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Speaker 2to the category, Tim. Old favourites moving with the times. Open brackets, parentheses, or not, question mark. This is shocking. Who's moving with the times and who isn't? The Ham. The Ham. Enter K, The Ham. Yeah, yeah. I don't love this album, I have to say. I love what you're going to say. It's a masterpiece. No, I love. Listen, I like all The Ham. The Ham, apologies. I love Black Box, the previous record. Sorry, Sitting Target is the previous record I love. The record after this, which is the other record he made with the group he assembled to make Enter K, the K group, I think is a masterpiece. Top five Ham for me. Enter K for me is a little tentative. It's a little tentative. It's a little bit too back to basics for me in terms of The Ham. So just to give the listeners the context here, Peter Hamill decided he wanted to form an almost back to basics beat group. Is that. Am I getting that right?
Speaker 3It is true. It's true, you're entirely right there. Although, obviously, with Peter, back to basics is not back to basics. It's a relative term. by anybody else's standards. Yeah. I like this, but I think, again, I'm with you. I really like Sitting Target. I think Sitting Target is one of his underrated classics. And I think Patient. Amazing. or Patience. Patience, yeah. Song is Patient, The Ham is Patience, yeah. And I think that with that, this is where the band comes into its own. This is somewhere between those two points of him being. studio artist on his own, integrating the band. But I think it's got some amazing material. It's got one of his greatest ballads, Don't Tell Me. It's got one of his greatest experiments, Accidents.
Speaker 2Those are the two tracks I would sing.
Speaker 3And I also really liked, especially live, because I saw him live about three or four times during this period. And Happy Hour was always devastating live.
Speaker 2Really? Okay, because it's quite. I find it quite dull on the record.
Speaker 3It worked live.
Speaker 2It just goes on for ten minutes.
Speaker 3Accidents also, you know. Accidents I love, yeah. The most interesting. Because I saw him when he was playing to his own audience. When he was playing to his own audience, it would be small venues packed with admirers. And he could come into his own. But one of the best gigs I've ever seen was him, in effect, touring this album, even though it's in 83. And it was Peter Hamill supporting Marillion when they were doing script for Jester's Tear. And it was tragic and brilliant at the same time. He was on, he was with John Ellis on guitar, backing tapes. And there were 12 of us at the front, because we'd gone there to see Peter Hamill at the Manchester Apollo. And we were looking up admiringly. And I actually met him after the gig, and he was lovely. And he was brilliant, because there was so much adversity. It's like you were talking about Talk Talk at the Genesis gig. People were shouting through the songs, trying to get him off.
Speaker 2We've all done gigs like that, haven't we? Let's face it. But it was awful. But he was a legend.
Speaker 3He was a legend, and to be treated like that. And apparently it had been so bad the night before in Liverpool that Fish had got on the stage and said, listen, this is one of my idols. Right. Stop it. Yeah. And I remember, because I'd supported Marillion a couple of times, I was terrified of doing that, because of what he'd witnessed, Peter Hamill. And luckily, by the time I'd supported Marillion, the audience were lovely. They were really nice. I think Marillion at that
Speaker 2time probably had a large contingent of metal boneheads in their audience who would have not supported Peter Hamill. Who had not responded to anything existential, shall we say.
Speaker 3It was awful, because he was so good. And it was the epitome of grace under pressure. They were amazing. John Ellis and Peter Hamill played wonderfully to really a hostile audience. Those were the ones who hadn't gone to the bar.
Speaker 2Yeah. Anyway, The Ham. We love The Ham. But yeah, it's a lesser entry in his catalogue. But obviously, you have to get all the Ham albums. Is it also. So it's a transitional record. Is that also true of King Crimson's Beat? I think probably I'd say the same thing about Beat. Between Discipline and Three of a Perfect Pair, Beat felt like a little bit of treading water at the time, maybe?
Speaker 3Yeah, I think you're right, but I love it. And again, it's one of those with the trilogy. Depends on which day. I think, you know, I know which is the best artistically, and that's Discipline. Yeah. I know that's the best of the three. And I know that they did not have a good time making Beat. Yeah. They really were in conflict. But I love it. I love the album. Really? I loved it then. I love it now.
