Search and Destroy : Julian Cope

you should certainly, certainly check out 20 Mothers fyi - it's full of lovely little pop songs (like Try, Try, Try, which I'm sure you'd love, and the amazing Highway To The Sun)

Yeah I like 20 Mothers more than autogeddon or interpreter tbh

Latterly, Citizen Cain'd is brilliant -- it has his hookiness AND his post-megalithic heaviness

"Try Try Try" is amazing because at that point he's clearly no longer interested in Top of the Pops but you just feel him saying "by the way, just so you know, I can still effortlessly produce incredibly hooky pop songs"

Given the other songs you liked, I'm surprised no "5 O'Clock World" -- why, because it's a cover?

5 O'Clock World is such an odd cover, by that point he'd been a pop star for like ten years.

was he ever really a pop star? Serious question. I know he and the TE had a few hits.

Teardrop Explodes at the time were Duran Duran level huge in the UK, no? He was pop pinup for sure. And World Shut Your Mouth was definitely in heavy rotation on MTV in the early 80s... also his My Nation Underground singles were constantly on Post-Modern MTV and 120 Minutes in '89 (how I first got interested in him), Island was definitely trying to make him one again.

Yeah, in my link I mentioned the CMJ and modern rock chart hits ("Charlotte Anne" hit #1).

Yeah, the sort of subdued psych aspect of Charlotte Anne is what made me buy My Nation Underground back then!

Not that I would have described it that way then, probably more like "this has that same weirdness the Legendary Pink Dots exhibit"

I bought St. Julian on the strength of a newspaper review and goddamn if it wasn't the most amazing thing I'd ever heard -- both just like the classic rock I was listening to and also totally not -- it rewired me

he is absolutely one of the greats (imago canon)

Teardrop Explodes at the time were Duran Duran level huge in the UK, no? He was pop pinup for sure.

neither he nor the teardrops were ever really household names.

When "Try try try" came out, I got a postcard from "KAK' promotions from Julian Cope basically bigging it up excitedly. I was more "Hey, its nice but aren't you more out-there than this?"

(I didn't write back, that's not what I mean)

Anyway, he did do TOTP. with Try*3 and he looked happy doing it. I think it was the last time he did the pop single hit thing, but hey.

Planetary Sit-In seems like another stab at it

Anyway, he did do TOTP. with Try*3 and he looked happy doing it

Little did I know!

Planetary Sit-In is more spacey-hippy-dude than upfront poppy; the Interpreter album overall is pretty accessible though!

Well I for one remember hearing it on the radio and thinking it was going to be a bigger hit than it was. Definitely sounds to me like he had a hit single mind:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yd5Fmb17jjY

in

I bought St. Julian on the strength of a newspaper review and goddamn if it wasn't the most amazing thing I'd ever heard -- both just like the classic rock I was listening to and also totally not -- it rewired me

― Guayaquil (eephus!),

otm – and I only heard it a decade ago

Check out the CD version, "Radio Sit-in". Very daft.

... and in a cabinet close to the exit an arrangement of football shirts with green-and-white hoops: Glasgow’s Celtic FC, of course. Like Edinburgh’s Hibernian, Celtic FC came into being during the late 1880s, in celebration of Scotland’s ancient Irish roots.

... if you ever needed definitive proof that Julian Cope had long ago lost his marbles.

Has anyone heard the Vesuvio album? Apparently this was a real album fleshed out from a fictional band mentioned in one of his books, a guitar drone record with Stephen O'Malley and Slomo's Holy McGrail.

https://www.headheritage.co.uk/merchandiser/item/TRCD06/

At least one track on SoubdCloud, CD still available. I skipped it, I'm not down with his sludge metal stuff.

Yeah I saw it was still available on his site, honestly more interested because of O'Malley than Cope himself, though I am a sucker for fictional albums fleshed out to become real things (cf Fucked Up).

I keep buying his new albums, but the returns... are diminishing. Wish he would actually try and record a proper album in a studio again with like a band and a producer.

There's rumors of a big Teardrop Explodes box set this year, though. Which could be fun.

Would it be fair to say he's not released a properly worthwhile album since Interpreter

I mean, John Balance Enters Valhalla was fun I guess

Citizen Cain’d is song-based and fantastic

yeah but that was eighteen years and seven albums ago

Yeah he honestly lost me around the turn of the millennium. I liked the Head Heritage music discussions for a good stretch there but eventually drifted away.

I really like Revolutionary Suicide

Like the last decade has been interesting but in a pinch I'd still rather hear even My Nation Underground

i saw JC live a few days after MNU had been released.
the hardcore fans at the front were singing along to one of the tracks, and JC said : 'how do you know the words !?'
of course the best part of the gig was when he went absolutely mad during the Reynard The Fox.
the venue, (Leeds Univerity Refectory), had this balcony, so during the instrumental section, he climbed up the speaker stack, got onto the balcony, and than ran all over the place.
gets to the central section of the balcony and leans over and starts shouting/singing re reynard.
it was one of the best gigs i had ever seen.

has MNU ever been reissued ?

Nah, Cope hates it and is unlikely to revisit in with a deluxe edition or whatever... I guess Island could do it without him.

thats what i thought.
not heard it in years as i bought it on cassette.

I too own My Nation Underground on cassette, and I love it! Had no idea JC was not into it but we all have our quirks.

Playing it now. Is that... a vibraslap on 5 O'Clock World???

It's an excellent album - title track and Charlotte Anne esp.

(A weird comparison to make as they're nothing alike musically but in terms of discography replacement/neglect it's sorta Julian's The Burning World)

Interpreter is exactly where I stopped with my Cope collection.

I don't want to go too hard on the post-Interpreter era because I really do love some of it (the drone trilogy Queen Elizabeth, Odin, and Woden for example) but really how do you top a run of albums like Peggy Suicide -> Jehovahkill -> Autogeddon -> 20 Mothers -> Interpreter?

With the two Teardrops Albums + World Shut Your Mouth + Fried + St. Julian but that's just me

“I will be absorbed by the river” and “feels like a cryin shame” are as good as anything he ever did

But as pointed out, citizen cain’d was a long time ago too

And in the days of LP those two songs could have made a whole album almost

Peggy Suicide -> Jehovahkill -> Autogeddon -> 20 Mothers -> Interpreter

I mean, this was exactly the run where I first dipped my toes in, but yeah... such a fantastic run.

Which is to say I understand CC has its share of filler but the core is v v nugatory

Peggy Suicide -> Jehovahkill -> Autogeddon -> 20 Mothers -> Interpreter?

There should be a name for this era. When he became full archdruid making fantastic multihued earth-conscious concept records but still had hit albums and hit singles. It's the period I've always been the biggest fan of.

yeah, it's like the era of overlap between his pop star and drude phases

It's like the opposite of Abacab-era Genesis

(aka the best era of Genesis)

I too own My Nation Underground on cassette, and I love it! Had no idea JC was not into it but we all have our quirks.

lol I saw this thread in SNA and I thought, I'm going to post about how I regularly put on my cassette copy of My Nation Underground while putting away laundry ... and yeah! It's really fucking good!