posted
i'm not his hugest fan but his version of the ballad of sacco and vanzetti is one of the greatest things i've ever heard
Posts: 255 | From: london | Registered: Aug 2006
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posted
Ta for all yuor help/ My local HMV only 2 and 4, so I've started with them. Plus a Walker Brothers best of. It's some of the most amazing music ever.
Posts: 656 | From: Essex | Registered: Jun 2002
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quote:Thanks a lot, but no need, as I...er... "annoyed Hobbes" last night, so to speak - grabbed it off Soulseek. Damn good it is too.
Fabbo. The only thing which for me recreates the dusty, nuts and bolts feel of that album is the one I'm listening to now- Forward The Bass: Dub From Randy's. Or perhaps Glen Brown's Termination Dub. Anyway, all three are spectacular.
Posts: 8033 | From: Kazakhstan Laboratories | Registered: May 2002
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Yeah, that Yabby You comp is top stuff - it's no "Open The Gate", but if that were the criteria then there would only be about four records in the world. Really strange and interesting to hear deep, dark reggae with lyrics that would be more at home on a fundie Christian website.
I was thinking, one of the great things about Scott Walker: he was getting into all these Brel songs and thought "hmm, I should write some stuff like that." "The Girls From The Streets" is a bit of a first go, but then he suddenly writes "The Amorous Humphrey Plugg", a fucking amazing lyric which brings that Brel bacchanalia right up to date and relocates it in grim suburbia:
Hello, Mr. Big Shot - say, you're looking smart I've had a tiring day, I took the kids along to the park
You've become a stranger Every night with the boys Got a new suit That old smile's come back And I kiss the children goodnight And I slip away on the newly-waxed floor...
I become a giant, I fill every street I dwarf the rooftops, I hunchback the moon Stars dance at my feet
Leave it all behind me Screaming kids on my knee And the telly swallowing me And the neighbours shouting next door And the subway trembling the roller-skate floor
I seek the buildings blazing with moonlight In Channing Way Their very eyes seem to suck you in with their laughter They seem to say
"You're alright now So stop a while behind our smile In Channing Way"
Oh, to die of kisses, ecstasies and charms! Pavements of poets will write that I died In nine angels' arms
And they all were smiling Still, seductive as sin in their eyes The man I had been No more hard luck stories to wear Nothing left to give, why the hell should I care
Ann knows my smile and Mary's my shadow In Channing Way And with her cellophane sighs Colleen of the candles Begs me to stay
"You're alright now So stop a while behind our smile In Channing Way."
Very male-identified and all that, but about seventeen times better than most of the lyrics about unicorns and chariots that came out that year. What always staggers me about that song is how musically sophisticated he was, too - because he just stood there with a microphone and the string arrangements were done by people like Wally Stott, people tend to forget that Scott was a musician, playing bass guitar on Sandy Nelson records at the age of seventeen, and wrote all those strange songs entirely by himself. "The Amorous Humphrey Plugg" winds through sixteen chords and changes key almost every two lines, the kind of formal sophistication that was beyond pretty much all his peers except for Burt Bacharach, Brian Wilson and (sometimes) Lennon-McCartney. It's an amazing bit of work.
Posts: 3395 | From: further over there | Registered: May 2002
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posted
I like the use of the word "telly". Although it grates with the word "subway"...
Posts: 20721 | From: Far away, without a city wall | Registered: May 2002
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I'm coming (ashamedly) late to Scott on his own, although I've been a fan of the Walker Bros for a long time (I must say that 'My Ship is Coming in' is my all time fave - the sentiment, Scott's voice and the opening 'Girl', which has three syllables!) and all the stuff posted here is great.
A word for Scott's own composition 'Copenhagen' which must be one of the very prettiest songs ever - from the intro and "Hope for me, I hope for you" to "children's caroussels" and the plinkety out-tro.
Dreamy.
Posts: 3378 | From: just this side of beyond all hope | Registered: Sep 2002
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posted
"Follow me into... just one more spring..."
That's the killer line in that song for me. Changes the whole thing from a pretty love song to something more mysterious - is he dying? Is he saying their love is doomed? Is she threatening to leave him? Is he just thinking of leaving Copenhagen? Puzzle picture. Brilliant stuff.
Posts: 3395 | From: further over there | Registered: May 2002
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posted
In case anyone is interested, 'Scott Walker: 30 Century Man' is on BBC4 tonight, from 21:00.
It happens to dovetail nicely with Jools Holland's programme on BBC2, on which are British Sea Power tonight.
Just so you know, like.
(edit: Although you alreadt did know, as I know it's mentioned previously, upthread. So this is just a reminder, really.)
[ 08.02.2008, 19:18: Message edited by: evilC ]
Posts: 7428 | From: such drivers' ed films as 'Alice's Adventures Through the Windshield Glass' | Registered: Aug 2005
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posted
I've listened to Scott 4 again a couple of times recently and I'd like to revise my assessment of it, upwrds by quite a bit. Still prefer 3 but both are very fine albums.
Posts: 1606 | From: John McGlynn's bouncy army | Registered: Sep 2006
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