college radio stations drove it to #3 on the Billboard Modern Rock charts and was later used in the American Pie films.
The album itself is fairly interesting. Recorded as a series of session with Brian Eno it actually produced enough tracks for two albums - "Laid" being the "song album" and "Wah Wah" being the more experimental release.
You note, of course, that I use the term "interesting" in a way that means "if you're a huge music nerd like me"
The "Help! Album" released in 1995 for The War Child foundation was a particularly stunning album. Not only was it recorded in one day (Monday 4th of September), mixed the next day and was in shops by the Saturday but it helped raise more than £1.25 million for the charity which, at the time, was dealing with 2 million families displaced by the fighting in Sarajevo.
Produced by Brian Eno, the track listing was a veritable who's who of prominent British (-ish, technically Neneh Cherry is Swedish) artists including the first recording by the Manic Street Preachers since the disappearance of Richey Edwards, Bill Drummond and Jimmy Cauty - better known as the KLF - recording as One World Orchestra and a hauntingly spare version of "Ode To Billy Joe" by Sinead O'Connor.
Many of the tracks actually benefited from the short turn around time. As Eno put it
"You know what sounds so great about these tracks? They're all so fresh. I really hope it sets a precedent - that people will stop messing about in the studio for months on end, emerging with the sort of over-processed nonsense often presided over by the likes of me."
Not least of these was Suede's cover of Elvis Costello's "Shipbuilding"
which was itself originally written during the Falklands War in 1982 in response to the seeming contradiction that whilst the war bought prosperity back to the traditional shipbuilding areas like Merseyside, Tyneside and Belfast it was also these areas that traditionally provided many young men to join the military.
Anyway, great album if you can get hold of it and the official account of how it happened is also well worth a read.