Speaker 2I think half of it is great, and half of it is.
Speaker 3Satorian Tangier, Neil and Jack and me.
Speaker 2Howling is awful. I love the Howling. He doesn't. Robert hates it. I remember when I was remixing the album, he couldn't be in the same room when I was doing.
Speaker 3I know. Amongst the band, it's a bit of a lizard, isn't it? It's an awful track.
Speaker 2I love it. I love Lizard. But Neurotica, amazing. Neurotica. Neurotica, amazing. It's amazing. Yeah, Waiting Man, really like. Yeah, some great tracks.
Speaker 3Waiting Man, one of the great. It's not what I mean, but you're just reeling them off, and I think they're amongst my favourite King Crimson pieces of all time.
Speaker 2Well, I would say there's four tracks on it that I really like, and four tracks that I have no use for at all. Okay, I mean.
Speaker 3My personal, you know. Heartbeat is my least favourite, that's for sure, but I still think it has a quality, some lovely guitar sounds and a balance, and a great melody.
Speaker 2It's okay. I mean, Billy's a wonderful vocalist. Tell us about John Cale's music for A New Society, Tim, because I think I'm right in saying that you really rate this record very highly, right?
Speaker 3I do, yeah. Yeah, well, this was a period, again, I saw Nico live soon after it, and music for A New Society is the closest he came to that marble index desert shore approach. It's got more of a synthetic quality because of the era, but he's taking apart ballads, so there's a kind of a close watch, which is a ballad from an earlier album. Yeah, that's the original version. And the line is taken from a Johnny Cash song. I keep a close watch in the heart of mine. But he takes. Tears it apart with sound effects. So there's all sorts of things going on from sort of, you know, random bagpipes to thrown-in music, concrete. It's a really interesting album with some beautiful melodies, very fragmented. So if you like Cale's voice, and if you like the production innovations of Marble Index, investigate it.
Speaker 2See, I do, and I don't think this is a very good album. So that's where I disprove your rule. I love the marble index. I love the production. I listen for this record. I said, I can't listen. DX7 sounds. Yeah,
Speaker 3but do you hear what I'm saying? He's using the same techniques. Yes, I think. Yeah, I see what you're saying.
Speaker 2Like almost like that exquisite corpse thing where overdubs don't necessarily relate to the. I do, but I think the sound for me, the musical palette here is to DX7, 80s. We talked about 80s, you know, loving the 80s, but of course there was a lot of people that were. In fact, we talk about when we come on to jazz later. A lot of jazz musicians, when they transitioned from using things like distorted ring modulated electric pianos to synthesizers, just had the worst taste in sounds and it ruined their sound for a lot of people. I'm not very fond of the sounds on this record.
Speaker 3I can understand. I mean, I love his voice so much. His voice is good. And I liked Artificial Intelligence, which is his biggest banquet one, which was the one after this, which has got even more of the DX7 sounds that you won't like.
Speaker 2Another favourite, on the podcast, Bill. We love Bill Nelson, don't we? We love him. In some ways, his career, you can draw parallels between his career and Peter Hamill's career, can't you? Yeah. Constantly reinventing himself, constantly absorbing technology into the new technology, into whatever he's doing at that given time. And that's exactly what he's doing here. The Love That Whirls, the album that came out this year. It's a very new electronic synth-driven form of guitar pop. Very Bill Nelson-esque. Yeah. But, different to anything he's done before, he's kind of shedded a lot of the new wave kind of aspects of his sound that he had on Quit Dreaming and the Red Noise album. It's a more lush, more sophisticated sound. And interestingly enough, he's also alternating a lot here between ambient instrumentals and song-orientated material, which for me is one of the reasons why I love this album so much because it's very nicely balanced. It has a bit of everything. I think a lot of the time after this, he tended to do either the ambient record or the song record or the ambient record. Or the guitar instrumental record or the drum and bass record. And here, he's kind of mixing it up a bit, isn't he? Some classics on here. The October Man, Empire of the Senses. Flaming Desire. Flaming Desire, Private View. Classic Bill Nelson stuff. I'm assuming you're a fan of this record, Tim.
