black sea

XTC poured some oil on the water and threw pessimism in the air, shrugging off shrouds with the glorious whimsy of decency's jigsaw.   The Swindon punks had developed their sound into a new wave art pop over three albums  (White Music,  Go 2 , and  Drums and Wires) before returning to The Town House in London with producer Steve Lillywhite.   'Black Sea' was recorded during June and July of 1980 with engineers Hugh Padgham and Nick Launay and featured  Terry Chambers on Tama drums, Tama Snyper drum synthesiser, and free form vocals;   Dave Gregory on guitars, synth, piano, and vox humana;   Colin Moulding on vocals and Epiphone Newport bass;   and   Andy Partridge on vocals, guitar, and synth.   

Partridge proclaims:    "We never let producers make any structural changes to our music. We only give them the music and they then mix it, usually under our supervision as well. So it's a bit rotten on a producer who gets involved with us because we tend to loom over them all the time. I'd personally like to mix them but it would be wrong to impose my taste totally on the band so we get a producer in as mediator or like a sifter - we throw all the ideas in and he has to sift them out and stop us from fighting with eachother and biting eachother on the leg and things like that, 'cause we have a lot of ideas and they do need sifting ... I'd say [we're] equally a singles and album band. I think our albums are more important 'cause they've made far more inroads than our singles have, especially in other countries. I do like singles and I'd like to think that our albums are composed of potential single material - you know, all the tracks could be singles. That's why we tend to work within a three minute, four minute framework ... We never build a song for a purpose. The only time we ever did anything on purpose was quite an innocent thing, an electric re-recording of "Ten Feet Tall" for the American charts. But we never do anything on purpose, we just write whatever comes out and rehearse it the way that it just falls out. Nobody's told what to play, everybody plays exactly what they want to and we never sit down and try and make things difficult to understand or easy to understand, we just do them as they come out. Certain songs demand certain treatments and they seem to scream it when you rehearsing it. They say 'Do me like this! Do me like this!' and there's no other way that you can mess around with them. So we just try to do things as naturally as we can. It's just our personalities..."Travels In Nihilon", originally a book title by Alan 'Loneliness Of The Long Distance Runner' Sillitoe. It's nothing to do with the book title, it's just a great title. Nihilon means state of nothingness if your thumbing through your dictionary right now. Its about how the media basically fox young people into believing that the latest trend is going to save them or what have you..gonna be the saving grace, it's gonna pick rock 'n' roll up, it's gonna make pop music 'it', you know...you must be a mod, you must be a punk, you must be a hippy, you must be a pirate...all of those trends. And people do get serious about them. And I know I got serious about them when I was younger. I think the last thing that I got demi-serious about was punk. After all it's only another media game. The sell you all the items, they sell you the records and you will buy it. And the younger you are the more your judgement is fogged by the fact that you think that you're finding something ultimate and you're not. And it happens every so years the media finds something they want to sell to you, and it's not really about that at all. It's about music basically, a lot of it revolves around music and "Travels In Nihilon" is about how people are continually japed into believing that there's something to believe in ... and there's not. It's just music and it always will be music, and they shouldn't try and sell you these funny things that have nothing to do with music."

'Black Sea'  hit number sixteen in the UK and was their biggest album in the US peaking at number forty-one.  In New Zealand it became their only number one album in their entire career.  







http://chalkhills.org/

http://www.ape.uk.net/







"Generals and Majors"   went to number thirty-two in the UK, twenty-four in Australia, and sixteen in New Zealand.  


Generals and Majors ah ah 
They're never too far 
From battlefields so glorious 
Out in a world of their own 
They'll never come down 
Till once again victorious 

Generals and Majors always 
Seem so unhappy 'less they got a war 

Generals and Majors ah ah 
Like never before are tired of being actionless. 

