Robert Wyatt: Classic or Dud?

Message Bookmarked
Bookmark Removed
Not all messages are displayed: show all messages (511 of them)
Classic. Wonderful human being as well. Gorgeous voice, clever and unexpected melodic sense, lyrically at once naive and knowing (I'm not sure how many of his lyrics his wife wrote on the last record, but she wrote most of Shleep and Dondestan).

Best records best to least for me: Rock Bottom, Soft Machine vols. 1 & 2, Shleep, Dondestan (either mix), Ruth is Stranger than Richard, Old Rottenhat, Matching Mole, Cuckooland (enjoyed it but the cheap keyboards are starting to bug me - Leonard Cohen syndrome). I don't listen to Rock Bottom very often at all, because it's such a charged object for me; it'd be like having the Koh-I-Noor diamond lying around as a paperweight.

End of an Ear is a prog-jazz record which I enjoyed, but it has hardly any vocals on it. Solar Flares Burn for You is an odds-and-ends compilation which is notable for some Rock Bottom demos and 'Little Child' which is one step away from being Lil' Markie.

Brakhage (brakhage), Tuesday, 12 July 2005 14:02 (nineteen years ago) link

i didn't think shleep was to his standards; i prefer the new one i think. end of the ear left me fairly cold, it's most akin to some of the more noodly stuff on the matching mole records.

Amateur(ist) (Amateur(ist)), Tuesday, 12 July 2005 20:50 (nineteen years ago) link

nice to see some love for matching mole. i just heard little red record a couple months ago, expecting something mildly interesting but datedly noodly. there are some rough patches, but i was nicely suprised by how good it is.

wayward son, Tuesday, 12 July 2005 22:03 (nineteen years ago) link

do you have the s/t lp by matching mole? it's better.

Amateur(ist) (Amateur(ist)), Tuesday, 12 July 2005 22:08 (nineteen years ago) link

never heard it. thanks for the tip

wayward son, Tuesday, 12 July 2005 22:18 (nineteen years ago) link

the s/t is way, way, way better. it's got the beginnings of wyatt's cute nursery rhyme slow songs and the jams jam.

i hardly ever listen to Little Red Record, but the cover is GREAT. doesn't it have a terry riley homage on it?

The Amazing Jaxon! (jaxon), Tuesday, 12 July 2005 22:26 (nineteen years ago) link

first track sounds a bit Reichian maybe, those were the days. the second one kicks off like it's going to be the monster of the whole decade but it piddles out a bit before the end, but I love the Eno synthscape rampup on 'Gloria Gloom' and 'god song' is a great Wyatt tune that could have been on the second Soft Machine record.

first Matching Mole album holds up though... the second side "wyatt-discovers-the-mellotron" is drony and fantastic

Frith says he was signed up to join Matching Mole for their third album. But then, the accident.

milton parker (Jon L), Tuesday, 12 July 2005 23:04 (nineteen years ago) link

milton otm. and a vocal looseness graces "flora fidgit" that wouldn't sound out of place on Rock Bottom

wayward son, Tuesday, 12 July 2005 23:33 (nineteen years ago) link

xposts:

do you know of this single i mentioned upthread where he's playing w/south african musicians? i never picked it up and now i kick myself.

Oh, I've got that... it's "The Wind Of Change", credited to Wyatt and the SWAPO singers. It's bright and jolly and swingy and catchy.

and a 12 w/ UK faux-latin new pop types Weekend where he duets w/ Tracey Thorn.

Ah yes, got that as well. "Venceremos" is the title - though it's actually a three-way performance between Wyatt, Thorn and Claudia Figueroa. It was Working Week's debut single; their second, "Storm Of Light", featuring Julie Tippetts (aka Driscoll) on vocals, is also outstanding.

Another good rarity is Wyatt's cover of Chris Andrews' "Yesterday Man", which was scheduled as a follow-up to "I'm A Believer" but never released. Instead, it appeared (in 1975) on a cheapo Virgin 2LP sampler called V. I also like his performance of Soft Machine's "Memories" on Daevid Allen's Banana Moon, and his harmony vocals on Kevin Ayers' "Hymn" and "Whatevershebringswesing".

"Free Will And Testament", featuring Paul Weller, remains the last 7" single I bought (not counting second-hand stuff).

mike t-diva (mike t-diva), Wednesday, 13 July 2005 09:23 (nineteen years ago) link

"Yesterday Man" is also available on the EPs boxed set, and very lovely it is too.

