Durutti Column: classic or dud

Sucked into listening to DC again. Thanks thread! Anyway, I see that Durutti Column did a live session on BBC radio this week.

http://www.thedurutticolumn.com/

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/b00c72y1/console

shit! except that's the wrong iplayer link. http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/b00c72y1/thursday/console

why don't people just recommend circuses and bread when they recommend dc to newbies? it's got everything and more. and its a perfect starting point.

^that's my next fave after the first 2.

Did LTM reissue Obey the Time? I only have the vinyl on Benelux. Is it worth buying for the bonus tracks? I should keep up with LTM more.

afaik 'obey the time', 'time was gigantic' and 'sex & death' are out of print, but all of them are easy to find s/hand

actually i've just realised pretty much all their factory stuff post-C&B is only floating about in factory once/too form

Hotel Of The Lake 1990 has been one of the songs I've started many dj set with. Maybe my favorite of his.

why am I the only person who thinks Another Setting is by far the best?

actually "time was gigantic" is pretty difficult to get secondhand... unless you want to pay a ton of cash for it. same is true for the factory CD reissue of "without mercy" and the limited CD reissues of "live at the venue london" and "amigos em portugal." however, a lot of the other factory reissues like "return of..." and "LC" can be had for bargain prices even brand new. same is true for his post-nineties stuff... all readily available.

a dozen great tracks to sample from a variety of albums, in no particular order:

1. "the missing boy" from LC - the chorus of this song breaks my heart every time
2. "conduct" from the return of... - on headphones this song can still make me walk into trees at the park at around the two minute mark
3. "street fight/royal infirmary" from bread and circuses (reissue is called circuses and bread, but is the same) - he's the best guitarist in the world maybe, but when combined with such piano, he is devastating. i love how this song only really gives you the chorus once, forcing you to relisten to the whole track
4. "the together mix" - available on the obey the time reissue, i think, originally a 12"? - 90s happy mondays-like thing, looped vocal a la tom's diner, fantastic
5. "vigil" from somebody else's party - never heard a song that better expressed how it feels when someone close to you dies, maybe my favorite song by him ever
6. "shooting" from tempus fugit - tony wilson thinks he should never sing, but i can't imagine the durutti column without vocal tracks like this one. he's a bit like new order, the lyrics are sometimes utterly childish, you can see the rhymes coming from miles away, but then he'll amaze you with it
7. "love song on quattro" from tempus fugit - he does a lot of spanish guitar sounding stuff like this these days, and i think it's great.
8. "silent nite" from the return of the sporadic recordings - eerie, lady singing, snowing probably
9. "spent time" from another setting - i don't like this album, but it's got good stuff on it, they all do
10. "never known" from LC and "never known version" from sunlight to blue... - he loves to do certain songs over and over again. "shooting" up there at #6 is another version of "longsight romance" from rebellion.

Perhaps it'd be good to start with these three albums to get a good sampling: LC, Vini Reilly, and Someone Else's Party?

I left out a lot from that list, too... I don't even own Sex and Death or Time was Gigantic. Oh yeah, probably best to avoid "Love in the Time of Recession" and "Rebellion" to begin with. Not saying they aren't good, just not a good intro.

thanks for the tips good ppls

now the problem is that the list of starting point suggestions is almost as large as the back catalogue

Hi everyone! Please help me! Could anybody put here the lyrics of song "Vigil"? I would really appreciate it!!! Thanks in advance!

Robert from Hungary

Curiously, Someone Else's Party is one of the few DC albums I don't own.

The new '4 Men w/ Beards' reissue of LC doesn't include 'For Belgian Friends', anyone know why this is?

It wasn't on the original release either. It was a single released on Crepescule or whatever, iirc. Maybe they didn't get the rights. What is on that reissue? Why not just get the Factory Too reissue?

what is the purpose of the 4MWB re-issue, is the kooky box not good enough?

http://pantry.wordpress.com/2008/08/21/for-belgian-friends/

says it was released between albums.

