Aging rock act on new album: This time we wanted to go back to the basics

two people squatting in it

just four of us standing in a basement

Good idea. More bands could benefit from stand-up drummers.

I think we opened for them once in Trenton. It was fucking EMPTY, which was weird since they were supposedly a well-liked NJ band. Also IIRC they played a pretty spot-on cover of War Pigs. This was before I remember that song becoming one of the most played out covers of all time.

Just four people dapping in a silo

Brett Anderson says "Autofiction is our punk record. No whistles and bells. Just the five of us in a room with all the glitches and fuck-ups revealed; the band themselves exposed in all their primal mess."

The record was produced by long-time Suede collaborator Ed Buller, and comes 30 years after the release of their debut single 'The Drowners' in May 1992. “Autofiction has a natural freshness, it's where we want to be,” Anderson continues. The album was recorded with a back-to-basics approach, thrashed out by the five members in a Kings Cross rehearsal studio. “When we were rehearsing and writing this record it was this sheer, physical rush. That thing where you're hanging on for dear life,” adds bassist Mat Osman.

Textbook.

Thrashed out!

"This one is from our new album."

ilxor must have a "prototypical lifecycle/album cycle of every band" thread? (even successful jokes would still be owned by "into the unknown/back to the known" tho. imo).

Red Hot Chili Peppers have a new album out!

Interviewer: "And what did it feel like the first time you were all playing together again?"
Anthony Kiedis: “It felt humbling and going back to square one... to remember what it was to be four guys in a room together playing music and then we started writing new songs.”

what

when did ppl stop recording music primarily in rooms

lol, but c'mon that makes sense

('together' being the key word)

Which is more than Anthony Kiedis does in that interview.

just four guys, in a room, doing heroin

Writin' songs, playin' instruments

In Caaaaaalllllaaaaafooooooorrrrrnnnnniiiiiia

when did ppl stop recording music primarily in rooms

though it faintly pains me to defend Tony Flow, my understanding is that RHCP have continued to record in rooms (regardless of other bands’ practices), but he is acknowledging that one of the four guys had departed the band for the previous ten to fifteen years of recording, and thus not been in said rooms.

John Wesley Harding, Let it Be, Beggars Banquet
― niels

I've been looking at the origins of back-to-basics for something I've been working on, and I always assumed it began with The White Album, Beggars Banquet, and JWH. I was surprised, then, to read Jann Wenner's original review of The White Album, where he's bored with the whole idea, like it's yesterday's news:

"...in the past few months we have been deluged with talk of 'going back to rock and roll,' so much that the idea (first expressed in the pages of Rolling Stone) is now a tiresome one, because it is, like all other superficial changes in rock and roll styles, one that soon becomes faddish, over-used and tired-out."

Never got into Let It Be, but JWH,BB, and The Beatles/White Album are not just rehashed rootz.

xxp Perhaps, though "square one" for RHCP wasn't those particular four guys (and he doesn't say "THESE four guys in a room together..."). This ties into it being such a weirdly vacant-feeling quote, as if it's somehow missing every fourth or fifth word.

Always thought of Beach Boys, "Wild Honey", as being a precursor of "back to basics".

In a fresh way, yeah.

xpost Keidis also had his own book to do:

https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/71WwOBbOEzL.jpg

Keep in mind that, if the back-to-roots idea had been in the air for 10 or 11 months before Nov 1968, that was already more than half of Rolling Stone's lifespan. Also Wenner might have wanted to get out in front of the next trend by saying, "we pioneered this, but we're already onto the next thing".

Always thought of Beach Boys, "Wild Honey", as being a precursor of "back to basics".

Well, in a weird way, it was in fact Smiley Smile.

Well, yes, I thought of that, in terms of being stripped back and home recorded, but there's far too much psychedelic era weirdness going on!

Keidis book Co-written with Larry Sloman, dubbed "Ratso" by the Rolling Thunder Review, when he was the Stone's rolling Rolling correspondent. They assigned him to taking Dylan's dog for walkies. He dubbed Berlin The Sgt. Pepper's of the 70s. Sample text on Amazon page looks disappointingly normie so far.

have to imagine a lot of pretty much forgotten bands reacting to Pepper et al with "yeah we're taking it back to rock and roll" in the press?

home recorded, but there's far too much psychedelic era weirdness going on! That was home to Brian, his sandbox being thee least of it.

JWH,BB, and The Beatles/White Album are not just rehashed rootz..

No, but I think it was a somewhat amorphous concept that meant different things in different contexts. For Sha Na Na, it meant an imitation--a pretty dire one--of 1957. With those three albums, I take it to mean something like, "Last year we were doing '2000 Light Years from Home,' now we want to play things that sound like 'Prodigal Son.'"

Also, blues rock was coming up, first Canned Heat album was released '67.

OMG, they were uneven----w Al Wilson and John Lee Hooker, and sometimes even without, could be quite good, but a Rolling Stone reviewer (Ed Ward?) said another album should have been titled Yassuh Boss.

That's around the time I started seeing the term "blooze," although Mayall and some other dealers had their high points from time to tim.

I love Canned Heat!

Yeah, they could be very good!

Future Blues is a peak w Al Wilson (also there's a Wilson compilation now), also Hooker n Heat is uneven, but the Hook keeps it going, and The Very Best of Canned Heat is good.

I enjoyed Robert Johnson’s back to basics phase

hooker and heat is totally badass

I guess Zeppelins back to basics record is presence? Not really tho. Good on them to never have reached that point

I've been looking at the origins of back-to-basics for something I've been working on, and I always assumed it began with The White Album, Beggars Banquet, and JWH.

It pretty much started with Music From Big Pink, which — along with bootlegs of The Basement Tapes — essentially forced all UK rock musicians to simultaneously stop taking acid. Two hugely successful bands (the Small Faces and Cream) broke up because of the Band, and every other remaining group tried to sound like the Band.

Yeah, although that wasn't just going back to roots, it was what you could do with them: a fairly slow set, kicking off with a dirge ffs---but so intense in its way, in layers and segments of genres, subgenres, within as well as among tracks---psychedelic in its way, expanding and contracting thee lines around things (I don't love it, but I think I understand it).

Understand its influence, for better and worse.

Perhaps, though "square one" for RHCP wasn't those particular four guys (and he doesn't say "THESE four guys in a room together..."). This ties into it being such a weirdly vacant-feeling quote, as if it's somehow missing every fourth or fifth word.

not unlike Kiedis’ lyrics amirite

and while it pains me still, this is at least the third time that Frusciante has joined the band, and he pursues decidedly non-Chi-Pep musical interests during his interregna, so it plausibly does take the 3.1 musicians learning from scratch how to play together each time.

(None of this lessens the quote’s qualifications for starring itt obv!)

stop taking acid.

Also I really do think it's vanishingly rare for a huge band to track drums/bass/guitar live together these days (as RHCP does) , rather than layering them.

Related--not sure where else to put it...Saw a trailer for this tonight before the Neil Young film.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4YRb0qY5eKc

The whole back-to-basics thing started in '68, but this really accelerated it.

Geddy Lee was there and taking notes: "One day, God willing, I will honor Bo Diddley with 'The Temples of Syrinx.'"

getting back to basics is cool but i wanna get back to getting it together in the country

"One day, God willing, I will honor Bo Diddley with 'The Temples of Syrinx.'"

lol, but also…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wDlK52SvJVY

WTF about the voice of Geddy Lee?