Taste the Blood of Scrovula (noodle vague), Wednesday, 13 July 2005 09:30 (nineteen years ago) link

No doubt I've said this in 20 other threads, but his work with the Carla Bley/Mike Mantler nexus is generally superb - Mantler's The Hapless Child (prog-goth-isolationist adaptation of Edward Gorey poems) is tremendous, as is Nick Mason's Fictitious Sports, released under Mason's name but really a C Bley record.

Marcello Carlin (nostudium), Wednesday, 13 July 2005 09:31 (nineteen years ago) link

I don't think anyone has mentioned the recent "Greatest Misses" compilation yet - it's an excellent place to start. Japanese import I think, but I got it quite reasonably.

Why the Stanley Spencer of pop?

bham, Wednesday, 13 July 2005 10:46 (nineteen years ago) link

greatest misses is GREAT! amen to that. nothing can stop us now has some of my favorite wyatt stuff... i have the arauco/caimanera 7"... there's plenty of good bits here and there, although i can get tired of some of the proggywhozits. a few of his records start amazing and get eh... that's my rememberance of "ruth is stranger than richard"... i could be crazy.

m.

msp (mspa), Wednesday, 13 July 2005 14:00 (nineteen years ago) link

the song he guests on from Bjork's last is still my favorite from that record.

b b, Wednesday, 13 July 2005 15:06 (nineteen years ago) link

Okay...I like the last song now!

Sorry to Ivor Cutler! Sorry to the Welsh people...but somehow welsh sounds like an English dude doing a bad Carribean accident to me at first listen!

Rock Bottom: still ruling the school.

M@tt He1geson (Matt Helgeson), Wednesday, 13 July 2005 15:17 (nineteen years ago) link

There should be more six-song albums. Less opportunity for filler. See also Talk Talk - Spirit of Eden and Laughing Stock of course, both of which were partially influenced by Rock Bottom.

Ian Riese-Moraine: the crown prince of understatement. (Eastern Mantra), Wednesday, 13 July 2005 15:21 (nineteen years ago) link

yeah...I can really see the infl. on Spirit of Eden, now that you mention it.

M@tt He1geson (Matt Helgeson), Wednesday, 13 July 2005 16:16 (nineteen years ago) link

Sorry to Ivor Cutler! Sorry to the Welsh people...but somehow welsh sounds like an English dude doing a bad Carribean accident to me at first listen!

ha ha...Scottish, dude.

Masked Gazza, Wednesday, 13 July 2005 16:49 (nineteen years ago) link

damn! : (

I'm totally banned from the Commonwealth....

M@tt He1geson (Matt Helgeson), Wednesday, 13 July 2005 16:55 (nineteen years ago) link

>ruth is stranger than richard

definitely worked better as a two sided record -- I like every track okay, but they don't work as well all in a row, though "Muddy Mouth" at the very end is way up there with the best of his stuff

I love "Yesterday Man" so much. No idea why that wasn't a single.

milton parker (Jon L), Wednesday, 13 July 2005 17:26 (nineteen years ago) link

Muddy Mouth

Handy cided to leave
He'd come apart at the seam - endangered life and lawn order before
The more since he lies (even under oaf handy lies) when he feels caught
Between righthand wrong. I think he just might have been wrong this time
Which in turn left him with few alternatives to relieving himself by hand
Alone in the dark, wanking in the bog?

http://www.strongcomet.com/wyatt/lyrics/lyrics1.htm

milton parker (Jon L), Wednesday, 13 July 2005 17:27 (nineteen years ago) link

"The follow up - Chris Andrews' song 'Yesterday Man' - was shelved. I was told that the boss considered it 'lugubrious'." - Robert Wyatt

Taste the Blood of Scrovula (noodle vague), Wednesday, 13 July 2005 17:30 (nineteen years ago) link

Also from the EPs liner notes, re: "I'm A Believer" -

"I'd meant to do a Neil Sedaka song but, typically, got the wrong Neil."

Taste the Blood of Scrovula (noodle vague), Wednesday, 13 July 2005 17:31 (nineteen years ago) link

i know, that's great. his liner notes are always v. funny.

Amateur(ist) (Amateur(ist)), Thursday, 14 July 2005 05:21 (nineteen years ago) link

A wonderful artist - we should all be thankful that we're living in a time that Mr. Wyatt still elects to make new music. Please try and hear "Rock Bottom" and "Ruth Is Stranger Than Richard" or the first two Soft MAchine Albums or the First two Matching Mole albums. Classic stuff. I remember that the NWW Guy didn't like Wyatt...anothr goos reason to like him, I reckon.

SoHoLa (SoHoLa), Thursday, 14 July 2005 05:33 (nineteen years ago) link

A friend of mine met him recently and said he was a top bloke - he's kind of the Michael Foot of music. Plus he likes a beer, a cig, a laugh and the ladies - preferably all at once.

