Gary Numan--Cult Hero or Crap?

Actually I object even to the upper element in the choice we're given here: Cult Hero implies that even the best he'll get includes reservations. I love him without reserve.

"Can yer see 'is lickle eyez-ah?"

Old Fart!!!!!

Old Fart!!!!!

However, don't veer into his mid 80's material and onward (pretty much anything after "Telekon), as the quantity of worthwhile material sharply decreases.

*sniff*... this is pretty sad. Well, actually, it's hysterical. As is the above post. I mean post!!! btw, this is my first ever question posted the day I discovered ILX!!! Funny, I never gave my promised "well-considered answer".

There are over 300!!

*shudder*

If they didn't come out so close together, I would say that Ric Ocasek probably listened to some Tubeway Army. If you don't think so, check out "My Shadow In Vain", especially the breakdown.

Telekon is OK and the only other one I ever heard was I Assassin, which I found on vinyl for cheap and it is pretty bad, kind of reminds me of the first Underworld record that is also terrible. The biggest problem with these two albums is that the drums are no where near as funky, the songs are slower and Numan starts to go for a symphonic synthy sound.

(i say "classic," but i have a soft spot for robotniks and Bowie clones)

we'll take a taxi to the show
we could report by phone
we could remind ourselves that WE...MUST...LAUGH

Remind Me To Smile, that is.

A song that appears in my head about every three weeks on average.

Reconsider fame
I need new reasons

the tubeway army albums and the pleasure principle are awesome and completely unassailable classics.

I bought Dance a week ago and I'm completely entranced by Cry the clock said and Stormtrooper in drag. I know the obvious Cars etc. but it's the only Numan I own so no grandiose statements about his genius.. yet.

old fart had a blog??

Let The Boys Out

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ISUUdHffVYc

i don't have much use for his stuff from the mid-90s onwards (there, i said it -- though it's nothing personal, i don't go much for pseudo-metally/NIN-ish stuff these days), but i have come to rather like sacrifice.

I liked Sacrifice a lot at the time. When i saw him do his greatest hits tour in 96/97 whenever it was he played a few tracks off it. My favourite was the 2nd track on the album I think it was.

Guys, you have to hear Pure and, if you like that, Jagged. They're awesomely bleak! And the choruses are massive sandstorms of thirsty power.

The first three albums were all rather good. As for the rest......

STORMTROOPERS IN DRAG IS THE BEST SONG HE EVER DID DON'T LOOK FOR IT ON A PROPER ALBUM ETC

Listen to the production!!!!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qk9r-UPyvFY

I'm sweating now. Wow.

God I bet it only costs 50 billion dollars to have that on vinyl.

Gary Numan--Cult Hero or Crap?

Well, technically, Gary remains a cult hero whether you think he's crap or not.

But he's not crap. YOU ARE!

Sorry, it's early and that's the best I could come up with at this pre-caffeinated hour.

Alex in NYC! You have graced ILX with your presence again! I'm speechless. I'll check out that goddamn Alice Cooper greatest hits right this minute, I swear. I don't want Santa leaving me coal in my stockings. There was something about Killing Joke here on ILM recently though, that I can't recall...

I liked Sacrifice a lot at the time. When i saw him do his greatest hits tour in 96/97 whenever it was he played a few tracks off it. My favourite was the 2nd track on the album I think it was.

this. that is a solid and really emotional album. I mean, I know the line on GN was alway robotic/android and of course he did a lot to cultivate that, but the songs often had a warmer/hotter core than they seemed like at the time, or that's how it seems to me.

Both Dance (widely panned on release if I remember) and The Fury are underrated, though for many the saxophones may be a barrier.

STORMTROOPERS IN DRAG IS THE BEST SONG HE EVER DID DON'T LOOK FOR IT ON A PROPER ALBUM ETC

it's on Dance

You're a bastard! No it is NOT!
Not on my vinyl!

It's on the Premier Hits comp that Beggars released in the late nineties as well as the rerelease of Dance that followed that. And said album is quite great; The Fury I remember being less than thrilled by. Sacrifice is very good!