Speaker 3I really like it. It hits my Bill Nelson sweet spot. Me too. I think, you know, Quit Dreaming, this. Chimera as well, I really, really like. Yeah, the one after, yeah. And I like, you know, the tail end of Bebop Deluxe, the Jurassic Plastic. And of course, Red Noise fits into this as well. So I love this period of his work. And once more, I think this is a fascinating album because he looks the part. He looks the 1980s part. He sounds the 1980s part. And yet, only four years earlier, even on Jurassic Plastic, he's knocking off rock and roll licks, brilliant virtuoso rock solos. This is actually quite a departure from what he's doing in 76, what he's doing in 74. And there's not much of a difference dna in there you know although you say it's definitively built i know he did instrumentals and i know you look at that single from 77 japan and what is the the ridiculously pretentious b-side which i love no it's not blimps it's the one's the futurist manifesto oh yes okay yeah and i again i adore that and i suppose you can hear elements of drastic plastic and that single in his quick dreaming and diary of a it feels it feels
Speaker 2like on this record it feels like he's still really trying he's really trying and succeeding i would say too yeah he's really trying to have a broad appeal whereas later on it feels like he retreated into this world where he was just happy to make his music and sell a thousand copies of his album to the same thousand people every time and of course you know you know you know you know nothing wrong with that you know cottage industry it feels like he's still on a major label dave bates has signed him to phonogram he's making these big records that stand alongside whatever simple minds yeah but he was having hits i mean the thing is that he had a hit off
Speaker 3ships in the night was a hit for b-bob you know b-bob also but i think he did have a hit off quick dreaming well do you dream in color i
Speaker 2think it was a radio hit it wasn't it wasn't okay i remember being played a lot it was quite
Speaker 3yeah that was school disco stuff i mean this is the thing bill nelson got into my school discos with do you dream in color yeah so i kind of in my head that means he was huge
Speaker 2yeah everybody knew him you'd be surprised to probably realize it didn't probably didn't even make the top 40 but i know what you mean
Speaker 3okay yeah i remember that i remember seeing the video on um and he was you know he wasn't only in the music papers he was getting on bbc2 some of the arts programs i remember his review of brilliant trees and i remember it very specifically because he was very complimentary but said david sounds like somebody who needs to go out for a drink weirdly enough sylvian in contact with him and he was on gone to earth because i was yeah i mean
Speaker 2you're right because he was ubiquitous like he produced the gary newman record warriors he got riverside was it the riverside show he was on that a few times and then of course he was all over gone to earth the sylvian record he popped up on a few other people's records he does yeah skids he produced skids yeah so he's kind of he's right there in the zeitgeist isn't he he's in demand he's kind of respected i think by a lot of the post-punk post-punk generation um for what he's done previous to this like mccartney
Speaker 3you know he's an old school performer yeah if you look at how mccartney looked in 82 and he was quite old at that stage in some ways and nelson they actually pull it off yeah for some reason you can see him in smash hits yeah as much as martin fry ferry as well i guess yeah we um yeah so i really like him weirdly i think i told you before the podcast i bought another copy of this i've got it on cd and i had it originally on vinyl and i was in this amazing shop called i think it's um oh god what is it called a ray of light records in arundel which is an amazing record shop and it had the original double vinyl with labella labette the same track the free album and again while you fall in love with vinyl you've got that slightly textured sleeve on one part you've got nelson's quirky sleeve notes i love the fact that he's really trying he's writing sleeve notes then you've got labella but he's not content just to give you that album he'll give you another album
Speaker 2yeah of of weird kind of instrumental casio tones keyboard instrumentals yeah um yeah it was a lovely package you know so i really like this album yeah me too me too i love it um what else have we got this year van morrison beautiful vision we've talked about van's 80s albums they're all much of a muchness which is to say they're all lovely yeah uh this is no exception eno ambient form music on land it's very different to the other ambient albums isn't it it's darker it's more subterranean i think there's more use of overdubbing on this record isn't there it's got a less of the neoclassical aspect and more of what you might imagine being a big influence on what we think of as dark ambient music today isn't it beautiful record i mean you know drinking game
Speaker 3favorite yeah yeah i love this and as you say i love it because it's got a character different from other ambient albums and as you say it's partly in the darkness of the texture and i think all of this isn't it named after various east anglian sites which i've been because i right lived in east anglia for a while and some of this like you know lizard point is that one of some of these ugly they're quite bleak right done it i think might be one is it yeah yeah and i've been to dunwich beach and this is also this around this area you've got a really um interesting nuclear plant as well so it's quite haunting quite bleak and it's almost like we said this before about virginia astley it's music as landscape painting
