Silver Apples C or D/S&D

If you want to hear a great electronic rock band from the Sixties , then listen to the United States of America.

-J

The track in question is "I Have Known Love" - the version on the split single is a new version, and FAR INFERIOR to the original, on Contact. Just to refresh my memory, I'm listening to it now, and I'll go so far as to say that the new version is shitty. The drum beat is generic, the synths are uninteresting, and BLEH. The original, on the other hand, is something special. You must get the Silver Apples/Contact 2-on-1 CD. The lyrics are often kind of cheesy, but those rhythms and oscillators will just blow your mind.

Indie geek trivia - Folk Implosion sampled at least two of their songs on the Kids soundtrack: "Lovefingers" (for "Simean Groove") and "Program" (for "Nothing Gonna Stop"). Also, the lyrics to "Nothing Gonna Stop" are mostly made up of Silver Apples song titles.

i remember being at record outlet in ventura, ca and hearing the folk implosion stuff and being freaked out - i had been listening to the silver apples for like 9 months straight and i recognized the lifts and lyrical references immediately. i almost liked that barlowe guy for a second there.

i have a friend who dropped loot on the original s/t album w/super shiny cover.

i have a soft spot for "I have known Love" with it's actual chord progression and pretty melody.

worth seeing live? the recent youtubes i found seem pretty cool

i would also like to know this before i extremely reluctantly pay for spiritualized tickets (who the SAs are supporting down here)

luckily i can get in free. the headliner is grails which i'd probably skip

Stay home and listen to the records IMHO.

lol

stay home twice before listening

Teenage poets, make of that what you will
― dave q, Friday, January 18, 2002 5:00 PM (6 years ago)

OK i love DQ but who wasn't a teenage poet (besides me)?

i would also like to know this before i extremely reluctantly pay for spiritualized tickets (who the SAs are supporting down here)

― thereminimum chips (electricsound), Tuesday, November 18, 2008 1:40 AM (1 hour ago) Bookmark

Same question, 'cept I used to really like SPZ.

seen em twice (as a headliner, mind you) in the past year or so and had a lot of fun each time.

classick

"i have known love" is so so good

Yep...

I love everything about "A Pox On You" but maybe maybe #1 best part is the tasty drumming.

"This band is amazing, .... , "Well, it IS kind of boring I suppose". By the end of the CD, you will be slumped in your chair, leafing thru a magazine hoping against hope for the CD to end.

― Dadaismus, Monday, 24 March 2003 14:44 (7 years ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

Of course, some albums (or, indeed, sides of albums) should be heard as partworks.

Listening to the whole CD is too much too soon, sure.

They'd be classic just for "I Have Known Love," which I've now listened to 10X straight this morning; such a deceptively weird track. Completely transfixed by the way some lines/couplets get doubled over in certain places. Plus, I think the stanzas are tercets, but they kind of bleed into one another in random places.

That one and "Program" are the two best in my opinion.

i think this is the music that feels the most "ahead of its time" to me....if not for some of the vocal mannerisms i would never guess it was a 68 album

My cd copy of Contact sounds like total shit, bums me out.

what label?

Whirlybird, I think. I bought it just a few months or so before the s/t and it were reissued on a twofer. That one probably sounds better.

"i have known love" still sounds like it comes from the future

You and I sounds like Bomb Squad production twenty years early.

I remember hearing "Oscillations" as warm up music for like a Dan Deacon show or something and it was the same thing - until the vocals kicked in I thought it was something really modern.

I had dinner with Simeon in Lisbon once and he was a Southern gentleman

period live performance setup

very very impressive

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-4pQrgEAFEzU/TyLKrc4F4AI/AAAAAAAAA18/US88ZrA4CLQ/s1600/Silver%2BApples2.jpg

from the five-star Astronauta Pinguim blog - http://astronautapinguim.blogspot.com/2012/01/five-questions-to-simeon-coxe-lll.html

Great post from Graham Sutton (Bark Psychosis etc.) just now that he'll be working with Simeon on a new Silver Apples album

https://twitter.com/GPSutton/status/530805335859421184

So, what does the 2015 incarnation sound like? Simeon + ?

$13 at Trans-Pecos tmrrow, so expectations very low; just struck me that I have ~0% idea what he/they sound like live nowadays.

I suppose this is as good a place as any to ask a question I've been wondering about for some years.

