The Stranglers: Any freinds or foes?

[StevegSr]

Psychedelic punk? Melodic rock? Any friends or foes of the Stranglers?

[Mister Triscuits]

Really dug their early stuff, but I haven't kept up. I think Stranglers in the Night is the only post-Hugh album I own. Saw them live once on the MenInBlack tour. No strippers onstage.

[ronmac]

Depends who they're strangling.

Oh, you mean the band.

[Jack in Wilmington]

Not sure, never heard of them.

[BaldJean]

I am a fan of the Stranglers. what's more: I consider them to be a prog band.

now some people may say: ridiculous; they are a punk band. but if there is anything the Stranglers definitely are not it is punk.

the Stranglers are one of the few bands that use real polyphony in their music, a highly advanced composition technique which is rare even among prog bands. any band that uses real polyphony should in my opinion be called a prog band and definitely NOT a punk band because musical simplicity is at the core of the definition of punk

[NogbadTheBad]

Fan of Rattus, No More Heroes, Raven & MIB. They start to lose me after that, I saw them on the Feline tour and they were awful.

[Scrotum Scissor]

Fan of Rattus, No More Heroes, Raven & MIB.

Precisely!

And why not Black & White, with one of the greatest bandphoto-frontsleeves of all time? I could never find a home in that record. But those other four are great, with The Raven my fave. As for the post-MiB, the move from beer and speed to booze and morphine on Cornwell and Greenfield's parts arguably had something to do with it.

[NogbadTheBad]

For some reason I never got B&W

[polmico]

Fan of Rattus, No More Heroes, Raven & MIB. They start to lose me after that, I saw them on the Feline tour and they were awful.

Well, I didn't see them on the tour but don't dismiss Feline so easily. It's not great, but it's good. (But I can find something to like on all their albums.)

As for the post-MiB, the move from beer and speed to booze and morphine on Cornwell and Greenfield's parts arguably had something to do with it.

And you're both skipping over La Folie. Any album with "Golden Brown" on it has to be good.



The drug thing? Well, Meninblack is their heroin album. JJ and Hugh were both deep into it for a year (and "Golden Brown" is clearly about heroin--or a brown-skinned girlfriend.)

I found the following interview with Burnel (link below):

The band’s early days were dominated by extremes. Extremes in ideas and attitude and in drugs, after the initial acid phase they switched to heroin.
When Hugh and you got to heroin in 1978/79 did it change you as people.

”œThat’s what we did it for. The whole band was meant to take heroin for whole year and see what we would produce at then end of it. Jet and Dave were smart and they got off after a couple of weeks whilst Hugh and I got into it for whole year and it wasn’t that easy giving up but we did eventually. Heroin anaesthetizes you. It desensitizes you so you become less considerate towards other people and a lot more introverted because the only thing that is important is more heroin. Your world becomes smaller and smaller instead of bigger and broader. Once you give up heroin and you are out of that world you become bigger again. On it and all you care about is you and your own selfish little needs and you start losing the ability to love and feel for other people. Raven and Meninblack were the heroin albums.’

Before heroin, acid had been the key drug in their canyon.

”In the early years, when we had a day or evening off we took acid recreationally. I remember one Bonfire Night with indoor fireworks and I was taking acid- eventually I hid in a telephone kiosk and these kids were trying to get in with their mother and that became the inspiration for the song ‘Peasant in the Big Shitty’. I was stuck in this old red telephone box and this kid and mother were waiting impatiently and I just there tripping and looking at this kid pushing at the glass and the lyrics tell the story ”Ëœevery digit at my face, whose the man with the smile mom, do you like it like that, the cows go moo, is everything alright’ because when you hear these sounds on acid they stretch out. You hear weird sounds and people’s faces look weird. There were a few other Stranglers psychedelic songs that were written on acid at the time as well.’

http://louderthanwar.com/the-ultimat...rnel-opens-up/

http://teamrock.com/feature/2014-03-...on-heroin-plan

[polmico]

Not sure, never heard of them.

Fripp and Hammill have:

[Mister Triscuits]

And you're both skipping over La Folie. Any album with "Golden Brown" on it has to be good.