Calling Generals and Majors 
Generals and Majors everywhere 
Calling Generals and Majors 
Your World War III is drawing near 

Generals and Majors ah ah 
They're never too far 
Away from men who made the grade 
Out in a world of their own 
They'll never come down 
Until the battle's lost or made 

Generals and Majors ah ah 
Like never before, are tired of being in the shade








"Respectable Street"

It's in the order of their hedgerows

it's in the way their curtains open and close

it's in the look they give you down their nose

all part of decency's jigsaw I suppose

Heard the neighbour slam his car door

don't he realise this is respectable street

What d'you think he bought that car for

'cos he realise this is respectable street

Now they talk about abortion

in cosmopolitan proportions to their daughters

as they speak of contraception

And immaculate receptions on their portable

Sony entertainment centres.

Now she speaks about diseases

and which sex position pleases best her old man

Avon lady fills the creases

when she manages to squeeze in past the caravans

that never move from their front gardens.

It's in the order of their hedgerows

it's in the way their curtains open and close

it's in the look they give you down their nose

all part of decency's jigsaw I suppose

Sunday church and they look fetching

Saturday night saw him retching over our fence

bang the wall for me to turn down

I can see them with their stern frown

as they dispense the kind of look that says

they're perfect.

"Towers of London" made it to number thirty-one in the UK.  





"Sgt. Rock (Is Going to Help Me)" hit twenty in Ireland and sixteen in the UK. 











'Black Sea' 
full album:


All songs written and composed by Andy Partridge, except where noted.

1. Respectable Street 0:00
2. Generals and Majors (Colin Moulding) 3:38
3. Living Through Another Cuba 7:42
4. Love At First Sight  (Moulding) 12:26
5. Rocket from a Bottle 15:34
6. No Language in Our Lungs 19:04
7. Towers of London 23:57
8. Paper and Iron (Notes and Coins) 29:22
9. Burning With Optimism's Flames 33:39
10. Sgt. Rock (Is Going to Help Me) 37:55
11. Travels in Nihilon 41:52
12. Smokeless Zone  (Moulding)  48:56
13. Don't Lose Your Temper 52:47
14. The Somnambulist 55:20




interview 1980





XTC At The Manor 1980  documentary

alive!

Kiss hit rock bottom and had nothing to lose when they recorded this wild and crazy double-live album and saved their record company.    The sales of their first three studio albums (Kiss, Hotter Than Hell, and Dressed to Kill)  were disappointing and the band felt that they failed to tap into the energy of their onstage performances.  To make matters worse,  Casablanca Records was overextended by printing too many copies of a Johnny Carson monologue album.  The solution was to record a live album, which would be cheaper than the studio and would finally capture their dynamic live sound.  

'Alive!' was culled from shows at Detroit, Michigan; Cleveland, Ohio; Wildwood, New Jersey; and Davenport, Iowa  with  Paul Stanley on rhythm guitar and vocals;   Ace Frehley on lead guitar and backing vocals;   Gene Simmons on bass guitar and vocals;  and  Peter Criss on drums and vocals;    with  introduction by JR Smalling.     Eddie Kramer produced the album and oversaw the studio overdubs that were used to fix errors in the performances and accentuate the sound of the audience.  

'Alive!' went to number fifty-six in Japan, forty-nine in the UK, thirty-one in Norway, twenty-two in Sweden, thirteen in Australia, nine in the US, and three in Canada.  It spent over two years on the Billboard album chart.  







http://www.kissonline.com/








"Rock and Roll All Nite"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oIB6-BCXdxo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EFMD7Usflbg




VH1 Ultimate Albums documentary
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TTDLwoeRBpU



Midnight Special
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K5ZxJ5jJG-g





https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hYeo8am2iyc


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FwBhWs4C6PI






'Alive!' 
full album:

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLg6tYYDm8NjkBqFaJeBgSrkWk4X_PLoGm





