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Cocaine Decisions

Started by Depressed Beyond Tables, May 04, 2018, 03:40:11 PM

Previous topic - Next topic

marquis_de_sad

I'm not sure about the effect on the music, but Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young were pretty notorious for their cocaine use.

QuoteDavid Crosby: "Cocaine came into the picture right when we started to make the couch album [in 1968.] The people who first gave it to us said it wasn't addictive. [Laughs] We were idiots. We didn't have a clue. Music is an elevating force. Cocaine and other hard drugs take everything down: the level of consciousness, the level of conception, the level of performance, the level of humanity, your ability to be empathetic, your energy, your spirit. All that shit gets dragged down. It's a horrible drug and it has a terrible effect on your psyche and your work. The more we did it, the worse things got. I hate the stuff. I hate the years I wasted doing it."

Cocaine was occasionally an obvious subject matter, like in the Crosby and Stills song 'Cold Noses'.

Spiteface

Quote from: purlieu on August 04, 2018, 02:25:15 PM
Helicopters are fine (nay, great), but the outro of DYKWIM really bores me. It's not really enough, just a minute of dull backwards guitars. On the opposite end, 'Magic Pie' is a shite song made worthwhile by its ridiculous outro. I wonder who it was who came up with a load of wibbly noises and some jazz organ for that.

My favourite part of Magic Pie's outro is the part where Noel yells "SHUT UP!!!" at someone before the jazz organ kicks in.

mrpupkin

Why doesn't Noel Gallagher in 1997 (for example) wake up the next day feeling very sick and reverse all his cocaine decisions, that's what I dont get.

Gonna delete a few of these guitar tracks actually lads

a duncandisorderly

Quote from: mrpupkin on August 05, 2018, 08:48:39 PM
Why doesn't Noel Gallagher in 1997 (for example) wake up the next day feeling very sick and reverse all his cocaine decisions, that's what I dont get.

Gonna delete a few of these guitar tracks actually lads

blow or no blow, he's one of those blokes who finds it very hard to admit he's wrong about anything.

purlieu

He probably had a few more lines before he'd even remembered that he was recording an album.

momatt

Quote from: buzby on August 03, 2018, 08:44:47 PM
It's not got any heavy, subsonic bass on it but there wasn't much of that around in club music in 1983. Even the 1995 Hardfloor remix/remake doesn't add that much more to the lower frequencies apart from an 808-style kick instead of the DMX one.

Blue Monday 88 on the other hand should be erased from existence. It was a slapdash remake (the original masters were missing for a long time) to keep Quincy Jones happy and to pay off a massive tax bill and has dated horribly. The only good thing to come out of it was the promo video.

Maybe the problem is I'm comparing it to modern tracks?  But I still think it sounds thin, compared to something like Donner Summers 'I Feel Love', or most disco.

I assumed it was mixed while they were on coke, as that messes up treble sensitivity.  But perhaps not.
It still sounds thin and horrible to me.
Maybe I should seek out some alternative versions.  I've got all the downloads of the fan-made Recycle remastering project.  You know that?  It went to insane lengths to correct all sort of things like bad mastering and off-centre pressings.

Blue Monday 88 in indeed utter bollocks.  Those vocal samples are horrible.

gmoney

Quote from: a duncandisorderly on August 05, 2018, 09:07:59 PM
blow or no blow, he's one of those blokes who finds it very hard to admit he's wrong about anything.

I don't know, he seemed very down on every single video (and about half the songs) he's ever been involved with in this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rfNqyjZcleI

buzby

#37
Quote from: momatt on August 06, 2018, 10:50:51 AM
Maybe the problem is I'm comparing it to modern tracks?  But I still think it sounds thin, compared to something like Donner Summers 'I Feel Love', or most disco.
To be fair, Moroder got Robbie Wedel in with his massive multi-oscillator Moog modular system to do I Feel Love, and there's no way New Order's 2-oscillator Moog Source was going to compete with that. Wedel also pioneered the use of a sync track that allowed them to sync the Moog's sequencer to the multitrack, keeping each track perfectly in time - something New Order didn't have at the time (though Hannett's friend Martin Usher had built them a sync box that allowed them to sync Bernard's kit-built Powertran 1024 sequencer to the DMX).

A fairer comparison would be Patrick Cowley's mix of Sylvester's You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real), which is where the 'inspiration' for Blue Monday's bassline comes from.

