How was Here Come The Warm Jets received upon it's release?

"[..]wildly experimental Here Come the Warm Jets, which reached the U.K. Top 30"

Remembering, of course, that What's Going On and Astral Weeks never made the UK album chart, whereas the Black and White Minstrels had three number one albums...

It's all this political correctness to blame, I tell you!!!!!

One of the more intriguing developments on today's English rock scene has been the emergence of a cult of marginal musicians bent on doing "weird" things to the traditional pop song format. Be it in the name of being "trendy" (Elton John) or just for the sake of seeming mysterious (Roxy Music), these folks have taken so many liberties with a hackneyed old genre that it frequently ends up sounding quite unlike the early Beatles records which were its foremost representation.

Brian Eno, formerly of Roxy Music, is another one who writes weird songs but their weirdness is more silly than puzzling. Lacking any mentionable instrumental proficiency, he claims he "treats" other musicians' instruments—though the end product of his efforts would have to be classed as indiscernible.

His record is annoying because it doesn't do anything. The songs aren't strong enough individually or collectively to merit more than a passing listen. Save for some incendiary guitar work by Robert Fripp during "Baby's On Fire," the instrumentation is pretty tepid. In fact the whole album may be described as tepid, and the listener must kick himself for blowing five bucks on baloney.

Historians might want to take note of the fact that "Needles in the Camel's Eye" has a heavy Del Shannon influence; that "Some of Them Are Old" is constructed around harmonies highly reminiscent of the Four Freshmen; that the first three songs on side B quote extensively from the Beatles' Abbey Road. Others will hopefully join with this writer in taking exception to this insane divergence of styles and wish that the next time Eno makes an album, he will attempt to structure his work rather than throw together the first ten things that come to mind. (RS 172)

I have a pb collection of old Rolling Stone reviews, and apart from the occasional good one by Bangs or Marcus, it's got to be the closest to worthless I've ever read. Jon Landau in particular. Anyway, Christgau gave that record a good grade, and "Jets" seems like such a simple record, it's amazing it wasn't better understood. I guess 1973 really was a long time ago..."insane divergence of styles"? That's what I wanna hear!

did the black and white minstrels *really* have 3 number 1 albums as marcello says upthread?

Ha ha! Does anyone actually call things baloney anymore? Heaven forbid in a music review at that?

-- Marcello Carlin (marcellocarli...), July 7th, 2006

what the fuck. can't believe that.
clearly going for the christmas market!

so what happened in 1963 then i wonder? something else cool we can thank the beatles for? i'd like to think so. the sixties didn't really kick in until PLEASE PLEASE ME came out.

That said, RS did run a more favorable feature on Eno around the time, either in that issue or the next — and I know that b/c I'm the kind of nerd who read the microfiches in high school.

"tepid" is just a mindbogglingly stupid appraisal. it's always sounded the exact opposite to me. I always equate 'needles in the camel's eye' with someone turning all the colour settings up on your TV, so you get that near-psychedelic 'bleeding' look to the picture leaping out at you. (in song form, obviously.)

The idea of this record--top of the pops from quasi-dadaist British synth wizard--may put you off, but the actuality is quite engaging in a vaguely Velvet Underground kind of way. Minimally differentiated variations on the same melody recur and recur, but it's a great melody, and not the only one, and chances are he meant it that way, as a statement, which I agree with. What's more, words take over when the music falters, and on "Cindy Tells Me" they combine for the best song ever written about middle-class feminism, a rock and roll subject if ever there was one. My major complaint is that at times the artist uses a filter that puts dust on my needle. Grade: A

Alicia OTM.

This is a key point. The neo-girl group backing vocals swathed in echo evoke the passive but oversexed splendour of the Shirelles and the Ronettes. It's as if the Eno character is nostalgic for a time he knows is (a) gone; and (b) a chimera anyway.

haha i had just noticed that the other day! the first stanza of that piano motif is TOTES the same as seger!

i totally agree with this

not to be a prick, but i really don't think eno was serious about ANYTHING on this album, lyrically. he even screwed up the obvious rhyme for "maracas" ("Caracas") by putting in the lame-o "tobaccos", a botch job which still angers me a lot more than any "anti-feminism" here.

