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
The Teardrop Explodes
Kilimanjaro
(Mercury, 1980)
Julian Cope's inaugural blast on the foghorn.
Nowadays Julian Cope stalks the land as a leather-clad dissenter making livid protest albums and propagating Odin, megaliths and groups with names like Blood Moon, Skullflower and Crow Tongue. But fronting The Teardrop Explodes he was a Top Of The Pops-appearing, hit-bagging pop star who was on the cover of Smash Hits. Kilimanjaro was the album of this phase (though perhaps it's not that different - Cope was wearing leathers then too, and it's named for a giant rock). Army surplus-clad, neo-freak ex-punks standing against music's then-raincoated mood - guitarist Alan Gill even had a moustache - Kilimanjaro sounds a permanent reveille on trumpets and reaches the kind of climactic drama most groups would save for their last tune a mere 90 seconds into the first track, Ha Ha I'm Drowning. Such early singles as Treason, Sleeping Gas and Bouncing Babies continue to sparkle in re-recorded form, and despite the relative serenity of the last few songs, the remaining mood is one of a breakneck conflict situation, as on Poppies In The Field, where, whether it relates to opiates or Remembrance Day, their Lancaster bomber is about to crash and no-one knows how to open the parachutes. When accompanying single Reward was a smash a few months later the group looked set for lasting stardom; for the group's full lysergic Benny Hill chase into extinction, however, read Cope's fabulous memoir Head On and spare a thought for guitarist Mick Finkler, who co-wrote all but one song and played on five tracks, but was ditched from the aircraft on the brink of takeoff.
Ian Harrison
Posted by Ross_Bennett at 6:00 AM GMT 04/08/2009
Further Listening
The Teardrop Explodes – Zoology (Head Heritage, 2004)
Echo & The Bunnymen – Crocodiles (Korova, 1980)
British Sea Power – Do You Like Rock Music? (Rough Trade, 2008)
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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