Rough Music

["Richard" <paula@li...net.au>]

 Comments on the board led me to listening again, it was previously
my least favourite BA's album and i was surprised at how badly i actually
knew it. I think i'd just filed it away as "rifferama" .. but as ever there
is
lots more to it.

For a start the sleeve is terrific. Ann Sheldon's paintings are as
distinctive
and lasting as ever, esp the model plane in the red circle. The inner 
photos
capture the wigged out live experience so well, esp where they are all
collapsed
on the floor

Detective Song is great, the lyrics elliptical ("Westron Wynde and total
minus three"?),
in a sense the audience becomes the detective. A great live opener at the
time. Scared is classic Planes, all fireworks and dark atmospheres. Sugared
Almond, Contact High .. sorry the writing (chords) is too ordinary for me.
A Map Below - one of Gerard's best produced vocals - not too reverbed and
rhythmically out there - try copying it! James sounds like its trying to be
What it Is .. but lacks the chorus. But nice, when the vocals stop it 
sounds
like a Fairport Convention bootleg. Golden Birds, again much better than i
remember it, quite disturbing actually. Saint Me and the Devil, nowt wrong
with this, again sounds like Fairport warming up with an English Lit don
intoning over the top. Dark, hmm dont get this one, Secret Destination er
why that 'orrible saxaphone, misguided decision that one. Dear though the
Night, well i can hear what he was trying to do .. the guitars arent very
well recorded really.

I think it probably remains my least favourite BA's album .. the quality of
the writing isnt there, plus the flow of the album .. well it flows badly,
and is about 4 tracks too long. But lets face it Gerard is not capable of
putting out a bad record. And sometimes the ones that dont work at first
make sense at a later date. Certainly Rough Music sounds better now than at
the time. The band was in transition, struggling to write commercial (rock)
material to return them to heights of Swagger/Beatsongs, exhausted by
touring, schizophenic through all the personnel changes, all underpinned by
Gerard's wilful folky experimentation (the original aim of the group
remember) but which just wound up the industry people looking for something
easily categorisable.

No wonder there was quite a gap between Rough Music and the next record ..
and why much of the music press began to write off the band. But what do 
you
do - record albums to order? Give them the flavour of the day? No way,
follow your muse you might have a smaller audience but the respect is
greater. I think the next release was the Wierd Shit cassette-only package
.. a more interesting piece of work than Rough Music, and truer to the real
Gerard vision.  And where he is now is also truer to himself. Gerard has
become more arch, more difficult to follow, more stubborn.
 Never apologise, never explain, just go forward one small step at a time.

Cant wait to hear LIT how do i get a copy anyone?

Richard

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