Re: Sculpture Shed

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

Cavaliers is truly a strange record.  Many people dont like it. But Gerard
is incapable of making a bad record, there is always going to be something
interesting going on.  The sleeve and the way the information is
communicated certainly makes you unravel, not like its given to you on a
fast food plate. Also there are some deep and at times anti-authoritarian
ideas going on in the words. Lines like "and the spiritual team gets beaten
up by the rest" ring true for me, especially given the world events of 2003
and the way the peace movement was not given true democratic voice, given
that it was much bigger than the pro-war bullies.

"Roundheads" is one of the top 15 Aeroplanes tracks. I was there at the
recording, on the other side of the console with Jim Barr. We had gone to
J&J studio in Easton to work on Beautiful Is, and we spent a couple of days
on it making a very pretty track. Towards the end of the second day, 
perhaps
as a reaction to all the precision i had asked of the musicians, Calvin, 
Max
Noble, Joe Allen (from Strangelove) and John Langley kind of retreated into
the live room, turned UP, particualarly Joe on bass - producing that
feedbacking riff - and went into the jam that became Roundheads (Joff and
Gerard added their parts later). It reminds me now of Radiohead's
2 +2 = 5, its kind of asking you to "pay attention" to what you do every
day.

My big disappointment on hearing Cavaliers was that it could have been the
stage for Calvin Talbot to make a big mark on the band's trajectory. He is
such a brilliant guitarist. I  worked with Calvin, on my unfinished solo
album from 1997 recorded at LIPA in Liverpool, and his own solo demos,
recorded at my studio in North West London, in 1999. I rate him
up there with Johnny Marr, and for me is the second best guitarist to have
passed through the band, behind Angelo. But he kind of crossed heads with
Gerard, it just didnt gel. A shame, as he had some fantastic pieces all
ready to be turned into Planes classics, pop songs a la Swagger, but i 
guess
Gerard was more  into making anti-commercial statements at that time. Part 
6
of Cavaliers was recorded by me in London (an omission from the sleeve
credits), and was the opening track on
Calvin's solo collection ..  So what
with Calvin, and Jake Kyle and Paul Wigens who i believe are in Grand 
Drive,
there was the basis there for a great songwriting team. But listening to
tracks like Part 9 and Part 11 you have to conclude that there is a lot of
messy stuff which hardly seems to have a point. For me the writing is just
not interesting enough, compared to the sheer energy and colour of earlier
Planes material. CD2 is not something you would play to a new listener and
expect them to say what a great band. I was disappointed that a lot of the
material  was re-issued. But Here Comes the Queen, thats a good one in a
Ronnie Land tribute kind of thing, and recognisable as one of the jaunty
folk-rock things that the band do well from time to time, eg Days of 49. 
And
with Rounheads I maintain that the world is a better place for the 
Cavaliers
album
than not, even though it could never be a major release. A bit like LIT i
guess, though that record is infinitely more successful the fact that it is
a limited edition of 50 means that most people will never hear it.  What a
great  opening line, and the way Gerard says it. Did
anyone read my review of LIT in the recent Comes with a Smile?

while i'm in reminiscence mode (it may not last mind, though i could say a
few things about the making of Tolerance, Spitting out Mircacles, the 
bands'
tour of Norway of which i kept a diary, and other stuff), i remember after
joining the band, and before we'd ever been to a proper studio, Gerard
arranged a session at a strange little place in Clifton, more of a workshop
than a studio. I think Ashtrays from Mt Etna was done there. It belonged to
someones dad, who worked on music for  BBC wildlife documentaries. It had
very old gear in it and an atmosphere far removed from the "rock" ambience
of most studios. I recorded some guitar pieces, and John Stapleton was 
there
too doing what he did so well, ie finding odd bits of audio off
spoken word records. I completely forgot about the session, until i got
Wierd Shit a year or so ago, and "Pete's Popsicle" was on there. Got me
thinking about how John's influence on the group was really important in 
the
mid 80's. Live, he was constantly throwing juxtapositions and comic
interludes into the mix from a two deck & mixer set up. There was never a
pause between songs, as John was there mixing in some piece of ironic old
audio .. in that respect Aero's shows ressembled the continual flow of
another medium, like radio.
 At cramped late night sessions at the Western Star Domino Club
it must have made for a chaotic mess. but at big gigs like the Colston Hall
and the Sculpture Shed  it would have sounded like a band from another
world.

Richard


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