Quote
Maybe I should seek out some alternative versions.  I've got all the downloads of the fan-made Recycle remastering project.  You know that?  It went to insane lengths to correct all sort of things like bad mastering and off-centre pressings.
Yes, I'm well aware of the Recycle blog and it's output. It's a shame it all got shut down due to the Rhino remasters that turned out to be shite on the most part (not to mention the bonus discs full of mastering errors and vinyl rips with audible pops and clicks FFS). All they had to do was put out the FLACs that The Power Of Independent Trucking had assembled for each release.

momatt

Quote from: buzby on August 06, 2018, 11:34:44 AM
To be fair, Moroder got Robbie Wedel in with his massive Moog modular system to do I Feel Love, and there's no way New Order's Moog Source was going to compete with that (Wedel also pioneered the use of a sync track that allowed them to sync the Moog's sequencer to the multitrack, keeping each track perfectly in time).

A fairer comparison would be Patrick Cowley's mix of Sylvester's You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real), which is where the 'inspiration' for Blue Monday's bassline comes from.
Very true!  But something good to aim for.  New Order would have had fairly decent analogue synths at that stage surely?

I'll look that tune up now.  I love a bit of Patrick Cowley.


Quote from: buzby on August 06, 2018, 11:34:44 AM
Yes, I'm well aware of the Recycle blog and it's output. It's a shame it all got shut down due to the Rhino remasters that turned out to be shite on the most part (not to mention the bonus discs full of mastering errors and vinyl rips with audible pops and clicks FFS). All they had to do was put out the FLACs that The Power Of Independent Trucking had assembled for each release.

Cool, I figured you might be.  Let me know if you need any of the downloads.
Though amazing, it obviously wasn't going to last forever.  I think they finished it all before the shut-down though?

It's so stupid when little guys in their bedrooms do better jobs that 'professionals'.  Reminds me of the amazing fan-work done to restore the Star Wars Trilogy.

buzby

Quote from: momatt on August 06, 2018, 11:45:18 AM
Very true!  But something good to aim for.  New Order would have had fairly decent analogue synths at that stage surely?
Unfortunately not - they were skint after Rob Gretton got them to invest their royalties in the Hacienda (which opened in May 1982 - Hannett quit Factory at that point as he wanted them to buy a Fairlight instead of a club). Hooky recounts that they were still on a wage and struggling to pay utility bills until way into 80s (which is one of the reasons BM88 exists - they got a tax bill for £250k, despite never having seen the money as it had been going directly into the Hacienda).

The gear used on Blue Monday consisted of the Oberheim DMX (which they had just bought, and both Blue Monday and the PC&L version of 586 grew out of their first experiments with it), Simmons SDS2 analogue drum synth, Sequential Prophet V, Moog Source (sequenced off the Powertran 1024 sequencer) ARP Quadra and an E-Mu Emulator, which was their biggest purchase to that point (Gretton decided they should buy it after hearing it being demoed in a Denmark St. music shop with a sample of a Harley Davidson).

The ARP Quadra was bought early on to replace both the Powertran 2000 kit-built monosynth and ARP Omni II string synth they inherited from Joy Division and was getting increasingly unreliable (you don't see it in the TOTP performance, as the strings are being played on the Emulator). It soldiered on until 1985 but was largely replaced with the arrival of their pair of Octave-Plateau Voyetra 8s in 1984. It's retirement meant they could no longer play any of the Movement-era tracks like Procession live though, as they relied on it's unique arpeggiator.

momatt

Thanks for the information on their gear history!
So some digital stuff for the drums (not that digital is necessarily bad), but that Moog should be able to make some decent bass sounds I'd have thought?
Probably comes down to the final mastering as much as the gear though.  Plus it's personal preference too. 

I'll check out some other sources for Blue Monday and see if there's much difference.

SteveDave

Quote from: Tombola on August 04, 2018, 12:12:23 AM
Another shout out to 'Be Here Now'. Could have done with 2 minutes off each track, and 200 guitar tracks off each track.

I did an "edit" of it a few years ago. https://www.mixcloud.com/SimonLove/bhn-sls-2016-rethink/

Obviously I've not got access to the masters but I cut all the dull songs and trimmed the others.

