From: owner-fegmaniax-digest@smoe.org (fegmaniax-digest) To: fegmaniax-digest@smoe.org Subject: fegmaniax-digest V10 #210 Reply-To: fegmaniax@smoe.org Sender: owner-fegmaniax-digest@smoe.org Errors-To: owner-fegmaniax-digest@smoe.org Precedence: bulk fegmaniax-digest Wednesday, May 23 2001 Volume 10 : Number 210 Today's Subjects: ----------------- Re: Wingspan ["victorian squid" ] Re: Wingspan ["J. Brown" ] tempest in a teacup ["Andrew D. Simchik" ] More Brit Pop [Chris Bedford ] Re: tempest in a teacup ["Joseph S. Barrera III" ] It had to happen [steve ] behead the prophet ["Sirloin Stockade" ] Re: More Brit Pop [JH3 ] Re: She's a twentieth century girl (bah bah bah) [Jeff Dwarf ] Re: Multi-K Pedantic Mega-Wang-Dang Mythopoetic Initiation Theory [Michae] **se**serious **fi**film [The Great Quail ] Hedblade Soft Boys article [Bayard ] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 22 May 2001 18:25:18 -0700 From: "victorian squid" Subject: Re: Wingspan On Tue, 22 May 2001 13:37:20 Michael R Godwin wrote: >Like it! Macca's propensity for writing inane songs about everyday life >chez McCartney was brilliantly sent up in Spitting Image about 10 years (funny stuff snipped- thanks for sharing that! :)) In Macca's defense I think a lot of his domestic life songs are really quite charming, especially and particularly "Eat At Home". The world could definitely use more lusty paeans to married love. (I've long been thinking this one needed a cover, and no offense to Minus/Fellows fans, but Scott McCaughey hasn't quite got the voice for it. Altho I give him much credit for -knowing- that and not attempting the vocal swoops. Unfortunately they are really an integral part of the song's beauty. Anywayz, moving right along...) So the problem I think is really a tendency towards sentimentality that was gradually allowed to get out of control, not the domestic subject matter per se. Yes, I know, what an original insight. I guess it's just that I feel it's really important to note that I don't think domestic subject matter is the problem. I would like to see more domestic subject matter in pop music, frankly. As I move out of my angstful twenties I find more and more that albums like "Ram" really are a better reflection of life as I currently live it than a lot of other pop music is. There really does seem to be a paucity of good pop for adults* (as violently opposed to "adult pop" and in particular "adult contemporary pop"). It seems at least to me that the last couple of Robyn Hitchcock albums have been filling this void in a most satisfying way tho, which, flaws aside, is one reason that I really do appreciate them. They show him heading overall in a direction that too few have gone as of yet. loveonya, susan * I am not implying that anyone younger than I am is not an adult, I just couldn't think of a better word to express what I was trying to convey. p.s. sorry about the eudoramail wacky formatting. it seems to get even worse when I attempt to compensate for it. Join 18 million Eudora users by signing up for a free Eudora Web-Mail account at http://www.eudoramail.com ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 22 May 2001 18:58:23 -0700 (PDT) From: "J. Brown" Subject: Re: Wingspan On Tue, 22 May 2001, victorian squid wrote: > In Macca's defense I think a lot of his domestic life songs are really > quite charming, especially and particularly "Eat At Home". The world > could definitely use more lusty paeans to married love. > > (I've long been thinking this one needed a cover, and no offense to > Minus/Fellows fans, but Scott McCaughey hasn't quite got the voice for > it. Altho I give him much credit for -knowing- that and not attempting > the vocal swoops. Unfortunately they are really an integral part of > the song's beauty. Anywayz, moving right along...) what they should have done at that shopw is have Sean Nelson of Harvey Danger take lead instead of doing back ups! BTW has anyone else heard They Might Be Giants bizarro cover of Ram On? Jason Wilson Brown - University of Washington - Seattle, WA "Put your faith in death because it's free" -Robyn Hitchcock ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 22 May 2001 19:08:02 -0700 From: "Andrew D. Simchik" Subject: tempest in a teacup >From: Jill Brand >and pointed lyrics, they did a sea change (and I can understand why), but This is not directed at you