Back in 1998 or 1999 I was involved in the shooting of a music video for Silver Apples. It was set in a mental hospital or psych ward, and the basic idea was mental patients were getting administered drugs by a mad doctor played by Simeon, after which they would have convulsions or freak out. We were told that this footage would later be intercut with live performance footage of the Silver Apples for the final edit. I am pretty certain that "Mad Man Blues" from the album The Garden was supposed to be the song, due to the obvious thematic connection.

I never saw a completed version of this video, or even any part of what was shot, and I wonder if it ever came out at all. Has anyone seen anything resembling this anywhere?

The director of the video was Barak Soval, who later made the Silver Apples documentary Of the Moon, which I have also never seen.

I remember that Simeon was very nice and easy to work with.

I saw Silver Apples in Chicago last year. It was just Simeon. There was a cool mix of prerecorded tracks and live synth/electronic gizmo playing. And he sings of course.

Was the Of the Moon doc ever officially released? For something that might've come out in 2008, looks like it fell down the memory hole.

From this 2010 SoS article, sounds like he uses old samples of Taylor for the drum? http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/oct10/articles/silver-apples.htm

RIP

the story about the Contact LP cover is great, though its decidedly less great when you factor in that it killed the band

I think a lot about what would've happened to them had they continued. I think they would've at least made it to '73 or so. When you listen to The Garden - what survived of it - it's remarkable just how loopy they got. it might've been considered the first "Zolo" record.

RIP. I saw Simeon play a few times over the years, there were some less-brilliant shows but when it hit oh boy it really hit. The last show I saw people were going crazy, so much dancing and joy.

In 2008, I had ended a tour in Lisbon and stayed on for a week as a vacation. The guys who were booking/promoting the local DIY venue ZDB were generous hosts-- they would later go on to found Principe Discos (Marfox etc.) Simeon was playing ZDB a few days after I did, and so the promoters invited me out to dinner with Simeon before the show.

Simeon was one of those guys who didn't talk a lot but when he did it was like "regaling you with an extended anecdote", and he told me a really, really crazy story, for which I can't find any evidence in interviews or anything else online. Apparently there was a period in which Simeon was taking time off touring-- I don't remember if this incident happened in the 80s, or later, in the early 00s, after Simeon was taking time off to recover from his broken neck. But Simeon started booking shows again, just as "Simeon (from Silver Apples)". One of the first gigs he was schedule to play was a festival gig, something like Big Ears or whatever. Simeon shows up, introduces himself to one of the organizers, and the organizer's face goes pale and he walks away.

The organizer comes back with a couple of other people and says "you're not Simeon", and claims that he'd worked with Simeon before, and that Simeon was not the person he'd worked with. It turned out that during Simeon's hiatus, an impersonator had been going around playing gigs under the moniker Silver Apples, introducing himself to people as Simeon, and full just playing apparently convincing sets of SA songs and fooling everyone. I don't remember how the story ended, if Real Simeon tracked down Fake Simeon and C&D'd him or what, but yeah what a weird thing to have to deal with.

Anyway he was the best this band is the best RIP.

I heard stories like that too. Wasn't the reformation sparked by Simeon hearing his music being played at some exhibition and having to convince the curator that it was actually *him*? Followed by a long search for Danny Taylor, whom he'd located by requesting Silver Apples songs on every radio station and asking Danny to call him. And it worked!!

i saw him play a few times too and likewise it was either miss or HIT! When he very first came back in the 90s he did a tour with a drummer (not Danny Taylor, maybe Michael Lerner?) which remains one of my very favourite live experiences ever. Perhaps he didn't continue with the drums for financial reasons but I would have loved to have seen that show another time.

Total hero.

Saw them once in Knoxville in the late 90s. Fantastic, awe-inspiring show. This year is the worst.

Yeah it can't really be overstated how GREAT Silver Apples sound in the context of exhibitions, playlists, etc... their albums sound great on their own but when juxtaposed against "other music" it sounds so much heavier than anything else. I was at a fashion show a few years back where the designer used almost-all Silver Apples tracks and they hit like a freight train.

A band I was in supported him in 1996ish. We usually did a Silver Apples cover version, but I thought it would be deeply uncool to do it as the support band so left it off the setlist.
After the gig it was mentioned to him that we usually did a cover of one of his songs, and being the nice guy he was he said "Oh if you'd played it I'd have come on and sung it with you."
Cue dagger stares at me from the rest of the band haha.

what I found most astounding about Simeon was how not bitter he was about the string of bad luck that seemed to follow the band

had Silver Apples not been sued into oblivion and instead became fairly well known I think they might've been sampled a lot in the early 90's.

