Entertainment For Lively Minds
While the cat's away.........
Posted by Larry Bee on 15 February 2011 - 2:47am.
The mouse will play The The.
Half Term has ensured that I've had a night to myself while the FPO and young 'uns are in Edinburgh for a couple of days.
This didn't turn out to be anything like as exciting as I initially envisaged.
Have scoured my personal stuff on the Sky planner and realised most of it is crap, resulting in the failsafe option of seeing what you lot have been on about of late (hasn't let me down..never does).
Musically it's been Matt Johnson all the way. I can't recall many mentions in the mag or on the blog since my discovery of all things 'Word', which is pretty much day one.
Surely I'm not the only one?
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Soul Mining
Loved my cassette bought in Enfield back in the day. Whatever happened to him?
You're not the only one
I was a massive fan of The The when i was a young scamp.
The "Infected" album was a favourite and I still have my VHS copy of the video album that came out for it (not available on DVD as far as I know).
"This Is The Day" and "Uncertain Smile" from "Soul Mining" are two of the most melancholic (that a word?) songs I've ever heard.
Saw them at Brixton Academy with Johnny Marr. Must have been around the "Timebomb" album I suppose.
Great band.
Still plugging away...
His most recent work was the soundtrack for Brit serial killer flick "Tony" last year, and his website (http://www.thethe.com/) is updated fairly regularly, with monthly 15-minute podcasts (mostly new music) available at £3 each.
"Soul Mining" remains one of my favourite ever albums - it's apparently the only album to sell 100,000 copies in the UK without reaching the top 20 - and "Dusk" is superb, too.
Less than 5 years ago I saw a TV advert in the USA for M & Ms, with those cute animated red & yellow characters, soundtracked by "This Is The Day", which I found most incongruous, but hopefully he got a decent payday from it...
A snap for "Uncertain Smile"
Just great, and showcasing Jools Holland too !
He has cropped up on here before..
and I seem to remember that comments suggested he'd had such a rough time at the hands of record companies that he'd resolved never to deal with them again.
I bought the Tony soundtrack and it's okay, if a little bleak, (as soundtracks to films about serial killers must be I guess). I wish he'd get back to doing what he does best though : perfectly turned pop tunes with thought provoking subject matter.
Uncertain Smile
Is my favourite song of all time, as I've mentioned here often. But the single version, not the album version with Jools Holland's honky tonking all over it.
Agreed
I also love 3 Orange Kisses From Kazan. A very unsettling song but in a good way.
Also on your side
I have the 12in version, and the same for the follow up "Perfect" - both of them are brilliant, though I think the 7ins are better versions.
"Uncertain Smile" has one of the best B-sides ever as well - "3 Orange Kisses from Kazan", which is every bit as good as the title makes you want it to be!
Blimey
I didn't read this until after I'd posted. Are you me?
Soul Mining
Soul Mining is one of my favorite albums ever, and actually helped me get my first real job 20-some years ago. True story: At the end of my job interview, my future boss started asking a few casual questions, one of which was "What music do you like?" At first I wasn't going to mention The The because they weren't that well known in the States and I didn't want to come off like I was some cutting-edge music type -- which I wasn't, at all. But then I just blurted it out, and my boss got hugely excited: "I love that album." Next thing I knew I had a job offer. We had bonded over The The.
Unfortunately, my copy of the CD has a scratch and in trying to replace it, I've found the album is no longer available on CD here. I can't find a new copy anywhere online either. You can't buy a new CD on Amazon. It only has collector's versions for a ridiculous amount of money or used copies.
Anyone know if this is going to be reissued any time soon? I don't understand why it's no longer available.
Plenty available on Amazon...
... though you imply you're in the US, but with used copies from just £1.97 on www.amazon.co.uk, I can't believe the postage would be that offputting.
(PS closer examination shows you might have to pay a bit more for the edition that features the 12" version of "Perfect" as a bonus track)
Johnson was apoplectic
...that Perfect was stuck on the LP (cos the record company reckoned 7 tracks werent enough in 1983).