personally. But... ...it's not a "sea change"! It's just a "change"! It's okay! "Change" is good! No one can just say "change" anymore. It's got to be a "sea change." Even if it's a sudden change brought about through voluntary action on the part of the person changing, somehow it's still a "sea change." Again: this is not directed at you personally. It's directed at the endless parade of journalists hopping on this language pet peeve bandwagon and causing innocent civilians to adopt the same habit. Stop the Madness! >Jill, who just might as well grin and bear it, 'cause it's not worth the >trouble of an argument God I love that song. >From: Miles Goosens > >13 makes the wrong turns of BLUR worth it; "Tender" makes you think the >album's going to be an ersatz white-boy soul breakup album, but nothing >could be further from the truth. The rest of the album is populated by >noisy soundscapes, staccato bursts of Andy MacKay-like sax skronk, >disconnected lyrics floating about while Damon's shattered mind loses >itself in a haze of coffee, TV, and God knows what drugs. It's splendid. Or extremely annoying. Depending on the song. >From: "3 Rose Cottage" >For some reason the first Highlander >movie immediatly springs to mind as a good example. It's a great example, because that movie is so dorky it hurts. But it's also incredibly pleasurable. Objectively speaking, of course. :) >(What >about Robyns stuff:-)? Totally open and porous, because the images are incomplete glimpses, songs start and end unexpectedly, truth is fleeting and sinks and rises. Definitely quality stuff, but not in an airtight gleaming statue Apollo way. I'm glad what I'm trying to spout makes so much sense to you! :) >From: Eb > >So...mixed feelings on Blur. I'm also less than thrilled with the >group's apparent move toward dance music, nowadays. Oh dear god no. To what are you referring? >From: Miles Goosens >[Pulp] >But not until 1994's HIS 'N' HERS, after serving up mediocre fare since, >what, 1978? Yeah, those early albums were unbearable. I can't believe I paid good money for them. It took me a long time to warm to Pulp (in fact, I can pretty much tell when I'm going to really like a band, because I dislike them at first but keep listening...anyone I love right away is probably going to bore me in the long run), but I finally did, working backwards from _This Is Hardcore_. - -- Andrew D. Simchik, drew at stormgreen dot com http://www.stormgreen.com/ ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 22 May 2001 18:49:29 -0700 From: Chris Bedford Subject: More Brit Pop I too enjoy Pulp's Brit Pop sounds; "Different Class" is a great album. One of my favorite "recent" Brit Pop bands was Adorable. Their album "Against Perfection" was my favorite album when it was released in, I think, 1994. I was fortunate enough to see them tour, and was impressed by both their musicianship and stage presence. I'm told the lead singer put together another band called Polak. Any one heard of them or have any news/comments? Cheers, Chris ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 22 May 2001 19:18:37 -0700 From: "Joseph S. Barrera III" Subject: Re: tempest in a teacup Also sprach Andrew D. Simchik: > >From: Jill Brand > >and pointed lyrics, they did a sea change (and I can understand why), but > > This is not directed at you personally. > > But... > > ...it's not a "sea change"! It's just a "change"! It's okay! "Change" > is good! > > No one can just say "change" anymore. It's got to be a "sea change." > Even if it's a sudden change brought about through voluntary action > on the part of the person changing, somehow it's still a "sea change." Blame Bill S. Hey, at least it's not a "quantum leap". - - Joe Joseph S. Barrera III Software Architect, Kana Communications, Inc. _________________________________________________________ 1.650.219-4557 (cell) / 1.650.588-4801 (home) joe@barrera.org / napier@waste.org / joebar@broadbase.com www.barrera.org / www.waste.org / www.kana.com "By the way, Mister Watson... Have we got any of those sticky things left?" "Oh, sticky things, uh... I dunno. Go down in the hold and have a look." ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 22 May 2001 21:41:42 -0500 From: steve Subject: It had to happen I don't know if lj can wait, but October 23 brings the publication of --- WHAT IS MR. WINKLE?, complete with cross-promotions from Mattel and mrwinkle.com. - - Steve __________ No previous administration has tried to sell its economic plans on such false pretenses. And this from a man who ran for president on a promise to restore honor and integrity to our nation's public life. - Paul Krugman, on Bush, from his book Fuzzy Math. ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 22 May 2001 21:43:44 -0700 From: "Sirloin Stockade" Subject: behead the prophet have uploaded some photo graphs from the croco dile to . a few good shots here, but the place was just too damned dark. morris wasn't visible at all, alas. _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 22 May 2001 23:53:48 -0500 From: JH3 Subject: Re: More Brit Pop > ...One of my favorite "recent" Brit Pop bands was Adorable. Their > album "Against Perfection" was my favorite album when it was > released in, I think, 1994... Favorite album...ever? Or just that year? Adorable was a great band, another victim of the awful Creation/SBK mess (along with Slowdive). I liked their second album even better than the first one. And I wouldn't really call them "Britpop." Too downer-ish, for one thing. Most people wanted to compare them to Echo & the Bunnymen, which was actually somewhat accurate, I suppose. As long as we're discussing Britpop, has anyone else heard the Rialto album? I can't understand why they didn't take off... I loved that record... > I'm told the lead singer put together another band called Polak. Any > one heard of them or have any news/comments? Their second album just came out last month! I haven't managed to score a copy yet. Based on the first one ("3x3") I don't think they're as good as Adorable (or even Rialto), but they're definitely better than average. And more like the usual Britpop fare, too - slightly less morose and a bit more chimey, perhaps. Who knows, Eb might even like them! ( Official site: http://www.polak.fsnet.co.uk ) Meanwhile: >4KN*PB2zF7OzJ[PEO"#,HgSP4rHEGkI>3}#,;rW*8xDz5DEsSQ#! >!0C@8>1&!1JGUk6TE.PT1#=!:MRu5@QW;(SC7GR)NoW(@{2zF7#, jO8WJAO;6S-7CNJhttp://www.mf38.com >(C@8>1&MxU>)!# >Hg9{DzJGR;N;DPJ?#,Gk0Q4KPEW*8xDz5DE.EsSQ!";rDz5D0.F^! Really? Wow! I had no idea they were actually married! John H. ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 22 May 2001 23:23:42 -0700 (PDT) From: Jeff Dwarf Subject: Re: She's a twentieth century girl (bah bah bah) Eb wrote: > >What about their last album? I think its easily their best. > > Wow. I've previously said that I favor Parklife over any Oasis album, > but > on the other hand, I rate the self-titled album, 13 and Leisure as > barely passable. i can sorta see 13 and Leisure being rated so lowly, but i still really like the s-t one, even if "song 2" was overplayed up the ass. of course, we have established i don't like the right albums by anyone best. (though i think MLIR is their best one though). > So...mixed feelings on Blur. I'm also less than thrilled with the > group's apparent move toward dance music, nowadays. It was > immediately > evident that the band's Mod sound had hit a creative cul-de-sac with > The > Great Escape, but I'm not pleased with the way they "solved" that > problem. > > Has anyone heard that "Gorillaz" album? It's Damon Albarn > collaborating with someone else, right? dan "the automator" nakamura > Eb > > now: tired ===== "Loyalty to a petrified opinion never yet broke a chain or freed a human soul." Mark Twain "For every fatal shooting, there were roughly three non-fatal shootings. And, folks, this is unacceptable in America. It's just unacceptable. And we're going to do something about it." George W. Bush, May 14, 2001 Yahoo! Auctions - buy the things you want at great prices http://auctions.yahoo.com/ ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 22 May 2001 23:24:28 -0700 (PDT) From: Stephen Mahoney Subject: Re: She's a twentieth century girl (bah bah bah) yeah oasis blur(some good stuff) and pulp arent modern day kinks- sorry. xtc are the only band(duo?) that could fit that bill- if they want it! noel gallagher, I lied him on the chemical brothers album dig your own hole, but I cant say much about the rest of his output. pulp, I dont know as well. for those in portland, ore.