The The: C/D, S&D

I love MIND BOMB (specifically for "Good Morning, Beautiful" and "Gravitate to Me," but Matt Johnson's finest hour is largely thought to be his debut, SOUL MINING. My fave remains "Sweet Bird of Truth" on INFECTED, tho'.

Classic!

That's a monster masturbating into its own mouth?

Mind Bomb/Infected/Soulmining/Dusk/Hanky Panky/NakedSelf/Burning Blue Soul.

The first three are largely interchangeable, but they're all you really need.

I read somewhere that Matt Johnson is pushing to release Infected, The The vs The World and From Dusk to Dawn on a single DVD.

That pretty much tops my current DVD wants list!

HMV are selling these at £4 or £5 each, so thus I am tempted, but indeed have the originals.

Really surprised to see the majority in here not too impressed with the Johnny Marr era of the band. I love everything up to and including Dusk, but Mind Bomb and Dusk are easily my favorites.

I loved Doran's interview with Johnny Marr where he says, "When are you going to get back together with the most innovative and creative musician of our era (pregnant pause) - Matt Johnson!"

'Icing Up' from Burning Blue Soul came on my shuffle earlier and I had no idea what it was - sounded like some crazy Teardrop Explodes-meets-Smiths-in-psych-jam odyssey. Johnson's voice isn't a zillion miles from Cope's, in fact

Anyway, it was great

you're right and it's true

Listening to the whole album now - my god it's something isn't it? Think I might prefer this to much of The The

Nice review on Cope's site: http://www.headheritage.co.uk/unsung/review/474/

tons of great stuff from the "lost" album (The Pornography Of Despair) between BBS and Soul Mining ended up on B-sides. that's my favorite era - "The Nature Of Virtue", "3 Orange Kisses From Kazan", so good.

yeah, well the song's so completely jammed in my head imma post it here

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TrGJd29p72U

hear ye

Soul mining is the worst name for a record ever. I hate the sound of melodicas, accordians or whatever is happening in this song. I hate fiddles mostly unless in the context of dexys or van morrison. but "this is the day" is a good song.

I heard this and somehow I knew that his name is matt johnson, in the same way that I somehow know that John of the Book of the Apocalypse or Revelations or whatever it's called wrote it while on the island "Patmos", even though I can't remember what I ate for breakfast two days ago

I like this song. it makes me want to smoke clove cigarettes and quit my job.

great post. Perfect is his best bad but truly great song

heh thanks for the recommendation. I will look it up

i feel like all great songs that i connect with are similarly flawed? now I know how God felt when he created that world while on that bender. 4AD was a weird label in retrospect. how do you compute modern english, cocteaus, the the, red house painters in one accounting book? that's just straight-up, buttoned-down madness.

Pixies, Throwing Muses, Wolfgang Press ...

yah, the list goes on. wherefore, Ivo? What is your throwing muse?

make sure you hear the ten-minute 45 of Perfect - it's utterly transcendent and one of the best ways to start the day ;)

this is my jam:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kGoFClbrZS0

Del, I can't tell if you're quoting some goofy Amazon review or are sincere. But that record is damn near 'perfect'.

http://www.huckmagazine.com/art-and-culture/film-2/matt-johnson/

So is "The Inertia Variations" 3CD set all or mostly instrumental?

Seems to be a mix of covers by others, instrumentals, soundscapes, interview snippets and spoken word bits

https://www.thethe.com/radio-cineola-trilogy-new-boxset-announced/

holy crap that looks amazing im super stoked to see this!

and it genuinely pains me to see him speak about singing and playing his old stuff like this... the last tour was just so so so amazing

I've never forgotten seeing him perform on the Dusk tour. They started with "Sweet Bird of Truth", and after an extended intro, Johnson suddenly appeared out of *nowhere*, rasping "Six o'clock in the morning..." - really thrilling stuff. And meanwhile, Johnny Marr is at the side of the stage, all "Don't mind me, I'm just the guitar player." Good times.