And he's justifying his taunts by specifically addressing himself to the (supposedly) mushbrained suggestibility of young, upper-middle class women.

But it's way too easy to disparage difficult ideas (like feminism) by attaching them to target groups that no one will leap to defend (like overbred debutantes).

I love Eno, but this song bugs me. And the defense that he's being self-mockingly ironic in some kind of convoluted sense just doesn't wash. If anything, the "mustardy" vocals work as a snarky underbite to the song's superficial compassion more than its core message.

Eno's a guy of some accomplishment and significance in the world, and therefore his fruity (no, I don't mean gay) tut-tutting comes across as cheap and reactionary.

Heh. Which is why I don't think much about the broader implications of "The Paw Paw Negro Blowtorch."

And yet on Baby's On Fire the last lyric before the multi minute Fripp ejaculation is "they said you were hot stuff, and that's what baby's been reduced to." which strikes me a particularly about SOMETHING.

Christgau:
The idea of this record--top of the pops from quasi-dadaist British synth wizard--may put you off, but the actuality is quite engaging in a vaguely Velvet Underground kind of way. Minimally differentiated variations on the same melody recur and recur, but it's a great melody, and not the only one, and chances are he meant it that way, as a statement, which I agree with. What's more, words take over when the music falters, and on "Cindy Tells Me" they combine for the best song ever written about middle-class feminism, a rock and roll subject if ever there was one. My major complaint is that at times the artist uses a filter that puts dust on my needle. Grade: A

-- Haikunym (Haikunym), Friday, July 7, 2006 3:57 PM (1 year ago)

Here, for comparison (because I'm just that geeky), is the original version of that review:

ENO: Here Come the Warm Jets (Island) The idea of this record--top of the pops from quasi-dadaist British synth wizard who makes out with the Soft Machine--is a lot worse than the actuality, which engages the ear and the mind in a vaguely Velvet Underground sort of way. Minimally differentiated variations on the same melody recur and recur, but it's a nice melody, and chances are he meant it that way. Some good words, too. B PLUS

"Minimally differentiated variations on the same melody recur and recur, but it's a nice melody, and chances are he meant it that way."

Sentence kinda interesting in light of Eno's later ambient music.

Always love this interview:

http://www.moredarkthanshark.org/eno_int_nme-feb74.html

I don't understand, he meant it that way.

From the Stylus article, and thank you all for the reference and the link:

I guess it makes sense that this same person whose solo debut cover art contains a picture of . . . a nude playing card--the eight of spades to be exact--showing a squatting woman urinating (in what looks like a junkyard) as a dapper gentlemen holds up the back of her skirt, would take a humorous anti-feminism stance on a track from his first post-Roxy Music outing, Here Come the Warm Jets.

Actually, it does not make sense. Fetishism--even when it is as well known as Eno's--does not automatically equate to mysogyny or even "anti-feminism."

Although now that I think on it, maybe he did mean the lyrics more or less as explicated here: Eno's fascination with smoothly functioning (or smoothly dysfunctional) systems is no secret. If you consider then that each part must have a role within an operational system, it may not be such a stretch to go from there to "a woman's place is in the home."

This is why he could say something like "cities are places built for women," backing it up with something like, "In cities, you have the opportunity to do all the things that women are really specialized at: intense social relationships and interactions, attention to lots of simultaneous details"

http://www.indexmagazine.com/interviews/brian_eno.shtml

Still, given Eno's oft-stated preference for meaning expressed through sound over that transmitted through words, it may be dangerous to consider the lyrics to "CTM" as anything more than merely an exercise in sibilant phonoaesthetics

were there any bootlegs of that one and only eno solo tour, the one that got cut short after his collapsed lung from too much groupie-rooting? curious as to how these songs were rendered live - a 'studio as instrument' record like this can't have been expecially easy to do back then, never mind that the effect is pretty mild in context of his later work.

intrigued by posited medical connections between groupie-rooting & collapsed lungs

Was the tour with the Winkies as backing band? Or was that later? There is a Peel Session available with Eno & the Winkies, that might give some idea of what the live band sounded like.

tom i think you might be on the right track. i didn't know there was a peel session! there'll be a link around somewhere, doubtless.

jd, swear i'm not inventin' this one

Eno's brief career as a solo star started with Here Come the Warm Jets. Its startling variety, punk-prefiguring abrasions, and country melodies became his only solo Top 30 hit in 1974. But a brief period touring it graphically demonstrated his limits as a rock star. "Scuzzy," he'd call it later.

