Cardiacs: Classic or Dud?

That's a relief, I feared the worst when I saw new posts. I've been thinking about Tim/Cardiacs a lot since yesterday's revive. Will donate when I get home.

Funding page isn't loading for me?

loaded for me Ned in Chrome.

I donated -- when you read stuff like this, it's not usually accompanied by "and if he gets the care he needs, he'll be able to make music again." Such an inspiration, and he's already got more than half of the goal!!!!!!

a little heartbreaking to see that a decade was essentially wasted :/

I donated roughly what I probably should've paid for all those albums I pirated, back before any of this stuff was even remotely available

Wonder what the % will be by the time I'm home later. Hopefully about 170

I think more than a decade 'wasted' alas - I doubt much more than LSD will be completed, and even that would feel miraculous and special above all things. Extremely heartening that they're going to try.

not really getting my hopes for that either, but a man can dream

tragic part of all this, as the article touches on, is that the band really did seem to be breaking through on a larger scale in '07 - Cardiacs used to be one of those "music's best kept secret" sort of things, but from say 2006 to 2007 it seemed a lot of very enthusiastic fans were pushing them out to the right people and I started seeing them blow up on sites like RYM or last.fm. had they completed the album I think it would have been massive.

Still could be!

When I clicked on it, about 5 hours ago, to donate it was at £4000 odd, now it's up over £23,000, brilliant!

Very cool, 40K+ in 10 hours, nice to see some interesting names popping up in the comments section too.

JG ThirlwellJan 8, 2018
All the best to Tim and I hope this cause makes a big difference in his life. Thanks for the years of amazing music.

£100.00

I've spotted a few others too

Weasel Walter just chipped in :)

They've announced they're going for 100K pounds, which will cover him for a full year, and that they have it set up so that way they'll have the full year to raise that amount. Currently at 48K

alright fine I'll kick in another tenner

It'll get there by Wednesday!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FXf8HB6uUoc

One of the great toys of rock music, along with The Top

Wonder if someone could build a track around a full Screwball Scramble run

Hello everyone,

This message is sent as a means of explanation for the non-arrival of stuff you may have ordered from The Consultant's Memorabilia Collection.

Tim Smith has been in the hospital since last Sunday and I have been part of a team of close friends and family supporting NHS staff to provide the best care possible in a severely overstretched system. He is never without someone to advocate for him or hold his hand from early morning until late at night. This means that it has become almost impossible to send out orders. As soon as there is a moment in my schedule, I will start posting - I promise!

In the meantime, the love that is still pouring in is being transmitted directly to him through any channel deemed efficacious at the time. Sometimes, we just tell him with wormbs.

Please know that your purchases are important to me and will be sent as soon as is humanly possible.

Stay focused!

With love and respect,
Mary

https://www.justgiving.com/crowdfunding/timsmith

More than 80% of the way there, truly great to see.

He'll make it fairly soon I'd have thought, if only maybe because of the ppl that will throw in a little more after their next few payday cycles.

...and the goodwill messages are getting more and more random too, which bears out my theory lol.

Wow even Mike Love got in on the action

some cardiacs thing here as part of this weekend's freak zone

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b09q06f8

"Stuart hears new information about the long-term illness of Cardiacs singer Tim Smith from his bandmate Kavus Torabi. Tim has battled with a rare brain disorder since suffering a cardiac arrest 10 years ago, the full details of his condition and how it has affected him have not been made public until now..."

have just started listening and there's a cardiacs track about an hour in so maybe ffwd to that.

(starts about 43 minutes in)

wait, a new track?!

noh, a classic from old - I was listening at the time. I don't know the Cardiacs stuff beyond "is this the life", but I believe someone prompted his favourite ever Cardiacs track so.

which one is it?

it's on the link i posted!

Cardiacs
Dirty Boy

tim's situation does sound grim, the stuff of nightmares.

https://alphabet-business-concern.bandcamp.com/

have been enjoying myself there, yes! although the only one I hadn't heard every second of was the MAMSAMD album

Really enjoyed Heaven Born And Ever Bright. Hard to choose favorites.
Its like the little creatures from The Stranglers MenInBlack intro migrated to the last track of this and are being flushed out.
The S sounds in "She Is Hiding Behind The Shed" are a bit too high pitched.

Cant believe I bought 13 of these albums in late 2014 and still only listened to less than half of them, shame on me.

she is hiding behind the shed -> march -> goodbye grace -> anything i can't eat

T'was the first Cardiacs record I bought, on cassette from Tower in Piccadilly on a visit to London as a youngster

Helen And Heaven and March are two of my favourite Cardiacs tracks, but I find that record can sometimes be a bit of a tough listen, it's quite middle-y sounding.

Man this new Craolya Lectern record is pretty neat!

Cardiacsy thread next time - it even has your name in the title! Bumping this one always gives me a Tim Smith Update tingle, or a New Convert frisson

That said, thanks, I will surely listen the heck out of this :)

Oh wait this has actual Cardiacs members on it. Pedantry withdrawn haha

Nah, you have a point though, I should have put it elsewhere, even if it is tiny Bob Leith, pretty as a picture...

Helen And Heaven and March are two of my favourite Cardiacs tracks, but I find that record can sometimes be a bit of a tough listen, it's quite middle-y sounding.

― MaresNest, Friday, May 4, 2018 11:50 PM (three weeks ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I actually made my own "fixed" version of HBAEB with the bass lifted and the mid-range softened. Obviously not as good as a properly supervised remaster would be, but it does the job when I'm out and about and don't fancy having my eardrums wrecked every time a track crops up on my MP3 player.

I did this just the other day with a record by the band Eight Storey Window that has a really terrible cheap, pingy snare that goes straight through me.

I've never had any issues with the mix on that album. Is it a CD mastering problem? I usually listen to it on the old vinyl copy or the cassette which I taped from the vinyl (in my ancient car).

I had to do that with this obscure punk band the Absentees. Their track on Killed By Death #7 is muddy as hell but the official CD reissue goes completely the opposite and is extremely trebly instead. I had to edit it in Cool Edit to boost the bass to make a listenable version

I've never thought that Heaven Born or StG were the best sounding records but the production is a small part of what makes them distinct; anyway no mattter how harsh and trebly they are you can still hear the bass so it's OK by me.

I always thought that the sound of StG and HBaEB were a result of the limitations of Tim's home studio plus how his own brain reacts to mid freqs, you can hear it also in some (but not all) of the records he produced and recorded. he def has a way of mixing that can sometimes be a little pushy in that spectrum.

They're not, by any means, full of screeching mids, he balances quite tricky middle frequencies (mostly guitar blare) fairly well, but as my own ears get older they're less well equipped to handle certain mids, so I tend to watch what I'm doing to preserve it.

The '95 reish of HBAEB (I always read that as Hey Babe!) is supposedly utterly trashed and distorted for some reason (something to do with a bucket and some nails....)

The recent vinyl and digital versions are I believe from the '92 master which is quite light on bass but not too bad at all, jt's appropriate to the style and what he intended.

STG frustrates me a bit on that front. It is just a little harsh in those mids and my ears are also very sensitive to that. My preferred way to listen has become a normal position cassette of a CD-R rip of the vinyl ;-)

Whenever this thread is bumped I'm expecting news of an obscurities or live recordings dump on Bandcamp.

Ditzy Scene and Faster Than Snakes should appear at some point. What else is missing (apart from LSD)?

One day, the original A Balloon For Bertie's Party will emerge in its best-prog-song-by-a-teenager-ever glory

StGs big secret is that it's all drum machine apparently.

Every beat was sequenced, it's a library of sampled Bob.