Liar! It is not on the Dance LP.

xpost - sorry Ned I've got a bone to pick with mister John D. here

Yes on a CD of course well I've never bloody owned the damn Dance LP on CD.

I wish I had The Fury, though, I remember liking that quite a lot.

What the hell is "Dead Heaven" on though?

Too drunk to google? You bet.

Look I've got OK Computer on my iPod at last so don't fuck with me okay?

But why? Why did other people have Dance on CD and I didn't?

i was gonna say that "stormtrooper in drag" is on my CD version of dance. (i also like the st. etienne version, which i heard before i heard the original numan version.)

if i had to pick one numa-era numan CD, it would be either berserker or strange charm (for "my breathing," one of his more underrated songs).

then again, strange charm also has "the need," which is probably numan's worst song ever (other than anything off of machine + soul).

Fuck yeah, Berserker.

somebody should make a t-shirt of Matthew Perry and Lisa Kudrow etc all posing while plugged into a wall and shooting off sparks under the title "Are FRIENDS electric?" and sell it to people for the 5 minutes that it actually seems funny.

Gary Numan has been on an RV trip out here and has been livetweeting it. Which explains this:

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BOmWU9MCIAAIKQZ.jpg

My day has been made.

Boy, Dance is an underrated album, isn't it?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B5UVIiXM_HY

Dance is quite possibly my favourite Numan album.

What album is "Muzig vor... gameleons" on?

Oh God. I just looked at that picture and read Numan's feed and now I want a Numan cover of "Holiday Road."

that picture needs to be added to the 'pictures where people have figured out how to live' (or whatever its called)

What album is "Muzig vor... gameleons" on?

― Tommy McTommy (Tom D.), Thursday, July 11, 2013 6:12 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

It's on I, Assassin, which is the album after Dance.

Ned, you have made my week.

This I did not expect

https://www.facebook.com/GaryNumanOfficial/photos/a.146356118757563.28686.128507877209054/804414429618392/?type=1&pnref=story

"some of it's mine, most of it's not. here's marge"

Ha, that's brilliant!

Listening to Strange Charm now and surely 'My Breathing' must be one of his most blatant Bowie rip-offs... he's essentially taken the middle 8 from 'It's No Game' and written an entire song around it, and the last verse is all like "wah, why won't Radio One play my records anymore?" ... the rest of the LP (apart from maybe 'I Can't Stop') isn't very good, IMO... 'The Need' in particular being terrible.

Yeah, that's the one where I finally got off the bus after seven years of being a Numanoid. "New Thing from London Town" was great on its original single release but even that got botched for the LP as I recall.

Anyway, I thought the revive would be to note that he just turned 59 yesterday. I see he's playing with John Foxx later this year, that would be worth seeing.

Isn't there supposed to be an album due out this year? I know he's been working on something that was initially supposed to come out last year, but I dunno what's happening with that now.

Thing is, I actually really like Metal Rhythm... it's basically the only album of his I'd keep from the 1984-1993 period. Maybe the odd track here and there from the other albums during that period, but I think his songwriting lacked inspiration for many years.

yea he's doing some Kickstarter/Pledgemusic thing, can't remember which is which. album should be out in 6 months or so. though these things always go over schedule. good news too since I happened to think his last one (Splinter) was his best since Telekon, or maybe Dance

for the record I always thought Berserker was the one to save out of his...uh...less good years. love the title track on "Strange Charm" though.

Splinter was incredible, his best album since either Pure or Sacrifice for me, even though some days I might even prefer it to be both of those. It's well produced in a way that his stuff since 1994 hasn't always been.

plus the songwriting is quite diverse, which you can't really say about any of his other late career albums

It was a huge surprise given that he'd talked the album up for years as this huge, gloomy, noisy sonic monolith, like it was going to be a more extreme and uncompromising version of Jagged or something. Thank fuck that didn't happen!

i loved the recent documentary re the Splinter recording/release process.

