Robert Quine

np quine/maher "basic"

While doing some recording a couple weekends back we got stumped trying to figure out a guitar part on one song. I played the solo on 'Love In Spurts' to explain the feel for my friend to try on the part and it ended up influencing what we recorded.

RIP.

there is quite an informative site here.

Even if he hadn't been a damn good guitarist, for the VU set last year alone he deserves credit. RIP.

RIP

His squeals and weals, his steers off-road and up-neck. His lurches and car crashes of sound; his conjured explosions and high twang drifters.

Terrible news...

it is.

Anyway, let the anecdotes begin: anyone else hear the story of the '74 or '75 Richard Hell tour with the Ramones in the UK, where - older and crankier than his tourmmates - Quine allegedly throttled whatever gobbers dared spit on his nice guitar?

(message ends)

'Don't Look Back', 'Sweetheart' (1990)

'Tell Your Sister (The "L" Word) (1991)

'Like Lovers Do' (1995)

'Man on the Verge' (2000)

or many others.

yeah, he didn't have a management/PR structure of any kind that would get his name out there…and not that I knew him, but certainly I knew enuff people who knew him to attest that his pride, combined with his dogged belief that Raw Power and Agharta were the last remotely good records ever made, would have prevented him from working steadily… he was surly as fuck, and Lou Reed (or Sylvia) signs the checks, so he would have been the one that gets to be surly… I don't imagine Mike Rathke would get awfully testy…

xpost - one eye open i bet that is exactly right

I fucking love that Harris/Quine LP, very cool and unique sound

definitely one of my favorites, I didn't know the ending of the story was this sad though.

I sold my copy of "Escape" back when it was way out of print and going for good money, it was interesting but kinda not my thing, but different strokes.

Basic and Escape sound a heck of a lot more contemporary to me now than they did when I heard them back in the late 90s for the first time. Back then I kept thinking - you know this would sound so much better with a full band - now it kinda just sounds like how more like how music is made. You got to pay to get sample packs that sound that grungy, that's an upgrade now.

Sorry, thought I'd already linked this, which incl. lots of Quine talk, esp. lately:
Lou Reed: The Blue Mask

Hadn't seen this interview before!
https://www.vintageguitar.com/2918/robert-quine/

also:
For this feature we spoke with Quine’s bandmates Richard Hell and Ivan Julian, his longtime collaborator Fred Maher, songwriters Matthew Sweet and Lloyd Cole, disc jockey and author James “the Hound” Marshall, and others. Times good quotes from The Man Himself:
https://www.premierguitar.com/artists/forgotten-heroes-robert-quine

that vintage guitar interview is fantastic. what an articulate, self-aware guy he is there. and what a scholar of early rock guitar. tremendous.

That’s a great interview. His mention of Mickey Baker brought to mind Andrew Hickey’s “A History Of Rock In 500 Songs” podcast episode on “Love Is Strange”: https://500songs.com/podcast/episode-49-love-is-strange-by-mickey-and-sylvia/

I was listening to that episode while driving. My surprise at hearing that Baker had studied with Xenakis — and hearing one startling result of those studies — almost made me drive off the road.

wonderful, thank you for posting

Speaking of Quine and guitars, I remember reading eons ago that during the Voidoids tour of the UK (opening for the Ramones, maybe?) he would get into fights in the audience with gobbers for spitting on his vintage Strat.

just another thank you for that Vintage Guitar interview, really cool

like, I love how he casually drops this

After the Velvet Underground, there hasn’t been much that influenced my playing. There are three, however – Iggy & the Stooges, Raw Power; Miles Davis from ’72 to ’75, and Brian Eno’s On Land from ’82.

(can you spot the one that's different?)

Thanks to sleeve for recent Television thread remynder of this one!

Ikue Mori | Robert Quine | Marc Ribot ‎– Painted Desert [Full Album]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-vGHBqept3Q

Think the interview in here is already linked above, but had not seen this whole slew of tributes, memories etc of friends, fans,collaborators, on Perfect Sound Forever, also a link to one fan's Top Ten Quine solos, and links to other RQ mentions:
https://www.furious.com/perfect/quine/index.html

Not related to Robert Quine's passing, but he was related to W.V.O. Quine, who is maybe one of the Anglosphere's five or ten most influential philosophers of the 20th century. Funny to think that one of the original punks was related to a distinguished Harvard professor.

