So, looking ahead to next year, how can I and how will I serenade my significant? Of course, I wouldn't dream of singing myself, my Funny Valentine would be decidedly more funny peculiar than ha-ha, but all this kerfuffle has had me thinking time for a mixtape. (Don't panic, not here.) Browsing my cache I can find nine different songs entitled Valentine, in all styles and genres. Expanding that search into wiki and there are hundreds. Too much choice. Way too much choice. But, brainwave, how about bands? Ditching the Valentines, the band, as too obvious (and too kitsch, Bon Scott or not), I suddenly realised what could be more romantic than Kevin Shields and My Bloody Valentine?! But, sez you, MBV never sang a song about Valentines, read the brief. When do I ever, sez I, but, clever dick, what about this? Well, sort of.
Cupid Come (Isn't Everything) 1988
Cupid Come, from their first album, 1988's Isn't Everything, epitomises the paradox of the band, the meld of coruscating guitars, all a sonic maelstrom of dissonance, with angelic vocals and ethereal melody floating over and through the storm. Is that shoegaze, then? I quite never got that term, it seeming always to suggest more a winsome introspection and shyness. Only now, the shame, do I understand it was less the avoidance of audience eye contact it referred to, more the necessary concentration of the array of footpedals, the integral tools of distort. Me, I aways just saw this style as a natural transition from Phil Spector and the Beach Boys, a bit of Byrds even, through to the Ramones and, later, the Jesus & Mary Chain and Teenage Fanclub, the tunes never more pop as the backing goes progressively post nuclear. That works for me.
You Made Me Realise (lead single from Isn't Everything) 1988
It could never be said the band were prolific. With, so far, but three long players to their name, their legacy, influence and allegiances cast a longer shadow. Coming together in Dublin during the early 80s, primarily lumped around Shields and karate buddy Colm O Cíosóig. A fairly fluid line up and a string of releases on minor labels gradually built up their name, ahead of catching the ear of Creation records boss, Alan McGee, he and his label then the pinnacle of the indie scene. A clutch of EPs followed, the sound and the membership still evolving, ahead of that 1988 release. The critical response completely overshot the anticipation: the relatively limited initial pressings soon swamped by demand, cementing their move from obscure favourites to cult treasures. (In truth, overall sales were low, outside the aspirational concept of the indie chart. I don't think many copies made their way across the pond at all.)
The main change was the vocals, now almost exclusively female led, this role provided by Bilinda Butcher, also second guitar, with Deb Googe, another woman on bass, alongside O Cíosóig's drums. Shields, writing a majority of the material was second vocals and lead pyrotechnics, on guitar. The dreamy vocal style was, arguably, a by-product of the recording process, working all hours with little sleep, all thus in a state between tired and comatose.
The band followed this with a repackaged reprise of their earlier fare, with some taster EPs then gradually dropping, to fill the unfeasibly lengthy, and expensive, time being spent in a follow-up. Creation bosses were becoming increasingly concerned, not least by the fact that Shields, increasingly troubled by tinnitus, seemed to be the only one much evident in the process, playing all the guitar and bass parts, with pre-recorded drums acting as the click-track. Butcher still added vocals and the band was still nominally a unit, but this was now increasingly Shield's baby. Fearing a dud, it was with no small relief when it came out in 1991. Loveless was acclaimed with even greater praise than its predecessor, if still only denting the UK and Irish markets. And strangely those of Korea and Japan.
Taken on tour, it was a sign of the acumulated tensions that led to both the band promptly imploding and being dropped by the label. It was all too destructive.
Only Shallow (Loveless) 1991
Shields carried on relentless. Rapidly gaining a reputation as a tortured genius, think Brian Wilson or Syd Barrett, most of this come to nought. Constantly working on and revisioning earlier tapes, adding, subtracting, morphing and melding, it was a full 22 years before it arrived at fruition. Entitled m b v, all four band members are credited, but the participation was often either historical, dating back to the early 90s, or later short term drop-ins to lay down some drum parts or add some vocals. The momentum and demand, the reputation of the band having peaked exponentially during the silence, was sufficient to crash the band website, revived especially for the occasion of downloading the new material. The US press were now on board, avidly avowing, if belatedly, the importance of the band in influencing any number of far more successful and far more famous bands, Smashing Pumpkins and Hole, for two, and made it a feature of many best of lists of 2013. They even toured the States that year, following UK and European dates, if their record-buying heartland of SE Asia had the earliest shows. And, yes, it was the trusty four of Shields, O Cíosóig, Butcher and Googe who regrouped in the live delivery.