(at least i think it was the Splinter album .. )

Very good new interview with the man in the latest Tape Op magazine. Goes in deep re: his recording processes, production etc

Been blasting in cars

That Numan interview is really good, he's such a self-effacing musician.

Any suggestions for tunes to check out on his later records with Ade Fenton that are discussed in the Tape Op magazine articles?

in my experience all his stuff is worth the dig, especially in the age of youtube/spotify -- Warriors is great to my ear, the bass is all slinky/warbly/possibly fretless? I suspect so stuff that I really like. if you were around for Cars the first go-round, it's a little hard to square the Numan of Telekon/Pleasure Principle with how much he grew musically, & I think this is down to how little he grew vocally. He has the same vocal style he had in the Tubeway Army all the way through, to my ear...but as a musician, as a songwriter, he goes through truly daring changes from album to album -- New Anger is one thing, The Fury quite another, and so on & on. But there, at the center always because it's so distinctive, is the same sound. So the ear tends to find that as a focus, but to me these days the vocal lines are more -- decorative? While musically, I'm still finding new things to like on so many of his records.

If you end up going all in, the live album from the New Anger tour, The Skin Mechanic, is especially good imo.

Ah yes the live version of Young Heart is pretty special. I think New Anger / Metal Rhythm is unjustly overlooked with some great stuff on it. Don't Call My Name sounds like it could slot neatly into a David Lynch soundtrack and Voix should've been a single.

I like all of the Beggars Banquet albums (yes, including Warriors which I hated for a long time until I finally managed to adjust to what Gary was doing on that record) - I like Metal Rhythm a lot and find it to be a very underrated record. Then of his recent phase: Sacrifice, Pure and Splinter. All the others I just cherry pick one or two tracks from.

Ah yes, and Dead Son Rising - love that one too. In hindsight, the recent one (Savage) was underwhelming.

I didn’t know until today that Tape Op has a digital subscription! So that’s happening for me today.

My Numan thing has been to slowly creep forward with a new point on the timeline every few years. For decades Tubeway Army/Replicas/PP was the corpus for me, then I got with Telekon in the 00s, that was a very easy and thrilling add; Dance I digested in the 10s and I don’t think I’d have been able to grok it if I hadn’t gotten into Japan in the meantime. This past year I finally got I, Assassin and I’m still coming to terms with it tbh. I like its soundworld a lot but I do find at this point that his choruses are too often stamped from the “We Are Glass” template of long breathed whole note and half note melodies with portamento-ing monosynth.

when in the right mood, I really enjoy Pure.
I have a 2cd live set from that era, Scarred.
because they released a LOT of live albums, and they were selling them off at Fopp for £3 each, and I just picked one randomly.

So many great tunes, and I ask: what was his presence -- college radio and otherwise -- in America 1979-1981?

Can only speak for commercial radio, it was just "Cars" over here, and it was inescapable in early 1980.

can I just say what a fucking phenomenal tune "Complex" is

still yet to find anything that makes me feel like that song does

"Muzig vor gameleons... muzig vor gameleons..."

Despite attempts to change his signature sound with fretless bass and terrible sax playing and whatever, his stuff is so samey - I mean I like it, but listening to a whole batch of it you very quickly notice its limitations. Of course, the music's all written around his extremely limited vocal range, which doesn't help.

limitations are good

LOL @ his US chart record, "Cars" got to #9 and "I Die: You Die" climbed all the way to #102. I didn't even know there was a #102.

haha yeah wait how low does that chart go

"debuting at #572, it's..."

I Die: You Die is better than Cars

And it goes to 200, no?

Excuse me, "I Die: Yo Die". His singles are great.

those limitations have defined his career from the start, someone (maybe on here?) mentioned that The Pleasure Principle was like 10 different takes on the same tune and that's really stuck with me, actually makes me like the album more

I was really into Pure (his 2000 album) for a while until I realized that he was doing the same trick on nearly every track, you could drop in any chorus on any tune at it would still work

his latest two do seem to mix it up a bit more for what that's worth