Despite his re-stated resistance to arena rock, art rock, and most of all what he calls "Yuropean" flavors of those and other, xgau really got and got into PPU and Pulnoc:https://www.robertchristgau.com/get_artist.php?name=The+Plastic+People+of+the+Universe
https://www.robertchristgau.com/get_artist.php?id=1102&name=Pulnoc
Hope I've still got a copy of the bootleg board tape he christened Live at PS 122, their first NYC show in '89: don't know what generation it is, but really good. hopefully posted somewhere, since I'd have to dig pretty deep for the cassette.
Also---Milan Hlavsa 1951-2001:https://www.robertchristgau.com/xg/music/hlavsa-rs.php
― dow, Wednesday, 14 September 2022 20:43 (one year ago) link
He does hear them as being into Zappa. Well okay (I got off the Z-bus pretty early, so maybe).
― dow, Wednesday, 14 September 2022 20:45 (one year ago) link
Yes, I think there's a definite Zappa element in there, I don't hear anything like Can though, they're too lumpy and awkward for that. Though they have a lot of later albums which I've never heard, I only really know the 70s stuff.
― Buckfast At Tiffany's (Tom D.), Wednesday, 14 September 2022 20:50 (one year ago) link
Hope I've still got a copy of the bootleg board tape he christened Live at PS 122, their first NYC show in '89: don't know what generation it is, but really good. hopefully posted somewhere, since I'd have to dig pretty deep for the cassette
lmk if you want i can dropbox it or whatever, dow. i forget who, but someone on the board was kind enough to turn me onto that one many years ago
― Half Japanese Breakfast (outdoor_miner), Wednesday, 14 September 2022 22:16 (one year ago) link
i always assumed some Zappa love just on account of their name
― Half Japanese Breakfast (outdoor_miner), Wednesday, 14 September 2022 22:17 (one year ago) link
Tbc I do know they were Zappa fans and took inspiration from him (as did many prog and avant-garde rock bands). I just meant that their often dark and droney music doesn't usually recall for me most of the qualities that I typically associate with Zappa's sound: tight, busy, on-a-dime arrangements; virtuosic rhythmic complexity; cartoonishly jarring stylistic juxtapositions; echoes of 50s rock and roll and doo-wop. There's maybe a couple percentage points more of those than you find in Can tbf. (Xgau did say PPotU make Can and Faust look like wimps in that link!)
― No purposes. Sounds. (Sund4r), Wednesday, 14 September 2022 22:59 (one year ago) link
i think i remember hearing via mr. yanosik that the famous PS 122 tape may get an official release. i think they're just haggling about inclusion of the cover song.
― Thus Sang Freud, Wednesday, 14 September 2022 23:01 (one year ago) link
xxxpost thanks, will keep that in mind, outdoor_miner, but it's high time I get off my duff and excavate the stash incl PS 122. Great to know it may get legit release intact, or at all.(Xgau did say PPotU make Can and Faust look like wimps in that link!) Ha yeah but he would; they and (Plastics spin-off Pulnoc) and sometimes Henry Cow, and some things by or involving Robert Wyatt, are about all the "Yurrupean art rock" he can digest, like Motorhead and Reign In Blood-era Slayer are about it for him in metal.
― dow, Wednesday, 14 September 2022 23:53 (one year ago) link
So, stimulated by xpost rockcritics.com coverage of the PPU expert, I've tweaked my archived edition of xpost "Uprostred," written in early '99 about the PPU family tree and some neighbors. It was my maiden Voice voyage as unfrozen caveman hipster, still quite evidently, but now with chiropractic adjustments, as I've become a better re-writer over the years. Informative, anyway, re a lot of good-to-great old music still in no danger of overexposure:https://myvil.blogspot.com/2005/12/uprosted.html
― dow, Sunday, 18 September 2022 21:34 (one year ago) link