Squeeze: Classic Or Dud

Interesting read, that. I love it when artists badmouth their own songs. How could anybody hate "Black Coffee in Bed"?? "Ponderous"? Fucking "ponderous"?

Actually, "Black Coffee" does sometimes wear out its welcome after 6 minutes. They usually up the tempo a bit on stage.

Well, skimming the book turned into rereading the whole thing, so give me another day or two. I just checked, and they both say that "Letting Go" is one of the best things they ever did.

Can you tell me what's essentially said about "Vanity Fair" or "Up the Junction"?

Up the Junction
CD: When I wrote this it was Dylanesque and was much longer, with about 16 verses... [ Who Killed Davey Moore ] inspired me to write in a seamless way, like I was narrating a story, with no chorus.
GT: I was thinking of something like Dylan's Positively 4th Street as a template when I wrote the music.

Surprisingly, A&M Records recognized the potential for the song early on, when the band was originally playing it in a slower, folkier arrangement, and asked them to make it poppier.

Difford also suggests a future ILM thread: "Incidentally, there aren't many songs that end with the title as the last line. Two spring to mind: Up the Junction and Virginia Plain."

Vanity Fair
GT: I wrote a piano part for this but when it came to playing with the orchestra I bottled out, to my eternal shame.
CD: This has an absolutely stunning melody and beautiful arrangement. It's one we never really did live which was, in retrospect, a lost opportunity.

In the back of the book, they print the lyrics of a number of songs which are evidently their picks for the best:

Strong in Reason
Take Me I'm Yours
Slap and Tickle
Up the Junction
Slightly Drunk
Goodbye Girl
Cool for Cats
Pulling Mussels (from the Shell)
Another Nail in My Heart
I Think I'm Go Go
Separate Beds
If I Didn't Love You
Vicky Verky
Tempted
Piccadilly
Someone Else's Bell
Woman's World
Is That Love?
Labelled With Love
When the Hangover Strikes
Black Coffee in Bed
King George Street
Last Time Forever
No Place Like Home
Tough Love
The Prisoner
Striking Matches
The Waiting Game
Peyton Place
Slaughtered, Gutted and Heartbroken
She Doesn't Have to Shave
Love Circles
Melody Motel
Letting Go
The Truth
Walk a Straight Line
Wicked and Cruel
There Is a Voice
Some Fantastic Place
Third Rail
It's Over
Loving You Tonight
Cold Shoulder
Electric Trains
Walk Away
I Want You
Daphne
The Great Escape
To Be a Dad
Without You Here

They don't do a song-by-song analysis of the "Difford & Tilbrook" album, but do make note of Love's Crashing Waves, On My Mind Tonight and The Apple Tree.

On some of the songs listed above their opinions are split--yes, Tilbrook really does call Black Coffee in Bed "ponderous," adding "My vocal is mannered and not very good at all, and I can't stand to listen to it now."

One thing that crops up a lot in the book, particularly from Tilbrook, is statements like this:
GT: [ Rose I Said ] falls into the same category as If It's Love in that I like the song and the performance of it, which is very spirited, but it doesn't distinguish itself in any way.

Tilbrook also seems to distrust the simpler pop songs; Grouch of the Day is "a fun song without any importance attached to it." Vicky Verky is "lyrically slightly twee in the way that Up the Junction isn't, which makes it less interesting to me. Musically, I don't think it's very good either." Trust Me to Open My Mouth is "quite an ordinary song really, although I liked it more at the time." Is it that he finds these songs too easy, or that they don't do anything new?

Difford does it too: Farfisa Beat is "crap... It's an album filler at best... It was probably just stuck on the album because it was uptempo."

thank you!

weird discovery: although I've heard it >50 times as a boy, 'If I Didn't Love You' is fucking amazing, like seriously a candidate for best Squeeze and one of the better pop songs of its era

seriously it's so great when you rediscover a piece of music you once knew off by heart but it still blows your mind

"If I didn't love you, I'd hate you."

Tilbrook: If I Didn't Love You was "musically inspired by Talking Heads. The line 'The record jumps on a scratch' was such a gift that I had to use it, so we sang 'If I, If I, If I, If I.'"

Difford: "I love Glenn's slide guitar solo. When he first did it I thought 'This guy's out of his tree. What's he doing?,' but it's brilliant."

"'Singles remind me of kisses / Albums remind me of plans.' They are my favorite lines on the whole album. When I used to have girls back to my flat I'd go through my record collection and find the album which had the longest side... I knew that by a certain point on the record if I didn't have my hand down her pants then it wasn't going to happen because I'd have to get up and change the record over... The best album for this purpose was Something/Anything by Todd Rundgren, because it had one side that was 30 minutes long. I'd put it on and get down to business and knew that I had a couple of minutes at the end of the album to lie on my back and then I'd have the excuse to get up and change the record."

Now, some 35 years later, Squeeze have re-recorded 14 of their classic tracks for Spot the Difference, an album of all their classic hits re-recorded in a way so painstakingly faithful to the originals that they challenge you to spot the difference.

dumbest...idea...ever.

in general, i kinda hate (and avoid) re-recordings of old stuff, but this goes beyond that. this is demented. in the metal world people will re-record albums cuz when they were young they only had five dollars to spend on making an album and now they have ten dollars. i kinda understand that. even if i never want to listen to the results.

I wouldn't mind hearing their first album re-recorded. Peel sessions are much better sounding. Other than that, no interest in this, I don't think...