Speaker 2brian eno who invented modern pop music as we know invented everything invented everything yeah yeah invented music the notion yeah the very notion of music you should see how he strings his guitar yeah i'd love to donald fagan's the nightfly tim as the resident steely now i did listen to this record on the way here uh and which which is why i made the comparison earlier on feeling like china crisis the closest i could think of you're you're the resident steely dan i mean what makes this a donald fagan album and not a steely dan album because i couldn't really figure it out as well as a
Speaker 3novice i think the thing is that by donald fagan standards this is slightly more pared down okay but
Speaker 2even a pared down fagan it's
Speaker 3really sophisticated it's very
Speaker 2slick it sounded very american session musician-y to me yeah which is which is kind of the problem i have with this whole steely the sort of arc of steely dan it's it's just not i know they're amazing um i love the single from it and
Speaker 3um that was played i think on ogre whistle test quite a lot um for a solo album this was a big success it was a big success yeah and i think the cover and some of the titles i think it tied in because there was always a slight nostalgia in steely dan and almost reclaiming this sort of 50s cold war era quality i think it did quite well you know the mccarthyite okay yeah it's i think it's an interesting album i like it but i prefer gaucho i prefer asia i prefer you know
Speaker 2right right it seemed a little bit more synthetic than those records i heard a lot more synth textures than i that's the only thing i could in my mind i could say well that's different to steely dan that i know well in some ways you know
Speaker 3you ask me the difference it's a bit like we're talking english settlement that maybe english settlement sounds like a superior demos album by xdc standards this sounds like a superior demos album by steely dan standards i kind of feel if becker had been involved with steely dan it would have been fleshed out that little bit more right
Speaker 2but i like it okay sparks angst in my pants i there are so many sparks albums i have never heard this would be one of them it's good that's all i can tell you it is good is this the one with sherlock holmes in rob our beautiful research assistant is this the one with sherlock holmes in yes yeah this is really
Speaker 3you know so they've again they've reinvented themselves from number one song and they've become almost this kind of thing i think it's a really good album i think it's a really kind of new wave pop band and they're great at it like they're great at electro pop like they're great at glam rock like they're great at glam pop like they're great at symphonic sample music later on in their career good album and some very funny lyrics they sound committed right really good album
Speaker 2right obviously very very talented and very you know like we talk about these bands that kind of redefine themselves on every album i mean they're a classic example of that aren't they yeah i think they're a classic example of that aren't they yeah i think they're a classic example of that aren't they and that can work against you in your career you know that does work against your career how you pull that off being able to change from album to album and expect to take your album with you i don't think anyone's really pulled it off except bowie maybe
Speaker 3yeah one of the next albums they do weirdly was called check or not one of the next singles change i think it was mid 80s 85 86 and that's got heavy use of fairlight great single right changed by sparks i recommend that but
Speaker 2here's a record that i know you want to talk about tim and i really like this record and i think it's a really good record and i think it's a really good record too roy harper another of our favorites on the show work of heart now he's definitely embracing the 80s here isn't he but he's he's um he's pulling it off isn't he because he's taking a lot the the first side of this record is a conceptual suite second second side i beg your pardon is a conceptual suite that you could say a follow-up to lord's prayer from life mask um or once upon a time in england from bolina ming vase but this is a this is a sort of equivalent of that that sounds like it could only have been made in 1982 there's a lot more there's something about the cheesy lounge sax on this i think that gives gives the era away too but i like it i go with it i
Speaker 3really like it i mean it's an interesting album that i think it was hated at the time was it okay with one exception derrick jewel of the sunday times gave it album of the year wow
Speaker 2okay um so it did
Speaker 3get some praise but harper hates it because he'd lost his major label deal and apparently it was recorded and it was recorded and it was recorded and it was recorded in relatively limited circumstances so we didn't have access to the major label budgets the major label studios and i think there were all sorts of problems making it getting the technology to work i think it's great first side i think it's five pieces it's separate pieces a few of them really strong heavier on the keyboard texture heavier on things like the fretless bass that ties it in with the 80s