For Mimi, For Belgian Friends and Self-Portrait were on the A Factory Quartet double LP along with Kevin Hewick, Blurt and the Royal Family and the Poor.

Ok, Robert From Hungary, here's my stab at the lyrics. Interesting song. I can't make them all out but this is a good bit of it.

Vigil

put some sounds in the walkman
and take a walk around
and i have never heard
such an emptiness in sound

theres a screaming tight?
their rockets on stretching?
make myself a drink
take a sip start watching

even though the hurdles smoke
on an isolation trip
force myself to eat
but i know i'm getting sick

i came here like a partner
ready for a fight
drown my lovers coffee
and settle for the night

? over broken people
foretelling their own deaths
listened in the darkness
to someone fighting for her breath

compressed air is hissing
hissing in the wing
i don't believe in anything
but i'm praying for a friend

put some sounds in the walkman
take a walk around
and I have never heard
such an intumescent(?) sound

nerves are screaming tight
the rack (rot?) keeps on stretching
make myself a drink
take a sip, start retching

given up the herbal smoke
on an isolation trip
force myself to eat
but I know I'm getting sick

I came in like a hard man
ready for a fight
drank my lover's(?) coffee
and settled for the night

(?) with broken people
foretelling their own deaths
listening in the darkness
to someone fighting for her breath

compressed air is hissing
pissing in the wind
I don't believe in anything
but I'm praying for a friend

Thanks both of you (brotherlovesdub and the girl from spirea x (f. hazel))! :) Keep on living the spirit! All the best, Robert

"otis" has turned up on a few mixes i've listened to lately and i'm smitten. at least one version has had drum machines under it. are there remixes out there or was the dj doing this?

For your hacienda party, you should check out the Together Mix, which Jeremy turned me onto just in time for Fac Off.

there was a great mix of Otis and another track on bbc radio done for Tony Wilson I think. Can't remember who/what/when but I know it was great. :)

ya, if this is what you're talking about, this is what i heard it on
http://www.resonatormag.com/2007/09/10/tony-wilson-tribute-mix

dan, which mix?

o, i know what you're talking about, this one

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wSpLcTXGkso

This thread inspired me to put on the 2cd career-spanning comp I've got for our dinner party last night. No one commented but I sure enjoyed it, especially "Sing To Me" with the gorgeous guest vocals.

Yea, it inspired me to play DC stuff too. Circuses and Bread is terrific and Another Setting is just about perfect.

One more request please... :-)

I would be really glad if someone shared the lyrics of "Tuesday"... Another favorite song of mine. Thanks!!!

Robert

Anyone?

I don't have Tuesday in my iTunes. What album is it on?

I started transcribing Tomorrow, which is one of my favs, but realized that wasn't what you wanted. The lyrics are pretty clear on Tomorrow anyway.

Ah, ok, it's on Keep Breathing. I have that one on CD but haven't ripped it yet.

Tuesday - Keep Breathing - 2006

I don't mind who you're waking with this morning
it's not the ...? sounds that i hear calling
no senselessness of waking dreams still forming
it's just the fight is over
i know you've gone

i still feel you
i can feel you
i can feel you
i still feel you

so i get up,
i get on with my day
and i'm not broken up
i don't wish
and i don't pray
and if we met
there'd be nothing there to say
it's just i wish
i'd tried to make you stay

i still feel you
i can feel you
i can feel you
i still feel you

i don't wake up
expect to see your smile
and i don't mind
you've gone so many miles
and i hope that you've kept your sense of style
i just still love you
so it's gonna take a while

Tomorrow is definitely one of my faves. I've even got the 12".

Thank you very much brotherlovesdub! Anyway, You're right, the lyrics are basically clear, but there were some parts I couldn't figure out exactly... So thank you! Magical song...

classic btw

"I don't mind who you're waking with this morning
it's not the _shocking_ sounds that i hear calling..."

