Joy Division's "The Only Mistake" is proto-shoegazer music?

Someone who posts here must have some cash lying around. Start a label and churn them out, damnit!

I'm VERY glad I got those mid-nineties reissues when I did. Marvellous stuff, and perhaps I will listen to Sleep No More now (followed by Phaseshifter, as I muttered to Pash earlier...actually maybe I'll reverse the order).

This hurts me in my heart.

Comsats as protoshoegazers? Nah - drums too big, band not posh fops, too much kinetic energy (WFAM), potential energy (SNM), and pop energy (Fiction).

Comsats as protoshoegazers? Nah

Yeah, I was gonna say -- I relistened to SNM last night and was thinking "Shoegaze this isn't."

This doesn't square with Isn't Anything.

Listen to "Restless" and the title track.

I love how the Comsat Angels did one straight-as-an-arrow breackneck tune ("Home Is the Range"), left it as a B-side, and never did anything like it ever again.

However, what I think you and Tim might be suggesting is what Stripey noticed with the new Perfect Circle album -- as she put it, there's a lot of gaze-related stuff there but it's all about the difference how the songs are mixed, what is prioritized and what's buried, making it sound very unlike gaze by numbers as a result. So if that's what you're saying...?

so out of not wishing to see my shoes and reminding myself they might have needed some work, i've fallen out of the habit of looking at my shoes altogether -- so i don't understand this clothing label any better than turtle-necks

so they could be playing really complicated and interesting music requiring immense concentration, hanging around front of their amps getting their feedback spot on, some musical reason.

i guess they could be really boring, sad, awkward, unwieldy or un-rythmic people too. Perhaps they're just bored with their job.

i mean it seems like a bad look for a "rock" band -- i used to think "why don't they just sit on chairs ?"

was no-one expected to be dancing ? were fans' footwear fashions influenced by the bands ?

sorry barry, I don't think I've heard that song, I'll go look it up, I'll probably be of little use to you though as I only have an idea of what shoegazer is rather than an experience. in fact, I may then actually be of more use to you than this ingrained lot. : p

As for "Dark Parade"/shoegaze: A dirge (until about 3:40, at least) with leaden thuds, resigned vocals, and bursts of violent guitar. Were there not songs by Catherine Wheel, Ride, etc that are built and played somewhat similarly? (Hardly saying that these bands knew the first three Comsats albums inside-out, though I wish it had been the case!)

Few talk about more than the sound of the guitars when discussing shoegaze bands. Why? For instance, how much of a record would Nowhere be without those drums?

The Catherine Wheel comparison is actually pretty apt -- in the SNM rerelease Jack Rabid notes that he compared their song "Ferment" to the Comsats' "After the Rain" and CW fully appreciated and loved said observation! But then again the Catherine Wheel were never gaze as such to me either, though certainly I heard about them as part of the general coverage of the time -- Dave Thompson in MM, with his review of Chrome in particular, crystallized for me how they felt/worked more like the Chameleons, which given this thread is also an intriguing take. Overall, I sense fellow travellers rather than a closer grouping, like and yet unlike.

Waiting is still my favorite of the first three albums, I have to say. SNM is strong, certainly -- you can tell the impact from covers as opposite/apposite as Martin Gore's "Gone" and Silkworm's "Our Secret." But...I don't know, something intangible separates that and Waiting clearly for me.

Colbert is K.Moon RoXOR type drummer (or at least thinks he is) : looser, more feel than precision. The other three are 'pattern' drummers - less about feel and forward motion, more about working to a set template. Budgie = the most versatile (reggae/dub and tribal/burundi as well as machinerock styles). Glashier = the best at integrating the unexpected into the overall band sound, and Lever = not really that goood.

To return to the original question - The Only Mistake was one of the songs that they ran out of time in finishing at the Unknown Pleasures sessions, otherwise it would probably have made it onto the album. Certainly the band regarded it as equal to any of the UP songs just prior to the release of the album. They played it live quite a bit in mid 79, but it disappeared from the set after it didn't get on the album. I reckon the Hannett production here is fairly shoegazey -the guitars obv, but also the thud/pulse of the dulled snare and kick drum. MH took this further on the Pauline murray and The Invisible Girls album, although the drum sound is different, everything else is indistinct and filtered. A great album.

MH took this further on the Pauline murray and The Invisible Girls album, although the drum sound is different, everything else is indistinct and filtered. A great album.

Without question. I was so happy to find that used one day, even more so to actually hear it!

Surely 4AD (Cocteaus, DCD, Dif Juz etc etc) is a better link between Pink Floyd and Slowdive?

