With all the hype about Paddy's new Sprout, I thought I would scour the internet for some live material from another 80's artist that was (imho) a cut above - Green Gartside.
Found this!
With all the hype about Paddy's new Sprout, I thought I would scour the internet for some live material from another 80's artist that was (imho) a cut above - Green Gartside.
Found this!
Cool!
The first album was wonderful. I just could not get into them after that. They had some great 12 inch singles, too.
Library Jon
A snapshot of time. Scritti Politi was good.
I also liked Propaganda and ColourBox.
Not that they were all that similar but a period of interesting ( to me ) music.
Definitely a 'pick and choose' period for songs rather than complete albums. Some of them did flow pretty well though.
mark
"It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it."
-- Aristotle
Nostalgia, you know, ain't what it used to be. Furthermore, they tells me, it never was.
“A Man Who Does Not Read Has No Appreciable Advantage Over the Man Who Cannot Read” - Mark Twain
I loved the Cupid & Psyche album......there were other good synth-pop bands such as Camouflage and (especially) Cause & Effect that never had that one hit album to put them over the top......
I tend to put Scritti Politti and ABC together- SP was a better group imho, a little hipper and less soul/R&B wanna-be than ABC but both were really great when on their game and a bit cringe-worthy when the weren't
ABC wasn't all synthesized -- they at least had players playing parts over the sequences and Linn 9000...I think the only non-Fairlight performance on Cupid & Psyche was some guitar parts.....I agree with the rest of your assessment (although I do like both and especially Im a big fan of ABC)..... I do prefer Gartside's vocals over Martin Fry's, though -- but thats only because Martin tried to pronounce "ev-e-ry syl-la-ble" of every word when he sangOriginally Posted by trurl
I tend to put Scritti Politti and ABC together- SP was a better group imho, a little hipper and less soul/R&B wanna-be than ABC but both were really great when on their game and a bit cringe-worthy when the weren't
Yep, Martin's voice is the weak link of ABC for me. And I like them because they did have a real rhythm section, whereas I like SP because they took programming to about its ultimate place... even more than Trevor Horn and his projects... and the songs were good!
Scritti with real drums and bass (Me'shell Ndegeocello) - from "Anomie and Bonhomie" - 1999.
Awesome.
Much prefer Sprout myself.
But Propaganda's debut album and Talk Talk's The Colour of Spring were the masterworks of mid-80s European sophisti-pop, IMHO.
"Improvisation is not an excuse for musical laziness" - Fred Frith
"[...] things that we never dreamed of doing in Crimson or in any band that I've been in," - Tony Levin speaking of SGM
I really like those first two SP albums. I’d like Songs to Remember even if it weren’t for the presence of Robert Wyatt and Mike Ratledge. Green has a voice that’s maybe a bit too twee and affected but it’s not without its charm and is definitely immediately recognizable. And he had to be one of the most pretentious pop stars out there; just read some interviews from back in the day, what with him name-dropping Jacques Derrida and other famous intellectuals every sentence in his attempt to explain the existence of “A Perfect Way.”
Didn’t care much for Provision, it just tipped the glass over too far. Too slick. The presence of Miles Davis doesn’t really help its cause, disappointingly. I probably ought to at least try Anomie & Bonhomie and White Bread, Black Beer some day. I also need to hear more of Early. I’ve pretty much just heard their first single A-side, “Hegemony.” What a change in sound from that to Songs to Remember!
RE: ABC. I really like Martin Fry’s voice, I think he puts a lot of passion and personality into his singing performances.
RE: other “sophisti-pop” acts of note, I ought to mention Blue Nile and Everything but the Girl here. Surprised the former has not been mentioned yet, Hats was one of the few albums released in the musically woeful year of 1989 worth a damn. I far prefer the jazzy/bossa nova infused iteration of the latter to the “house”-inspired version that made them superstars. Oh and, remember that thread about women with low alto voices? Shame on me for not mentioning Tracey Thorn!
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MIKE (a.k.a. "Progbear")
"Parece cosa de maligno. Los pianos no estallan por casualidad." --Gabriel Garcia Marquez
N.P.:“Through the Four Doors”-Flying Island/Another Kind of Space
<forehead slap> The Blue Nile!!! Yes!!! Love them - I like most of their albums, but "Hats" is by far my favorite, just for "Lets Go Out Tonight" and "The Downtown Lights" alone....a lot of people do not realize how much of an influence they were to bands of subsequent generations, including acknowledgements by Air and Coldplay.....great minimilistic band with an 808 that doesn't go "Boom"
Along those lines, there was a band from the 80s called Incognito which I liked a lot, and a group called Lime from Canada that was interesting.
However, if we are talking laid-back sophisti-pop, Double should definitely get a mention, especially with their album "Blue" which was a great listen and contained the hit "Captain of Her Heart"
<sigh> good ol 80s Yuppie music for Biff to serenade his girlfriend, Muffy, as they tool around in their Beamer
Is there a such thing as Yuppie Pop? You know, bands that visually looked more comfortable working at a law firm or JP Morgan? Some great synth-pop in this category
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