- cowboy junkies at the millenium nw at 5p.m. THURSDAY(not friday as was printed in the oregonian) On Tue, 22 May 2001, Jill Brand wrote: > For me, the beginning of Blur's career is a bit of a bell curve, and then > things flatten out in the late 90s. Leisure is good (in my mind) but a > bit immature. Modern Life is Rubbish is very good and occasionally > brilliant (both in terms of melody and lyrics). Parklife is my favorite > album of the 90s: great music and quirky observations of life keep coming. > The Great Escape has a lot of good stuff on it but, it is overproduced > (somewhat self-conscious and there are just too many horns). When their > self-titled album came out, and some of us were expecting more great tunes > and pointed lyrics, they did a sea change (and I can understand why), but > they didn't manage to take me with them for about half of it. And their > last album..... > > I actually came upon them because of the Kinks. Everyone was calling Ray > Davies the godfather of Britpop (a title he loathes; he says it makes him > feel like he is a 1000 years old), and bands like Blur, Pulp, and Oasis > (though I don't know why for this group) were being called modern-day > Kinks, so I had to go see what it was all about. Someone sent me a video > clip of Ray and Damon Albarn on TV doing Waterloo Sunset together, and > then they broke into the chorus of Parklife, which sounded intriguing. > And then I went Blur nuts, and managed to see them quite soon after at the > Middle East in Cambridge, MA, a club that can't hold more than about 500 > people. I couldn't believe that in England they were selling out Wembley, > and here they were in a smoky basement. Great, great show. Subsequent > shows have been good, but not as wonderful. > > So....I'd say that one should start with Parklife, but then one shouldn't > expect anything better. Or...start with Modern Life is Rubbish and get > the next two in order. > > Not that anybody asked... > > Jill, who just might as well grin and bear it, 'cause it's not worth the > trouble of an argument > Gallons by which daily U.S. oil consumption would drop if SUVs average fuel efficiency increased by 3 mpg : 49,000,000 Source: Sierra Club (Washington) Gallons per day that the proposed drilling of Alaskas Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is projected to yield : 42,000,000 Source: The White House Stephen Mahoney Multnomah County Library at Rockwood branch clerk stephenm@nethost.multnomah.lib.or.us 503-988-5396 fax 503-988-5178 ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 22 May 2001 23:31:30 -0700 (PDT) From: Stephen Mahoney Subject: Re: blur jeans yes alien thelma and louise and bladrunner were made by a ridley scott who I consider to be a great director the rest is , well, it leaves alot to be desired!! just bought the unrated filled with goodies directors cut of requiem for a dream, ahhhh....let the nightmares begin! On Tue, 22 May 2001, Andrew D. Simchik wrote: > >From: Stephen Mahoney > > > >who really wants to see > >a great directoor do something with alien????? > > > > I guess it's debatable whether Ridley Scott is a great director, > but I think his Alien was better than Jeunet's by a very large > margin. Certainly I think he set a standard that's considerably > higher than that set by Planet of the Apes, Rollerball, or Police > Academy. > > >From: "Brian Huddell" > > > >First album is actually "Leisure" and I can't second that recommendation. > >The follow up, "Modern Life Is Rubbish" really shows the first glimpses of > >the perfect encyclopedic britpop they master on "Parklife", and all but > >exhaust on "The Great Escape". > > I like _Leisure_ -- there are some excellent songs on it along > with the mediocre, which is pretty much how it is on most Blur > albums IMO. _Modern Life_ is very very good, but it took a while > for it to grow on me. _Parklife_ is close to perfect. I've never > heard _The Great Escape_ (will probably get around to buying it used > one of these days), and I'm lukewarm on the "American indie" albums > _Blur_ and _13_ (back to the great songs mixed with mediocre problem > again). > > Oh -- the thing with _Leisure_ is that it's pretty saturated with > that "baggy/Madchester" sound that was all the rage at that time > (see also Happy Mondays, Stone Roses, Charlatans UK). To me that's > a plus, but others might disagree. > > -- > Andrew D. Simchik, drew at stormgreen dot com > http://www.stormgreen.com/ > Gallons by which daily U.S. oil consumption would drop if SUVs average fuel efficiency increased by 3 mpg : 49,000,000 