Robert Wyatt: Classic or Dud?

i keep passing up this one single of his. it's him and a bunch of south african musicians. anyone know anything about it?

He was closely identified with the Popular Unity movement of Salvador Allende. After Pinochet's coup which toppled Allende, Jara was arrested, tortured, and later killed (along with 1000s of other Chileans).

His stuff probably shouldn't be too hard to find in any Hispanic music store (I'm not sure where you're at, but there's a million such places in Chicago), and on eBay you can sometimes find the remastered CDs from his catalog that came out in Chile last year.

Anyway we're talking about him because Wyatt recorded one of his most famous (and beautiful) songs, "Te Recuerdo Amanda" ("I remember Amanada").

Anyway, Jason - yeah I believe I paid something like $30 or $35 for EPs as well. Too much, but as I say I had to have it (maybe it isn't too much, i dunno; I don't know what it went for new, but it seemed like a lot to me). It's just a really beautiful package, a nice thing to have on the shelf, you know? Yeah that Animals soundtrack is unsettling, and I've never even seen the film.

I think it would give me nightmares.

Also he was on one of the best singles ever, Vivien Goldmans Launderette / private armies record

Since when was Robert Wyatt ever a "Stalinist"? What, because he sang "Stalin Wasn't Stallin'"? Do some research before accusing people of being Stalinists.

Errrrrrrrrrrrrrrr, what exactly does that mean? Wyatt was a member of the British Communist Party, he was a Marxist, he was not a Stalinist.

"Robert Wyatt! I got on well with Robert. The greatest problem between us was a political one. I had been in the Young Communist League -- when I was a schoolboy, I'd established a branch or two. And I was the one that didn't get beaten up on the way to our first meeting. I'd worked with the Communist Party of Great Britain's headquarters. I kind of knew what the party was like. One of the things that appealed to me about Marxism was its anti-utopian foundation -- it was infinitely preferable to wishing that the world was a nicer place, or that Robin Hood was elected sheriff. But through reading a lot of theory and working for the party, I thought, 'This ain't for me,' whereas Robert was getting more into it. I really liked him, but that was the principal reason for drifting apart: he was getting more Stalinist and I wasn't."

Anyway, why is it only Robert Wyatt who is hauled over the coals for having been a Marxist when other musicians like the various members of Henry Cow or AMM aren't? (I say having been a Marxist, but as far as I know, at least two-thirds of AMM still are Marxists.) I haven't heard anyone bring up Fred Frith's politics lately - least of all Fred himself. And let's face it, there's far worse things you could be than a Marxist: a Tory or a Republican or "New Labour" for instance.

do some research before you accuse people of being new labour

i have a deep respect coupled with a bit of bemused exasperation re. robert wyatt. he reminds me of a lot of people i knew growing up.

the album is very melancholic--it's the urgent combination of melancholy and whimsy (blended such that you often can't tell them apart) that is a big part of what makes this record so special to me. the wordless vocalizing at the end of the first track (??) is one of the most powerfully ... desolate stretches of music i know. such things are in the ear of the listener, of course. but considering the circumstances under which it was made it's not hard to imagine depression being one of many states that is being evoked in rock bottom.

i have a long and intense history w/this record (incl. listening to it in venice where wyatt composed much of the music)...

x-posts

*digs out dog-eared copy of End Of An Ear for comparison purposes*

Hmmm, I see your point. If it's Wyatt it's bloody good playing for someone who says he isn't that good at playing the guitar.

(either that or it's his funny Italian organ, or Hugh Hopper's bass speeded up?)

Interesting record, though, End Of An Ear; it's like an extended avant-scat variation on Gil Evans' "Las Vegas Tango."

