The Boo Radleys, Classic or Dud?

Recent tweet referencing Carr's recent exposure thanks to live tweeting his wife's homebirth:

"Sonny is trying to cram his pyjama top into his foreskin. Your move, media."

His work as Brave Captain was very patchy but there are some gems on some of the albums.

The Fingertip Saint Sessions Vol. 1 - Six track mini album which starts with the lovely Raining Stones but is then followed by him just messing around in the studio producing nothing of interest for five tracks.

Go With Yourself (Fingertip Saint Sessions Vol 2) - See above except this time there are nine songs and the good one is the last track.

Corporation Man- Great one off single that is still a good song despite containing the lyrics "I don't wanna lecture, but don't let him get ya" Like the good songs on the first two albums this is just like the Boo Radleys in their simple pop mode.

Advertisments For Myself - Actually a great album that features some pure Boo pop, some Super Furry Animals style songs and lots of Aphex Twin like interludes, it's a lot better than that sounds.

All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace - Can't actually remember anything about this, sad to say I gave up on him after this.
--Kitchen Person

I think I agree w all of this. Wrote a positive review of AfM for Stylus. BC isn't lifechanging or anything but it is a little underrated.

Rock critics habitually throw around references to 70s dub, Brian Wilson and Scott Walker like bullets at a high-school massacre. It's OK, they don't really mean it. These are just the kind of artists they would prefer to be writing about, as opposed to the ones that they have to write about. Enter the Boo Radleys. 'Sharing the bill' means we take it in turns to headline. Tonight, the Boos go on last.

Martin Carr is the Boo Radleys' resident 'genius'. He is the lucky recipient of the kind of hyperbolic prose I was getting nine months earlier. His band are currently touring an abomination of an album called Giant Steps. It features all the predictable TSB Rock School dub and inept approximations of Miles Davis. In two years' time the Boo Radleys will do the unthinkable and make a record that is actually worse than Giant Steps. A record that even King Dunce Alan McGee (their label boss) will disown. The record is called Wake Up Boo: three words guaranteed to induce nausea and a cold sweat, followed by the kind of killing spree that will forever be preceed by the phrase 'tragic events'.

http://i.imgur.com/tNesyca.jpg

who the fuck listens to the auteurs anyway? their best release was completely remixed by µ-ziq

After Murder Park any day over Giant Steps.

Both are good albums. It amazes me what an enormous bore Haines has become. Tragic really.

I was actually surprised he picked on Boo Radleys of all things in Bad Vibes. He gets into it even worse a couple paragraphs later, detailing their wrestling matches before shows. It's not a boring book by any means. I loved it.

I like the Boo Radleys. Just read his book recently and it popped up in my head.

Bear in mind that his introduction to the book, he sort-of apologises in advance for what was 'to come', being what he felt at the time.

He hints that the Boos got the praise that he himself was used to receiving.

I dunno, I don't doubt he doesn't like them, but I also doubt he hates them...

detailing their wrestling matches before shows

Wait, luchador-style or what?

El Siceto

being what he felt at the time

So when he was on tour with the Boo Radleys in 1993 he was feeling that two decades later he would hate their 1996 record and to prove it, here's what Alan McGee said in 2001.

I take the stairs to our shared dressing room to find three bodies writhing in the doorway. I accidentally tread on some hair and a Scouser squeals. The hair and squeal belong to a Boo Radley, engaging in their customary roughhousing. This lot seems to be pathologically incapable of setting foot outside their windowless tour bus without breaking into a bout of rough and tumble with one another. The bodies pick themselves up from the deck.

'Awlright', mate? an exaggerated Mersey accent enquires, leering toward me. The implication seems to be of the Do you want some? variety? Hmmmm, the backstage drinks rider is already seriously depleted. Are you really trying to menace me? I wonder. I hold out my hand and offer my finest limp-wristed handshake and my most sickly simpering smile. The north. The South. And never the twain shall meet. All friends then.

xpost -- Luke Haines, timelord.

They're from WALLASEY, not Cantril Farm or Croxteth. My God, we're weak sauce as far as Scousers go.

xxp - wkiw Boos!

Funny that should be posted because it had just crossed my mind that class was behind it. I've noticed that English people often have an almost comical disregard towards people from Merseyside.

ALAN McGEE has launched a stinging attack on ex-CREATION RECORDS band THE BOO RADLEYS, declaring their most commercially successful single 'WAKE UP BOO!' an "atrocity exhibition".

McGee has written a review of David Cavanagh's book on the history of Creation Records, 'My Magpie Eyes Are Hungry For The Prize' on the Poptones website www.poptones.co.uk.
In it McGee declares Cavanagh's work "unquestionably the dullest book I have ever read", "tedious" and "humourless", before claiming it captures "none of the spirit" of Creation Records.

However, his most venomous attack is saved for ex-Boo Radleys guitarist and songwriter Martin Carr. Apparently unhappy at their musical output following the most successful album of their career, 'Wake Up!', he writes: "For the record, Martin, I would have dropped you in 1995 after the atrocity exhibition that was 'Wake Up Boo!' but for (Creation co-founder) Dick Green's infatuation with you. Creation was never about touring the US in Bon Jovi's tour bus... for me Creation was touring Germany and Holland with the Mary Chain in a transit van."

Elsewhere in the review McGee accuses the Boo Radleys of costing Creation "about a million pounds", before saying "you were never a part of it. For me you never proved it. Sorry, mate."