I still don't get it, except that apparently i do have to accept it; "shoegaze" is a genre name. Will have to search more as to the origins of this term. To me it seems a rather arbitrary term, possibly a "scene" term, but in the long view, how useful can that be ?

I don't care what the band look like while they make the music, since mostly i want to hear them (OK theartrical elements are nice but so rare as to be in-consequential to be useful as yardsticks to any qualities inherent in music, let alone to make distinctions with).

The term may have a visual basis, but extending that to a genre, surely bands with all sorts of sounds might be shoeqazers visually. Obv. this term has gone on to mean a lot to a number of people, as some bands have been obv. lumped with this term, but that doesn't make the term any more meaningful except as historical accident. On a visual basis, early Talking Heads could have been said to be shoegazers, for instance. And weren't Magazine initially heralded as the "second wave" or "new wave" of punk ? Really, how useful is the term "new wave" in pidgeon-holing Magazine today ?

I say lumped because this thread evidences disagreement as to what actually makes such'n'such "shoegazers",
eg, cozen :
..I'll probably be of little use to you though as I only have an idea of what shoegazer is rather than an experience ..

so dirges, precision, looseness, blurry lyrics, a particular drum sound, "peers" from Ned (no, no, that's not _really_ a scene we're talking about !?), or even better "mouth-agape out-of-body thousand-yard-stare"/ "emotional connection"/ "restraint" as "is" or "is not" reasons in Clarke's post.

(is there some defn. somehwere please, or) is this more a case of "who can we call shoegazers ?" and does this have to do with a certain time/scene and sound that has emotional and maybe sentimental resonance ? Some posters upset at some bands being called shoegazers .. some posters assuming such'n'such were .. other arguing about nuances of various bands sound ..

to an outsider, it seems to be all about shoving a seemingly diverse bunch of bands with certain somewhat common characteristics into a vague and certainly musically meaningless pidgeon-hole, a so-called genre with strong emotional ties to some people who OK may have agreed in the past on this term but apparently may not like music they like being binned using this term now.
eg: **most of the Factory catalogue is proto-shoegazer***
This hurts me in my heart.

there's no consensus as to what makes a shoegazer band, but plenty of argument over the merits of various bands seemingly on the cusp. It's a negatively overloaded term too, a term some posters seem to want to distance their faves from.

Please point me to some concrete defn of this term. Is it a virtue or a sin to be shoegazing ? Looking at this thread, "shoegazing"
seems to be an insider or sentimentalist term at best, a term still in transiton, still being defined in transit, a term that seems to upset respective fans, but also a term that in both its vagueness and usage resembles the sorts of names teenagers call each other in schoolyards.

How is "Ferment" like "After the Rain"? Fucking brilliant songs, they are, but I don't see it...though I can see the build-up of "Ferment" as being somewhat similar to "The Dark Parade" (which always struck me as a bit Doors-y, from the title to the gloom).

Barry, I've got some soap right here for you to wash your mouth out with. No need to thank me.

most of the Factory catalogue is proto-shoegazer

Yeah, and Bush is a great president, etc.

I must say I'm deeply sad that it took me another month or two after this fascinating thread began to even discover ILM.

I've never been able to see precursors to shoegazing anywhere else but Cocteaus and the "4AD sound" in general, though to a certain extent I can see where Barry was going with the guitar sound on The Only Mistake. But I find it hard to believe any shoegazer would have heard that song and suddenly thought "yeah! This is how we're gonna do it!"

I'm delighted to know I'm not the only one here who:

a) worships Comsat Angels' Sleep No More - Christ, Barry, please tell me you took Ned's urgent advice TO GET IT NOW

b) has the Pauline Murray & Invisible Girls album - which, though I don't think it quite works as a complete whole (I don't think her voice is very good to be honest), has a real badass bit of Martin Hannett bass playing on "Time Slipping". Move over Peter Hook!

I wasn't trying to imply that this was the case. In Feb 2004, it was fun to look back on a 26-year old tune and think "what do you know, JD had a bit of a shoegazer thing going on years before that scene came about". In all likelihood, there is no causal argument to be made connecting "The Only Mistake" and shoegazing, unlike the Cocteaus and shoegazing, for example. But in that respect, it's interesting to note that "TOM" predated the Cocteaus by four or five years, hence my comment about ten posts into the thread (i.e. I wasn't implying that the Cocteaus took their guitar sounds from JD either).

And I did end up d/l'ing "Sleep No More" and some of "Waiting on a Miracle", but unfortunately, neither of them made much of an impression on me.

ah well, time for your beatings.

You know, one of those things. But I believe we don't have to go to those extremes. There is such a thing as rehabilitation. First time I heard Can, they didn't do a damn thing for me. Be still, Ned, I believe there is hope yet for Barry.