-- Donnie Smith The Quiz Kid (what_d...) (webmail), September 17th, 2004 5:02 AM. (later) (link)

i can see our "interpretations" being complementary, more or less. but i'm reluctant to describe this album as being "about" any one thing, especially something as cliché as "learning to laugh again." i don't think the album has a narrative per se, or an obvious forward progression. or at least i've never chosen to hear it that way.

i love schleep for the funny mental explorations and the love songs. i've been a little obsessed with 'i'm a believer.' i put on schleep once at a bookstore i worked at in an old west tourist town and the owner hated it.

listening to Comicopera, now surely his last solo album...what a beautiful album to cap his career.

Comicopera was my favorite album of 2007; it remains so.

The Daevid Allen clip upthread suggests that would not have been a concern of French TV in the 60s.

― The British Boy of Film Classification (Tom D.)

i'd honestly like to know more about french pop music television in the late 1960s... when i look at clips there are names of all these different shows, "Dim Dam Dom, "Tous En Scene", and then in the 70s you have "RockEnStock" and "Pop 2" and later "Melody" with Genesis and King Crimson... and then late in the decade the main show is "Chorus". all these shows and I can't keep track of them all. They showed a _lot_ of pop music, it seems like, on a _lot_ of different shows. I was looking up Soft Machine clips the other day and somebody mentioned that "Pop 2" was started by someone who'd run one of the earlier shows, but that show was cancelled for political reasons. And in the Anglosphere you just get to see the clips, Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, nobody says anything about the shows themselves, their history, what they were _like_... anyway INA preserves them all and has put a lot of them online. Often paywalled but it doesn't stop it from getting out. And in fact the video stuff is far more widely accessible than the French radio stuff. There are lots of French radio broadcasts that are just unknown and unheard in good quality. And yeah, INA does seem to have kept everything, they seem to have a _very_ good archival policy. You can see not just the broadcast sections but unbroadcast rehearsal outtakes, in many cases. Just like in Germany, the Beat Club show would broadcast maybe four minutes of a Dead '72 show but the whole set is on audio, at least, and often the whole set is on video. The archival policy is very, very different to that in the UK, which barely showed anything and immediately wiped it all.

The other thing that I am aware of personally is June of 1968. Which seems to have been a significant event, and I don't know how that affected the music TV shows, but God, it must have, right?

this one will never not slay me

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Huwy0Vq5-Ak

Thanks, I relate to all of that, although your experience goes deeper--wish I'd been listening to him at 21!

― dow

ahhh, well, there was a lot i missed out on by spending my late teens and early 20s focused entirely on "classic rock" and "prog rock", but it's good to know i didn't miss everything. wyatt wasn't really "prog rock" or "classic rock", but he was adjacent enough that i heard him relatively early on.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DEEX3uRJyo4

I don't think Cuckooland is one of his most loved albums, but I love it. Forest is a powerful Romani holocaust song and has really beautiful lyrics by Alfreda. It makes me well up every time.

The other thing that I am aware of personally is June of 1968. Which seems to have been a significant event, and I don't know how that affected the music TV shows, but God, it must have, right?

You mean May? Yes, the French are good at archiving stuff (cf. the BBC).

Yes, Paris in May, Moon in June

l

I don't think Cuckooland is one of his most loved albums, but I love it. Forest is a powerful Romani holocaust song and has really beautiful lyrics by Alfreda. It makes me well up every time.

Thanks, I relate to all of that, although your experience goes deeper--wish I'd been listening to him at 21!
― dow

It doesn't seem like this has been posted before, but I loved it. One hour doc from 1998, Italian made.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Z5zy6MaFtI

missed this. heartbreaking

Friend of mine managed to end up backstage at a Patti Smith concert (in the Southbank probably?) Verlaine might have been there and Gillespie almost certainly was and various other luminaries. He said everyone there were complete arseholes and then he noticed a guy sitting (he thought) in a corner, pint of beer in one hand and a cigarette in the other, covered in ash. He went over to talk to him and it was Robert Wyatt and he was like, "What do you make of all this?" and he was basically the only genuine person in the room.

^exactly as you would expect

Robert Wyatt is the best <3
Wish him all the love

this sux :(