Classic or Dud: INXS - Kick

Instead Michael went for art and Max Q. Hey, it was his life.

i was v lukewarm on them when X came out, but now I like that album way more than I ever did at the time. And Welcome To Wherever You Are is pretty good in retrospect

xp VG I'd hate to out-Oz you but that'd be a Tim Farriss there, six strings on that guitar. GGB was on bass duties.
Also for all y'all, hesitant recommend of Beck's record club version with St Vincent and Angus Andrew from Liars, among others - the version of New Sensation is superb. It's listed on his record club page but the links seem to default to the homepage. http://recordclub.beck.com/recordclub/

we can stop the world and let off all the fools and let em all live with their guns

otm

Revive otm. I’ve never been an INXS fan but tonight I was at friend’s house, who is a huge audiophile, and he played this album on the dolby atmos format and oh my god.

due to the lack of quality finds in the charity bins i have resorted to picking up stuff i would normally gloss over.
subsequently in the last couple of weeks i have picked up Listen Like Thieves/Kick/X/Welcome To.
i used to have no time for this band, but now, these albums are really hitting the spot.
i think a lot of the love is down to the sax excess. makes me realise how rare it is to hear a sax on a track now.
the production values are insane, and as Moka says, even on mid-level equipment these albums sound really good.

well, i thought Mystify was a lovely documentary that told a tragic story really well.

Yeah I agree. There's a revealing incident that I don't want to spoil for anyone who hasn't seen it but it explains a lot about him

Noel Gallagher is a cunt btw

Don't remember seeing Noel getting any shit at the time for the Hutchence comment at the time. Guess everyone just wanted to be in their 'gang' at that point

as i said elsewhere, i hope that a young band do to NG what he did to Michael.

Sleaford Mods (not exactly young fellas but whatevs) constantly have a pop at NG which riles him up

also, as the final chapter was tabloid excess, i tuned out and cared not.
it really was horrid for all concerned.
no-one came out of it well.
i loved loved the final few mins that showed him and andy adlibbing Mystify in the studio which given how massive that song became is quite something.
and i would never ever have gone to see them live as i was a full on music snob when they were at their peak, but, damn, they looked insanely good live.

There's a revealing incident that I don't want to spoil for anyone who hasn't seen it but it explains a lot about him

the before and after is quite startling.

I was too young and didn't give a toss about music in the late 80s to bother with them and by the 90s, I was all about the grunge and indie.

"Need you tonight" & "Never tear us apart" are mighty singles

there are quite a few songs i could add to that mini list, all of which probably feature on their greatest hits compilation to be fair.

I'm about halfway through the Hutchence doc and it's pretty good, and makes some smart choices. The first is that it discards the talking head format and just uses voiceover interviews, which is kind of key, because a) it keeps the focus on Hutchence and b) he's so magnetic and charismatic it's hard to keep your eyes off him to begin with. Second, it doesn't really hinge on INXS, choosing instead to tell his story through his romantic relationships, which could be a cheesy or tacky tactic or simply salacious, but it instead provides a pretty intimate portrait of this guy who feared loneliness and craved personal connection and loved nothing more than to share his love of life with someone else. Third, it's called "Mystify" rather than "Never Tear Us Apart," which I'm sure had to be in consideration at some point but which would have been a little too on the nose.

Curious where the story goes ... just kidding. Sigh.

It does make me want to put on the Max Q album, which I forgot existed.

Third, it's called "Mystify" rather than "Never Tear Us Apart," which I'm sure had to be in consideration at some point

probably would have caused confusion with the 2014 biopic

cf

The Australian Zeitgeist Tracking Thread

and

Classic or Dud: INXS - Kick

Sic, I dunno exactly where you're from, but I noticed Hutchence's accent to be very mild. Was that just me?

He spent some formative years in Hong Kong and there was always an Englishness to his accent which was noticeable to us Strayans.
I found the doco pretty good, and sad of course, pretty compelling to see INXS completely run off the rails after his head injury and the terrible way it wasn't treated. One thing which pissed me off mightily was the hamhanded use of image stabilisation, I felt like I was drunk or looking at some bad 90s video concept during all the live footage.

He lived mainly in Hong Kong as an adult too afaik. Generally his accent sounds perfectly reasonable for someone from Belrose / Frenchs Forest - loads of my schoolmates' parents from one suburb away had full on seth efrican accents in the decade after Kick times.

I see the doco is available streaming from the library on Hoopla, will check it out just to see this image stabilisation hoo-ha.

Until the doc I'd never even bothered to notice that Chris Thomas produced "Listen Like Thieves," "Kick" and "X." Now clearly he was the right choice, but they by and large sound like such outliers among his credits. That is, "Original Sin" was produced by Nile Rodgers, who seems like a perfect fit for this material, but INXS is so slick and shiny compared to a lot of Thomas's usual stuff. I guess it's a testament to his talents that he could shift gears so seamlessly in service of a band's vision.

Chris Thomas also produced four Roxy Music albums, which I don't believe is too much of a stretch. Interestingly, INXS worked with Nile Rodgers before Duran Duran did.

When NR&”C” played a 1200-cap room in Sydney circa 2010, they played Original Sun for the first time ever, and Nile shouted out / thanked a Farriss (…and Pengilly?) in the vips. The Farriss and his entourage then fucked off halfway through the next song.

How did I never weigh in on this one?

I wouldn't say "dud," but "classic" seems like kind of an exalted term of INXS. That said, their "on" moments ("Burn For You," "Don't Change," "Listen Thieves," and ... some others) are pretty goddamn great.

I still have the Max Q album, as well.

"Listen LIKE Thieves," that is.

"This Time" was pretty great, as well.

Oh I'm a complete idiot, this is just about KICK. Please ignore me (more than you probably already do).

Good to see you here Alex!!

LLT >> Kick

I understand why the latter was the breakthrough, though.

otm