I put the hilarious "Aaahh!" from "Fade In-Out" in the middle of "D'Yer Know What I Mean?"

buzby

Quote from: momatt on August 06, 2018, 02:25:49 PM
Thanks for the information on their gear history!
So some digital stuff for the drums (not that digital is necessarily bad), but that Moog should be able to make some decent bass sounds I'd have thought?
And the Emulator (8 bit sampler with analogue filter section).
The Source was basically a MiniMoog with all the knobs replaced with crappy membrane buttons and a data wheel, so it was capable of producing fat bass sounds (and New Order did use this capability occasionally, like the growling bassline of Ecstacy on PC&L), but as I said, big bass wasn't really all that fashionable then. Check out the contemporary Italo Disco track Dirty Talk by Klein & M.B.O., which was another 'influence' on Blue Monday. It's not particularly bassy either

There are plenty of recent live videos of them playing Blue Monday where you can hear the results of Roger Lyons' bass boosting on the DMX kick and Source bassline from the original multitracks. The more recent ones mean having to put up with Tom Chapman playing Hook's bass parts though - he's a decent bassist and plays them well, but he uses a Fender Precision which doesn't sound anything like the Shergold Marathon 6 the track was recorded with, or Hook's custom Eccleshall hollowbody with Yamaha BB1200 active electronics he uses live.

momatt

Quote from: buzby on August 06, 2018, 03:35:38 PM
And the Emulator (8 bit sampler with analogue filter section).
The Source was basically a MiniMoog with all the knobs replaced with crappy membrane buttons and a data wheel, so it was capable of producing fat bass sounds (and New Order did use this capability occasionally, like the growling bassline of Ecstacy on PC&L), but as I said, big bass wasn't really all that fashionable then. Check out the contemporary Italo Disco track Dirty Talk by Klein & M.B.O., which was another 'influence' on Blue Monday. It's not particularly bassy either

Ok, that's the Moog I thought it was.  A strange design, but still had a good sound.

That's a fair point, maybe they weren't aiming for a bassy sound, rather than cocaine-induced incompetence.  I'm probably unfairly comparing it to more recent tracks too.

Love that Dirty Talk tune!  It's great, but hardly thunderously bassy.

Rich Uncle Skeleton

Quote from: Spiteface on August 04, 2018, 08:43:15 PM
My favourite part of Magic Pie's outro is the part where Noel yells "SHUT UP!!!" at someone before the jazz organ kicks in.

Laughed way too much at this. I've somehow never heard Be Here Now (brother got it when it came out but I don't remember him ever putting it on) and this post is the one thats pushed me over the edge.

Brundle-Fly

Terrorvision's albatross, Tequila has a snort of gak about it. Their only hit and probably recouped for them though.

Phil_A

Quote from: Brundle-Fly on August 06, 2018, 08:11:07 PM
Terrorvision's albatross, Tequila has a snort of gak about it. Their only hit and probably recouped for them though.

They had a few top ten singles before that, surely?

It must've been pretty galling having slogged away on the toilet circuit for years, and then to have your biggest hit be almost entirely someone else's work(Mint Royale did the remix)...and then to get dropped almost immediately afterwards.

Is it possible this cover art was so radiantly terrible it ended their career overnight?



Maybe the promo version would've been a better choice...



...Nah.

buzby

Quote from: Phil_A on August 06, 2018, 08:41:22 PM
They had a few top ten singles before that, surely?
Two prior to Tequila - Perseverance got to no. 5 in March 1996, and Bad Actress got to no. 10 in July 1996.
Quote
It must've been pretty galling having slogged away on the toilet circuit for years, and then to have your biggest hit be almost entirely someone else's work(Mint Royale did the remix)...and then to get dropped almost immediately afterwards.
It was a cover too, and on the UK singles there was no B side, just various versions of the remix so they will have got next to nothing out of it. It was all Zoe Ball's fault for pushing for he remix to be released.
Quote
Is it possible this cover art was so radiantly terrible it ended their career overnight?
To be fair, they were dropped by EMI nearly 2 years before Good To Go came out, by which time they had signed to Papillion (an offshoot of Chrysalis Group, set up after they had sold Chrysalis Records to EMI). The band split 4 months after it was released, and even if they had carried on Chrysalis wound up Papillion in 2002, so they would have had to look for another label anyway.

purlieu

Quote from: Rich Uncle Skeleton on August 06, 2018, 07:09:27 PM
Laughed way too much at this. I've somehow never heard Be Here Now (brother got it when it came out but I don't remember him ever putting it on) and this post is the one thats pushed me over the edge.
The weird thing about Be Here Now is that it manages to be absurd, staggeringly over the top, overall quite pompous and ridiculous, yet painfully boring at the same time. You have to wade through six minutes of one of the band's most tedious songs just to get to the funny outro on 'Magic Pie'.