Hmmmmmm. I really really love Squeeze but that just sounds like a pointless effort.

I was just wondering today if there were any remasters of squeeze's stuff. their 80s recordings sound a little thin and wouldn't it be nice to give them a little attack. but this is not what I had in mind.

In the past year or so they've redone Argybargy, Sweets from a Stranger, Frank and Ridiculous, but they're only available as imports in the U.S. Three of them have the appropriate b-sides plus unreleased stuff from each album, except Ridiculous, which for some reason has none of the b-sides that it should. Argy is a double with a concert on the 2nd disc.

This is the perfect opportunity to get all those b-sides in the right place, not doled out piecemeal on 17 redundant Greatest Hits records. Don't piss me off, guys, or I'll... get all sullen and bitch about it on the internet.

Tilbrook has also released 3 of a planned 5 volumes of demos from the Squeeze years.

DeepDiscount has the deluxe Argy for $23.38, and it was well worth it. Nice remaster, bonus tracks and great sounding live recording. I hope they do East Side Story next.

"New recordings - improved sound quality"

i wouldn't mind hearing it if it means improved sound quality (not that classic squeeze sounded *bad* per se -- it isn't as if they started off as some no-budget crusty-punk band). but if their idea of "improved sound quality" is the "compressed-to-an-inch-of-its-life" junk that too often passes for remastering then i can live w/t it.

If you're a Squeeze fan and you *haven't* heard the 1992 BBC Session of Take Me I'm Yours, please do yourself a favour...

http://open.spotify.com/track/3YDGxXzhoTJdtF5mPn5jBq

And when you're done with that, here's a song from Tilbrook's last solo album Pandemonium Ensues:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9WZXIfAYAV4

I think you guys missed the point of the "Spot the Difference" album. They re-recorded those tracks so they'd have the rights to them and could license those out instead of the ones controlled by their record company.

oh yeah, I bumped this because I was wondering if it's worth going past "Argybargy"

oh yeah, I bumped this because I was wondering if it's worth going past "Argybargy"

Well certainly "East Side Story." And I think "Play" is the equal of "Cool/Argy/East," although it took some time to reveal itself--it's definitely not as poppy as any of those.

Listen to my picks of better later Squeeze here:

The ILM Fan-made BEST OF/ANTHOLOGY Compilation project -- POST Tracklists, Cover Art, Liner notes, editorials, spotify links and/or otherwise LEGALLY obtained streaming album lists HERE!

There's something inexplicably great about the lines "I'd beg for some forgiveness / but beggings not my business" in Up The Junction.

my favorite song by them right now is "Goodbye Girl", such a wonky time

It's great!

Melody Motel is so weird.

Tempted is among the worst songs ever written. Utter crap, and every copy on earth should be destroyed, similar to what happened with smallpox virus.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qums4Soo2Is

How's the Difford-Tillbrook solo album?

― Alfred, Lord Sotosyn (Alfred Soto), Monday, May 29, 2006

I heard an excerpt a few months ago -- sounds like the boys decided to record a Hall & Oates album and failed.

The live at the Hammersmith Odeon, March 9, 1980 set on the deluxe edition of Argy Bargy is just super hot.

i really like squeeze, but i cant abide jools holland's superfluous boogie woogie breakdowns. 'cool for cats' is a prime example. needless.

Where? There's an instrumental break in that song and then a melodic solo at the end. Neither of them strike me as "boogie woogie."

the instrumental break. it just seems crowbarred in.

I think that's how people educated by message boards describe piano playing on a Squeeze album

Just listened to that live set (I always had it, just never really bothered with it for some reason), you're right, this is really fun

I mean these guys have nothing on XTC or whoever they're usually compared to, but they are one of the most likeable bands ever, so there's that

I listen to Another Nail in my Heart on repeat sometimes.

Squeeze are a fucking class act, man. so much excellence.

I LOVE SQUEEZE.

I listen to Another Nail in my Heart on repeat sometimes.

― Trip Maker, Friday, May 25, 2012 11:29 AM (12 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I do that too, sometimes.

Oh and guess what? I'm going to see them in July! :D

I was just going to say something about Up the Junction being one of the best songs ever but thought to C&P myself first and, well:

Heard Up the Junction in the car today and god damn that is one of the best songs ever, no question. <3 <3 <3

― ★彡☆ ★彡 (ENBB), Wednesday, December 30, 2009 9:59 PM (2 years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

they're pretty killer live. i mean they did that album a couple years back where they did virtually identical re-recordings of old songs, they can play everything perfectly and Tilbrook's voice hasn't really aged any.

Awesome. I'm really excited. They're opening for the B-52s who will be fun to see and all but I bought the (fairly expensive) tickets pretty much for Squeeze alone.

Up The Junction is my all-time favorite Squeeze song, no joke.

i'm like the only person who likes Squeeze that doesn't really get the song. I appreciate the craft of it but I prefer the big shameless chorus stuff.

Saw them play several times in the Argybargy/E Side Story period.

Alfred, I have an autographed Difford-Tillbrook solo album if you want to make me an offer!

I haven't listened to anything past Argybargy but right now I don't think they've topped "Goodbye Girl", such a cool, wonky tune

"Vicky Verky" is the classic for me

^Yeah, I love that one, too.

ok this Hammersmith Odeon set is good but jesus Difford singing "Mess Around" stfu