Dadaismus (Dada), Thursday, 14 July 2005 08:18 (nineteen years ago) link

The "Soup Songs" concerts of a few years ago, with Wyatt in attendance but not onstage, were utterly wonderful; I saw two in one day. Participants included Phil Manzanera, Julie Tippetts, Didier Malherbe and Annie Whitehead. (Wyatt's only contribution on the day was to tell Julie off for going off-key at point. The cheek!)

mike t-diva (mike t-diva), Thursday, 14 July 2005 08:26 (nineteen years ago) link

re: Sleevenote:

Check his entry on the C81 cassette booklet (that you had to cut out/staple from a page of the NME). I still don't know what precent serious he was...

mark grout (mark grout), Thursday, 14 July 2005 09:04 (nineteen years ago) link

We went to those Soup Songs concerts! Lol Coxhill and George Khan on saxes as well, the latter coruscating on "Team Spirit." Blimey, that must have been - what? 1999? 2000?

Marcello Carlin (nostudium), Thursday, 14 July 2005 09:31 (nineteen years ago) link

I think it was 1999. I saw them in Newark: both matinee and evening performances, with an overlapping but not identical setlist. I'm not too sure we got Lol Coxhill... gawd, the old memory... no, we can't have done, because I'd have remembered something as genuinely exciting as that. One of the shows made it to CD, right? But a limited edition CD? No matter; I've got a cassette recording off the radio stuffed in a drawer somehwere...

mike t-diva (mike t-diva), Thursday, 14 July 2005 09:52 (nineteen years ago) link

one month passes...
On a whim, I bought Greatest Misses the other day back home in Mass. -- I've always been a fan but not always the most passionate one. But that day I decided I needed to own his version of Chic's "At Last I Am Free".

And thank god I did, because cripes -- what a brilliant fucking collection. Of course, the Chic is time-stoppingly beautiful -- oddly, its secret is actually something in the way the tamborine is mixed. But the other chestnuts reveal themselves quickly. "Age of Self" -- I've had the (now out of print) Mid-Eighties comp for ages that includes the entirety of Old Rottenhat but never so much as noticed it. Casio beat cum subtle throwdown funk bassline cum wondrous lyric cum perfectly elegant melody.

The songs from Cukooland, particularly the Beach Boys/Water Canticle-esque vocal multitracks of "Foreign Accents", inspired me to go seek that record out -- and, of course, it's offhandedly brilliant how his cornet playing has adopted the phrasing and tone of Miles Davis -- as if that were simply the one sound he absolutely NEEDED in his arsenal. Combined with Shleep ("Free Will and Testament") the guy's been on a serious roll this last decade.

But in spite of his successful return to lush productions, in the process of digging through all of his records, I've found myself particularly drawn to his mid-80's minimalist stuff -- which extended to Dondestan which I hocked in college in a fit of immaturity, and of course that version's now unavaiable. There's a certain dignity to his use of so few materials in this material, particularly in light of its directly political nature. Works In Progress seems its perfect distillation, really, with "Yolanda", "Te Recuerdo Amanda", the exquisite reading of hitherto insufferable "Biko" and his collab. w/ Hopper "Amber and the Amberines" -- has any pop artist ever made doomed political causes sound so hopeful and infused with life? Admittedly, Old Rottenhat is significantly more funereal, but still...

Naive Teen Idol (Naive Teen Idol), Friday, 19 August 2005 01:21 (nineteen years ago) link

"Shleep"=classic

M. V. (M.V.), Friday, 19 August 2005 02:08 (nineteen years ago) link

I've recently become obsessed with another Wyatt performance, the single Jelly Babies by Epic Soundtracks. I think it was on some sort of Epic Soundtracks comp recently and may or may not appear on an upcoming CD release you'll hear a lot about in the future. Wyatt and Soundtracks singing harmonies, a beautiful, melancholy song.

Dan Selzer (Dan Selzer), Friday, 19 August 2005 02:56 (nineteen years ago) link

my album of 1997: shleep. the album of his that pleases most to these ears.

alex in mainhattan (alex63), Friday, 19 August 2005 04:17 (nineteen years ago) link

shleep is a great, great album. So is cuckooland. Count me as a fan.

