Sky: C/D

From a certain point of view, everything Sky did is pretty funny; except for when they were actually trying to be funny. The liner notes were horrible enough in 1982; now, they're simply excruciating.

When I was a teenager the idea of any instrumental rock band had seemed hopelessly outmoded and lame, regardless of how good such a thing might be on its own terms, which is why I put my Sky records away.

They still seem to me to be about as uncool as a group can possibly be; what I'm interested in is whether the shifting tides of musical fashion in the past 25 years have made them seem any less ludicrous.

i heard 'westway' on a mix recently and was surprised to learn that it was these dingburgers. pretty good song - odd, sleek & funky, sounds like something that could actually have been on sky the label. so i bought the first album today for one pound and frankly it's mostly about as revolting as i expected. i do quite like the version of gymnopedie no. 1 (not quite as goofy and disconcerting as the one that gary numan did at around the same time though) and 'cannonball' seems to have something going on, blandly cheesey yet also sort of chewy. haloumi prog. did they get any better after the first album?

Maybe Tristan Fry led them more in this direction, what do you think?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MhJw5gOHJOg

individually maybe theyve all been involved in some good things? herbie flowers on walk on the wild side, the first couple of curved air records are great, I've got some solid John Williams records. Still don't know who the heck kevin meek is though, his name is too dull for me to want to google

i met someone once on a music course in maybe 1981 -- p sure he played guitar and he worshipped williams and he LOOOOOOVED sky, he described a live show he'd seen where he said the audience were just mad for it and crazily clambering the walls and hanging off the balcony and all this and that

his other fave was status quo, i have never forgotten this person

I always hated Kevin Peek, never could figure out why. Then he died and I read in an obit he was running pyramid schemes back in Oz later in life, and I felt vindicated.

Anyway Sky were complete dogshit, even Francis Monkman's prog epics weren't all that. And the sleeve notes are the worst kind of pseudo-wacky public school arrogance. Even Geir Hongro doesn't like them! Yes, that bad.

the saddest headline that also tells the whole story:
https://www.news.com.au/national/western-australia/small-funeral-for-disgraced-sky-guitarist-kevin-peek/news-story/84a764d9ee8aff479a5334f4f9359490

Francis Monkman was also in Phil Manzanera's "What'll I do while fucking Ferry makes one of his solo albums" band 801.

"we are the central shaft!"

Hate hate hate Tristan Fry's drumming, it's a classical percussionist's idea of what rock drumming is, really clumpy and stiff

In short: dud

thirteen more years pass…

It is quite funny that he's Sky's Tristan Fry though xps

Don't know if there was any shared personnel but another record I associate with Sky is Andrew Lloyd Webern's Variations. Except that kind of rocks

that's mostly colosseum II i think (he says before checking)

plus herbie flowers!

Lol he truly did play on every record in the 70s

correct

I like the idea of Andrew Lloyd Webern

cazzeck

It is quite funny that he's Sky's Tristan Fry though

Awesome.

i've just realized i've mixed up francis monkman and morgan fisher again

anyway. francis monkman did do some work with robert wyatt early on, so points for that i guess, even though none of it strikes me as being particularly _good_ work.

this is bad but i don't really think it's exceptionally bad; just sounds like mannheim steamroller to me.

Monkman made some decent library music for Bruton just before and overlapping with the start of Sky.

For a brief moment, aged 15, I wanted Sky to be my new favourite band. But even I was heavily editing Sky 2 when home taping it off a borrowed copy of the record.

imo monkman's library music is better than karl jenkins', but not as good as geoff or trevor bastow. (geoff bastow does have one of the saddest wikipedia pages i've seen; the artiste behind 'music to varnish owls by' deserves better)

Yeah Monkan's Tempus Fugit album on Bruton is some primo high-energy library music with lots of cool harpsichord and synth flourishes, but Geoff Bastow's Tomorrow's World on the same label is one of the greatest library albums full stop

Monkman also scored ‘The Long Good Friday’...”what a diabolical liberty”...

the monk man also played the synths on brian bennett's deeply classic space disco album 'voyage (a journey into discoid funk)'

rewatching the long good friday for the first time in many years -- the soundtrack is so daft and so great

Sky might be the most embarrassed-looking band to ever appear on TOTP

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yt4ieZrcZsY

smily kevin peek in the centre planning his scams