In Another Way (m b v) 2013
Since then it has, again, been all promises and hope, several releases projected, including a Shields solo, but never quite making it. But spirits remain undashed, after all, 7 years isn't that long by MBV standards.....
In the meantime, here's an interesting 'explanation' from Shields as to the how and why.
As a middle-school youngster, I used to listen to Harry
Chapin’s Greatest Stories Live like
an addict—sometimes multiple times per day. The second track, “W.O.L.D.,” was
never my favorite on the album, but that didn’t stop me from memorizing every
word of it by heart. Regardless, fellow poster Retropath has already
contributed more commentary about the song that I would have, so I’ll move on
to another radio tribute.
“Midnight Radio” is a song from the rock musical Hedwig and the Angry Inch, written by
Stephen Trask. The version above was first covered by pop-folk artist Dar
Williams a decade after Hedwig’s
premiere as the penultimate track on her 2008 album Promised Land. It’s a moving song of reminiscence for those who
have sentimental emotional memories of feeling connected with the world in a
new way because of the radio (which, it would seem, applies to most people who
read and write about music).
The lyrics illustrate the narrator becoming a star
vicariously through the strong female voices on the radio: “Here’s to Patti /
and Tina / and Yoko / Aretha / and Nona / and Nico / and me.”
I’ve only been writing for Star Maker Machine for a little more than two years, but I was a reader for some time before that. I’ve long appreciated the breadth of the music discussed here and the knowledge and writing skill of many of the contributors, many who have unfortunately long stopped contributing to this blog. I’ve followed some of these writers to their personal blogs, and have enjoyed learning from them. I may not be the best person to write about the history of SMM, and I hope that some of the writers who have been involved here longer can fill in the gaps in my knowledge, but I’m going to kick things off, as we look back before we move forward.
From what I can tell, this blog was started by a guy named Paul under the name “Six Songs.” The first post was on February 6, 2008, and the concept was that Paul was going to post a song six days a week, hoping to engage readers to create a conversation in the comments. The first song he posted was Emmitt Rhodes’ “With My Face on the Floor.” But on March 23, 2008, Paul posted “We’re Taking a Break,” writing:
“Posting a new song everyday is surprisingly stressful, even with the Sunday rest. So we're off for some R&R. We may be back with a new format.”
Four days later, Paul teased the blogosphere with the announcement that he had come up with a new concept, and, on March 28, 2008, he announced the new name, “Star Maker Machine,” posting a picture of Joni Mitchell, and the song “Free Man in Paris,” from whence the blog name came. And then, on March 29, 2008, Paul announced the new concept—that he would open the blog up to writers who wanted to post about music, without necessarily starting their own blog. And, in essence, the SMM journey began.
On April 5, 2008, in a nod to the original “daily song” roots of the blog, Paul announced the first theme, “Days of the Week.” The first song that Paul posted was “Sunday Morning,” by Margo Guryan. I wanted to “go deeper” with that song, for historical reasons, but, frankly, it doesn’t speak to me, even though the album that it comes from, Take a Picture, was described by Allmusic as “one of the most exquisite and appealing, if little heard, one-shot "California" (although actually recorded on the East Coast) soft-pop gems of the kaleidoscopic late '60s.” So, instead, I decided to discuss the different Velvet Underground song, with the same title, which was also fleetingly mentioned on SMM back on April 3, 2010. (I also thought about writing about the SCTV soap opera parody, but decided against it.)
