Cardiacs: Classic or Dud?

Yes my friend. Yes you do need to acquire the Garage concerts. Everyone needs this album. It's got a horrible title, a bad cover and the concept behind it sounds pretty lame. I grant you all of that. But it's a couple of dozen awesome Cardiacs songs you don't know yet, plus a handful you do know, performed with ferocious intensity.

It's like one of those Zappa albums where it's live with tons of overdubs so you barely register the liveness except here and there or when there's a distant cheers at the end of the song. They should've packaged it like Zappa did- without all the "LIVE IN CONCERT! - US DOING OUR ANCIENT MATERIAL YOU DON'T REALLY CARE FOR". The marketing of the album really sucked. The contents are great.

My favourite, play-it-three-times-in-a-row-almost-every-time song on Guns is "Sleep All Eyes Open". Especially the last bit. I can never work out how the hell they do what they are doing without fucking up. After that it's Clammy Lammy, then all the rest.

oh look, the Garage concerts are on iTunes

Sleep All Eyes Open is amazing but for some reason it's the one song that never gets stuck in my head *rechecks* oh wait no it does, sometimes. The bit starting at 1.45 especially. Another slow-builder! Mixes minor and major chords in a quite ridiculously good way

God, the synths in Clammy Lammy...and when the bass drops as the sax piles in...and the key-changes...

Arghh, now I want to hear the weird extended dirge bit at the end of "Jitterbug" again. Fuck it, I'm just going to have to put the whole album now, aren't I?

I'm cueing this up to listen to this on my walk home. Havin' an old fashioned Guns parteee!

it'd be nice if it wasn't just us folks having the love-in time after time but i'm not gonna complain :D

hang on why is Is This The Life playing, killitkillit - damn with Eating In Bed instead of that song ALM would've been something

(the reason it's playing or rather was playing is that I listened to Wind And Rains Is Cold, marvelled at how ska can be done so goddamn well, and headed for In A City Lining which also takes ska by the short 'uns and shakes it into something transcendent)

the garage concerts are indeed great.

can I just mention that I have the seaside on cassette? OH YES. much as the production on this album is very thin and ropey (prob. not helped by the format), it features TO GO OFF AND THINGS in its first incarnation and is therefore beyond criticism.

have frugged to that song live - can't remember for the life of me what it sounds like, but it is intense

my favourite *REALLY* early Cardiacs song is the Stonehenge recording of their introduction/farewell fanfare - one keyboard playing the most beautiful hymn, band hold hands and sing -

Holding these things in my hands, and I
End up singing everything

...it's the only manifesto they or anyone has ever needed

xp it sounds a bit like this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9N3RZqcYxXY

I've got Mares Nest live already! But yeah :D

Holy fuck those interview snippets! Sarah's description of what happens when you die is one of the scariest things I've ever heard a musician say!

And oh yeah, THAT'S what it sounds like. FRUGGGGGG

lol his hair

Alternatively, it could sound like this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-YtFI6AAZ4U

FRRRRRUGGGGG

newer version is of course tighter + louder but then this is a band who released the ditzy scene ep a mere 30 years into their existence

'To Go Off...' was the start of it all for me. Ten years ago, my bandmates at the time were huge Cardiacs fans, and one of handed me a copy of Mare's Nest. Being a huge Monsoon Bassoon fan, I'd heard OF Cardiacs, but never actually heard them, as bizarre as that sounds.

"this is OK," I thought. "not bad. nothing special. don't really see what the fuss is about. oo, hang on. I like this fast one."

AND THUS A SEED WAS PLANTED THAT BECAME A FAIRLY SIZEABLE WILLOW.

my face is on fire

^^^drunk posting to the cardiacs thread = behaviour that should be encouraged imo

if you can cure my hiccups then by all means inform me of the brilliance of this band alternatively I can sit here hiccupping my fucking head off

if you play this song very loudly, and dance to it, then you will not have hiccups any more

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MLoe4DGT3hk

haha it's just struck me, even while sober, how fiery gun hand must sound like literally the greatest thing ever while drunk

at the moment it's all blah blah the clean who cares about them we just saw Broken Bones they're so old

I have:
Guns
A Little Man..
On Land and in the Sea
Sing to God pts 1 + 2

One of the best bands I've ever heard, of course. What else do I need to hear, from their whole catalogue, or from side-projects/Cardiacs family? Acoulethic?

Haha, I'm not the one to ask (re: Cardiacs, we'll get to the family later)! Because I'd basically name everything you have there + the Ditzy Scene single. As a few posters intimate upthread, the Garage Concerts (available on iTunes) are totally worth getting hold of, and I'll be giving them a proper listen in the immediate future.

As for the family, well

um

Unknown, vaguely Cardiacsy prog-pop that only MaresNest and I actually like

The Sea Nymphs
Tim Smith's Extra Special OceanLandWorld
The Monsoon Bassoon
The Shrubbies
Bill Drake Solo
Stars In Battledress

For starters anyway.

Excellente! Thanks, if only I wasn't on ratio watch..