"I enjoyed screwing the girls for a while, but then that wore off as well." The collapsed lung which finished him was, Chic magazine claimed, the result of six such couplings in a night. Studio collaboration would give Eno safer, quieter avenues.

winkies peel session is pretty awesome. there is at least one other recording of a winkies live show I've got lying around somewhere.

peel session

http://punknotprofit.blogspot.com/2009/04/eno-winkies-peel-sessions.html

Got that on tape somewhere, so that link is useful!

this is the other recorded show, can be found in the usual places, terrible sound quality on it tho

Kings Hall
Derby, England, UK
February 13, 1974

The collapsed lung which finished him was, Chic magazine claimed, the result of six such couplings in a night.

well I'll be damned

fact checkers at chic magazine worked overtime on that one I bet

may we all suffer from similar injuries in the future, i say

you know what they say - loose women, impending breathing difficulties

how can a man with the maturity to write 'driving me backwards' have the gall to bonk six girls in one sitting

I would like to be able to claim that's how I got my collapsed lung, back in the day, but I can't

eno, j'accuse

golden showers of praise.
― cutty (mcutt), Sunday, June 5, 2005 7:18 PM (5 years ago) Bookmark

genius

Going by that recent bio and past interviews, Eno plays it very coy when it comes to his alleged sexcapades. On occasion he's claimed to have acted in porn and basically lived with sex slaves, but at the same time he was a Catholic-raised father rooted in monogamy. This is the same dude who may or may not have drunk his own urine, peed on Duchamp's urinal and fostered a fetish for bottoms, S&M, perfume and statuesque African women. Only Eno knows the truth, but I think he likes being perceived as the winking virgin/whore.

yeah, i think a lot of that was probably BS on Eno's part. maybe not *entirely* BS, but maybe 50/50.
anyhoo, those BBC sessions are essnetial! I might even prefer some of those versions to the Warm Jets versions, heresy though it may be.

wow thx for the link, didn't even know those existed

yeah the BBC sessions are easy to find and totally essential, also there are some good tracks from 1976 live shows that get tacked on to boots of the Peel sessions (e.g. Music For Fans). The one Winkies show that has surfaced is, as EIII notes above, almost impossible to listen to due to bad sound.

So what's notable about this record exactly? It sounds like John Cale jamming with some muppets. It's also unswinging as fuck.

john cale jamming with some muppets! i like that.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m-SG0g7T69c&feature=youtu.be

So what's notable about this record exactly?

just from memory:

guitar sound in Needles
drum sound in Needles
the way the solo comes in on Needles, mixed up louder
vocal delivery on Paw Paw
guitar solo in Paw Paw, freaky electro splatter
the cool little scrapy echoey guitar bit in the outro of Paw Paw
everything about Baby's On Fire

etc...

imo the genius of this record is in the sound of mix, the way the guest musicians are deployed/treated, and the melodic sense which is subtle and addictive.

argh sound of "the" mix, lost connection

i'm not a huge eno fan, but really 'unswinging' -- is that really what you were expecting from an early seventies art rock album? and a british one at that? swing?

Think he means "swing" in the xhuxk sense.

what sense is that? i'm not actually familiar!

vague and ad hoc

"Swing" for me is an "I know it when I hear it" quality, rather than a narrowly (or not so narrowly) defined characteristic.

And Warm Jets swings.

love this record. "graham greene" on paris 1919 does sound like a template for it. no idea what the special xhuxk meaning of "swing" is but i suspect it isn't fair to apply it to any eno record, it's not like he's the groundhogs.

xp motorik is the rhythmic groove or pocket that eno is in to my ears.. when i think of swing i think of, like, grand funk railroad, but to each their own impossible distinctions.