Source: Sierra Club (Washington) Gallons per day that the proposed drilling of Alaskas Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is projected to yield : 42,000,000 Source: The White House Stephen Mahoney Multnomah County Library at Rockwood branch clerk stephenm@nethost.multnomah.lib.or.us 503-988-5396 fax 503-988-5178 ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 23 May 2001 12:52:07 +0100 (BST) From: Michael R Godwin Subject: Re: Multi-K Pedantic Mega-Wang-Dang Mythopoetic Initiation Theory On Tue, 22 May 2001, 3 Rose Cottage wrote: > I also saw the Wings thing. And also was suprised by the lack of Laine > appreciation. Ive never gotten the feeling that there was alot of emotional > generosity in Paul, and that just confirmed it. He can and has transcended > himeself(some of the Beatles stuff,some of the first album and occaisional > other signs), but otherwise ... I remember a story that Denny Laine went broke recording an album of Buddy Holly covers (it seemed like a good idea at the time) and Paul offered to bail him out _if_ DL signed over all his Wings royalties to McCartney multinational enterprises. Can anyone confirm / deny this? Paul did let Denny sing "Go Now" with Wings, though ... - - Mike Godwin n.p. Very noisy LotR trailer ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 23 May 2001 09:54:43 -0700 From: The Great Quail Subject: **se**serious **fi**film >I've watched **se**serious **fi**film OK, why are people doing the faux stuttering all the time for this? Just curious, - --Quail ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 23 May 2001 07:40:59 -0700 (PDT) From: Bayard Subject: Hedblade Soft Boys article Jay (a former feg) gave me this to give to the list - it was published elsewhere, but what are ya gonna do. _ The Soft Boys By Jay Hedblade The year was 1980. Ronald Regan had waltzed into the White House and was credited with the dubiously timed release of American hostages in Iran. Unemployment was at an all-time post-war high under Margaret Thatcher's eighteen month old administration in Britain. The Russians had invaded Afghanistan, and overnight the Cold War was suddenly not so tepid. If The Sex Pistols looked like court jesters three years earlier when they were screaming "No Future," they were suddenly looking like sage prophets. To say some found the time bleak is an understatement, as the last gasp of the late 1960s "peace and love" movement was quickly sucked into a vacuum, taking its optimistic pop songs with it. "All You Need Is Love" had given away to the haunted sentiments of The Special's "Ghost Town," and The Clash's "Guns Of Brixton." Among all of this were the Soft Boys, a band formed in Cambridge in 1977, wielding intelligent songs and ringing guitars that reflected their studies in the three "B's: Beatles, Barrett, and Byrds. The timing for their masterpiece, "Underwater Moonlight," was as awful. "We just thought, 'Gee, the world could be over by Christmas, but at least we've made our album,'" says Soft Boys figure-head Robyn Hitchcock twenty years on from the record's unceremonious release on the tiny independent label Armageddon. No one could have imagined, least of all the band themselves, that two decades later "Underwater Moonlight" would no longer be a record, it would be a CD. Two CDs, in fact, as the Matador label has just painstakingly re-packaged the original release with an assortment of studio odds and ends AND an entire disc's worth of rehearsals. Now known to the world as "Underwater Moonlight And How It Got There," Matador has seen to giving the barley known Soft Boys the type of royal treatment you might expect for "Pet Sounds" or "Sgt. Pepper." It all begs the question: WHY? The reason is simple. "Underwater Moonlight" is to the 1980s what "The Velvet Underground And Nico," Love's "Forever Changes," or Big Star's "#1 Record," were to a decade before it. That is to say that very few people bought them upon initial release, but those who did became fervent about them and, over time, fought to keep them alive. In the case of "Underwater Moonlight," those ardent fans include R.E.M., Counting Crows, The Goo-Goo Dolls, The Replacements, Old 97's, Frank Black and the Pixies, and Cake to name just a few. Some have rated it among the greatest guitar records ever released. If you haven't heard it, here's what you're missing: The simultaneously delicate