Yeah, he lost everything in Katrina, iirc, had to rebuild from scratch

I think they might've been sampled a lot in the early 90's.

sampled in the late 90s - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uxu2SHdhrbg

A band I was in supported him in 1996ish. We usually did a Silver Apples cover version, but I thought it would be deeply uncool to do it as the support band so left it off the setlist.
After the gig it was mentioned to him that we usually did a cover of one of his songs, and being the nice guy he was he said "Oh if you'd played it I'd have come on and sung it with you."
Cue dagger stares at me from the rest of the band haha.

― ( X '____' )/ (zappi)

Weren't you supposed to do a collab at a festival the year he got into the car crash, or am I misremembering?

had Silver Apples not been sued into oblivion and instead became fairly well known I think they might've been sampled a lot in the early 90's.

― frogbs, Wednesday, September 9, 2020 8:48 AM (forty-five minutes ago)

I'M THE POLL NATURAL POLL for the KIDS soundtrack (1995 Harmony Korine, Lou Barlow Folk Implosion)

"Simean Groove" samples Danny's drumming from "Lovefingers"
"Nothing's Gonna Stop The Flow" samples the drums/bassline from "Program"

Weren't you supposed to do a collab at a festival the year he got into the car crash, or am I misremembering?

Yes, forgot about that part! J just told me that she's lost all sorts of things over the years but still has his handwritten lyrics from when she asked him what they were as she couldn't make out some of the words. He was v generous with his time and support.

Awesome, glad he stayed so active in musical drop-ins and his professional media gigs. Also contributed to a Monks trib I covered in the Voice, Silver Monk Time:
Chicken-coop guest gusto generates an amen corner in Silver Apples x Alan Vega's incarnation of the title track. All I could make room for---the album was released in autumn of '06, xpost Katrina was third week of August '05, I think, so the track may have indeed been launched from something like a chicken coop, but as good as Link Wray recordings therein. Boy, what a spiritual affinity---can almost imagine a whole Silver Apples Suicide Monk Time.

With actual Monks, of course (Gary Burger showed up on the trib).

WT...?

Wikipedia has broken link to your article :( But can be found through google.

RIP Simeon Cox
What an amazing guy he was
an inspiration not just musically But in life as we hung out many times over the years
Hopefully now him and Danny can play as silver apples in the sky as they were supposed
very sad x
Thx to @adrianutley for introducing them to me pic.twitter.com/Ilc3hKP0zZ

— Geoff Barrow (@jetfury) September 9, 2020

One last post about Simeon
He was a true original and was still playing gigs into his 80’s
We were lucky enough for him to Join Portishead One night when we played “we carry on” which is heavily inspired by silver apples
RIP ❤️
Here is the Video
> https://t.co/G1WhQhHj7s

— Geoff Barrow (@jetfury) September 9, 2020

Glad they acknowledge how We Carry On is practically Portishead doing a Silver Apples song.

I think they might've been sampled a lot in the early 90's.

sampled in the late 90s - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uxu2SHdhrbg
Ha, who done that? ;-)

I always think there's a bit of the start of Oscillations pitched down in this. Which I guess could be a an in joke i.e. low frequency oscillations.

https://youtu.be/t31IDNv8OBk

i had never noticed that before. it does indeed sound like it and seems to be - https://www.whosampled.com/sample/519379/LFO-Advance-Silver-Apples-Oscillations/

Ha, who done that? ;-)

:-)

That site says the first artist to sample Silver Apples was....

Deee-Lite:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MIknLI-yFiw

his "bakers dozen" at the Quietus is full of good quotes:

https://thequietus.com/articles/10584-simeon-coxe-silver-apples-favourite-albums

He was overtly out of the box gay before it was fashionable and the straight people trying to interview him were guaranteed to be caught totally off guard by his wackiness. He wore gobs of eye liner and makeup at a time when it was totally shocking! It was always a howl to watch him yank their chains. And don't underestimate his musicianship - or his lyrics! "Tutti fruiti, allrootey! Tutti fruiti, allrootey! Whoooo... Tutti fruiti, allrootey! Tutti fruiti, allrootey! Tutti fruiti, allrootey! A whop baba loo bop ah whop bam boom!" Now that's some kinda lyrics!

