Scritti Politti: Classic Or Dud

The album hit #50. Provision topped at #113. "Perfect Way" was #11, "Wood Beez" #91 or something like that, and "Boom! There She Was" made it to #54 or somewhere around there.

Is anyone else the proud owner of Scritti Politti - Early. I just picked it up today and it's my first exposure to the band.
Bought it as soon as it came out. Went straight to Vinyl Fever after school and bounced like I was on a pogo stick when I had it in my hands. I ended up buying another copy later on that day at another store (as I had pre-ordered it but they didn't tell me it was in yet) and gave it to my friend Courtney because she is the only person I know around here who'd appreciate it and I wanted to share the experience with someone I knew. She quite loves it. "Doubt Beat" makes her smile.

"Jacques Derrida" sounds like Simon and Garfunkel and the Beatles (and others), but also like nothing else.
To me it starts out like a gentler version of The Monochrome Set before exploding into something that seems to have been left off of Prince's Dirty Mind for not being sparse enough.

Say, I have a 7" pressing of "Jacques Derrida/Asylums in Jerusalem", and of "Faithless" (both Rough Trade original pressings) - would they be worth anything at all? I always figured not really.
Fuck, keep those, they're fabulous. I certainly wouldn't sell them!

Not Even Better Than George Michael

(OK, the "Wood Beez" vocal is pretty good.)

Totally overblown overstatement.

OK, no. Sorry - listening to it for the first times after buying a copy for a dollar. Am not the biggest lyrics guy in the world. Listening to it for the second time while paying attention to the lyrics (which I didn't do first time), the compositions "sunk in" more.

We got a bit carried away (assuming it would sell out instantly and at most one of us would succeed in getting tickets) and bought one more pair than we needed for the Thursday night of this:

http://www.scritti.net/

So if anyone wants two tickets at face value, let me know.

Go on I'll have em...not likely to see Scritti at a venue this small in a hurry...

Cool - webmail sent.

Scritti are playing live with Michael Clarke at the Tramway in Glasgow for his new work.... i got tickets for two of the three nights, i thought all three would be excessive.

The Work is on at the Barbican too from the 17th-27th of october but I can't confirm Scritti's live presence that night.

those nights, rather.

Do you have a link?

via the Tramway facebook page:

Really exciting news just announced: Scritti Politti will be performing live as part of Michael Clark Company’s world premiere performance of New Work 2012 at Tramway next week - can't wait!

http://www.tramway.org/events/Pages/Michael-Clark-Company-New-Work-2012.aspx

no confirmation one way or the other re the barbican shows.

i know that this work has been in development for a while, including a dry-run (sort of) in glasgow earlier this month. scritti composed part of the score for this dry-run but on those shows the score was played over a PA. they'll be playing live in glasgow with michael clarke but (i've just checked) they are on tour at the time of the barbican shows so live sets there on any of the nights are unlikely.

Ah shite, I'm in London then.

When I heard "Perfect Day" on the oldies station a couple weeks ago I made ridiculous hand movements and head thrusts sitting in traffic.

I was thinking The Saints there.

That's not my fault, it's Perfect Way, innit?

He's playing with Saint Etienne in December too, glad to see that he's finally got over his stage fright.

i met GG last night. so cool. he looks truly amazing for 57. if i didn't know who he was and was told he was early 40s i would believe it easily.

Okay so, I know hongro-bashing can seem pretty played-out, but this:

Old music is usually better than recent music. At least it has been during the past 15 years.

― Geir Hongro (GeirHong), Thursday, 20 March 2003 23:43 (9 years ago) Permalink

Was in the car with a friend (who, in her defense, has a real job and is very busy and hasn't bought new music in 15 years and generally only listens to music in the car on the way to and from important clients). "Perfect Way" came on the satellite '80s station, and she absolutely freaked out ... negatively! She said it sucked, could be Milli Vanilli (name similarity just occurred to me), etc., and I was absolutely floored that anyone could hate that song but also by the difficulty of conveying what makes the band special, how its polish is partly what makes it subversive, how its nods to hip-hop and NYC's avant scene were subtly radical, how the lyrics were sometimes so smart and clever it was easy to miss how smart and clever they sometimes were. All that stuff. Just a tough band to capsule to someone who only knows them from that one song which blends together with all those other one-songs from that period of the '80s.

This bump made me play "Hypnotize" on repeat all day yday

why only yesterday

CONTINUE

I had work today.

I remember my ex flipping out about the video years ago and me thinking "Eh, it's not bad" and then I rewatched it yday and I was like "HOLY SHIT THIS IS AWESOME"

I love it when lazy, half-assed stuff winds up being unintentionally brilliant.

even at the time "Perfect Way" sounded baroque: until Jam-Lewis a few months later it was the hardest thing on pop radio. And Gartside snuck "I'll forget how to remember with you" and "I took a back seat/a back hander" into a pop song

My w was "It's a bit too lovey-dovey" but hey. I think she preferred the Skank Bloc stuff, Which is fair enough, I do too.

Wonder if we'll get a new album from him soon? Already eight years since White Bread Black Beer.

I met him, did i mention that? ha. he was huge and beautiful.

i came to scritti long after the fact, after years spent ignoring pop music of all stripes. i was aware of them through occasional mentions in the uk music press, what with their history as a post-punk band. about ten years ago when i started getting interested in new pop stuff like "lexicon of love", scritti were on my mind as something to look out for and eventually i found a cassette of "cupid". after years of being into the likes of beefheart and krautrock it sounded like the most "80s" record i'd ever heard, as much of a shock to me as listening to, say, merzbow might be to someone else. it soon became one of my favorite records.

just learned original drummer tom morley does drum circles for corporate events now

http://www.tommorley.com/sessions

get bent tackles Cupid and Psyche 85

http://consequenceofsound.net/aux-out/cupid-and-psyche-85-the-unspoken-influence-of-scritti-politti/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P3B8J1a2lwY

a friend just posted this the other day, so wonderful!

The idea of being thrilled by Arif Mardin's production touches seems just as 'muso' as enjoying a John Squire guitar solo. No doubt someone will tell me it's not.

― Dr. C, Tuesday, May 29, 2001

ah old ILM

I dunno I'm with the Dr. there to a large degree.

Must we parse "thrilled"? To explain how Mardin's production works isn't muso -- it's what we do.

30th anniversary expanded "Cupid & Psyche". It must happen. You need all those remixes.

the production on this (and david gamson's fairlight programming) is sublime.

i mean, to me, it just completely sparkles. it captures a moment in a bottle in a really thrilling way.

also, i know people accuse green of having done the careerist-auteur thing when he broke off with the original scritti bandmates, but there's something about the collaborative approach to cupid that reminds me of eno's anti-auteurist "scenius" philosophy -- it comes from a very english, humble, social-democratic mindset. pop as (expensive) populism.

C'mon, he INVENTED um... all that.

I don't think Dr C was disparaging explanation, Alfred, I think that comment was part of the ongoing old-ilx discussion of the value of "chops". If someone back then had pitched up and said "I like record X because that dude is so good on the guitar" they would have been disparaged, so the Doctor was asking why it's better to say "I like record Y because that dude is so good at using the studio."

I think its the lack of explanation he's pointing out - what he wants is "this production is great because it does this and this and that ends up doing this and this to me when I listen to it".

The nearest old-ILM came to a consensus, I think, was that no-one wanted to value technique for its own sake, thinking end product more interesting.

old ilm = old punks.