Talk Talk (RIP Mark Hollis)

In the US they are probably a staple among a very narrow class of music fan, but overall def not well known -- even their hits don't seem to have much traction here in the 80s revival playlists compared to other new wave.

I heard "It's My Life" and to a lesser extent "Life's What You Make It" on '80s revival radio in the nineties, but that's it. "Talk Talk" made it to Night Shift in 1982.

Nice piece Alfred. One quip though:

Silence and exile he sought, with some cunning—when he needed money he composed a bit for a Kelsey Grammer TV series.

To my knowledge it's never been confirmed that he did this for the money. He might have, and he probably was paid for it, but money being the most important reason for him doing this isn't mentioned in the p4k hyperlink you put underneath it either.

Please correct me if I'm wrong though, obv

i really hope he did it because he sincerely loved the show "boss." that would add a fun wrinkle to his personality.

Struck again by the fact that the first three songs on Spirit are programmed on both my vinyl and CD copies as one piece. On vinyl as one side with no break; on CD as one track. Side two always feels like a breakthrough

I do wonder what he did for money though. I somehow doubt that a few hits in the 80s is enough to bankroll someone for the next three decades.

I wonder this about pretty much all musicians.

Worth remembering the No Doubt cover would have earned him some new coin at least. Alternately maybe he just quietly worked out of the public eye.

How musicians make their livelihoods fascinates me.

LBI, I didn't meant to imply that finances motivated him, not that this would be a venal reason for accepting the assignment. Maybe Hollis dug Kelsey Grammar as a comedian.

I can't imagine they came out of the EMI deal with much/any money. Didn't Spirit of Eden cost a crazy amount of money to make?

Maybe he was doing a square job all this time! Also maybe his wife has a lucrative job and he was able to be mr mom.

I do wonder.

To attempt to answer my own question, Talk Talk was pretty huge in continental Europe in the mid-eighties, he could conceivably have made a couple of million there and then invested wisely and lived a frugal life. Topped up with a residual of royalties and the No Doubt hit, it could have seen him through I guess.

you can hear them (a conservative expression) in tortoise's music I think

"Finding good quality vinyl presses of the last two Talk Talk albums and the Mark Hollis solo album is nearly impossible unless you have $75-200 budget per album. The 2012 represses were perhaps not authorized (some are banned for sale on Discogs) or were done very poorly."

The Ba Da Bing reissues were allegedly poor (I never heard them, and never heard anything good about them; I doubt they were 'unauthorized', they were probably officially licensed from the labels but I think they were just mastered from the CDs). The later reissues from EMI for Spirit of Eden and Colour of Spring (which came with DVDs as well) are lovely, and then there was a subsequence reissue of Laughing STock by Polydor which is good as well. It's just the solo album that remains unavailable most places. I still have the CD.

AFAICT the question of how he lived depends so much on what kind of deal he was shrewd or lucky enough to have negotiated. It's really unpredictable who winds up financially sound and who doesn't based purely on ostensible success.

I bought the Hollis solo LP Ba Da Bing reissue in like 2015? Suddenly it went out of print I guess since it started climbing on discogs.
I don't remember it sounding too bad but I'm not a huge audiophile either. A normal sized one, maybe.

the solo LP is more of a "ILX" record to me. i'd always heard various music people in the US talk about the last few Talk Talk albums, but I didn't even know Hollis had a solo album until hearing about it here. And it is really, really good, of course.

Now that I look at the release pages on discogs, I remember the issue being the EU pressing being better than the US pressing for one or both of the last two albums. I ended up buying some bootleg of Laughing Stock with the b-sides on the 2nd LP that is pretty spotty sound wise, but I do have the 2012 Spirit of Eden LP w/ DVD. Guess that one sounds ok.

hollis solo, comsat angels first two, the sound's first two, junior boys' first... all very ilx records to me. sure there are others

anecdotal story on that album: my friend was in Piano Magic at the time that came out and they were on tour with Low in England. And he and Zak Sally went to half a dozen record shops looking for that CD and apparently couldn't find it.

I found it fairly easily in the bay area on release.

talk talk is definitely a band i discovered thanks to ilx, back in the mid-00s. i couldn't find any of their stuff anywhere in my city -- i remember having to order laughing stock at borders.

Slight derail but for MANY reasons there’s no more ILX release than Disco Infernos 5 eps compilation.