i saw the tour with the auteurs supporting.
(not that they completed the tour of course !).
i loved the dual microphone thing : normal vocals o the right hand side, and then the distorted vocals on the left.
dont think we had marr on guitars by that time as it was quite a while after Dusk, but it was still very intense and absolutely fantastic.

as much of a fan of The The i am, this boxset does not interest me in the slightest.
i love the 2017 RSD single, its definitely classic The The, and so i want a lot more, but spoken word pieces/demos/instrumantals etc just do not interest me in the slightest no matter how gorgeous the packaging is.

of course this all makes my one missed opportunity to go into full on fanboy mode all the more painful.
many years ago, i was in london for a rare 'event' (freelance hellraiser at bigsexyland as per sorted out by our very own doran), and the day after i was very hungover so ended up going for hair of the dog with a couple of extras.
i then spotted matt over the other side of the beer garden.
my knees started to shake, and i told the crew i was with re my hero worship.
they egged me on.
a little later, i saw matt then head to the bar for more drinks (or so i thought), and after some more nudging, i eventually thought 'f*ck it .. ' and headed in the direction of the bar.
only to find out he had not gone to get more drinks, but left the pub.

really looking forward to the upcoming shows.

Saw him tonight. Singing along to Love Is Stronger Than Death, Dogs of Lust, Slow Emotion Replay, the whole side a of Dusk actually, Armageddon Days, This Is the Day, is so so Classic. The sound was a bit too low, the beginning was a bit uncertain, he is not the biggest name in Denmark so having him on the main stage meant a lot of people were confused, but I'm so so happy.

Awesome. who is in the band?

I honestly don't know, not much information in the festival program. Perhaps other reviewers knows, I'll keep you posted. The keyboardist really ruled on Uncertain Smile.

this is the band lineup now: https://www.thethe.com/comeback-special-lineup-revealed/

no johnny marr unfortunately but a good sampling across the eras.

Earl Harvin rules.

re todays statement.
what a fucking hard thing to have to deal with.
and what a beautifully worded statement.

???

yeah, what?

A Statement from Matt Johnson: pic.twitter.com/ZmGyo7eeYa

— THE THE (@thethe) June 2, 2018

thank you ned.

wow. heartbreaking.

Official live album/DVD out October:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y4W_pLvLUS4

Curious, I just checked in with his social media and ... still anti-vaxxy. Sad.

World tour to be announced, surprised as I thought his health was very bad

https://www.thethe.com/ensouled-world-tour-2024/

Huh. Didn't Johnson have a voice destroying throat infection or something? Also, didn't he have a bad case of COVID conspiracy brain?

dunno, I missed all of that (the covid thing; saw your previous post). I did think his voice had been destroyed though.

Would it fucking kill him to put out some new music or just release some of the scores of unreleased albums he made during the 80’s/90’s?

tbf he fucking released like seven new albums and dozens and dozens of other new compositions and an unreleased album from the 70’s between 2010 and 2020 without fucking dying, and given what happened last time he tried to put out unreleased music from the 80s and 90s he actually might not fucking be fucking able to

"This is the Day" is one of the top five songs to open your veins to. Had he done nothing else, that song would cement his place in the pantheon.

he's collecting money from Guardians of the Galaxy so likely doesn't feel compelled to over-release things that musically might not measure up

Dusk is still one of my fave albums of all time

It’s a shame he’s devolved into a “do your own research” internet weirdo but maybe he was always that way. I have no desire to see him again saw the 93 Dusk tour and there’s no way he can match that 30 years later. Would buy a vinyl repress of Dusk though.

"Dusk" tour was incredible, I remember it better than I remember the two "NakedSelf" shows I saw (which were also good). Wasn't able to see the last tour, but the concert film is pretty good!