Just realized that info was already posted upthread

Misleading title, since this new piece is mainly about stompboxes, but good mention of grooving with Quine:

Stompbox Shopping with Robert Quine
Pat Irwin

That was such a great read, thank you Dow

Nice! Hadn’t heard the Art Garfunkel story before

i'm not super familiar with quine's work, but when i was putting together my beatles cover project, i was really taken by the quine/harris version of "yes it is". i wouldn't call it "angular" or any of those kinds of words that often get used to describe quine's playing (tho i don't have a problem with "angular" as a description!). i just think it's really good.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FLejh80bsVM

Starting to finally think more clearly of what angular might mean after all these years. Yeah, he would never be angular, too much early rock and R&B in his playing combined with the outsideness– some of the outside quality comes from early rock!

Rock ‘n’ roll, yeah rock ‘n’ roll

Wouldn’t call Ivan Julian angular either

Feel like angular means hardly any blues influence, hardly any direct European melodic influence, classical or otherwise, and no distortion but maybe a chorus effect

Does anyone really know what's meant by angular though? I think of Andy Gill as angular and he comes out of Wilko Johnson, so plenty of blues there.

it's all that tolkien

Lol

Some people say it means big intervals instead of small

https://forums.stevehoffman.tv/threads/define-angular-guitar.76043/

I would say the Love Comes in Spurts solo is "angular," to me. I'd put the leads from, say, Safe As Milk to be in that category as well, as another example that's definitely blues based. I guess I'd say it is playing that is at angles with the key/mode that would be expected for the song.

Not trawling through some Hoffman link to find out but as well as the above I'd say playing at an angle to the rhythm, however you want to define that. Arto Lindsay, for example, just plays across the whole thing.

it's a short thread! allow me to summarize:

It's a weak descriptive adjective with no real meaning. It's a horrible rock critic cliche whose user is too lazy to actually "write" what he means.

Yes, it's a bad description. I think the writer means that the rhythm guitarist is playing single lines instead of strumming the entire chord at once

btw I fucking love Quine's playing on the Voidoids LP. I always took the original "angular" to be the post punk dry clean guitar sound, eschewing effects, e.g. Entertainment! and Crazy Rhythms.

Arto is a perfect example!

I think of angular to mean lots of syncopated phrases with space in between, and probably using a lot of dissonance too.

Yes I think of it as meaning staccato/chugging guitar parts or like erratic arpeggios or something

I don’t think Lindsay is angular - he admits he can’t play guitar traditionally and treats it completely as a percussion instrument; angular guitar isn’t really *just* that

Angular guitar has too many notes that are purposely played.

I've always thought of Jay Graydon's solo on "Peg" as the ur-angular guitar break.

nothing more angular than the waves of fear solo though.

btw I fucking love Quine's playing on the Voidoids LP. I always took the original "angular" to be the post punk dry clean guitar sound, eschewing effects, e.g. Entertainment! and Crazy Rhythms

otm, yeah i think a lot of people habitually deploy "angular" when what they're really responding to isnt the playing but a certain sharp piercing tone

I've always thought of Jay Graydon's solo on "Peg" as the ur-angular guitar break.

i always like seeing this thread revived. what is it about quine? his obvious insecurity, his obvious talent.. i think we all sometimes think of ourselves as quine-ish (self aggrandizingly, perhaps)

Lol

Angular to me was using tritones, diminished or augmented chords that literally have the notes going at an angle on the fretboard. They are not minor or major more going for dissonance.

Like that opening chord of Liars Beware and the licks that follow.

I listened to the back half of Girlfriend today, which Quine dominates. Talk about an okay pop record turned into a great one thanks to Quine (and Richard Lloyd and to a lesser extent Lloyd Cole).

point of order: talk about a great pop record turned into a SUBLIME one, etc etc (one does not need to belittle Sweet's achievement to celebrate Quine and Lloyd imo)

ha, fair!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xp-5V3PJ90E

Ah yes