That and the homemade bob seger comp

the live at montreux 1986 is awesome, what a groove, what a performance:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QNIIOr3g8lQ

Slight derail but for MANY reasons there’s no more ILX release than Disco Infernos 5 eps compilation.

Ha, probably true, I guess.

I have the Ba Da Bing reissues and they're fine? I think? I really love the Mark Hollis solo album more than anything else though, really incredible.

LBI, I didn't meant to imply that finances motivated him, not that this would be a venal reason for accepting the assignment. Maybe Hollis dug Kelsey Grammar as a comedian.

― Let's have sensible centrist armageddon (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Tuesday, February 26, 2019 11:09 PM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Thank you. It did jump out at me as if you were implying that, but I never read your writing in bad faith.

I do think it's entirely possible he got by on royalties, and that that was a steady source of income. According to discogs Talk Talk appear on 1150 compilations, mixes and albums alone, and No Doubt's version.

If Slade can live off one xmas single for the rest of their lives (Merry Christmas Everybody supposedly generates 500.000 pounds, annually) I'm pretty sure Hollis could have earned a half-decent income from it.

The No Doubt hit alone would have netted him a lot of money, bar a really bad deal.

Obv. the band's early stuff is much less obscure, from a new wave hits of the '80s standpoint alone. Did "Colour" have the impact in the States that it had at home? Regardless, the next two records had next to no commercial impact anywhere, not least because of the arrangements that Hollis (iirc) fought to keep them from truncating for single release. And I'd argue that the Talk Talk mythos, as cool as much of the early stuff and esp. "Colour" is, stems from those last two albums, which are weird and challenging and magical and need to be sought out to be heard. And at least for the longest time his solo album takes things down a notch further in terms of literal accessibility.

I think we're spoiled in terms of available music, but twas not always the case. For example, it wasn't until the '80s that stuff like the VU (first reissues in 1985?) and Big Star records (outside of bootlegs) were more readily available, iirc, and even then I think a lot of people were driven to them by bands that name-dropped them, like REM. But later (which is to say, not commercial) Talk Talk was more elusive because Hollis himself was so reclusive. Like I said, it was strictly word of mouth, not Rolling Stone think-pieces and whatnot, that got those albums what little exposure that they got. And even now the group's influence is more of a conceptual one. There is lots of music that is Talk Talk-like, but not much like Talk Talk, not even quite Bark Psychosis or These New Puritans or whatever.

Oh I remember it was literally impossible to find Neu! anywhere in 1999, even the bootlegs were hard to come by and $30 each

But yes there is the mythos. I used to complain (and still kind of do) that I felt the mythos, including the monstrous budget and immense amount of time required to make those two last albums, were detrimental to my enjoyment of them, as I felt that their quality was overrated as a result of the backstory. I argued that In A Silent Way effectively did the same thing as Laughing Stock compositionally and was recorded in a single day. I argued that the influence of Laughing Stock on Radiohead led them to similarly make "hunker down for infinite time and fuck around until we come up with something" albums instead of, you know, doing pre-production. But never mind I still really think they're both excellent

I have the Ba Da Bing reissues and they're fine? I think? I really love the Mark Hollis solo album more than anything else though, really incredible.

― flamboyant goon tie included, Tuesday, 26 February 2019 23:21 (thirty-seven minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Happy to read this. I listen to it less but when I do it feels more.

absolutely love the atmosphere of it. you hear the room, the chair (or floorboards) creaking. everything feel so special and delicate. it's overwhelming, the intimacy of it.

It's truly a one of a kind album. Overwhelming intimacy nails it. It's so fragile and delicate. Right up there with Paul Buchanan's album (another ilxest album)

<3 fgti

There was a WIRE interview around the time of the release of the solo where he talked about Morton Feldman being a huge influence.

iirc he was on the cover.

If you listen to Inside Looking Out the Feldman influence is right there. It's also the one where you can hear the creaking of the room.

...and now I'm on to the next track, The Gift, and the influence is there in the horns too.

fuck it, this is his Morton Feldman tribute record. It's all over it.

