Rod Stewart - Every Picture Tells A Story
Rod the Mod finds his solo footing, headed for stardom, with the Faces in his wake.
6:00 AM GMT 22/06/2011
Features Disc of the day
Mercury Rev
Boces
(Beggars Banquet, 1993)
Kosmic Katskills kombo unlearn the rules of rock music. Flutes are involved.
With their latest album, Snowflake Midnight, reminding many of what they loved about the band in the first place, let’s stagger back to a time when an encounter with Mercury Rev was like hacking through a jungle of drug-fried mayhem to a clearing of opalescent beauty. Boces, their second (can it really stand for Board Of Cooperative Education Services?), was their last to feature barking, lumbering co-singer David Baker, and is still the only record to approximate the sound of 8-year-olds on heroin unleashed in the school music room to play imagined soundtracks to Walt Disney’s True Life Adventures while a Balinese gamelan band crash a New Orleans funeral, The Groundhogs fall from the sky and a scary fat tramp impersonates Billie Holiday. The spirit of Beefheart lives in the way the band rename their instruments – here’s Dave Fridmann on Bass Explore, and beaming Muttley/mini-Buddha Sean “Grasshopper” Mackowiak on Dither Guitar – enhancing the impression that this is a reinvention of music using bespoke, previously unavailable tools. Over the years I have developed the suspicion that the record is about the dawning of sexual consciousness – perhaps partly fomented by the upsetting promo vid for Something For Joey, which features a stuffed platypus and musteline porn actor Ron Jeremy – but less controversial is the reflection that it still sounds exciting, unpredictable… and great. Baker went west after this (making a record as Shady with various Boo Radleys), Rev graduated to a more palatable, less explosive incarnation, and Fridmann went on to produce everyone good for the next 15 years, but Boces remains a testament to the infinite boundaries of “indie” before it became the besmirched marketing category we know today.
Danny Eccleston
Posted by Danny_Eccleston at 6:00 AM GMT 19/09/2008
Further Listening
Mercury Rev – Yerself Is Steam (Beggars Banquet, 1991)
Shady – World (Beggars Banquet, 1994)
Flaming Lips – Transmissions From The Satellite Heart (Warner Bros, 1993)
Previous Disc of the day
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Earl Brutus - Larky
Last salvo of Ginsters Pasty-Warholism from Britpop ramraiders.
12:04 PM GMT 08/06/2011
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Loudon Wainwright - T-Shirt
An overlooked small wonder from an unpredictable career.
6:00 AM GMT 03/06/2011
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Landscape - From The Tea-rooms Of Mars… To The Hell-holes Of Uranus
Dry computer club Futurists, upon hitting implausible chart paydirt.
6:00 AM GMT 17/05/2011
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Causa Sui - Summer Sessions Vol 1-3
Epic Danish jams, for when the neighbours get you down.
6:00 AM GMT 12/05/2011
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Posted by Anonymous at 2:07 PM GMT 20/09/2008 Report Abuse
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yeah, boces is a totally amazing album - messy, flawed, surprising, beautiful, and trancendent. Kind of like a band of more hardcore Daniel Johnstons.
I remember playing this to a mate after a *lot* of weed. Totally freaked him out - we had to leave him on his own for a bit afterwards. He described it as "a fucked up animal orchestra messing with my mind".. Went out and bought it the next day.
Posted by fink at 11:39 AM GMT 28/08/2011 Report Abuse
Reply to this post
yeah, boces is a totally amazing album - messy, flawed, surprising, beautiful, and trancendent. Kind of like a band of more hardcore Daniel Johnstons.
I remember playing this to a mate after a *lot* of weed. Totally freaked him out - we had to leave him on his own for a bit afterwards. He described it as "a fucked up animal orchestra messing with my mind".. Went out and bought it the next day.
Posted by fink at 11:39 AM GMT 28/08/2011 Report Abuse
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Comment on this post