Side one
1. "Deuce"   (Gene Simmons) lead vocals:  Simmons 3:56
2. "Strutter"   (Paul Stanley, Simmons)  lead vocals:  Stanley 3:22
3. "Got to Choose"   (Stanley) lead vocals:  Stanley 3:40
4. "Hotter Than Hell"   (Stanley) lead vocals:  Stanley 3:30
5. "Firehouse"   (Stanley) lead vocals:  Stanley 3:50
Side two
6. "Nothin' to Lose"   (Simmons) lead vocals:  Simmons, Peter Criss 3:33
7. "C'mon and Love Me"   (Stanley) lead vocals:  Stanley 3:05
8. "Parasite"   (Frehley) lead vocals:  Simmons 3:34
9. "She"   (Simmons, Stephen Coronel) lead vocals:  Simmons, Stanley 6:56
Side three
10. "Watchin' You"   (Simmons) lead vocals:  Simmons 3:49
11. "100,000 Years"   (Stanley, Simmons) lead vocals:  Stanley 12:12
12. "Black Diamond"   (Stanley) lead vocals:  Criss, intro by Stanley 6:16
Side four
13. "Rock Bottom"   (Frehley, Stanley) lead vocals:  Stanley 3:21
14. "Cold Gin"   (Frehley) lead vocals:  Simmons 7:16
15. "Rock and Roll All Nite"   (Stanley, Simmons) lead vocals:  Simmons 3:59
16. "Let Me Go, Rock 'n' Roll"   (Stanley, Simmons) lead vocals:  Simmons 5:45






Cobo Hall 1/26/1976
full show
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XauUeYaU5Pc



Winterland, San Fransisco 1/31/1975
full show
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=btcjTsUsTDM

wild planet

The B-52's were really tearing tar off the path looking over hidden driveways to find the insane strobe light of a party out of bounds.    As their eponymous debut was still climbing the charts, the band went back to Compass Point Studios in Nassau, Bahamas during April of 1980 to record their second album with co-producer Rhett Davies and executive producer Chris Blackwell.  The sessions for 'Wild Planet' featured Kate Pierson on keyboard bass, organ, vocals, and keyboards;  Fred Schneider on vocals, cowbell, glockenspiel, and additional keyboards;  Keith Strickland on drums, drum machine, and Venus sounds;  Cindy Wilson on bongos, vocals, and tambourine;  and  Ricky Wilson on guitars.   


Strickland:   "When we started, it wasn’t a scene. We moved to New York because there wasn’t really any place for us to play in Athens. It was all happening in New York so, once we signed with Warner Brothers, we went up there. Then, within a year, the whole Athens scene exploded—Pylon…R.E.M…all hell broke loose! Now, when I go back, it’s such a different city in many ways. Any given night, there’s 20 or 30 bands playing and Athens is not a big town. The University of Georgia is there and I think that’s the main factor in having so many young people there. It’s been happening in a lot of cities and college towns, like Austin, Texas...Certainly Athens was a “blue pool” in a very conservative, maybe not-so-open-minded region. Athens was very liberal and I was fortunate to come of age in that environment and in the years that I did."


Cindy:    "In one way, it was very easy for us because we were a group of friends. It wasn’t like being a hired performer to come in and be in a group. It was a bunch of friends getting together — artists and free thinkers. We’re from a college town, Athens, which was a great place to grow up because it wasn’t conservative. It was a very artistic scene there. So we came up through a more open-minded feeling, and had the sense of having fun and being outrageous and making each other laugh. We were lucky that we kind of came up through an organic situation like that...When we came to New York and people started coming to see us, I’m sure we looked like we were from a different planet. But we started getting an audience there and definitely hit a nerve, so it just became bigger and bigger after that. We were kind of our own thing."