Speaker 2yeah and the sack the lounge and the
Speaker 3lounge yeah but they're good they're good you
Speaker 2great i'm wondering how much of that was him and how much of that was the producer saying you've got to have this this is that you've got to go with the times roy yeah let's get my mate to do the the you know the careless way whisper saxophone solo i wonder how much of that was going on there it's really you know to me the
Speaker 3five songs on the first side they're really good and then the second side the suite is i think one of the best things he's ever done and also the closest what an odd era for this to happen mike oldfield does it of course the closest he's ever got to prog in that this is a pink floyd style conceptual suite and he pulls it off this in this i think the sax and the textures and the fretless work perfectly okay you know this i think is a really underrated album and i think one of the reasons it's underrated is it was released as the roy harper band it's also got a terrible cover and it's got a terrible terrible cover almost as bad as tarkus give it a good cover give it a good cover and put the suite on side one this is a roy harper classic for the ages i love it and it was later reissued in a weird way because the demo album for it where he's playing everything including the acoustics you know the including captivity yeah so born in captivity yeah and it's pretty much it's got the side long suite but just played with acoustic guitar and voice to be honest with you i prefer the bells and whistles version me too you know because i'm always told oh if you really want to hear this album listen to born in captivity yeah no i agree and think you know yes good but i prefer the full version yeah and there are a couple of tracks that yeah if he'd have put stan and elizabeth on the album it would have been even better he could have dropped a couple put them on the album and put them on the album and put them on the album but i think it's one of his strong
Speaker 2i i i really like it i think in this category going with the times or not i would say yes he's you know i'd say i'd say go and buy
Speaker 3it from amazon via an album
Speaker 2years link unlike this next entry this is now i really really don't like now we're going to talk about it in conjunction with another record made by the main songwriter of this band came out the same year that i fucking love go on the band the who the album it's hard yeah can't stand it what pete townsend all the best cowboys have chinese eyes masterpiece i'll just let that lie there for a minute tim what would you like to say about this now
Speaker 3it's an interesting thing because all the best cowboys i bought when it came out ditto it's hard and i fell really hard for all the best cowboys amazing loved it slit skirts and it's still one of my favorite albums of all time i know he refused see refuses no river sometimes you have these little poetic interludes the musicianship is impeccable the arrangements are great it's got an 80s surface sound but it has a depth of musicality that is quite different from a lot of albums in that period so the album i don't know if you know
Speaker 2this the album started off as pete's idea was he wanted to read his poetry okay to music so that's where you get a lot of spoken word stuff right songs like the sea refuses no river and obviously it developed and it became more song orientated as it goes along i think you know to me this sounds not knowing it sounds like this is pete saying i'm keeping all my best material for my solo record we've got to make a who album all right i'll give them one great song one great song eminence front eminence front great amazing great song the rest of it so forgettable i like it so forgettable okay make a case for the defense
Speaker 3then well i think it's got a sound in itself i love the fact that on the cover they're there in this kind of it's like digital early amusement arcade yeah and they've got these quite fancy 1980s haircuts as well and the sound of the album is more synthetic it's quite symphonic as well in parts i think both albums are really ambitious eminence front is one of my all-time who favorites me too i like athena i like i've seen no war i really like the album i i just i everything about
Speaker 2sound from the cover to the a terrible title it's hard i mean that's just going to open you up to all sorts of gags i mean to me it's an album it's a band running on fumes absolutely running on fumes and pete's saying i've got all this great material maybe the band didn't want to record it to be fair i think there was a bit yeah maybe the band didn't want to record all this great material making an absolute masterpiece of an album in all the best cowboys of chinese well i think the thing
Speaker 3is with all the best cowboys the slit skirts it's quite you know it's equally sort of pretentious and pompous in places which i love it well it was always a little bit a little bit pretentious you know but it's very personal i think yes somebody saved me slit skirts they are amazing accounts of both of his life yeah and what what townsend does better than almost anybody is he captures his life and he captures the history so in these songs you almost get the culture from mod to hippie to punk to this kind of drowned out alcoholism of the early 80s washed out quality it's fantastic you know so there's an autobiographical quality that you can't imagine the who perhaps doing justice to slit skirts or to somebody save me or even the sea refuses no river yeah
