Julian Cope, Drude

"Tends towards dance"??? How?

I love pretty much all the Teardrops' records and the first two solo J Cope albums. After that the drude-trip seemed to be summed up best on Jehovahkill and everything else kind of fell into that record's shadow.

His output's been a bit patchy since, say, JEHOVAHKILL, but he's still capable of the odd fantastic single (the last great one beging "Try, Try, Try"). PEGGY SUICIDE remains his finest hour for my money.

I heard a single by Brain Donor and wasn't especially impressed. The joke seems to be wearing thin.

I've only experienced a few Teardrop/Solo Cope songs (standard issue chart stuff from 80s, early 90s). However, I have read his brilliant biography "Head-On", this guy is quite a character.

Tom, when i say "dance" i mean the poppy bubblegum 80s kind of stuff. But you and Alex are right where i'm at; both those albums are great. Have either of you checked out any of the stuff that's only available on his website (headheritage.com)?

Derek, yeah, i've been looking to get that -- always interesting perspective. ¥

Hi Christoff,

it really is a GREAT read, the copy i have came with the second half of his bio, "Re-Possessed, attached. while i've heard "Re-Possessed" isn't as good as "Head-On" i'll definitely get around to reading it...someday!

Almost forgot this, but the fixation with Julian Cope is how i found Freaky Trigger.... i think. Until a few years ago, i'd just search "julian cope" over and over in various search engines to see what turned up. The lists that Tom & Ned wrote for the '90s both had Cope mentions, and eventually the blog section on pop music that simultaneously frustrated and amused me became a regular read. It could just be an implanted memory.

Jehovahkill is superb. Best Cope album. Fer sure. Maybe. 20 Mothers was last solid album for me. Interpreter too produced.

Brain Donor is a godawful mean joke. I rather wish that he'd let that trip flutter away. His megalith projects i understand, the platform boots, the weird wigs, and the double necked guitars, yes, groovy.... but he has too great a gift for stealing and cannibalizing melodies to be mucking about with music relatively unconcerned with melody.

Repossessed is still quite good, even if it doesn't have the flush of his discovery of music and immersion in a scene as in Head On. Cope need not even record a new pop oriented album if he sheds the Brain Donor project, and could write the third book that chronicles the '90s.

Wasn't there some kind of stab at dance with the remixes of Peggy Suicide's "Head"? He seemed to hate baggy though with "Bagged Out Ken" one of those toss-off obscurituies probably not worth mentioning, but....

Jehovahkill is the single best and most complete thing he's done. A lot of the other projects are single minded explorations of a specific style rather than trying to knit his interests together.

Of he various instrumental albums the 2 Rite albums are best. I like Braindonor but again its a fairly narrow appeal and aguably not what he does best.

There is a CD of 5 recent songs thats about 50 minutes (Audeience With The Cope) that he was selling at gigs thats pretty good. Floored Genius 3 has some interesting songs though they are fairly loose.

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badger -- Yeah, i've got a couple remix albums from the Peggy Suicide/Jehovakill era and East Easy Rider alone has at least three different mixes. The thing is, i sense that these are more motivated by getting a groove on than by presenting a dance mix.

tigerclawskank -- I've been considering the Rite albums as well as Odin. The Floored Genius 3 album sounds like it might be worth it, and the (demo quality) Floored Genius 2 BBC Sessions sounds real good, too.

¥

I haven't heard Odin yet so I can't compare with Rite. The QE2 albums are pretty good but not as much as the Rite ones. I think the QE2 albums are (I think) largely improvised (with Thighpaulsandra) and so there are some slightly less enthralling passages.

Floored Genius 2 is pretty good, its mainly radio sessions and so mainly different versions of songs from albums. FG3 is songs he never released so they have the advantage of being new but some of them are bit throwaway.