Some decades ago I interviewed Matt Johnson. Don't remember much about it, but as a gift the publicist sent me a cool autographed promo photo. I always meant to get it framed, but kept forgetting, and every time I remembered I meant to do it I for the life of me could not find it. On multiple occasions I more or less went through every single place in the house, every closet, every receptacle for accumulated clutter or stuff I'd collected (I found six old issues of Slash magazine!), every shelf, every storage bin, everything, everywhere, I just couldn't find it. I was so stumped I started to suspect I *did* bring it somewhere to be framed but then forgot to pick it up, but that's not like me.

I had resigned myself to never seeing it again for so long that I once again forgot it ever existed. But yesterday, putting away some plates ... I found it! After 20 years!! Like, hanging with some plates and a couple of candle holders in this dining room dresser thing we have. But why was it there? Matt Johnson, why were you hiding with some plates and a pizza serving platter and some seldom used candlesticks? What were you thinking, you jerk?

Anyway. Now I've found it, and it was like this latent psychic burden I'd just gotten used to carrying suddenly lifted. Have you ever wanted something so badly that it possessed your body and your soul, through the night and through the day?

Lol

haha amazing

Yes, my mom told me years ago that when she was a young 'un she and a friend went to Sun Valley ski resort and were lounging in the outdoor pool when who should saunter by but Farley Granger, matinee idol of the day, whose PR person saw a good photo op and took a picture of him and his adoring "fans." I scoured the internet for years, looking for images from those old movie magazines (it wound up getting printed in one of them) to no avail. And then! When I was clearing out my parents attic to move them into their retirement community I opened a box and lo and behold, a perfectly preserved 8x10 glossy of the pic which I of course had framed forthwith, and post to social media every Mother's Day.

Whoa, from "Strangers on a Train"? That's cool.

New album! An actual album of new songs, not a soundtrack or a reissue. And tour dates! All at thethe.com

First single sounding pretty good. The The are still a band for whom the word "brooding" might have been coined:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=biD-AmPI-Y4

Tour months, not tour dates.

"The album also marks the return of co-producer and engineer Warne Livesey, who previously worked on landmark THE THE albums Infected (1986) and Mind Bomb (1989)."

This is great news. In addition to being Johnson's two most brilliant collections of songs, those are two of my favourite *sounding* albums.

These look remarkably like tour dates to me xp:

https://www.thethe.com/tour-dates/

Not sure about that new single but I think this, only from 2020, was just wonderful

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6HQ33Jq3-KE

The dates 404’d from the home page this morning (but I got them from his email, and they’re playing six blocks from me, whee)

No talk of the new album? I think it's really really great, though I'm afraid to parse the politics too closely. One of the more potentially dubious songs, which seems to maybe have an anti-vaccine undercurrent, he claims to have written under the influence of morphine while he was recovering from his near death experience, which might have been around the same time he posted a couple of questionable things to social media. I'm not sure that's a defense or an excuse or what. Anyway, the album is great, I think, probably his best since Dusk, not that there have been many offerings since then.

its really good! i liked naked self but this is good! his lyrics are still corny as hell. excited for the tour - the lineup is sick.

Everything I heard sounded really good but yeah the lyrics scared me away. Though I'd already bought a ticket for the tour, so will be seeing him in a few weeks.

It's good, and definitely has a "Dusk" vibe, but I was hoping for some of the industrial / aggro effects that "Naked Self" displayed.

...wasn't expecting to hear The The in Megalopolis

Band was predictably great last night. Nice hearing the new album in its entirety, probably made a few fans that way. 2nd set of hits and career highlights, Matt Johnson was in great spirits.

Just watched a rip of the Infected film - another archaic BBFC 18 certificate I don't quite understand (the brief murdered businessman smearing blood down the window I guess?) - while contemplating what a big deal it apparently was. Period charm is definitely enhanced by looking at the original box art and seeing critics pointing out how shocking, intense, popcorn-dropping it is, though knowing so many of the stunts - sticking the loaded gun in his mouth, filming in a brothel in a dangerous district, and especially everything unscripted about the Sleazy shoots in Peru - were real adds a bit more of the desired verve. Most watched The Tube special ever apparently! The music's incredible ofc.