NME.COM contacted a representative for Martin Carr for comment, but none was immediately forthcoming.
Read more at http://www.nme.com/news/brave-captain/6277#exRiUHyIT9fBrKWm.99

What a jerk.

Carr calls him on it here in 2009.

Carr: "You once described ‘Wake Up Boo’ as an ‘Atrocity Exhibition’ which, as I’m sure readers will know, was the title of a J.G Ballard novel.He’s dead now and, let’s be honest, you have to shoulder some of the blame for that. What other records (records, not bands) that came out on Creation would you rather have come out on another label, if at all?"

McGee: "Loveless Isn’t Anything and Soon I hate mbv I wish I had never signed them tuneless garbage."

In other words...don't take it too seriously folks (and Luke Haines).

McGee is a dick, but Wake Up is shit.

lol @ "do you think alan gives a shit what you think you dickhead, crawl back up your dog’s arsehole, what the fuck are you doing with your life apart from boring every cunt"

It's funny that McGee disses the Boos for not being "transit van" enough for Creation, while Haines highlights their "windowless tour bus". I'm thinking "what's the big deal with their transportation?" Is it a van or a bus? So I googled it on the off chance their was an actual photo of the Boo Radleys tour bus somewhere. Up pops Ned's report from a '93 Boo Radleys gig "outside the Roxy in their rear parking lot near their tour bus or van."

The mystery deepens.

McGee is a dick, but Wake Up is shit.

― emil.y, Thursday, February 7, 2013 4:08 AM (12 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

It's my least favourite Boos album, but I still think it's got a couple of good tracks on it: 'Joel', 'Martin, Doom! It's 7 O'Clock'... and I like 'Reaching Out From Here', too.

It's funny that McGee disses the Boos for not being "transit van" enough for Creation, while Haines highlights their "windowless tour bus"...

― everything, Thursday, February 7, 2013 4:46 AM (12 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

It's funny that McGee is laying into the Boo Radleys for this. I wonder if he'd say that Oasis, the act that made him the most money, weren't "transit van" enough for Creation either.

Yeah, it doesn't make that much sense.

Wake Up is amazing fwiw. A totally misunderstood record base on the misunderstood irony behind the lead single.

While I'd agree that a lot of people misunderstood the band in general because of 'Wake Up Boo!', I don't think tracks like 'It's Lulu' and 'Find The Answer Within' do them any favours either.

It's Lulu is terrible. I like Find The Answer Within and the backwards messages etc

I like abt half of Wake Up, esp Joel

that luke haines stuff about the boo radleys is relatively affectionate. you should hear what he has to say about the verve. and suede.

I've always found this band to lack that extra special charm...I think it's the vocals. They don't really have much character, do they?

idk the boyishness of the vocals well suits the wide-eyed pocket-adventure quality of much of the music

the cover of Giant Steps is absolutely horrible

Joel is a beautiful song the string arrangements and then it goes full on Revolver by the end

idk the boyishness of the vocals well suits the wide-eyed pocket-adventure quality of much of the music

― imago, Thursday, February 7, 2013 11:25 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I quite like it how, on things like 'Run My Way Runway', Sice is like, this tiny voice in the middle of chaos. His small voice actually does the trick of making the music seem bigger.

OTM. The one thing his voice just doesn't suit are brash pop numbers - I never liked or saw the point in It's Lulu, C'mon Kids, Free Huey etc...

I don't mind his brash voice so much on 'What's In The Box? (See Whatcha Got)', but I do get what you mean!

Maybe it's because I'm not a super fan and I have a place in my heart for pretty cheesy pop songs, but I don't get why something like "It's Lulu" stands out as a blatantly bad song. I never thought it was that bad in the scheme of things...not that I've listened to it in years.

I like the horns.

It's just such a drag. The whole premise behind the song and the lyrics are weak and condescending. It's brash in a horrible alarm clock kind of way. It sticks out from the rest of the album like a sore thumb. Just sounds like Carr was asked to do another Wake Up Boo and tossed this off in about five minutes.

'It's Lulu' might have been one of the first songs written for Wake Up!, actually... I remember reading that Martin wrote it while the band were mixing Giant Steps. Apparently he tried to write it in the style of the Buzzcocks.

I read an interview where he says he hates it, so I guess I'm just not listening to it with very critical ears. I always wonder how artists can hate their own songs.

When artists 'give-in' to their baser instincts, (ta, Eno!) and then live to regret it/

It's very 1995 though, isn't it? I get the same feeling from it as I do whenever I listen to Grand Prix, it always reminds me of that specific year. I don't really get the same feeling of "this sounds like a specific year" whenever I listen to C'mon Kids.

squeaky brass was a britpop trait. brass seems to be making a bit of a comeback, but it's deeper and lower. imo anyway.

btw, i'm going to do an artist poll for the Boo Radleys. it will come up sometime in the next five year.

Thread for coordinating the order and timing of ILM ballot polls

61. Iggy Pop, incl. Stooges - flopson
62. Boo Radleys - Bee OK
63. XTC - Shakey Mo Collier

that is a joke, hopefully it won't be in five years.

Well, the poll/ballots have really slowed down lately

Looking forward to it. I think a boo Radleys poll was what started the idea of that coordination thread.

Yep, will undoubtedly be participating in it... and then the XTC poll afterwards!!