Entertainment For Lively Minds
The kitchen sink? Yeah, bung it in!
It seems, like rats, we can never be very far away from a comment on this blog about 80s music; most of these comments fall into one of two categories: those insisting "the 80s were crap" and those vailantly defending them, with varying degrees of enthusiasm. I've posted a comment elsewhere to the effect that, for me, the song's the thing, and that if a song is good enough, it can survive, or even prosper from, some adornment. There were no more or fewer crap song in the 80s than in any other decade; however, given the undoubted Big 80s Sound that was so prevalent then, a heavily polished turd sounded that much more ridiculous than a simple, humble dud. perhaps this explains some of the anti-80s vitriol.
Anyway, on a more general level, the term "overproduced" is widely used, and I use it quite a lot myself. So why is it that with certain records, I seem able to suspend my liking for simplicity and the strippped-down sound, and bask in multiple layers of shimmer and sheen? Let's take an example: Dr Mabuse by Propaganda. It's all here: ginormous drum crashes, great swathes of synth as far as the ear can hear, Fairlight bass stabs. I can't even say it's a great song as such - not sure it would be up to much played on just a piano or guitar. And yet I love this record dearly. From the coin sound effect at the start, through the preposterous spoken bits, to the glorious voice of Claudia Brücken, it's bloody perfect. My favourite bit is when she slips in a line in her native German, "Kein Zurück für dich" (there's no way back), with a delicious little harmony.
So, what's your favourite example of kitchen-sink production?
- More from Rosbif.
- Login or register to post comments
-
The whole album - but I love it
That's awful.
Sorry.
No need to be sorry
I didn't make the album.
It's the perfect example of over-production to me.
Yes!!!!
My guilty pleasure....
Barry Ryan - Eloise
Nothing to feel guilty about as far as I am concerned.
Great song.
The Damned
I really liked their version before I knew it was a cover.
Getting so much older
Eloise is brilliant - and (ahem) Eloise in the video is certainly the sort of girl you'd ride a horse into the sea for.
So sad, and inevitable, when it all ends up like this:
Great song - suits the ottness
Fuck...
That song is good.
I think a stripped down and slowed down version would be pretty interesting as well.
My thoughts as well.
Great song, period.
Aye, that's a belter
He did a few "huge" anthems did Pete. The 12" version of this (incorporating "Talking Blues") is well worth checking out as well, a really moving speech.
Story of the Blues
Hear hear - the Talking Blues coda is sublime.
"You've got to hope for the best - 'cos that's the best you can hope for" - declaimed from a mountain top with a hint of a Liverpool accent. Meant a lot to me at the time (still does!).
bit obvious but - Two Tribes
air raid sirens, massed choirs, Patrick Allen as "The Last Voice You Will Ever Hear", Chris Barrie as Reagan quoting Hitler, several orchestras, scallies laughing and a wicked bassline behind a storming vocal performance.
Ladies and Gentlemen, Frankie Goes To Hollywood, probably the most important thing this side of the world....
Oh yeah, well 'ard.
Never knew that was Chris
Never knew that was Chris Barrie, thanks!
"Just think - war breaks out and nobody turns up..."
We've been blethering about this mighty record over here:
http://www.wordmagazine.co.uk/content/two-tribes
I marginally prefer the first side of Pleasuredome but it's a close-run thing.
This entire thread
belongs to the released output of Zang Tummy Tumby from 1983-6.
Who allowed pop to stop being so ambitious and totally superior?
1986
I suppose is when Stock Aitken & Waterman arrive and Pop sort of reverts back to a more simplistic style with its roots in Motown/70s Disco but all done very quickly on early samplers/sequencer using a much more limited sound pallette and the same signature sounds used over and over again to create this very generic, utterly articifical processed pop, whereas the stuff Trevor Horn and co were doing was absolutely routed in Prog Rock. Welcome to the Pleasuredome is Prog Rock Pop.
I read somewhere at the time
that the "Lads" music of choice was Floyd and Zeppelin while HJ and PR were into Hi-NRG and the classic FGTH sound is therefore a fusion of those two things. Kind of makes sense.
All the ZTT stuff was made by people who love music, no matter what Paul Morley might have said. SAW/PWL were just people who liked making money.
All true
But intelligence, bookishness, pretention and pop just became mutually exclusive, with the exception of Pet Shop Boys, who should be in this thread somewhere..
Perhaps this is the only period all these elements fruitfully and happily co-existed.
New pop, Postcard, New Order, Scritti, ZTT, Smash Hits, Smiths.
Ah well that would explain it
someone should write a book about Liverpool 'Cosmic scallies' of the 80s/90s and their peculiar taste for Pink Floyd and Prog Rock..very interesting cultural phenomenon.