Not swinging with a vengeance: Robert Christgau on new wave disco and hard bop, 1978

I would like the title track played as I am cremated.

do you like bardo pond, morbz? they put out a cover of it for record store day

https://soundcloud.com/firerecords/bardo-pond-here-come-the-warm

Warning: put on your 2005 glasses as you step through the heat shimmer to read the thread I linked.

it's been so long since they bored me live, but no, i was just reminded I do not like BP.

So what's notable about this record exactly? It sounds like John Cale jamming with some muppets. It's also unswinging as fuck.

He crazy

I picked up "Seven Deadly Finns" at a carboot the other day, £1.

It sounds like John Cale jamming with some muppets

that's no way to talk about the velvet underground imo

otoh John Cale jamming with The Muppets could only be a good thing

"Unswinging" is such a wrongheaded way to approach this. It doesn't in one (irrelevant) sense, I guess, but in another way nothing else swings quite like it. IT IS A FUN RECORD

this discussion of swing in relation to early 70s british art rock put me in mind of this ben ratliff remark, from his review of the latest black sabbath album, which i think is otm:

You may find yourself missing Mr. Ward keenly. He has the slight swing and awkwardness that came with English rock drummers of his generation, and this group built its sound around his. Mr. Wilk’s playing is stronger across the board, less eruptive and detailed — and more anonymous.

Man I love everything about this record. I cannot imagine thinking/feeling otherwise.

god i hate ben ratliff's writing

His Coltrane bk is p gd

No it isn't

debate!!

Don't waaste your time, read the Lewis Porter book instead, people! You will learn much more about the man and the music than the sixties icon and his cultural significance.

oh wait *checks url*

Haven't read the Lewis Porter bk, but I liked the fact that Ratliff really tried to engage w/ late period Coltrane in a way I'd not read before

I thought he concluded that Trane went down the wrong path and dragged everybody along with him.

Wld have to revisit, but that's not how I recall it (if anything, thought he was fighting against that kind of orthodoxy, while acknowledging that things like Live in Japan are 'difficult' listens, esp if you haven't followed the through-line of Trane's career)

Sorry to derail from HCTWJ btw, which is prob my fave Eno rec. Always thought the title track p much invents My Bloody Valentine.

yeah, hearing this record was like hearing something like gainsbourg where you think "oh here's where [band x] got pretty much their whole thing"

the title track is the perfect example of that -- it sounds like ground zero for basically everything i thought sounded super cool at the time i heard it
i also loved this album the first time i heard it, and seeing all that stuff upthread is kinda…i dunno, i stopped reading after a while because i don't honestly care about whether or not eno was flipping the bird at feminism or w/e.

Hah I didn't read any of the rest of the thread. I just didn't get the idea that there isn't much going on/notable regarding the record. Glad that it is not the case for me, it just rules.

yeah i dunno re: feminism -- i mean, eno probably had a lot of weird ideas at the time. he was a weird dude!

he was a weird dude and honestly i don't care what he thinks about feminism then or now

there's a part in "baby's on fire" that has been stuck in my head for 14 years

I like Another Green World and Before and After Science, but somehow I just can't get into this record.

all four of those vocal records are so great that it makes me upset that he didn't continue banging them out. I know its not really like Eno to continue doing the same thing but it's such a great run and all those records are unparalleled in their own way

it is my third favorite of the enorawk quadrilogy after Tiger and Green but I do love it and I LOOOOOOOVE Needles

i think what Green and Tiger have over Jets is the sound of them is so distinctive and spatial and pleasing and Jets does have that garage psych feel which is fine but not what Eno would end up being ~about~

It ws wt he ws abt at the time tho

yeah that was a dumb comment on my part.

Every song title on this album is great too. The songs are also ridiculously fun to sing. All the way through!! Great album for words IMO.

Blank Frank is the messenger of your doom and your destruction!

