If you're going to form a rock band, there's worse things you can do than model yourself musically after XTC in the early to mid-80s.
In a more perfect world, these guys would've been huge:
But sadly, of the groups from last decade that most resembled XTC, these guys flamed out the quickest, leaving behind one unspeakably brilliant album.
The second album was never finished... but the band made all the raw tracks available online as an "open source album." So if you're inclined to finish these songs, remix them, add or subtract elements and combine them into something new... then go at it.
"When you name something, it gives you power over it."
I don't believe that.
"Then how come you felt better when you learned the name of the weird flu you had?"
That wasn't about the name. It was about being able to get better.
"By using the name. Because knowing the name gave you power."
But what about before anyone named it? Naming a disease doesn't mean you've cured it.
"Maybe not. But if you divide everything into two... before you name it and after you name it... the before part is all swirling and amorphous."
And the after part is swirling and amorphous with a name.
"What about you? What were you before you had a name?"
I didn't exist. My parents named me long before I was born.
"Maybe they did. Maybe you just came into existence with a name. And that name seeped through the membranes until your parents recognized it. And knew it was part of you."
I can't find the reference anymore... But a few years ago someone told me that, before the word "hippie" caught on, people who were... basically hippies referred to themselves as "the Beautiful People." (And if you know where this "fact" originated, let me know.)
I know this much: John Lennon had a weird psychedelic song fragment called "One of the Beautiful People" and Paul McCartney had a chorus that started "Baby You're a Rich Man." And they strung the two together, tweaked the lyrics, and came up with a hippie anthem for the period just before anyone knew the word "hippie."
By the way, Wikipedia says the original mono mix of this song featured a spin echo feedback delay that bridged the end of one verse with the start of the next. When it came time to make a stereo mix, engineer Geoff Emerick could not recreate the spin echo effect, so he just took it out. (Feel free to compare and contrast.)
J.B., whose regular blog is the fantastic The Hits Just Keep On Comin', shares the story original version of "Brown Sugar" (with Eric Clapton and Al Kooper) over on WNEW's Rock Flashback blog. It's even better than the "official" version (in my opinion).
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