Paunchy Stratego (kenan), Friday, 19 August 2005 04:20 (nineteen years ago) link

seven months pass...
i bought 'rock bottom' on vinyl last week! what fucking awesomeness!

gear (gear), Monday, 10 April 2006 00:01 (eighteen years ago) link

you are now a man

Jaxon von Jaxon (jaxon), Monday, 10 April 2006 00:24 (eighteen years ago) link

search: ROCK BOTTOM, shleep, cuckooland
destroy: ruth is stranger than richard

a.b. (alanbanana), Monday, 10 April 2006 00:29 (eighteen years ago) link

Solar Flares Burn For You!

artsake, Monday, 10 April 2006 00:48 (eighteen years ago) link

"Team Spirit" jumped into my top-10 favorite songs last year when I heard it for the first time. CLAHSSIC, if not EPIC.

pixel farmer (Rock Hardy), Monday, 10 April 2006 02:00 (eighteen years ago) link

in soviet russia, Solar Flares Burn For You!

a.b. (alanbanana), Monday, 10 April 2006 02:16 (eighteen years ago) link

one month passes...
this man is just too cute. this was posted in a bulletin from the owner of his myspace fan page:

Message from RW.....
Body:
After starting this little profile in honor of Robert's life & work, and after VERY quickly seeing for myself the love & devotion his fanbase feels for him, I soon decided to make the extra effort in bringing that love & devotion to Robert personally.

A few weeks ago I wrote to Robert, explaining the Myspace craze (in a roundabout way) and giving him the web URL in case he chose to check it out himself.

I also enclosed printouts of the entire RW profile, including the comments section and dozens of messages (addressed to him) which I'd received via the private message feature. If memory serves, I mailed the package a little under two weeks ago.

Today I received a reply, and there is no longer ANY doubt in my mind..... Robert Wyatt is the coolest man alive. Bar none.

How cool? Well..... first of all, he gave me back my stamps!!!

(The letter came inside a recycled version of my original envelope, with portions snipped away & taped together, the original return address now used as the regular one. Anyways, when I opened the letter, the stamped portion of the original envelope plopped out first, along with a friendly note: "thought you might be able to use these again?".... too cool, I tell you. Just too cool. I'll scan that little note as soon as I can.)

The reply itself was handwritten on a lovely origami design, again composed of recycled scrap paper. I'm assuming (and hoping) that Robert won't mind if I share some selected portions with his loving fanbase......


Hallo Alex -

what can I say xept thank you so much for your very kind thought, and actions

Not doing gigs of course, I don't actually meet or even know on the whole who's out there keeping an ear out for what I've been doing, so it's a relief to get such amiable feedback.

I dare not get too distracted, though: I'm still struggling to get the next things done, etc.

Besides, I'm vain enough already, in my little way! You ask Alfie!

RW

PS. I hope people'll understand that if I don't respond it's just that my communication methods are still stuck in the deep recesses of the Twentieth century!

Robert, if you're reading this...... thank you again for being who you are, and doing what you do.

PS. Robert also wrote a little message on the outside of the envelope.....

"thanks again - it's all a lovely surprise........"

jäxøñ (jaxon), Friday, 19 May 2006 02:42 (eighteen years ago) link

That is pretty funny, and very RW. The owner of his unofficial page, the Strong Comet page, has done good work for a long time and he once received a thank you (birthday related) that I remember he scanned for everyone, kind of similar to this. RW has always come across as completely loveable and charming but difficult to reach.

TRG (TRG), Friday, 19 May 2006 02:52 (eighteen years ago) link

two months pass...
i think the version of "i'm a beliver" on the live disc may be the best song ever

PARTYMAN (dubplatestyle), Tuesday, 8 August 2006 01:33 (eighteen years ago) link

okay, not really

PARTYMAN (dubplatestyle), Tuesday, 8 August 2006 01:35 (eighteen years ago) link

but for tonight

PARTYMAN (dubplatestyle), Tuesday, 8 August 2006 01:35 (eighteen years ago) link

it is nice.

Leave Brintey Alone (Jody Beth Rosen), Tuesday, 8 August 2006 01:49 (eighteen years ago) link

it makes me happy. it's corny to tie it in with the fact that he had recently had such a horrible fate befall him, but it does make me happy nonetheless.

PARTYMAN (dubplatestyle), Tuesday, 8 August 2006 01:53 (eighteen years ago) link

I love it, especially when the band go into "The Laughing Policeman" at the end. Also because the song itself is newly important to me, for personal reasons; second chance at life, and love, and all that (plus the Monkees original was number one the day my other half was born), and it's my favourite singer singing it.

Marcello Carlin (nostudium), Tuesday, 8 August 2006 07:54 (eighteen years ago) link

jess, i wouldn't have pegged you for a wyatt fan, but it makes me happy you are

jaxon (jaxon), Tuesday, 8 August 2006 16:56 (eighteen years ago) link


You must be logged in to post. Please either login here, or if you are not registered, you may register here.