I'm a big fan of everything up to and including La Folie. Feline is all right, but it's really soft for a Stranglers album. They pretty much lost me with Aural Sculpture, but I tried going back to it a few years ago and found I liked it after all.

[PeterG]

HUGE fan, after Cardiacs, they are the band I have seen live most often, at least 20 times, from the mid-80s onwards. First time I saw them was 86, last time I saw them was on their Suite XVI tour.

[Scrotum Scissor]

[...] Meninblack is their heroin album. [...] "Golden Brown" is clearly about heroin

Yup, and already "Don't Bring Harry" on The Raven is.

Jon Anderson has switched from herbal Chau tea onto raw Earl Grey recently, but luckily knows to carry the experiment no more than a cuppa days before complete detox.

[adap2it]

Psychedelic punk? Melodic rock? Any friends or foes of the Stranglers?

Never a punk band...they were smart enough to produce very punchy proggy music with a punk attitude. I was absolutely blown away with Rattus on first listen. I have pretty well everything Stranglers including a subscription to Strangled magazine. I still play them as much as the classic prog bands of the 70's, in fact we played Feline at last Wednesdays basement sessions.

[PeterG]

Never a punk band...they were smart enough to produce very punchy proggy music with a punk attitude. I was absolutely blown away with Rattus on first listen. I have pretty well everything Stranglers including a subscription to Strangled magazine. I still play them as much as the classic prog bands of the 70's, in fact we played Feline at last Wednesdays basement sessions.

+1

[PeterG]

I would say that apart from Kate Bush and Cardiacs, they have the greatest ratio of great albums to total albums of any band. They released very few poor albums, and we all know which ones they are. Even Neil Young has released more turkeys than The Stranglers.

[NogbadTheBad]

I would say that apart from Kate Bush and Cardiacs, they have the greatest ratio of great albums to total albums of any band. They released very few poor albums, and we all know which ones they are. Even Neil Young has released more turkeys than The Stranglers.

I'd put Univers Zero and Henry Cow in that list.

[GuitarGeek]

You better watch out for the skin deep

[BaldJean]

Fripp and Hammill have:

just adds more punch to what I said about the Stranglers

[Progbear]

I am a fan of the Stranglers. what's more: I consider them to be a prog band.

now some people may say: ridiculous; they are a punk band. but if there is anything the Stranglers definitely are not it is punk.

the Stranglers are one of the few bands that use real polyphony in their music, a highly advanced composition technique which is rare even among prog bands. any band that uses real polyphony should in my opinion be called a prog band and definitely NOT a punk band because musical simplicity is at the core of the definition of punk

I wouldn’t say it’s ridiculous. In one of the rock mags (I forget if it was Circus or Hit Parader), they listed their top 10 favourite albums, and it was all prog and Krautrock stuff (NEU!, La Düsseldorf, Camel’s The Snow Goose, etc.). That’s what led me to believe that maybe there was more to this band than just “Nice & Sleazy.”

[Mythos]

FRIEND here!

In fact Feline is one of my top-10 1980's releases...

[Scrotum Scissor]

I'd put Univers Zero and Henry Cow in that list.

And some 200 other acts who maybe released 3-4 albums in their existence span.

[StevegSr]

Never a punk band...they were smart enough to produce very punchy proggy music with a punk attitude. I was absolutely blown away with Rattus on first listen. I have pretty well everything Stranglers including a subscription to Strangled magazine. I still play them as much as the classic prog bands of the 70's, in fact we played Feline at last Wednesdays basement sessions.

Well, I've even heard them called "prog punk." Regardless of what box they are thrown in, I like them.

[no.nine]

I love their UA (a.k.a. EMI) era albums. IMO they took an immediate nosedive when they moved to CBS with Feline. Cautiously checked out Aural Sculpture, hated it, and never bothered with anything after.

But those first six albums (seven if you count Live (X-Cert)) still hold up for me. I think their peak albums are Black and White, The Raven and The Meninblack - they're unique and highly creative. I've never heard ANYTHING else which sounds remotely like The Raven or side two of Black and White. They were in their own musical world at that time. There are even some CHORDS on these albums which still astound me.

Oh, and most of their non-LP B-sides from the UA/EMI period are of equal quality to the album tracks.

[zombywoof]

I have The Raven and I love it. What else should I get?