Julian Cope - Mad Genious or Acid-singed Yoyo

You can also treat this as a Search and Destroy thread if you like.

Great, wonderful, but I suspect he might be too intense for me if I lived with the guy. ;-) Dorian's put up with him all these years, though, so hey.

The putative modern world/car trilogy -- Peggy Suicide, Jehovahkill, Autogeddon -- is pretty damn sweet, while his first two albums, World Shut Your Mouth and Fried, are equally worthy. He's never really shy about his sources but he's done a good job at stamping his own style onto them all. The autobiographies are both eminently readable. By all means avoid My Nation Underground, one of the worst consciously 'commercial alternative' albums late-eighties style released. Thankfully he regained his senses.

For those who are interested: Julian Cope: Search & Destroy

I dunno Ned, you gave My Nation Underground an okay review on AMG. Personally, I like it a lot. Sure the production might be suspect, and as you said, the album thus lacks Cope's vision, but it avoids the meandering and excesses of his self-produced later work. It's as good as Saint Julian & World Shut Your Mouth at least. The typical 80's production is kind of charming I think. I have Droolian and Skellington and etc. and I think this record is a lot more fun. But then again, I always strongly favor "pop." I think that when a highly creative and indiosyncratic artist is reigned in by a producer and comes up with an album that said artist professes to hate, it is usually a good sign that the album will be worthwhile. It's a good kind of tension i guess. "China Doll" is a great song too.

To answer the main question, I lost interest after Jehovakill for some reason (maybe the whole new age space alien hippy image he got into), but the body of work up to that point is good. Really I prefer the earlier stuff, up to MNU, but if you like more stoner oriented prog/psyche tinged stuff you will like the later period better. Peggy Suicide is good too but I actually think it sounds more dated at this point than MNU.

I seriously need to check out some of his more recent output, because I'm really only familiar with the Teardrop Explodes albums and his mid-80's solo records.

Actually, I was just listening to Wilder last night when drifting off to sleep.

I dunno Ned, you gave My Nation Underground an okay review on AMG...

I *did*? *rechecks review quickly* What in the...Andy Kellman, change that goddamn 4 1/2 star ranking now! (I should note that the 'star' rankings in the AMG never come from the reviewers -- Andy K can explain why.) I'll allow for the fact that there's a potentially great album in there somewhere, but that the end result isn't it.

i met him in hyde park before we marched on traf sq as part ov anti- poll tax demo - he was either squubsy or big baby

rock-a-doodle YOU !!!!

Jeesus Geordie. You sound as if you not only did more acid that he did, it sounds lik yer doin' it right now! ;-)

What would you rate it, Ned?

The ratings do often come from the reviewers, though many freelancers have the tendency to suggest 4.5 star ratings for every single thing they review. And, when 1200 reviews come in each week, it's possible that a few ratings don't receive the proper adjustment until an editor comes along at a later date.

Give it a 2, I'm feeling generous.

Jehovahkill is one of the greatest albums ever. Definitly classic.

i always thought he failed miserably to live up to his own hype musically. from what he says in interviews, & his interest in krautrock & space rock, you'd expect his music to be far out & cosmic, but it's not. in fact it's dissapointingly ordinary. very basic rock music with a few token squiggles of electronics was all i could hear. i think most people really get mixed up & mistake what he actually is for what they want him to be. fried was ok. couple of nice tracks on there. apart from that - very dull. maybe he should actually listen to the bands he raves about before he makes another record? definitely not a genius in any dept. he 's an entertaining & well thought out performer, but an acid singed yo yo would probably make more interesting music.