Katherine In a Cupboard
Ring
Zag ANd The Coloured Beads
Ad Nauseum
KnifeWorld
Ablemesh
Levitation
Lake Of Puppies
Sleepy People
North Sea Radio Orchestra
Mikrokosmos
Buntychunks
Mad Uncle Jane
Hayestack
Brain Of Morbius

Send me a PM Davek and I'll post you over some bits.

yeah even I haven't heard most of those - the ones I have heard tend to be the ones that didn't originate as Cardiacs side-projects, mostly because I have a slight suspicion of side-projects

everyone assures me that The Sea Nymphs are great though so yeah I need to get hold

The Monsoon Bassoon and Stars In Battledress are of course awesome, the former more so, although the latter have some stellar moments (as it were)

oh look some more bands - have only heard Zag & TCB (GREAT TRULY GREAT live) and Levitation (groovy psych-prog-shoegaze)

Sea Nymphs albums are truly great, like mind fuckingly great.

ah, ok

i guess there's not much chance of me disagreeing either, is there

None more up your alley LJ. :)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TbxzUhk7R5c

i dunno to be truly up my alley it needs a bit of mindmelting distortion or grandstanding darkness here and there ;)

ooh ok let's give this a go

(and by 'distortion' i mean 'sonic fuckery', at which point it becomes a serious statement and not a joke)

wow @ the piano in the midsection

this seems to be music of small treasures, falling somehow together in an organic and bizarre way

Katherine In a Cupboard
Ring
Zag ANd The Coloured Beads
Ad Nauseum
KnifeWorld
Ablemesh
Levitation
Lake Of Puppies
Sleepy People
North Sea Radio Orchestra
Mikrokosmos
Buntychunks
Mad Uncle Jane
Hayestack
Brain Of Morbius

Ha, that's basically everyone even vaguely connected to the band, isn't it? I think you'd struggle to find material from most of these, particularly Katherine In A Cupboard, who only had one song ever officially released on a compilation.

Add these ones to the list:
Stars In Battledress, aka the brothers Larcombe, who produced one incredible album of psychedelic whimsy-pop and have been rather quiet since
Ponce - possibly the most obscure of all the Cardiacs family bands - lasted the duration of one fantastic single, "Runny".
Arch Garrison - North Sea Radio minus the Orchestra.
The Trudy - One of the few bands from the early-eighties Richmond scene to've been around as long as Cardiacs(the band their original drummer left to join, in fact).

Then there's Mr & Mrs Smith and Drake - the prototype Sea Nymphs, basically their psych-folk album recorded on four-track.

Oops, now I see Stars In Battledress have already been mentioned. Carry on.

Let's not forget the fantastic Silver Ginger Five. The album Black Leather Mojo is two or three Wildheart, Jon Poole on bass PLUS William D Drake on keyboards and is produced by Tim Smith. Doesn't sound anything like Cardiacs though. More like a Cheap Trick/Slade vibe and it rocks.

i nearly bought that from an HMV once but chose something else

then it was gone

regrets, i've had a few

It's always been difficult to find. It was one of the most expensive CDs I ever bought. Originally it was a Japanese import which sat in the Virgin Megastore untouched because of it's nearly $100 price tag. Eventually it got reduced to half price and I took the plunge. What a relief when it turned out to be good.

wdve been 12 quid, right there

Then there's The Trudy. Formed by early Cardiacs defectors, they are still around and recorded some stuff pretty recently with Tim Smith at the controls. The songs in question are on their myspace page.

btw am listening to the Garage RES right now...

...much punkier than the 80's version! Cardiacs are a band who got punkier and yet more epic at the same time

Theres a third version of RES? I much prefer the version on The Seaside to the Little Man one. I think it's because I've watched the video so many times.

The Seaside is the latest one i managed to find at a decent price (is 20 pounds decent?) RES followed by To Go Off and Things, I can't think of many better ways to end an album.

Would say it doesn't quite have the same miraculous momentum of the ALM version (and hey, I DID vote for it in the ALM poll), but it's a darn good live rendering. Little is lost, and it's a fresh perspective.

RES into Whole World Window is pretty damn spectacular. My favourite end to any Cardiacs album is actually Snakes A-Sleeping, because much as Will Bleed Amen is amazing and Secret Like Swans lovely, they need to be indexed as separate tracks, dammit

Haha, The Obvious Identity is straight-up punk! And really good straight-up punk at that. Nice.

(Obviously The Everso Closely Guarded Line is right up there with S A-S, but I prefer the latter for some reason)

Versions of RES:

The Seaside (both versions)
A Little Man and A House And The Whole World Window
Nighttracks (Janice Long session that came out on vinyl)
Mares Nest Live CD
Special Garage Concerts

And there's a video for it on the Seaside Treats thing, which if memory serves is slightly different to the version on The Seaside.

btw I'm still annoyed 'Is This The Life' won the ALM poll. all 4 people who voted for it, I reckon, have heard VERY little other Cardiacs, let alone the whole album