Manifesto

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

 Interesting idea, this notion of a manifesto for the band. "wilful folky
experimentation" or whatever
 i wrote was just trying to summarise (badly). Would Gerard ever be pinned
down to a single
manifesto? I doubt it. But hey, the surrealists had one. The situationists
had one. Dogme had one. Even
Matt Herbert's got one! I would therefore like to think that he did have
one, even if it is a bit confused between
re-inventing English radical culture (that was good whoever said that)  ..
and jangly 80's  US guitar bands (seems to me he was always stretching that
a bit far, being closer to the former than the latter). You may have 
already
heard this .. but Gerard was once fond of saying that he saw each album as
being a bit like an Island Records sampler/compilation from the early 70's.
ie eclectic, poetic, veering from acoustic to electric, knowing. And i 
think
he has pretty much achieved that with every record.

Dr Daeve, that is a great insight into the meaning of "Skiminy Ride", and
"Rough Music". I bow to anyone's knowledge of these matters. It seems
typical of the way Gerard disguises his anti-conservatism in a riddle that
only very few people are going to want to unravel. Yes, just got it even
more, Fragile being the last track on Life Model .. leading on to Rough
Music.

Can anyone answer this .. why is Mark E Smith so celebrated by The Wire and
Gerard not? Is it because the band
were once packaged as plain old "indie"?  Is Gerard's poetic vision seen as
too middle class? OR TOO AVANT?!
I have this lovely moment on video when Gerard was on Daytime Cable TV in
the mid eighties, just as it was starting up. The fresh faced presenter,
switching no doubt from some banal piece of tele-shopping, turns to Gerard
on the couch and glibly asks, "So, you're into poetry?". Gerard sums the 
guy
up and retorts .. "No, not really".

I have never seen the Beatniks with Altitude T Shirt, but it sounds great,
and is one of the reasons why this discussion group is so excellent, it
expands the 'Planes symbolic world with every posting. The "Beatnik" one i
have has a dictionary definition of "Beatnik" (ie suffix similar to sputnik
etc ) on the front, with the name of the band on one of the upper arms.

OK, here's another thread. Ever since i read a half-decent rock biog,
Patrick Humpries piece of work on Nick Drake, i have thought that the 
market
was right for a definitive history of Gerard and the band, it could be a
large tome in fact if all the lyrics are gone into as well. Anyway this
leads me to a title suggestion. "Up in Down World: the story of Gerard
Langley and the Blue Aeroplanes". Others, please! If we come up with enough
snappy titles maybe Harper Collins will go for it.

Richard

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