and powerful drumming of Morris Windsor, the slinky funk of Matthew Seligman's bass, the manic catharsis of Kimberly Rew's guitar, and the articulate, visual lyrics of Robyn Hitchcock. These elements are spread across a canvas dotted with impressionistic shades of "Revolver" era Beatles, Byrds-like twelve-string jangle, and touches of Hendrix inspired psychedelia. It's no wonder the mere mention of "Underwater Moonlight" in some circles elicits hyperbolic adulation these days, but at the dawn of the New Romantic movement and the SKA revival, it was as undesirable as the creepy "Old Pervert" Hitchcock congers up eight tracks into the set. "If you stand back broadly enough, "Underwater Moonlight" make perfect sense," says Hitchcock by way of explaining why the disc dipped below the radar upon its original release. "If you draw a line that runs from Bill Haley through to, say, Travis and you make that your horizon, you can imagine a dot right in the middle of all that and you could put the Soft Boys there. We were just the missing link between the Byrds and R.E.M., but at the time we made no sense at all." Guitarist Kimberly Rew concurs. "It didn't fit in with anything that was happening, and I don't think we ever got over that problem of trying to explain what we were. "Underwater Moonlight" died when it first came out, in commercial terms. It died first and lived second, if you will." Like a lot of bands who were inspired by the D.I.Y. aspect of Punk in the midst of an economic recession, The Soft Boys were trying to accomplish an ambitious recording with virtually no budget. They set up shop in producer Pat Collier's bare-bones Alaska studio and attempted to create a masterpiece using a four track recorder and a sixteen channel board. "The way we constructed it was by first making a stereo backing track of the band and then overdubbing the vocals. It was nearly a live recording," explains Collier, who by his own admission has spent his life producing guitar records, including seminal recordings of The Wonder Stuff and The Jesus And Mary Chain. "I didn't see it particularly as establishing me as a producer," he adds, "but I actively pursued The Soft Boys. Looking back over all of the bands that I've worked with, they've got to be in the top five, and it's pretty gratifying that "Underwater Moonlight" is still knocking around after all these years." "The emphasis was on the guitars rather than on the rhythm section, which was kind of the opposite of what the state of the art was in 1980," Hitchcock offers of Collier's approach. "Neither the sound nor the songs had that much to do with the year that they were recorded in terms of style, but because of that "Underwater Moonlight," quite unintentionally, has a timeless sound." "That's the reason we're talking about it now," adds Rew. "In retrospect, thank God for that. I'd rather have that sitting on the shelf now, and I'd think that regardless of whether anyone ever noticed it or not. The fact that people did notice the record later on is a really nice bonus." Peter Buck of R.E.M. certainly noticed, and has often sited the disc as an influence on the budding band from Athens. "I thought most of the New Wave stuff was really boring," he admits, "but "Underwater Moonlight" was a very intelligent record with a lot of depth; there weren't a lot of those in 1980." Buck also notes that, "The Soft Boys were taking some of the influences that I really liked and they were mutating them. They were inspirational in that sense." "I don't think that we influenced Peter Buck," Hitchcock humbly contradicts, "I think we just listened to the same people that he did." When presented with the facts, however, Hitchcock reluctantly concedes, "Maybe we encouraged him and some young guys who worked in record shops to go a certain way musically that had not been on the cards for about ten years." That musical way was informed by Windsor's love of The Beach Boys, Rew's dedication to The Kinks, and Hitchcock's combined admiration of Lennon, Syd Barrett, Hendrix, and Dylan. Look around and you'll still find the undercurrent of musical references on "Underwater Moonlight" seeping into today's guitar-centered pop outfits. "Their loves are my loves," says Rhett Miller of Old 97's before reciting a nearly identical list of influences. But Miller is quick to point out that The Soft Boys brought something to