Schneider:   "Everyone brought in a distinct aspect to everything, and we just did our own thing. First of all, we liked it, and our friends liked it, and a hobby became a career...We were pretty punky in the beginning. We were formed as sort of a punk group with our own twist. We listened to Devo, Ramones, Sex Pistols. We went to see the Sex Pistols for their first show in America. But then we also liked James Brown, mambo music, pretty eclectic stuff....When I dropped out of college, the last thing I did—I knew I was dropping out, and a friend said, for our creative writing, he was going to do a book of poetry. I thought, “Shit, that’s easy. I think I’ll do one too.” And actually, some of those poems became bases for songs we did later on. I wrote these things, and the teacher said, “Well, I don’t understand any of it. I can see you’re very serious about it.” And he gave me an A. [Laughs.] My friend was reading his poems about a white horse, galloping through the desert, blah blah blah, and I’m doing poems about flamingos and living rooms and stuff...My friend Jolene and I, we used to stay home on Saturdays and watch really bad movies and laugh. We were doing Mystery Science Theater in the ’60s. Plus I like surrealism and Dada, and that’s what I bring to the band....Our look evolved from the fact that we bought thrift-store clothes. It wasn’t like “Let adopt a thrift-store aesthetic.” We just didn’t have any money. Whatever people want to print, who cares? Keith had the idea for the B-52s, and he had a dream where this woman with this bouffant, which they call a B-52, was playing in a lounge band. We didn’t want to be associated with Hiroshima or anything like that. Then we found, Keith and I, somebody’s fake-fur pocketbook in the shop down there, and talked Cindy and Kate into buying them and turning them into wigs. That’s how our look evolved...I went as a hangover for Halloween once. I just had on a wifebeater and a seersucker suit and a pencil-thin moustache and a broken cigarette. So I just left off the broken cigarette. 


Pierson:   "We always dressed like this,  We always shopped at thrift stores; it was sort of a pastime. There was a whole group of us in Athens who'd dress this way. It's actually good to think that you're recycling clothes like this, too.  I mean, look at this new stuff,  So much of it is acrylic — or worse. I think this stuff will still be around after the earth disintegrates...We started wearing [bouffants] to parties — it was like the clothes. It wasn't a conscious decision to re-create the Fifties or Sixties or anything. It was just for fun."


Ricky:   "It really hasn't sunk in yet, this success. I sort of don't believe it.  I guess you would call it success, though."


Schneider:  We never thought it would get past our circle of friends in Athens.  We never had any expectations ... We're not trying to do satire...We don't plan to keep everything the same, for sure.  Just to be entertaining, that's all I want."







http://theb52s.com/







"Private Idaho" 
Pierson:   "Fred came up with the title. He started out with “You’re living in your own private Idaho,” and I came up with, “Underground like a wild potato / Don’t go on the patio / Beware of the pool.” [Laughs.] It’s all sort of dark and mysterious—and silly, too, in a way. But the play on words with “Private Idaho” was pretty genius, because we just played recently in Idaho, and it is a strange place. It was a really cool gig—it was outside—but there’s always something, I don’t know, a little mysterious and scary about Idaho. [Laughs.] I don’t know, I guess it’s because it just seems unknown or something. Sort of vast and flat and unknown. But where it talks about “watch out for signs that say ‘Hidden Driveway’” and then the pool, I guess it’s really kind of a reference to the subconscious being like living in your own world.    There’s a reference to a radium clock in there—when Fred says, “Swimming ’round and ’round like the deadly hands / Of a radium clock at the bottom of the pool,” and it’s kind of an obscure reference, but there was a clock factory in Athens. They had glow-in-the-dark dials, and these women were dying of cancer, and I don’t know when this was, exactly, but I remember it was in the news about how the women who were painting the radium onto these dials, they were licking their brushes before they dipped the brushes into the radium. So that was a reference to that, and kind of a reference to, I guess, environmental pollution and toxic things. So it has this dark feeling, in a way. And yet we sing it with such glee. [Laughs.] "
https://youtu.be/2n_Tg8iHwZ8