Never seen From Dusk 'Til Dawn, not as a film anyway, or really know how to short of buying another VHS player. It seems much obscurer.

Is this streaming somewhere?

iirc there wasn't any more to it than the individual videos, which are on youtube.

I watched it on Internet Archive - https://archive.org/details/the-the-infected

Indeed not much more to it than the individual videos although as I was partly watching it for UK classification research I had to go to the source (or the closest thing to it - it's a rip of the US tape)

It's on youtube, too, right? What makes it a "film" and not just a collection of promo clips, is there a narrative or anything? Anyway, I think the official The The site has been dusting things off on occasion. Not posted by them, but I just found this, which is cool (and Marr on guitar):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UA48RPyBkOI

it's a "film" inasmuch as it was originally shown and broadcast as a whole.

yeah it's the album in sequence with videos for each song in order

Then they all ostensibly hyperlink up - in an abstract sense - in The Mercy Beat.

Going from the 'track list', as it were, From Dusk 'Til Dawn seems to be much more of a sculpted thing

Did not touring Soul Mining lead to 1986’s Infected becoming such a huge multimedia project? Or was it always your intention to move THE THE into other mediums?

It was a combination really. There was a lot of pressure on me to tour Soul Mining but I knew it was gonna be very difficult to recreate the album live. CBS weren’t very happy with that, but I stuck to my guns, rightly or wrongly. Going into Infected, there was even more pressure to go out on the road, but the way the album was developing, I knew again it was going to be very difficult to do it justice live.
So, Stevo twisted CBS’ arm to fund a long-form video album, on the proviso I would take it around the world in place of a tour. And I have to give him a lot of credit, he really hammered them, and they gave the equivalent in today’s money of well over a million pounds to a young up and coming artist to fly to South America and New York to make a film.

I imagine it must be a real source of disappointment that the Infected film hasn’t been commercially available since its video release in the ‘80s?

Yes, it is. We did some screenings a couple of years ago at the ICA in London, which were very well attended. The afternoon of the first screening, I went down there by myself to watch the film through to check the sound. It was the first time I’d watched it for decades and it looked so intense and vivid, I was blown away.
I’ve spoken before about my ongoing problems with Sony, but the fact is I’ve never received a royalty from all the records I’ve sold. Those old deals were just so bad – we all know the story, it’s not just me, it’s across the board. I actually ended up worse off from the 2014 Soul Mining reissue as all the remastering and repackaging cost were put onto me. So when they asked me to work on an Infected one I said, Why on earth would I want to do that? It’s a bit frustrating because it would be nice to remaster not only the Infected film but also the Versus the World and From Dusk ‘til Dawn films too and get them back out there.

https://wesleydoylewrites.substack.com/p/people-need-hope-beauty-and-truth

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uKt6xh7KT8k

If I absolutely had to pick a favorite from Infected, I'd probably go with "Out of the Blue (Into the Fire)". I hadn't ever seen the video clip before, and its last couple of minutes are every bit as grim and affecting as I could have imagined. What an artist.

"Sweet Bird of Truth" has forever been my Infected favourite but I've listened to the album so recently and "Slow Train to Dawn" has emerged as a very close second. Interesting that it uses a Motown-y rhythm - and there are many examples of this in UK pop at the time - but without it at all coming across retro/blue-eyed soul/pastichey/worthy. It's a bit like how northern soul is routed in "Reward". Also, it never really occurred to me til now mid-80s Mode-y the title track can feel - both it and Mode's" Pipeline" share the idea of some extra metal thwacks sporadically coming in immediately before the next bar without any decay, like a boxed-in sample (which in the latter is unavoidably what it is). Whole album is a fine piece of production regardless of how excellent and honed the songs are (which they are).

POV

The Nature Of Virtue
Flesh & Bones
Perfect
This Is The Day
Uncertain Smile

everything after the Infected era leaves me cold, I'm sure this is my problem not his

I share the same problem.

This Is The Day got three plays by different djs at a mostly dance music festival i was at a couple of weeks ago