As for SAW, I don't know much about Stock or Aitken but Pete Waterman has always struck me as a man who knows an awful lot about Pop and Soul music and cares deeply about it. I think he genuinely wanted to create his own Motown style Hit Factory, and there are one or two corkers in there..Mel & Kim's 'Respectable' spring to mind.
But I do think they created a lot of music which dated very badly and had a rather trashy, cheap sound with all that s-s-stutter effect and the same orchestral stab sample on ever track whereas Motown still sounds good..and sounded just as good in the mid 80s when it was the same age SAW music is now.
Wasn't just in Liverpool
In London, a lot of the Casuals, our Scallies, were getting into smoking spliffs and listening to Floyd and Zep and Prog. It's possibly one of the reasons I can't stand a lot of that stuff.
Although some of our North London boys who went through that went onto form Flowered Up, and Weekender is a lovely slice of E-d up prog funk that is as kitchen sink as anything in this thread.
Acid house
arguably grew out of this subculture - in terms of consumers (ahem) if not producers.
Yeah
cos he was doing Spitting Image at the time
It gets weirder
you can hear him on the 12" of Art of Noise's Close (to the Edit) doing Jim Callaghan.
There's someat you don't often hear on a pop'n'roll record.
At Work...
So can't access Youtube to post vids.
ABC's Look Of Love, and the whole Lexicon Of Love album is my favourite kitchen sink thing, and as with a lot of this thread produced by Trevor Horn. I'm also rather fond of Dollar's Hand Held In Black & White, although that's less kitchen sink and more widescreen - which also applies to Story Of The Blues I think.
It's an interesting distinction, and it's full of crossover points - like Scott Walker's 4 Scott albums. Widescreen sometimes is still heavily layered, and kitchen sink isn't always widescreen. Hmm...
Anyhow, my absolute favourite kitchen sink moment is by Paul Quinn & The Independent Group. Paul was in Bourgie Bourgie in the 80s, a Scottish band in the same vein as Orange Juice or Josef K. The Independent Group was a two album project featuring members of Bluebells, Orange Juice and the Commotions backing up Paul's crooner vocals.
The second album had a track called Will I Ever Be Inside Of You, which is amazing. Go and YouTube it, it's huge and widescreen and a little bonkers and heads into a section that reminds me of McClaren doing Madame Butterfly.
*edit: lot of crossover between this thread and tracks that build too...
Ike and Tina Turner
River Deep, Mountain High, marvellous.
Scritti - Absolute
So 'Big' it can be seen from space.
God I love this song
I played it to death. "Ooooh love you" like vocal liquid gold. I love the 12" I'm sure it's Peter Powell saying "I wanna hear the B-side" so 80's, so big, so wonderful
Cabaret time!
I'm pretty sure its David "The Kid" Jensen.
Agreed. Scritti are the best
but this is the version you want, the original Arif Mardin production
Grace Jones
Slave To the Rhythm 12"
Still my favourite Trevor Horn produced track
Yep absolutely amazing
Me too. Saw her with a wonderful band at the Sage last year and she sang this song as the climax to the show - with a hula-hoop on the go all the way through - astounding. I do mean a hula hoop not a small crispy snack by the way.
Oh - and 'A Day In The Life' for me...
That's just a bit...
too much.Hence the excess everyone latches onto with regards to this decade.Killer 7" though.
Yeah.....
.....but it's surely still fair game to slag off the 1980s, right?
I'd hate it if that avenue of enjoyment was cut off to me.
I'd have to take up basket weaving or something.
Simple solution:
The eighties were completely, appallingly, unspeakably, irredeemably shit.
Except for the bits that weren't.
The 80s
The eighties were completely, appallingly, unspeakably, irredeemably shit.
Except for the bits that weren't.
As were the 50s 60s, 70s, 90s & 2000s.
The wisest post
I've read for a long time.
Modern Plumbing
KIng of the kitchen sink productions
No-one bunged in more than Roy Wood. Features quotes from Scotland the Brave and Donald Where's Yer Troosers.
Magnificent and mad.
A truly underrated pop genius
The great thing about Roy was that he really could throw in everything and actually make it work in a great pop song.
There was a very interesting Radio 2/Radio 6 program about him a few years back where they talked about his production techniques and dissected some of the multi tracks of his songs. He really is one of the all-time great producers up there with Phil Spector and George Martin. Plus he could write great pop songs, play almost anything and he was a pretty good singer.
He also gave one of my favorite quotes about so-called "solo" albums.
"A solo album is when you write all the songs, do all the arrangements; you play all the instruments yourself, design the album cover, drive the van and make the sandwiches and tea. That's a solo album"
I guess he was talking about Boulders?
I seem to recall that was a 'proper' solo album - even down to the sleeve design.
I like this tune.