Hoo Hoo Hoo Hoo Hoo Hoo Hoo Hoo Hoo
You're living in your own Private Idaho
Living in your own Private Idaho
Underground like a wild potato.
Don't go on the patio.
Beware of the pool,
Blue bottomless pool.
It leads you straight
Right through the gate
That opens on the pool. 
You're living in your own Private Idaho.
You're living in your own Private Idaho. 
Keep off the path, beware the gate,
Watch out for signs that say "hidden driveways".
Don't let the chlorine in your eyes
Blind you to the awful surprise
That's waitin' for you at
The bottom of the bottomless blue blue blue pool. 
You're livin in your own Private Idaho. Idaho.
You're out of control, the rivers that roll,
You fell into the water and down to Idaho.
Get out of that state,
Get out of that state you're in.
You better beware. 
You're living in your own Private Idaho.
You're living in your own Private Idaho. 
Keep off the patio,
Keep off the path.
The lawn may be green
But you better not be seen
Walkin' through the gate that leads you down,
Down to a pool fraught with danger
Is a pool full of strangers. 
You're living in your own Private Idaho,
Where do I go from here to a better state than this.
Well, don't be blind to the big surprise
Swimming round and round like the deadly hand
Of a radium clock, at the bottom, of the pool. 
I-I-I-daho
I-I-I-daho
Woah oh oh woah oh oh woah oh oh
Ah ah ah ah ah ah ah ah
Get out of that state
Get out of that state
You're living in your own Private Idaho,

Livin in your own Private Idaho.




"Devil in My Car" 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g_sXbdT1hl0



"Give Me Back My Man"  
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hl_EEpRfrkk



"Dirty Back Road"  
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LMoOPo5zW3w



"Party Out of Bounds"  
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DYq4OZYqF1E






'Wild Planet' 
full album:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EAwXek5oxdw



All songs written and composed by Fred Schneider, Keith Strickland, Ricky Wilson, Cindy Wilson and Kate Pierson, except as noted. 

Side One
1. "Party Out of Bounds"     3:21
2. "Dirty Back Road"   R. Wilson, Robert Waldrop 3:21
3. "Runnin' Around"     3:09
4. "Give Me Back My Man"   Schneider, R. Wilson, Strickland, C. Wilson 4:00
5. "Private Idaho"     3:35
Side Two
6. "Devil in My Car"   Schneider, R. Wilson, C. Wilson, Pierson 4:28
7. "Quiche Lorraine"   Schneider, Strickland, R. Wilson 3:58
8. "Strobe Light"   Schneider, Strickland, R. Wilson 3:59
9. "53 Miles West of Venus"   Schneider, R. Wilson, C. Wilson, Pierson 4:53





11/07/80 - Capitol Theatre 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bVXfkG7q_0s

rattlesnakes

 Lloyd Cole and the Commotions caused a stir with these jangle pop reflections of cosmopolitan academia blues.  Cole was born in Derbyshire, England and started the band while studying at the University of Glasgow. They were signed to Polydor Records and recorded their debut album 'Rattlesnakes' with producer Paul Hardiman at The Garden in east London.  The album features Neil Clark on lead guitar;  Lloyd Cole on vocals and guitar;  Blair Cowan on keyboards;  Lawrence Donegan on bass guitar; and Stephen Irvine on drums and tambourine.   String arrangements were done by Anne Dudley.  

The band became associated with a number of bands that had a similar sound.  Cole considers:  "Quite often there are what are seen as "movements" in music, and it's more like a conflict. A bunch of people at the same time... If you set up a sort of scientific experiment and apply A, B, and C to a scenario and see what follows on, the same thing's gonna happen in Durham and Manchester and Liverpool as it's going to happen to other cities in the north of England or Glasgow. The way the music scene had been going, the dominance in the early 80's of very synthetic Stock Aitken Waterman pop music... it was sort of inevitable that people would react in an opposite direction.  Some of the people decided to go in a manner that was clearly sort of revolutionary, like Jesus and Mary Chain, and other bands were saying, "Well, we still want to make pop music, we just want to make pop music that's got maybe something to it." For Prefab Sprout, the Smiths, and us.... it was not a bad time to be in the U.K. in '84, '85."