As far as he was concerned, the album finished with Giant.
Which was the last track on side A of my old casette version (which had perfect and all the bonus tracks on side B).
I don't think I flipped over more than once, ever.
lott
If you PM me your address I'll happily send you a copy from my CD.
Well, that is very kind of
Well, that is very kind of you to offer. But you're in the UK, I assume? I am in the States, so I couldn't ask you to go to all that trouble. At any rate, your offer has reminded me that I can hit up my sister in law (a few states away from me) and I know she has a copy. Thank you, though.
That said, I would still buy a reissue of this in a heartbeat (on the off chance that someone who can make that reissue happen is reading this).
The The
I think their star has waned because their name makes them hard to find on the internet.
The piano in Uncertain Smile is the only decent thing Jools Holland ever did.
Count me in
My gateway CD was Infected (Still trying to replace the video may wife gave away to a charity shop in a clearout. Not too hard to source, but I've seen them go for silly money on eBay) - and I spread forward and backward from there.
I still have a lot of time for The The...
Copies available here
http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/offer-listing/B00004CK5G/ref=dp_olp_used?ie=U...
starting at around a tenner...
The The Shirt vs San Francisco
Back in 1991 I was doing a post-uni tour of the USA on many Greyhound buses and ended up in San Francisco resplendent in a slightly grimy "The The vs The World" purchased at one the "Mindbomb" Royal Albert Hall shows..it was my 2nd favourite shirt marking the first time I'd ever seen Johnny Marr play live with anyone. Having done Alcatraz -I'm queueing up to clamber around the WWII submarine parked nearby when this guy offers me what seemed like frankly stupid money ($100 I recall) to part with my beloved shirt.
An internal conflict resulted : Love of Shirt and British reserve vs "That seems like quite a lot of money for an ex-student's grimy shirt". Also - "if literally sell the shirt of my back - what am i going to wear back to my digs?".
I was genuinely sorry to refuse the offer to what i hoped was a fan - but a beloved shirt is a beloved shirt - and Johnny Marr's solo on "Beyond Love" at the RAH can still give my goosebumps.
Later in that trip, first favourite shirt packed on that tour - a black New Order "Touched By The Hand of God" shirt also got purchase requests at an alt-rock nightclub in Salt Lake City.
Agree with you there...
Marr's harmonica and guitar solo on 'beyond love' live is very special indeed
Good call on the harmonica!
I forgot about that..
I always found Tim Pope's filming of the show excessively dark and smokey, which to fair was how it was on the night..anyways the whole thing is here
Prescient, or what?
Co-incidentally, I too just got back into Soul Mining and Infected the last week or so - after over 20 years.
At the time, though, I was completely obsessed with both LPs.
No real duff tracks on either.
I was especially struck by the likes of Waiting for Tomorrow, THis Is the Day Uncertain Smile (obv.) and Soul Mining from the former; Infected, Out of the Blue, Heartland, Slow Train to Dawn from the latter.
Either of these is his best LP - close call.
Infected does suffer somewhat from the more superannuated production. On the other hand, Johnson's vocal stylings still quite nascent on some of the Soul Mining tracks (compared to the full maturity of the Infected delivery).
However, Good Morning Beautiful (above) was his all-time best track, by some distance. Astonishing stuff.
Kudos also to Beat(en) Generation too (Marr's appregios and Mark Feltham's harp are especially brilliant - the single shone like a lonely beacon amongst the cacaphony of soul-destroying SAW shit that saturated the airwaves in early 1989).
I don't think the rest of Mind Bomb was up to this standard (having said that, I havent listened to it since 1990 and need to redress this pronto).
I also dug the Jealous of Youth EP in 1991. Great versions of "Dolphins" and "Solitude".
A lonely beacon..
exactly..I do seem to remember The Beat(en) Generation being on TOTP...what a strange night that was.
The Mindbomb album itself did seem mostly done before Johnny Marr showed up..but Dusk and "Slow Emotion Replay" especially showed what could've been