And the whole approach to recording/making this rec ws v Eno, really

Some of them lose, and some of them lose

FYI:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paw_Paw_Negro_Blowtorch

"Dead Finks Don't Talk" was my favorite. That bit that sounds like an Elvis impersonation is gold. I loved Eno's approach to writing lyrics - "The biology of purpose keeps my nose above the surface" is one of my favorite lines. You have to really strain for it to mean anything but it flows so nicely!

That bit that sounds like an Elvis impersonation

think eno was going for something else here

maybe it's just hard to hear with hindsight (hindhearing?) but HCTWJ just doesn't seem all that sonically interesting to me. Maybe I need to listen to it on really killer speakers or something.

Have you seen Velvet Goldmine?

think eno was going for something else here

probably! but I can't figure what? is it Ferry?

Yup

It's not sonically interesting so much as it's arrangement/production interesting

its interesting how eno and ferry were both singing in that snotty quavery style they'd abandon so hard p soon

wrt ferry the order in which i heard roxy and his stuff means that i learned early on that his purpose was to ensheath me in comfort and luxury so i can't help hearing early roxy singing as "sounding like Warm Jets" even though it's vice versa

I hate that style, xp

I guess in retrospect I can tell, but I heard Eno before Roxy, and for the longest time I thought it was Eno singing "Mother of Pearl."

given the chaaance
I'll die like a baaaaabyyyyy

and that's what baby's been reduced to

this album is good but TTT(BS) has somewhat devalued it in my mind by being so utterly, phenomenally brilliant

*TTM(BS)

Reading through this thread, since I'm currently reading David Sheppard's Eno book, and I had never even heard about the Black and White Minstrel Show.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/9/9f/Black_and_White_Minstrel_Show.jpg

jfc, this went on until 1978?

6:27:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-cYbU_dOYHI#t=368

i like this album a lot, but i feel where you're coming from, hurting, for awhile i couldn't stand eno or cale vocalwise.

it's not as 'pleasant' a listen as "another green world", but i think it has a similarly playful approach to arrangements and guitar tones

jamming this now on a Saturday morning

bass solo in Needles rules

substitute that rhymes with dissolute = prostitute?

hmm maybe that is a synth solo in Paw Paw, not gtr

love the cymbal-ticking light touch drums on Baby's On Fire

Fripp guitar solo is one of his most undeniable

For years I assumed that was Manzanera doing that solo. Someone here set me straight.

I was pretty baffled by this record when I first heard it about 20 years ago; all I knew of Eno was his brilliant Roxy work and my unfair view of "that hissing shit on those Bowie records" (a view I have since revised considerably). I did not expect the melodic power-pop herein. Love it.

I also love the move of putting a 2 1/2 minute freakout gtr solo into the middle of a 3 minute song

lovely treated gtr solo by Manzanera on Cindy Tells Me, I've always liked the backing vocals too

Driving Me Backwards is the only song here I will not vehemently defend, kind of a monochromatic downer

Tarfumes otm

aside from On Some Faraway Beach being incredibly goddamn beautiful, I love the way everything else in the mix slowly overtakes the piano line as the song progresses

side 2 of this is maybe my favorite side of the 4 vocal records

onslaught of Blank Frank, the density of the bass really helps, the wall of gtr scree freakout (Manzanera?) one minute in is really something

speaking of lyrics there are some particularly good ones in Blank Frank

"the only time he speaks is in incomprehensible proverbs"

Driving Me Backwards is the only song here I will not vehemently defend, kind of a monochromatic downer

― RSD-rolled (sleeve), Saturday, April 26, 2014 11:24 AM (12 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I dig the warbly piano, but yeah, if Warm Jets has a failing, it's this song. If it has a failing.

yeah the piano is my favorite part as well

oh perfect masters

they thrive on disasters

they all look so harmless

TILL THEY FIND THEIR WAY UP HERE

all the weird little backing vocal details in Dead Finks, love it

aside from all the gorgeous melody in Some Of Them Are Old, it has that sweet little slide solo

so many moments like that hidden in this record

I just realized that I've probably passed the 30-year mark on listening to this record (less than others posters itt)

still holds up

remember me, remember me...

can someone who owns the lyric book tell me what the actual words to the title track are?

