Saint Julian

I love contrasts in music. I love the way that songs have internal conflicts such as minor key melodies set against pounding dance grooves or slow moving tunes melded to busy rhythms. It’s what makes music so fascinating. The knack seems to be to assimilate the weird and wonderful into a recognisable structure. It is for this reason that I like Julian Cope, who is a whole host of contradictions himself, and his music.

Outwardly eccentric and in many ways completely bats, Cope also possesses a mind that can research and catalogue ancient stone circles and write a massive authoritative tome on the subject (The Modern Antiquarian) and that can write, at his best, exhilarating music. Given his general demeanour you would expect his music to be scatty and uncoordinated – but not a bit of it. He understands musical structure and dynamics and can produce a pure pop hook with the best of them. Many of his best tunes, like ‘World Shut Your Mouth’ are irritatingly hummable. But what he does best is wrap up those melodic hooks in epic musical dramas that unfold in front of you or weird facsimiles of his beloved Krautrock.

In the late 1980s he produced one of his best and arguably most mainstream of his albums, ‘Saint Julian’. This comprises a series of rocky, generally aggressive songs backed by a slick traditional rock trio. But in amongst the rousing choruses, he plants little oases of calm where a fragment of melodic beauty is allowed to flourish. A bit like a rare alpine flower revealed momentarily by a rampaging avalanche. This is what makes ‘Saint Julian’ such a gem of an album. The later ‘Jehovahkill’ would attempt the same trick but in a slightly different way. Both are essential listening.

Much as I admire Cope, I cannot get to the bottom of his complex character. He seems to blend a sharp analytical mind with strange philosophies and an almost hippyish glee in being unconventional and I can’t quite work out whether this is the real Cope or whether it is all an act. Even a trawl through his rambling and utterly eccentric autobiography, ‘Head’ gives no real clue. Whatever, he embodies what for me is a real rock star, someone who is completely bonkers and unique yet still has a firm grip on how to create and structure great music. You have to be mad to be different but you have to have understanding to be mad, different and good and Cope embodies this in spades.

E=MC² Indeed!

Do my eyes deceive me? Did I really just see that? Did I really just see that Dippy Diva Maria Carey has titled her recent album, ‘E=MC²’, thus aligning herself with a discovery by one of the most brilliant scientific minds ever to grace this earth? Is hers the most inappropriately named album of all time?

Well, maybe. The audacity is breathtaking, but it probably isn’t the worst case of naming albums in direct contradiction to the content or provider. For example, in the ‘Does What it Says on the Tin’ award category there is ‘Like A Virgin’ by Madonna to be reckoned with and indeed the later ‘Music’, so clearly there are numerous instances of this type of misrepresentation littering rock’s dubious past.

After all, I could name you a whole host of bands or artists whose ‘Best Of’ compilation could form the basis of a Trade Descriptions infringement so the problem is deeper rooted than we might first imagine. Further research reveals the existence of workaholic Phil Collins’s 1982 effort ’Hello, I Must Be Going’. If only! Not only did he not go, he stayed around for another 20-odd years bothering us with all sorts of insipid MOR fare.

There is also the case of The Beach Boys’ 1971 album, ‘Surfs Up’ foisted on a public who had known for simply ages that none of the Boys actually surfed (bar Dennis Wilson whose subsequent death by drowning still had nothing to do with falling off a funny-shaped board).

Album titles are strange concoctions being a sort of advertisement and insight to the purveyor all in one. The trouble is that it sometimes gives away more than was intended like a slipping towel on exiting the shower. It comes to light that a few confused souls are in a bit of a tizzy over their sexuality, like Susanna Hoffs’ ‘When You’re a Boy’ and Neneh Cherry’s ‘Man’, but I’m glad to report that Debbie Harry has no such doubts with her solo project, ‘Rockbird’.

Conversely, there are a number of album titles that hit the nail squarely on the head. ‘Fried’ by Julian Cope probably needs no further comment, nor does ‘Oops...I Did it Again!’ by Britney Spears so at least there is a bit of honesty in the industry to be applauded. I bet the marketing execs who came up with those two are wringing their hands now!

But the last, painfully poignant word goes to Nirvana whose ‘Nevermind’ now seems dreadfully inadequate given what happened to Kurt Cobain a few years later.

False Start

It has long been a pet theory of mine that the route to success is not paved with unbroken success but more likely stained with failure, or at least some sort of initial setback. This apparent paradox can be seen in the music business time and time again. No sooner do record companies drop or fail to sign an act than they get picked up by a rival and are immediately successful.

A good example is the Sugababes who were unceremoniously dropped by London records just before achieving global mega-status for new label Island. Of course, there are always famous cases of future stars being turned down at audition by unsuspecting potential employers. I dare say that Decca are still kicking themselves over those four scousers called, what was it? Oh yes, the Beatles – I wonder what happened to them?

But often, success of a different flavour can follow disappointment. In the mid 1990s, Julian Cope was dropped by Island after his masterwork, ‘Jehovahkill’ was considered too uncommercial. But since then he has carved out a low key yet successful multi-career by releasing his own albums and writing learned books about ancient stone monuments as well as his own idiosyncratic autobiography.

More recently, a favourite artist of mine, Nerina Pallot has just returned to the fray with the brilliant ‘Fires’ album, released on her own independent label, Idaho, having been dropped by Polydor after just one album, and it is the best work she has done to date. Why can’t artists be given room to grow? Let’s face it; ‘Sgt Pepper’ was the Beatles’ eighth album. How many bands get the opportunity to release eight albums these days? Commercial shortsightedness is the bane of the music industry. How many companies these days would tolerate the experimental dabblings of the Pink Floyd before ‘Dark Side of the Moon’ (also album number eight)?

But let us not be too hard on the companies who see fit to let their potential stars go, as there is an upside. It is often the enforced change of direction that such setbacks bring about that precipitates the improvement in fortunes, something that may not have happened in situ. I, however, like to think that there is a strong element of two fingers to the perpetrators that spurs artists to thrive elsewhere.

Succeeding at a new record label after being dropped by another is a bit like scoring the winner against your old club, having been transfer listed the previous season– hugely satisfying.