Prefab Sprout- Jordan: The Comeback: Classic or Dud?

"scarlet nights" is the best song ever

I tend to forget that track due to its spot on the sequence, and always feel a surprised "how could I have forgotten you?" when it plays. "All the World Loves Lovers" is another top one on that disc.

I might be crazy but I think Machine Gun Ibiza is my favorite track on this

I'll chime in with classic as well. Honestly, I never understood the Steely Dan comparisons (well, because I hate Steely Dan) until I heard 'Machine Gun Ibiza.' Great song.
― righteousmaelstrom (righteousmaelstrom), Friday, June 24, 2005 10:07 AM (eleven years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Ah, that's what it is

yeah that was my fave off it for the first few weeks after it came out.

you guys should check this out, it's excellent http://www.sodajerker.com/episode-53-paddy-mcaloon/

Machine Gun Ibiza is the song I've been looking for since 1990 or 1991 when I heard it on college radio. I spent a few years asking for the Machine Gun Beaver song. I'm so happy to have randomly found it because of this thread.

i love them all but

"scarlet nights" is the best song ever

― HYPERLINK TO RAP GENIUS (BradNelson), Sunday, December 6, 2015 7:19 PM (eleven months ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

actually sometimes my fav is "one of the broken" which is weird bc i was allergic to the god side of this album for at least the first few months i listened to it

"End of the road I'm traveling
I will see Jordan beckoning!"

yeah that was my fave off it for the first few weeks after it came out.

you guys should check this out, it's excellent http://www.sodajerker.com/episode-53-paddy-mcaloon🔗/

Awesome, thank you! 🙏

Machine Gun Ibiza va Glamour Profession

jesse james bolero

Speaking of which in "Jesse James Symphony" why does Paddy reference Elvis with the lines "Well the zip code may read Vegas / But the heart beats Tupelo"? Is he comparing Jesse James to Elvis in terms of a wayward life?

Excerpt from Melody Maker, summer 1990 by Simon Reynolds

Jordan The Comeback was originally intended as a double album, and three of the sides are suites of thematically linked songs. One suite addresses the "bad boy" myth, using Jesse James as archetype of the spoilt mothers boys, who goes on the run from domesticity. But, grins Paddy, they're all really about Elvis.

Paddy: "The title track is Elvis as Howard Hughes on the top floor of his hotel in Vegas. I wanted to get an Elvis imitator to sing it, but then decided it was bit gimmicky. It's an Elvis monologue, him looking back at his life and saying 'I didn't do it right, but if I come back it'll be gospel music all the way and sod this 'Wooden Heart' crap. 'Jesse James Symphony' and 'Jesse James Bolero" came about when I was trying to kickstart my writing again, and I thought: 'what if I was writing something for someone like Streisand or Presley?'. I decided to write something that would have appealed to Elvis' own self-image. He liked to identify with mythic things, you can see that in his 'American Trilogy'. So I wrote something that dealt with him in those mythic proportions: the image of the outlaw, and all the sentimentality that allows the singer. The idea of his mother looking at him in the cradle, and then he ends up as this big fat guy onstage in Vegas that half the world wants to go to bed with. He's gone from from wearing your nappy, to wearing a nappy again, cos he's incontinent in your bed, which he was at the end. Finally, "Moondog" is about... if he came back, where would the Colonel have him playing?. There's only one place big enough, the moon. A satellite link-up."