nothing to saaaay, nothing to saaaaay

that's all I know

Driving Me Backwards is a fav for me

I signed out Enobox 2 from the library when I was 12 and for whatever reason (track title curiosity?) started with Taking Tiger Mountain instead of with Warm Jets, "Burning Airlines" cemented itself as the best song I'd ever heard and would ever hear. Returning to Warm Jets afterwards, I was somewhat disappointed with the comparative un-adventurousness of the instrumentation, more of a standard rock record than the endless funhouse of Tiger Mountain. Didn't warm to it until adulthood. Realize now that Tiger Mountain while awesome is jokey and ridiculous and obv sounded better to the ears of an adolescent, "Judy's Jungle" is basically a kid's tune

here come the warm jets is basically my dream of a ziggy stardust album - an alien using all of pop/rock's little musical and recording tricks and hooks to try and seduce listeners but from a slightly askew perspective. by comparison same-era bowie feels earthbound and stagebound, decent but more pretentious than actually surreal. I love it more with every passing year, but if it doesn't amuse a listener in the slightest after two spins i have no interest in trying to convince them of its charms. they obv don't like this kind of voice or this kind of sound and that's fine but ffs it's a canonical, 40 year old classic album, if you need convincing of its worth fucking consult your local library. google a review, jesus.

xpost tiger mountain has individual tracks that blow me away, but Warm Jets is more consistently rockin to my ears

Do not get dislike for 'Driving Me Backwards'. Its wooziness is integral.

It's the best track on the album imo

i mean if it's a "everyone is so reverent to this thing, but i don't get what the big deal is, i wasn't sent to mars, it was just goofy '70 UK Phil-Collins-in-the-liner-notes shit, and I don't even like Roxy Music anyway" well yeah it's a Roxy Music spin-off and you're an adult, music's not gonna make you shit your pants like you're 14 once you've got a general sense of what's out there. But just as Dylan made more sense to me once I stopped resenting that every sentence wasn't the promised-by-boomers pearl and sometimes this guy's just telling jokes and making it rhyme, it shouldn't be too hard to step back and realize "john cale with the muppets" could actually be an AWESOME thing.

yeah but all the grand claims people make for eno in the 70s are actually true

especially that muppets thing

availing myself of the opportunity to say da croupier otm

i was always disappointed that ziggy bowie wasn't more of a blast-you-into-space kind of thing, just a dude with an acoustic guitar poncing around

once a grown-up colleague of mine heard me playing 'warm jets' and he seriously had to inquire how someone could like 'serious music' and also this sophomoric junk (not his words), like there was a complete disconnect

"john cale with the muppets" could actually be an AWESOME thing.

could? yeah i guess VU were pretty good
geez who would disagree with john cale and the muppets?!

da croup otm
although I need a little convincing that Another Green World is as classic as the other 70s vocal records, to me it's just a collection of almost-but-not-quite-as-good-as-Cluster instrumentals and the annoying "Tie Your Shoe" song

y'all I don't dislike Driving, but it is my least favorite here

da croupier otm, ha xp

the annoying "Tie Your Shoe" song

*glare*

key to AGW is St Elmo's Fire/Big Ship imo

That shoe song is the should-be-erased musical-linguistic link between Eno's songwriting style and Rice/Webber imo, never was a fan

Love I'll come running, also whatever the version on the peel sessions is called

da croupier OTM

Another green Eno-nostalgia post: the second-longest relationship I've ever been in was with a girl I met at an Eno tribute night. She wore a black dress and had a goth band and smoked and sang through perfect versions of "Needles" and "Cindy". I was smitten and asked her out and we were together two years.

awesome

yeah that's tender

so who/what is 'Sweetfeed'—backing vocals:
http://www.discogs.com/artist/288423-Sweetfeed ?

I saw Jon Brion back in 2007 or so, and as part of the set he did a spontaneous three-song "Jets" tribute the consisted of "Dead Finks Don’t Talk," "Some of them Are Old" and the title track. I'll try to find some audio. And then he segued to "Jesus Blood Never Failed Me Yet," which of course is also connected to Eno.