When you think of the Velvet Underground, you think of dark themes, drugs, and kinky sex. You think of Lou Reed’s twisted, literate brilliance, John Cale’s unusual arrangements and instrumentation and Andy Warhol’s peculiar Warholness. “Sunday Morning” is a little different. The last song recorded for the band’s debut, The Velvet Underground and Nico, it was the leadoff track, and an attempt to create a hit single. On an album that included songs like “Heroin,” “I’m Waiting for the Man,” “Black Angel Death Song” and “Venus in Furs,” “Sunday Morning” sounds almost benign and friendly, although there is still an unsettling question about what happened the Saturday night before. It was originally going to be sung by Nico, the German singer who was shoehorned into the band by Warhol, but instead Reed took the lead. The song also features a prominent celesta part, played by Cale on an instrument he happened to find in the studio, which makes the song sound strangely happy.
After the first post, Star Maker Machine slowly began to engage other writers and commenters. It appears that Paul stopped writing for the blog in October, 2008, after posting a Pete Townshend demo of “We Won’t Get Fooled Again,” in a piece entitled “Meet the New Boss, Same as the Old Boss,” to focus on a personal music blog, “Setting the Woods on Fire,” but it appears that blog is also defunct.
As we move forward with Star Maker Machine, we hope to continue to engage, interest and amuse our readers, and maybe lead them to new musical discoveries.
Though I have it listed in my archives as a Jackson Browne cover, this 1967 song is actually the original recording, written by a sixteen-year-old Browne for the mononymic Nico to record, with Browne on acoustic guitar and Velvet Underground chums Cale and Reed on everything else...and only later taken back by the songwriter, as his stature as a performer began to truly take off. As such, as I noted over at Cover Lay Down back in May of 2008,
cover versions of These Days tend to fall into two camps: those that cover Nico, and those that cover Jackson Browne. The former seem more popular among a certain indiefolk crowd, especially after her version lent hipster cred to the soundtrack for The Royal Tannenbaums, calling us back to its fragile, anxious, somewhat spacey sound; you can hear the secondhand influence of Nico in more recent covers from fringefolkers Kathryn Williams, St. Vincent, and Mates of State. Meanwhile, fellow seventies icons Gregg Allman and Kate Wolf clearly have Browne’s slow, simple poetics and clear, open-hearted delivery in mind; so, a generation later, do relative newcomers Denison Witmer, Fountains of Wayne, and Tyler Ramsey.
But as others have pointed out long before me, the bifurcated trunk of the musical tree that is These Days versions is relevant to an evolution of song not only because of the curious history, but because the choices made in each version affect the meaning of the song. And here we are not just talking musical interpretation, either: Nico’s version is lyrically different as well as musicially distinct, and the lost second-person subject of the penultimate line, the focus on belief (I don’t think I’ll risk another) over feeling (It’s so hard to risk another), changes the narrator into someone more narcissistic, less historied, and — some believe — less believable overall.
Our new theme this week is a bit tricky to define precisely - we're not looking for cover songs; we're looking for songs written by recognizable songwriters, artists known as performers in their own right, but which were originally recorded by others - but more common than you might imagine, given the tendency of many artists to start their careers as songwriters and small-scale performers, famous within the music community before they record their first record, not to mention the wont of some famous artists to pen songs for other voices as a sort of side-project. Not all thematic entries will have as rich a history of coverage as These Days, of course - some songs that fall into this theme are never recovered by the original artist; others are, but don't end up standing on their own as well in the hands of others. But it can be a delightful surprise to uncover authorship in these cases. I'm certainly looking forward to seeing what the Star Maker community comes up with.
A few days ago it was over 70 degrees in Minneapolis. This morning (read: afternoon) I wake up to snow?!?! Shesh...
Quite disillusioned by that smirking trickster, Mother Nature, I simply don't have much to say. Nico's glacial delivery seems to express my feelings well. -------------
"Roses In The Snow" is an outtake from either The Marble Index (1969) or Desertshore (1970), released on the 2007 compilation The Frozen Borderline.
Star Maker Machine does not accept music submissions from artists or promoters. However, most of the contributors here do accept submissions for our own blogs, listed below. Please visit our blogs, take the time to listen to what we post, and then feel free to contact us if you feel that your music would be a good fit.