Speaker 2you know i think you're right it's something about pete's work it's always very meta isn't it like even down to who are you essentially being an album about struggling to write an album yeah you get songs like music must change a new song guitar and pen it's all about his struggle to write music and it's very raw very raw sometimes it's incredibly moving yeah i mean
Speaker 3i think it's one of the things about the album vulnerable very very vulnerable moving as i said i really like it's hard i've never quite understood the hate for it and i i really like face dances but you know it's hard sound if it's its own yeah i think the thing is you are right that empty glass and all the best cowboys are better than face dances and it's hard they are both classic yes hands and albums and although i think doltry is a phenomenal front man great vocalist his voice doesn't lend itself as well to the vulnerability of this material
Speaker 2i think that's it you hit the nail on the head yeah i think you're right yeah i think that's one of the reasons i've always although roger dolcher is amazing and has performed the definitive versions of many of pete's songs sometimes pete is the only person that can sing and i love his voice i love his voice right let's move on we love pete townsend all the best cowboys have chances if you don't know that record genius this is an interesting one isn't it tim neil young's trance now we talk this category as we said the beginning this category is called old favorites moving with the times or not he's definitely moving with the times isn't he this is an album that geffen his label at the time ended up suing him over this and another album i think it was everybody's rocking his rockabilly album they sued him for delivering unrepresentative work not sounding neil young enough essentially making records that didn't sound like neil young even though they'd sign neil young well hello you've signed neil young what do you expect okay i think he was going through a difficult time in his personal life his son had been born with cerebral palsy unable to communicate and there's something about that on this record neil chooses to make an album where instead of using his voice which is one of the most incredible voices in the history of popular music one of the most unique instruments in the history of popular music he chooses to sing a lot of this record through a vocoder what could be more up with the times than that and i think at the time it was seen as willfully destructive career destructive thing to do but again we talked about this in relation to hot space by queen didn't we looking back now at the catalog i'm so happy he made this record yeah and i
Speaker 3love that context i heard that he used the vocoder and obscured his words because it was relating to his son that he believed his son was trying to okay so i didn't imagine that that's great yeah so his son was attempting to communicate right but was non-verbal and i love that that he's got these complex messages perhaps in the lyrics that we can't hear right it's almost like a book that is glued together that you can't read what's on the pages but there's an
Speaker 2important message there but you know crazy horse meets craftwork yeah who would have thought that could work i thought it was a great idea then i think it's a great idea now it's a and i love the fact in the canada you know the 80s is a crazy time for neil he's making rockabilly albums country and western records vocoder records and some really really obviously later on albums like landing on water none more 80s sounding records 80s pop records and totally confounding the expectations of both his label and his audience but now it's fascinating isn't it to look back and see that as part of the trajectory trajectory it was at
Speaker 3the time i mean i always had time for landing water and other people don't but as you say there is not a record in his catalogue that sounds so of its time landing on water is pure mid to late 80s in every sound yeah but this is
Speaker 2one we'd say is going with the times and pulling it off trans i think so yeah i think so too yeah not gonna say it's a masterpiece marvin gaye's midnight love it's an album that goes with the times and pulls it off doesn't it to the tune of about eight million sales um obviously famously has has sexual healing on it interestingly you know just before this he'd become a recluse living in in a obscure seaside town in belgium yeah you've been there was it ostend he was living in yeah um this great american soul icon living in a little apartment in ostend in belgium and hanging out with the fishermen in the local bar playing arrows playing darts and dreaming up sexual healing, which is going to completely revitalise his career. He just signed, I think he signed to a new, Columbia released it, signed a new label. They spent $2 million making this record, which at the time was an astronomical, I think $20 million by today's standards. Nine months making these eight tracks, fashioning these eight tracks with this kind of bizarre, sensual, electronic R&B with kind of S&M, saucy S&M lyrics. And lo and behold, it goes on to sell trillions and trillions of copies.