the table with "Underwater Moonlight" that was more than the sum of its parts. "They didn't seem like they fit in with anything. Were they Punk rock? They sounded kind of Punk rock on "I Wanna Destroy You," but then Robyn is spouting this free-form poetry. It's hard to reconcile those two. There's this intelligent, forward thinking, lunatic poet fronting a Punk rock band that's also very much like an Art rock band. Nobody has ever really made a record that sounded like "Underwater Moonlight," lyrically or musically. The Soft Boys inspired me to write lyrics that work on a lot of different levels or defy immediate understanding." In terms of lyrics, "Underwater Moonlight," like much of Hitchcock's work in and out of The Soft Boys, is rich in characters and odd observations told with a humorous, cryptic slant. The aforementioned "Old Pervert," for example, has at its core a protagonist who drinks disinfectant and argues his behavior by stating "cleanliness of the soul is more important, don't you think?" Elsewhere, the paranoia of "Insanely Jealous" finds its spokesman proclaiming, "The damage that we do is just so powerfully strong they call it 'love'." And while "Positive Vibrations" has all the trappings of the "flower power" sixties that you'd imagine from its title (yes, that's a sitar solo), it was Hitchcock's subtle way of commenting on just how deeply negative things were at the time. Irony not being the basic building-block of rock songs that it became a decade later, it took Elvis Costello's wonderful but not nearly as clever "(What's So Funny About) Peace, Love, And Understanding" to deliver the same message in those days. "When Punk came, songs got short again, hair got a bit shorter, beards went, and everything was a bit fresher and more awake," notes Hitchcock, "But there was something that was sort of willfully aggressive and thuggish about Punk, which I didn't really subscribe to. We had our own kind of machismo and nihilism, but it was probably a bit more elitist. As the press never tired of pointing out, we came from Cambridge." But certainly there was enough aggression in tracks like "I Wanna Destroy You" and "Kingdom Of Love" for The Soft Boys to sort of slide in sideways and capitalize on the Punk movement, wasn't there? "I don't think we really saw it in terms of, 'in order to be successful, you have to this and that'," explains Rew. "A lot of bands do that and they are successful, but Robyn is a genuine, original character and I don't think there would have been any point in trying to persuade him to bend the way he was projecting himself." "I think the edge and the anxiety of the Punk stuff rubbed off on us," Hitchcock admits, "but a combination of Progressive Rock and Punk was a pretty unthinkable thought!" Which is, in a way, what the Soft Boys were perhaps unintentionally about: The concept of taking the energy, anger, and honesty of Punk and melding it with the idea of a concise pop song that aspired to art. If the world wasn't ready for it then, time eventually caught up with The Soft Boys. As the band head off on their first ever tour of the United States to commemorate the record's re-release, Rew is happy to see "Underwater Moonlight" is appreciated now if not then, but he maintains an objective perspective. "Obviously, when you're in a young band, it becomes all consuming. It's not an all consuming thing now, because everybody's had a life in those twenty years. But having said that, in some ways it feels like we recorded the album, took a couple of weeks off, and now we're going back out on the road for a month." For Hitchcock and Rew, the re-release and the tour are a celebration if not a vindication of a brilliantly conceived album. "We're not really going out saying, 'We told you so!' or anything like that, we're just sort of glad to see that the record is still appreciated." And it is. There's no shortage of contemporary bands or critics willing to wax poetic about "Underwater Moonlight," and that silently satisfies the band. "I'm pleased in my own sort of quiet, middle class, English way," says Hitchcock. "You know, we all look at the floor and say, 'It's nothing, really. Go on, cut off the other arm,' but inside I think I'm pretty pleased. I dare say this is probably exactly what I wanted." ------------------------------ End of fegmaniax-digest V10 #210 ********************************