Brundle-Fly

Quote from: buzby on August 06, 2018, 10:08:21 PM
Two prior to Tequila - Perseverance got to no. 5 in March 1996, and Bad Actress got to no. 10 in July 1996.It was a cover too, and on the UK singles there was no B side, just various versions of the remix so they will have got next to nothing out of it. It was all Zoe Ball's fault for pushing for he remix to be released.To be fair, they were dropped by EMI nearly 2 years before Good To Go came out, by which time they had signed to Papillion (an offshoot of Chrysalis Group, set up after they had sold Chrysalis Records to EMI). The band split 4 months after it was released, and even if they had carried on Chrysalis wound up Papillion in 2002, so they would have had to look for another label anyway.

I didn't do my research. Although I was aware of them, Tequila was the only TV single I knew at that point.

It's interesting the remixed versions of under the radar stuff that crosses over into the mainstream. I'm thinking A Tribe Called Quest's Can U Kick It? and Cornershops Brimful Of Asha. 

Anymore?

purlieu

Moloko were a slightly oddball trip-hop duo before the  Boris Dlugosch remix of 'Sing it Back' hit the charts. I wonder how many people bought that album and were somewhat disappointed.
Same late '90s era - Tori Amos' 'Professional Widow' remixed by Armand Van Helden, largely unrecognisable as her.
The original of Wamdue Project's 'King of My Castle' is pretty different to the remix that charted.
William Orbit's version of Barber's 'Adagio for Strings' is quite tasteful, following the original composition just arranged for synth pads. The Ferry Corsten remix that was released as a single became a huge hit and he faced a massive backlash from people thinking he'd made the trance version.

marquis_de_sad

There's the Pump Panel song 'Confusion' — famously in the Blade soundtrack — which is ostensibly a remix of the New Order song of the same name, but sounds nothing like it. The only bit from the Pump Panel 'Confusion' that comes from the New Order song is the lyrics and the vocal melody, such as it is. Of course, vocal melody is very important in music copyright, but for all intents and purposes they're two different songs. On most releases the Pump Panel remix is credited to New Order, but it was also released under their own name as a single.

buzby

#52
Quote from: marquis_de_sad on August 06, 2018, 11:47:24 PM
There's the Pump Panel song 'Confusion' — famously in the Blade soundtrack — which is ostensibly a remix of the New Order song of the same name, but sounds nothing like it. The only bit from the Pump Panel 'Confusion' that comes from the New Order song is the lyrics and the vocal melody, such as it is. Of course, vocal melody is very important in music copyright, but for all intents and purposes they're two different songs. On most releases the Pump Panel remix is credited to New Order, but it was also released under their own name as a single.

It was commissioned for 'The Rest Of New Order' remix compilation that was released alongside 'The Best Of New Order' compilation in August 1995.

The original release of Pump Panel's remix as a single to promote the album (3 years prior to it's use in Blade) was this one:

https://www.discogs.com/Pump-Panel-Confusion-Re-Mover/master/230099
It was released on FFRR, London's dance label run by Pete Tong (London had the licence for New Order's releases then, and it was Tong who suggested the idea of the remix album and artists to commission) and was backed with one of their own tracks as a B side so they would get some royalties from it. Pump Panel also released a limited edition 12" on their own label (Missile Records) at the same time with a different version of the remix. They then reissued it again in 2001 after it's use in the film, but by that time the main 303 riff had been sampled by Public Domain on Operation Blade and they got to no. 5 in the charts (with most people thinking it was the actual track from the film) whereas the Pump Panel release never charted. As Les McQueen says, it's a shit business...

There was also a suite of remixes of Everything's Gone Green that were commissioned from The Advent for the album that ended up not being used, and probably have even less of the original track in them than Pump Panel's Confusion remix (they put the vocals though a vocoder so the lyrics are there but to a different melody). The Advent were allowed to release it as a single (they were signed to Internal, a sub-label of FFRR) the following year:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6BBSTtOEZR4

There was also a bootleg rave remix of Blue Monday by Electroset (Alex Bell and James Diplock of Hyper GoGo under one of their many pseudonyms) called How Does It Feel? released in 1992, which got picked up by Tong for a legal release on FFRR.

