Re: Sculpture Shed

["Nev's Hotmail" <nevstreet@ho...com>]

Richard

Absolutely fascinating stuff! The first time I saw them was indeed at the
Western Star Domino club nearly 20 years ago - with Jon Stapleton. It was
quite brilliant and Jon really added to the whole performance, which
unfortunately couldn't be replicated and never really worked at the larger
venues. The Hope Centre (plastic sheeting and all that jazz) in '86 was
another classic.

Live version of Breaking in My Heart from that era summed it up well and
introed with an audio out take from Thunderbirds (I think)  - "The rockets
motors, they've fired, we're moving away from the sun, we're gonna live!"
Great stuff .... and so on....

----- Original Message -----
From: "Richard" <richard@li...net.au>
To: <blueplanes@st...net>
Sent: Saturday, December 27, 2003 1:40 AM
Subject: Re: [Blueplanes] Sculpture Shed


> 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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