Speaker 3It repays the investment. I mean, I like it. I do like it. And I think sexual healing, what a fantastic single as well. And it's almost got that sort of Roxy music, Avalon, everything synthesised, blended. Very smooth. This is your Michelin chef's blended soup. Yeah. To perfection.
Speaker 2Yeah. But he's right up there with, you know, Prince making 1999 using the drum machines. Michael Jackson, you know, making Thriller with Quincy. Marvin's doing it too. There's a lot of use of 808 drum machine. You think of, you know, albums later on. I mean, Kanye West. Kanye West, yeah. 808 and whatever it was called. Heartbreak. Yeah, I mean, Marvin was doing it in 1982, making an album essentially using an 808 drum machine as the foundation for the music, but still making it funky.
Speaker 3Yeah. Well, as you know, I've got a real soft spot for Dream of Lifetime, the album includes. It's either outtakes from this or the demos he was making for the follow-up. I'm not quite sure. Squeeze Sweets from a Stranger.
Speaker 2I don't know this record, Tim. You've written here. I hated, but I really like.
Speaker 3Well, it's probably their most controversial album. Very, because, you know, they went off at various tangents. They were seen as the new Beatles at one point, the new Lennon and McCartney. And I've always liked Squeeze. You know, one of those when I was at school. Take Me, I'm Yours. I thought it was an amazing single. Certainly was. Cool for Cass. Up the Junction. You know, best album. The very best of Squeeze. Which again, their greatest hits that was released possibly even slightly before this, or maybe slightly after, was brilliant. You know, Indispensable. Indispensable piece of work. And I really like lots of what they've done before. But as an album, this is very quirky, very dark, very experimental in parts for them.
Speaker 2Right. We were talking about Queen earlier and Hot Space and how it's a good album on its own terms. But in the Queen catalogue, it just doesn't appeal to the expectations of a Queen audience. So a lot of albums get dismissed as, being junk, not very good. But actually, they're really good albums. They just don't appeal to the core fan base or they don't fit in somehow to the continuum of an artist's work. No. And I think Hot Space is a great example of that. If that had been another band that had come out with Hot Space, we might be talking about it as a genius kind of disco, electro-funk record of the era with a great vocalist. But because it's a Queen album, it's seen as the nadir of their catalogue. Is that also true, perhaps, of the Squeezer? I think it probably is. And also another one you've got here is hated, but I really like it. B-52's Mesopotamia. Oh, God, yeah, I love that. That's David Byrne who produced that one. Isn't it about 10 minutes long, that album?
Speaker 3It's very short. It's very, very short.
Speaker 2Is it shorter than Merillion's Market Square Heroes EP from this year?
Speaker 3Probably, yeah, it is. It's great. It's got this kind of spindly, as befits the Byrne production, almost talking heads quality. And it's. It's funny, it's funky, it's maybe slightly more dour than the previous albums. And, of course, what happens is there's a reset after this because this does not do as well. And it isn't like Critically, it's not a commercial hit. And, of course, soon afterwards, they're going to come back with things like Luff Shack and it's, you know.
Speaker 2Suddenly it's like a.
Speaker 3All cylinders firing. Whereas I really like this. It's a quirky, miniature.
Speaker 2Miniature. Oh, it's a quirky miniature. Yeah. So I was waiting for the noun. I was waiting for the noun. Oh, there's no noun. A quirky miniature. There's no noun coming. It's a quirky miniature. Okay, the miniature is the noun. Miniature is the noun.
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