BJBMK2

THIS AIN'T ROCK N'ROLL

THIS IS GENOCIDE

Glyn

Quote from: purlieu on August 03, 2018, 08:50:02 PM
Be Here Now is pretty much the go-to cocaine excess album, but y'know I actually find it really works for 'All Around the World'. The rest of the album takes three minute songs and makes them six minutes long, but for 'All Around the World' they went the whole hog and just added more sections and key changes to the outro than anybody would ever need, to the extent that I find it actually becomes absurdly entertaining. The fact that there's only one song between it and its three minute reprise is just even better, the way the reprise fades back in in a kind of "hey, it's back!" kind of way, just brilliant. Best part of the album.
Yeah I would agree that it is one of the few tracks that benefits from the 'kitchen sink' approach. You can argue that Be Here Now exists because of Noel's desire to make All Around The World as huge as possible (well, that and cocaine) .It was apparently written a week after Supersonic so he had a long time to plan it. Saying that, it didn't sound too much different in 1992 though : https://youtu.be/CXDmN0UnS-M


Quote from: buzby on August 07, 2018, 12:42:34 AM
It was commissioned for 'The Rest Of New Order' remix compilation that was released alongside 'The Best Of New Order' compilation in August 1995.

The original release of Pump Panel's remix as a single to promote the album (3 years prior to it's use in Blade) was this one:

https://www.discogs.com/Pump-Panel-Confusion-Re-Mover/master/230099
It was released on FFRR, London's dance label run by Pete Tong (London had the licence for New Order's releases then, and it was Tong who suggested the idea of the remix album and artists to commission) and was backed with one of their own tracks as a B side so they would get some royalties from it. Pump Panel also released a limited edition 12" on their own label (Missile Records) at the same time with a different version of the remix. They then reissued it again in 2001 after it's use in the film, but by that time the main 303 riff had been sampled by Public Domain on Operation Blade and they got to no. 5 in the charts (with most people thinking it was the actual track from the film) whereas the Pump Panel release never charted. As Les McQueen says, it's a shit business...

There was also a suite of remixes of Everything's Gone Green that were commissioned from The Advent for the album that ended up not being used, and probably have even less of the original track in them than Pump Panel's Confusion remix (they put the vocals though a vocoder so the lyrics are there but to a different melody). The Advent were allowed to release it as a single (they were signed to Internal, a sub-label of FFRR) the following year:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6BBSTtOEZR4

There was also a bootleg rave remix of Blue Monday by Electroset (Alex Bell and James Diplock of Hyper GoGo under one of their many pseudonyms) called How Does It Feel? released in 1992, which got picked up by Tong for a legal release on FFRR.

Ha, my best friend signed Operation Blade from the white label and then signed it on again to a bigger label,  they were desperate to get the 303 sample recreated so that they wouldn't have to pay so much,  but after about 5 or 6 people trying none of them could match the power of the original Pump Panel mix (which was probably some combination of low budget equipment and overdriven to give it "that" sound).

buzby

#57
Quote from: Better Midlands on August 09, 2018, 01:05:24 PM
Ha, my best friend signed Operation Blade from the white label and then signed it on again to a bigger label,  they were desperate to get the 303 sample recreated so that they wouldn't have to pay so much,  but after about 5 or 6 people trying none of them could match the power of the original Pump Panel mix (which was probably some combination of low budget equipment and overdriven to give it "that" sound).

Would that be Matthew Brooks at Slinky, before it got passed onto Alex Gold's Xtravaganza\Xtrahard?

TIm Taylor reckoned it took them 3 days of tweaking the 303 to perfect that riff and that they caught lightning in a bottle in the process. Structurally, the remix was very much a development of their Ego Acid, released the previous year.

Quote from: buzby on August 09, 2018, 02:49:56 PM
Would that be Matthew Brooks at Slinky, before it got passed onto Alex Gold's Xtravaganza\Xtrahard?


Yes! You know Brooksy?

I knew Alex from his time at Rumour running
Escapade.

Spiteface

These, apparently:



Explains the excessive nature of the exercise, and this tantrum

Gave them a listen on the weekend. There's probably one solid album to be stitched together here, but instead we have three. Turns out Billie Joe Armstrong doesn't remembermost of the recording due to coke-induced memory loss:
http://www.thewaster.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/fp-1355337455.jpg
I like the guitar sounds on these though. Cleaner than usual.