'Rattlesnakes' went to number thirteen in the British album chart.  Cole reflects on his literary aesthetic:  "Well it's very simple. If you're going to put energy into it, if you're gonna care about the lyrics being elegant, at least elegant, then... you have to do it, you have to put the work in, and if people care about it, they will appreciate it, and if people don't care about it, you still have to put the lyrics together in a manner where by being used to carry the melody, they're just like any other lyric.  So I don't think there's any reason not to do it the way I do it. I have some people that I've worked with... you can hear, you can hear on certain records that the songwriter doesn't value the lyric as much as he values the melody because you can tell that they're moving words around in a very uncomfortable manner just to carry a melody, and you can tell when people care about it also. There's room in music for all kinds of songwriters. I'm just one of those guys who wants the lyrics to be.... elegant is the word I like."

http://www.lloydcole.com/






"Rattlesnakes" 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DEJaf8Bvc9U


Jodie wears a hat although it hasn't rained for six days
She says a girl needs a gun these days
Hey on account of all the rattlesnakes

She looks like Eve Marie saint in on the waterfront
She reads Simone de Beauvoir in her American circumstance

She's less than sure if her heart has come to stay in San Jose
And her never-born child still haunts her
As she speeds down the freeway
As she tries her luck with the traffic police
Out of boredom more than spite
She never finds no trouble, she tries too hard
She's obvious despite herself

She looks like Eve Marie Saint in on the waterfront
She says all she needs is therapy, yeah
All you need is, love is all you need

Jodie never sleeps 'cause there are always needles in the hay
She says that a girl needs a gun these days
Hey on account of all the rattlesnakes

She looks like Eve Marie Saint in on the waterfront
As she reads Simone de Beauvoir in her American circumstance
Her heart, heart's like crazy paving
Upside down and back to front
She says "ooh, it's so hard to love
When love was your great disappointment."





"Perfect Skin"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pMztoBark9U


I choose my friends only far too well
I'm up on the pavement, they're all down in the cellar
With their government grants and my I.Q.
They brought me down to size, academia blues
Louise is a girl, I know her well
She's up on the pavement, yes she's a weather girl
And I'm staying up here so I may be undone
She's inappropriate, but then she's much more fun and
When she smiles my way
My eyes go out in vain
She's got perfect skin
Shame on you, you've got no sense of grace, shame on me
Ah just in case I might come to a conclusion
Other than that which is absolutely necessary
And that's perfect skin
Louise is the girl with the perfect skin
She says turn on the light, otherwise it can't be seen
She's got cheekbones like geometry and eyes like sin
And she's sexually enlightened by cosmopolitan and
When she smiles my way
My eyes go out in vain
For her perfect skin
Yeah that's perfect skin
She takes me down to the basement to look at her slides
Of her family life, pretty weird at times
At the age of ten she looked like greta garbo
And I loved her then, but how was she to know that
When she smiles my way
My eyes go out in vain
She's got perfect skin
Up eight flights of stairs to her basement flat
Pretty confused huh, being shipped around like that
Seems we climbed so high now we're down so low
Strikes me the moral of this song must be there never has been one




"Forest Fire"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VSVDJwnrQKI

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yv1IamCan_k




"Are You Ready to Be Heartbroken?"





'Rattlesnakes' 
full album:


https://myspace.com/lloyd.cole.and.the.commot/music/album/rattlesnakes-9646198





All lyrics by Lloyd Cole, all music composed by Cole except where noted.

side one
"Perfect Skin" – 3:13
"Speedboat" – 4:37
"Rattlesnakes" (Cole, Neil Clark) – 3:28
"Down on Mission Street" – 3:49
"Forest Fire" – 4:34
side two
"Charlotte Street" – 3:55
"2cv" – 2:52
"Four Flights Up" (Cole, Lawrence Donegan) – 2:37
"Patience" (Cole, Blair Cowan) – 3:40
"Are You Ready to Be Heartbroken?" (Cole, Clark) – 3:06

"Beautiful City (Live At The Marquee (05/11/84))"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aWrpuYssFZ8