But stripped down it ain't. Very eighties, very over the top... (Living On Video by Trans X by the way)
I loved that song in 1985
and it turns out I still do. Thanks for the reminder, Ganglesprocket.
Living!
[bored] living on video.
Living!
[some grumbly nonsense stuff]
*everybody dances*
1985?
I vaguely remember that song, but it looks like a deliberate pastiche of the music and style of 1980/81, and yet 5 years a bit soon to be lampooning the past like that? Was it meant to be tongue in cheek? I'm confused!
They were Austrian
Always a few years behind.
Be Bop Deluxe
No, seriously, wait. Have a listen to Down On Terminal Street - it's got absolutely everything.
It was a toss up between this and Alice Cooper/Bob Ezrin's way over-produced From The Inside
Has to be Tears For Fears
"Mothers Talk"
Just managed to trace
what the opening of this reminded me of. It's this. Compare and contrast:
Richard Harris - Macarthur park
...
Middle part of cassette single of aforementioned genius. Contains elements of all versions.
Fifteen and a half minutes!
That's more like it!
Oh!
This version has a full magnet fitted kitchen, flooring and wall covering featuring tiles and work surfaces!
Gotta' love it!
Michael Jackson
Don't Stop 'Til You Get Enough
I can...
Hear the air in this one.
Stay With Me Baby
Lorraine Ellison
Ooh gosh. Probably something by Alan Parsons.
Where you can hear absolutely everything that Abbey Road has to give being stuffed onto sixty four tracks over scintillating over-the-topness.
Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you
Dennis Wilson's River Song
Which is my favourite song of all time, and it fits into this discussion perfectly. He didn't particularly do the "huge" sound with studio/production trickery (although his production on this piece, and indeed the whole album, is exquisite), rather, he did the huge sound with huge amounts of manpower.
40-odd piece baptist choir? Yup. Strings? Check. Grand piano? Got it. Beefy drums? Of course (Apparently he had a brief career drumming with some obscure band)
Sadly this youtube clip doesn't do the song justice, so you'll have to take my word for it; Listen to the vinyl edition of this, crank your amp up to eleven, there's just so much going on it's breathtaking.
Agreed
Not quite my all-time fave but way up there.
Great call
I also thought of posting this track. No matter how big the production gets the song never loses its emotional whallop with Dennis' cracked and wracked vocals. Perfect
Posted before by me...
... but this ludicrous piece of "everything and the kitchen sink" is designed for this thread
How about this
Tears for fears - Sowing the seeds of love (1989)
Jackthebiscuit
Takes the biscuit.
Got to be the winner.
Yep.
I, er, agree. It's got the Jewson lot.
Me too
http://www.wordmagazine.co.uk/content/in-praise-genius-roland-orzabal
Not quite sure
I am not quite sure if you are taking the piss or not Mister law.
I adore sowing the seeds of love.
"I adore sowing the seeds of love."
Don't we all, eh? Fnarr fnarr...
No piss being taken here, Jack.
STSOL is a fine tune. Even if it is more than a tad heavy, production-wise.
Is that Dave Grohl...
Pre- Nirvana?
Can't see which videos have been posted from this phone
...But I hope someone's posted The Tubes - White Punks On Dope, Don't Touch Me There etc
No? OK, here they are.
Jack Nitzsche was God.
Jay Aston sings War And Peace
Got to be the 12" version. Bucks Fizz went through a very strange, bombastic phase (probably trying to shake off Eurovision and build a career). This is an extraordinary record, and well worth six and half minutes of your valuable time - play loud!
Throwing in the Hallelujah Chorus always helps....
Life on Canvey Island was always like this...
Lights,
muskets, cannons, military band, choir and full orchestra...
If we must
turn this into a Trevor Horn circle jerk, let us find a point of ignition.
Between Yes and ABC, an aborted Buggles track, sold for a Dollar!!
Between ABBA and Propaganda!
Another one for your consideration.
Its hard to believe, but this was huge in 1967
Keith West - Excerpt from a teenage opera
(more commonly known as "Grocer Jack")
Yet another FYC
The Boss
Bit obvious
But nobody has mentioned it - Be My Baby
The Leader Of The Pack.
Down The Dolce Vita (Peter Gabriel)
Bob Ezrin
runs Trevor Horn close for most OTT productions, esp his work with Alice, Gabriel and the Floyd.
And how about Bat Out Of Hell? None more kitchen sink, shurely?
What about this
Macca-alike that throws everything in to the chorus including baby and bathwater
Because The Night
Patti Smith
The Whole
Of The Moon
George Harrison
Let Spector bring all of his friends to the party on Awaiting On You All and Wah Wah. Immense.
The Daddy
It takes me a while to dredge the memory these days
But it's always worth it when I find this Johnny Boy song lurking there