Ellas Bates, a guitar player from Mississippi, decided to call himself Bo Diddley and wrote his first song and called it 'Bo Diddley'. Then he wrote 'Hey, Bo Diddley', then he wrote 'Go, Bo Diddley', then he wrote 'Diddley Daddy', and everybody loved him because of that 'dah, dada, dah (pause) da dah' beat. He got on the Ed Sullivan Show by promising to play a big Merle Travis hit song called 'Sixteen Tons'. Instead he played (guess what) 'Bo Diddley' and got himself banned forever from the Ed Sullivan Show.

He was my hero.

One time I got up to go take a leak and there was an African warrior balanced on the urinal playing a saxophone. Amazing... and beer was only 25 cents a mug.

All I know is that Bela Bartok took the power of Beethoven and launched it into the 20th century with music that explores the very edges of ordered dissonance and harmonic tension without ever letting it break up into chaos. I don't understand any of this stuff, but damn I love it.

Silver Apples in Beijing is still the only gig my wife has ever been to.

Still trying to wrap my head around a. Only one gig, and b. that it was Silver Apples. That's amazing.

It's a bit of a cheat as we did go to a festival in the suburb we lived in, where we saw a couple of bands play a song or so each, still basically true.

Here are some photos I took -

In May 2011 I took my wife to see Silver Apples at Yugongyishan in Beijing, it is still the only gig she's been to. Simeon looked ancient already, his machinery was otherworldly, imagine carrying *this* around the world. RIP Simeon, thanks for the unforgettable sounds. pic.twitter.com/goA15LE2iN

— Centuries of Sound (@Centuries_Sound) September 9, 2020

Only one gig: if "only" one ever, Silver Apples wouldn't be too bad!
(James, whomever: what with xpost linkrot never sleeping, I dhould have thought to direct you to my nice clean archive of Voice pieces---unlike the ghostsite, this has the Silver Apples mention [now slightly tightened yet again], after snipping a few other words to honor the Great Voice Word Limit of Mid-00s, which taught me a lot: https://myvil.blogspot.com/2016/06/silver-monk-time-tribute-to-monks.html)

Saw him at Big Ears 2015, with Toby Dammit (also Knoxville!) on drums. It was really good, he was super into it.

Our local library's archive arm dug up and posted some things from the local paper: his parents' wedding, his birth announcement, and a hometown paper interview with him from 1968.

https://www.facebook.com/tamisarchive/posts/3273809322706502

Thanks for sharing that quietus list, frogbs! Some really great writing there! Also, that The Offset album is a banger!!

I was just about to post that lol

I've never heard it before and it's CRAZY good (The Offset)

Love that Quietus feature. He’s got a really entertaining form of writing about music he loves.

finally coming around to the idea that Contact is better than the s/t. it's so relentlessly freaky and the drumming on it is absolutely sick. I get its really abrasive but that's part of the charm. I mean who else would let the phone ring through an entire 6 minute track?

They’re both truly great but it’s still the first album 100% for me…I feel like it’s got kind of a murkier sound that suits the music better and the oscillator stuff is wilder and there’s still plenty of chaos going on even if it’s not mixed as out front…plus I think I just prefer the songs overall. Saw Simeon do a small show under the Silver Apples name about a decade ago and it was outstanding.

s/t has the better songs but they are actual pop songs with logical progressions, as opposed to Contact where they seem to lose control of everything. even on I Have Known Love there are all those weird repeated lines, and the melody sometimes doesn't quite fit the meter - a lot of the songs come off like it's only the first or second time they're playing it. on Fantasies that might even be true. I love how Simeon gives all these directions to Taylor during the song, and at one point completely flubs the lyrics because he can't read his handwriting

i just realized that two of my fave Silver Apples songs are on Contact (You and I, I Have Known Love). I also saw Simeon perform about 10 years ago at Big Ears and it was FANTASTIC. I probably mentioned it on here 10 years ago it was so good. I love the unhinged quality of the songs, like they are about to go off the rails at any minute but the melodies just rein it right back in. Love!

"Ruby", when I heard it on a bootleg reissue of the albums circa 1995/6 got me into checking out bluegrass!

was just thinking about that silver apples show/big ears 2015 (?) a couple days ago, LL! can't believe how time flies

never listened to contact, remedying that now