How was Here Come The Warm Jets received upon it's release?

They would say "Here comes 'Here comes the warm jets' "

bass solo in Needles rules

Bass solo?!?! Where? Have I lost my mind here or what?

For years I assumed that was Manzanera doing that solo. Someone here set me straight.

Fripp

OK maybe it is a gtr solo mostly played very low? the part right after he sings the title of the song, there is a cool solo, I am not a musician.

Ah, it's a gtr

I was somewhat disappointed with the comparative un-adventurousness of the instrumentation, more of a standard rock record than the endless funhouse of Tiger Mountain.

I don't think the two albums are all that different really, my one tiny tiny minsicule insignificant complaint about "Tiger Mountain" would be that some of the songs are a bit longer than they need be

nahhh

TTM is for me an entire step up, whether in terms of songwriting or sonic ingenuity

P. surprised Hurting 2 doesn't like the "Baby's on Fire" solo!

I listened to Baby's On Fire like 6x because of this thread and that guitar solo remains one of the most sizzling ever. How else to describe? Honestly I have no idea.

some of the songs are a bit longer than they need be
agree!! i love true wheel and mother whale eyeless but they could both stand to be at least a minute shorter imo

"sizzling" is right. fripp really knew how to make the most of a guest spot back then. tho manzanera does the solo justince in the 801 live version...

Fave Fripp guest spot can't not be the last minute of A Plague Of Lighthouse Keepers tbh

there's probably already been a fripp guest spot poll?

Ha, I never knew that was Fripp on "Lighthouse Keepers"!

Tbh I wouldn't put it past Banton to extract that fearsome solo from one of his organs, but yeah, Fripp.

here come the warm jets is basically my dream of a ziggy stardust album - an alien using all of pop/rock's little musical and recording tricks and hooks to try and seduce listeners but from a slightly askew perspective. by comparison same-era bowie feels earthbound and stagebound, decent but more pretentious than actually surreal.

this is really otm - I like Ziggy a lot but it only felt like 10% as "out there" as advertised. Warm Jets does a lot of really crazy things in some fairly normal contexts which IMO is what makes it so fascinating. It's not easy to do that!

True wheel could be longer, agree re mother whale eyeless tho. Latter has some of my fave lyrics ever

This is for the fingers
This is for the nails
Hidden in the kitchen
Right behind the scales

^if Scott walker sang this it would be horrifying and obviously about torture; when eno sings it it's not obviously not about torture, and unnerving.

Then there's the "in my town" sequence which is just funny.

Slightly off-topic, but the new one, with Karl Hyde, "Someday World" is streaming here:
http://www.npr.org/2014/04/27/306161810/first-listen-brian-eno-karl-hyde-someday-world

I didn't really OTM him because he'd been OTMed a lot but yeah, croup hitting it out of the park on this one.

Um, the internet thinks it might have been Banton after all xps

there's probably already been a fripp guest spot poll?

― tylerw, Monday, April 28, 2014 11:41 AM (39 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Even if we did a poll already, would make a sweet Spotify playlist especially since there's 0 crim on there.

and if we ain't polled it we should

This thread deserves to have ITS title fixed.

so who/what is 'Sweetfeed'—backing vocals:
http://www.discogs.com/artist/288423-Sweetfeed ?

― nerve_pylon, Saturday, April 26, 2014 6:33 PM (2 days ago)

http://www.spectropop.com/FrontPorch/

I was the only one to continue with music. I moved to London in 1971 and stayed for ten years. I had some success as a guitarist-singer-songwriter. I had a group that went by the name of Sweetfeed and also Roberts, Rice, Bandell and Scott. We recorded with Roger Daltrey on his solo album "Ride A Rock Horse", and also with Brian Eno on his album "Here Come The Warm Jets". We never had any of our own recordings released or achieved commercial success, but our fans included David Bowie, Rod Stewart, Gary Glitter, Bryan Ferry, the Supremes and all of London high society, including members of the royal family.

but no actual punters.

(soz)

xpost Pretty sure that is Fripp on the VdG album. I know he pops up a couple of places on "Pawn Hearts."