>I argued that In A Silent Way effectively did the same thing as Laughing Stock compositionally and was recorded in a single day

In A Silent Way certainly didn't take as long to edit as Laughing Stock, but if your point was to pick an example of a spontaneous creation then you definitely picked something that nearly illustrates the opposite -- the real revolution of IASW is in Teo's edit, not the live take. it's a complete foreshadowing of how Hollis used cutting and pasting of improvisations to compose; he cut away 95% of the pre-composed piece and left only the one chord vamp & the solos. I would agree with you that now DAWs nearly mandate this approach and the influence has become like death

respectfully pulled out my 30 year old copy of Spirit of Eden today. definitely a good record. favorite still probably the solo album; even if every one of those little intimate sounds are almost annoyingly carved out and poised, there's something special about the sounds, they're really good ones

xpost yr right, evocative room creaks are in and of themselves a total hallmark of Feldman recordings

I'm thinking his older brother, with his amazing record collection and eclectic tastes, as mentioned in the article posted somewhere in this thread, must have had quite an influence on him.

When Gerry Rafferty died his obituary in The Guardian (I think) mentioned that Baker St brought him GBP80k a year in royalites - this is the figure I remember when wondering how "retired" musicians live.

I would have thought he would have earned more than that from "Baker Street" tbh. But, yes, there's potentially a good living to be had if you have even one hit record.

"Such a Shame" from that Montreux show is always a good Youtube watch. In live footage Mark always seems to be wrenching the words out.

Rowland S. Howard's end-of-life cover of "Life is What You Make it" is a noisy and elegant interpretation, gets inside the song the way only a fellow introvert could.

I do remember glowing and surprised reviews for Color of Spring, and even a conversation with someone telling me to put aside expectations because he did and was entranced. But it's hard to make forceful arguments for unforcful records, and in the US they had just enough of a profile to be typecast as synthpop throwaways. The Howard Joneses and Eurthymics and Tomas Dolbys of the world were all making their second moves around 1986, to limited success.

When Gerry Rafferty died his obituary in The Guardian (I think) mentioned that Baker St brought him GBP80k a year in royalites - this is the figure I remember when wondering how "retired" musicians live.

― fetter, Wednesday, February 27, 2019 3:04 AM (

I read that too, but I wonder how that income would have diminished in the streaming era.

xpost Was Japan among the first wave of these synth-y new wave acts to take a big left turn?

OMD

>I argued that In A Silent Way effectively did the same thing as Laughing Stock compositionally and was recorded in a single day

In A Silent Way certainly didn't take as long to edit as Laughing Stock, but if your point was to pick an example of a spontaneous creation then you definitely picked something that nearly illustrates the opposite -- the real revolution of IASW is in Teo's edit, not the live take. it's a complete foreshadowing of how Hollis used cutting and pasting of improvisations to compose; he cut away 95% of the pre-composed piece and left only the one chord vamp & the solos. I would agree with you that now DAWs nearly mandate this approach and the influence has become like death

respectfully pulled out my 30 year old copy of Spirit of Eden today. definitely a good record. favorite still probably the solo album; even if every one of those little intimate sounds are almost annoyingly carved out and poised, there's something special about the sounds, they're really good ones

xpost yr right, evocative room creaks are in and of themselves a total hallmark of Feldman recordings

Good post, Jon. I will never forget when I heard the unedited recording of “Shh/Peaceful” on the IaSW box – that was literally shocking to me as even knowing how much editing Teo did I had never considered that the entire 16+ min could be derived from a 14 second fragment.

I’ve had a hard time with Talk Talk since their canonization in the early aughts. I hadn’t known these records for that long—probably was introduced to them in 1997 or so—and had loved them quite intensely since that time. But the amount of ink spilled praising them—and the preciously rockist admiration saved for Laughing Talk in particular—really made my stomach turn and seemed grossly out of proportion to the beauty of the records themselves.

Listening back to them now, SoE still resonates for me ... in hindsight, it almost seems a transitional album, albeit a rather extreme one for its time. Where the ST feels like the Feldman ode it is, and Laughing Talk has been thoroughly pillaged by the post rock brigade, on [i]SoE/i] there are still plenty of moments--the Hammond swirls on the chorus of "Desire," the entirety of "Wealth"--that firmly exist in a mid-80s soul context. Which, actually, is one of the things I like most about it.

There was a WIRE interview around the time of the release of the solo where he talked about Morton Feldman being a huge influence.

― Acting Crazy (Instrumental) (jed_),

that interview can be found here: http://www.snowinberlin.com/markhollis.html#the-wire-1998-01-00

the preciously rockist admiration saved for Laughing Talk in particular

What?