Maybe...

whenever i see this thread updated, i think bimble is back. and in a way he is.

Christ, he had a stroke and I didn't even hear about it. Lost use of his left hand, among other things. Still has a new album coming out though!

I only own the 2CD best-of but I may spring for more starting with this deluxe reissue of LC: http://home.wxs.nl/~frankbri/fbn10.html

awes

GREAT. And I like Another Setting even better.

His catalog is so frustrating - bonus tracks on some releases but not on the box set of the first four albums! And no odds and ends comp that gathers it all up. "Amigos" is way out of print and goes for stupid money. I really hope LTM's release is the start of a proper reissue campaign.

yes. Another Setting! thanks dan for reminding me about that record!

Yeah it's a bit messy. I had most of Amigos as tacked onto the Factory CD of Another Setting, then only years later did I realize it wasn't the whole thing and there was a separate full Amigos that I downloaded from iTunes.

A lot of the bonus stuff on this LC, I think I have on vinyl. I went through a phase where I was really avoiding "record collecting" except for buying old dance 12"s but I'd go to the WFMU record fair and only buy Durutti Column vinyl.

My prized possessions are my two Factory cassetes of DC that I bought in high school at Crazy Rhythms in Montclair, NJ. Without Mercy and Another Setting. As seen here:

http://www.discogs.com/viewimages?release=808623

I already had the Valuable Passages CD, which I later leant to someone who lost it, though I found it on vinyl years later. But that tape of Another Setting was a regular in my car for the better part of junior and senior year of high school.

I was lucky enough to discover DC in 85 so a lot of their stuff was still available either in shops or mail order. I got albums like "Amigos" and "A Factory Quartet" for about three quid each, and my first CD ever was "Valuable passages", again mail order in April 87 alongside the seven inch of "I get along with you very well". And those Factory tapes - I bought "The return of", "The graveyard and the ballroom" and "Pigs and battleships" on the same day, just after Xmas 85. I moved to Sheffield in 87 so it was a short train hop to Manchester for record shopping, picking up more of those Factory tapes and other rarities. It seemed the search was part of the fun in those days - always looking in the D section of second hand shops, finding a copy of "Deux triangles" that way in a little shop in Bristol... And then the one time I saw DC live - Manchester, 94, Peter Hook guesting on bass - Vini forgot the words to "The missing boy"!

Oh, I had "Valuable passages" on tape, one of only three double Factory tapes in those boxes, because it had "LFO MOD" on it which was unavailable otherwise in Britain (it was never issued on vinyl here, though I saw a US copy). Did you know "LFO MOD" is based around a preset of the same name on a Korg DW8000 synth? A friend had that synth and I was messing around on it and found that sound and spent the rest of the day trying to perfect how Vini plays it.

I've just bought myself the dbl cd of "Short stories for Pauline" for Xmas actually and will get "LC" as and when, I've got most of the stuff on it but to have it all in one place would be nice... Going back to "Short stories..." I bought "Homage a Duras" in 88 thinking "New Durutti tracks!" and finding those old ones, and Richard Jobson talking, and buying an obscure mail order tape in 90 which had "Snowflakes" and another song from "Pauline", and also introduced me to Sarah Records with a demo by The Wake and a song by The Orchids, and that was another obsession... God, "Snowflakes" is so perfect and desolate and beautiful.

And I've not even mentioned the music, which is some of my favourite music ever and it is so hard to describe why, and "LC" is train journeys over the Pennines at dusk and "Another setting" is just endlessly sublime, those long sustained feedbacking guitar notes on "Spent time" send shivers down my spine. And I'm not even going to try "All that love and maths can do", my favourite piece of music ever. Magical stuff, all the way. Sorry for rambling but I love Durutti Column so much.

Just reading the thread back and I ramble at the start too (and mention the 94 gig), so I've been rambling about DC for ten years on ILM.