What does it sound like?:
The concept: take a bunch of pretty well known Punk tunes and re-arrange them for performance by The Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and singers from the English National Opera
The result: In the main, it all works – Pretty Vacant, No More Heroes and Neat Neat Neat sound like they were made for this sort of re-arrangement, and Love Will Tear Us Apart gains an air of the sea about it – almost like it could be used for a Sunday Night BBC Drama about Shipping Line in the mid-1800s.
The atonal saxophone squawk on Oh Bondage Up Yours is “fixed”, and Ca Plane Pour Moi is just not a strong enough tune for this treatment, and stripped of it’s over eager vocal and high pitch Oo-oo-oo-oo (which is here, but just sounds too tuneful), it loses a lot of it’s “Europunk fun”
Teenage Kicks also loses some energy and urgency, but remains listenable. And Should I Stay Or Should I Go just about squeezes into the “OK” bracket
The thing that lets it down for me is the singing over the orchestral backing (Disk 2 of the Deluxe Edition is the instrumental tracks only, which is a more enjoyable listen).
Let’s not get into arguments about “authenticity” or “sounds from the street” here, but I do have trouble believing an ENO singer when he talks of his old man out washing the car, Heathrow jets crashing over his home or Babylon Burning with anxiety
(but, hey, they’re only words so maybe I should just stop examining it too deeply)
Maybe I should’ve paid more attention to the memory of Classic Quadrophenia where the singing (for it is in the same styl-ee) turned one of my favourite albums into a not so enjoyable experience.
If the singer had said “Some people say Opera Singers should be seen and not heard, but I say Oh Bondage Up Yours” at the start, it may have raised a wry smile, but it is all done very straight and conservative (which, I suppose, is the point)
An interesting curio showing (proving) that many of the “simple 3 chord punk thrashes” may have had a little more about them then first thought.
I may return to this, but more likely through the medium of Spotify or YouTube rather than the physical CD
What does it all *mean*?
Punk continues it middle age dotage by occupying another area of the “establishment” that, according to mass media headlines, it was supposed to destroy.
Give it another 30 to 40 years and we may find Anarchy In The UK being sung around campfires and/or Pub pianos, and old punk tunes being committed to record/CD/MP3 and identifying the writer as “Trad Arr”
Goes well with…
When it’s too hot (or too old) to jump around like a loony, but you want to hear your favourite tunes.
A sort of Sunday Morning Sharpener that can be listened to without waking the rest of the house up
Release Date:
Might suit people who like…
Those who enjoy, or seek, music of one style performed in it’s virtual polar opposite style.
Lovers of Beethoven and Mozart, as well as The Sex Pistols and The Clash
Rigid Digit says
Love Will Tear Us Apart
dai says
Notwithstanding your enthusiasm, to me it sounds hideous
retropath2 says
I prefer the Paul Young version.
Vincent says
This was the kind of thing record companies produced in 1978 to take the piss out of punk; sopranos doing pretty vacant, mor versions, etc. I can imagine chamber music goth, but really, isn’t this kind of thing beyond even barrel-scraping? I eschew orchestral pink Floyd for the same reason. Who buys this sort of stuff? Kids still trying to convince square parents that rock music played on classical instruments is a valid statement?
Rigid Digit says
One can’t deny the “Barrel scraping, can we exploit this anymore, what else can we do for Fathers Day” nature of it.
It’s a novelty – a bit of fun on one listen, but no real legs
(unless there is a future AW thread asking for songs performed in a different style)
Kaisfatdad says
Thanks for mentioning this, Rigid.
Not to be taken too seriously, it’s classical musicians having some tongue-in-cheek fun and proving, as you say, that some of these songs really have a lot going for them.
A lot of care has gone into the arrangements.
A bagatelle but no harm in that. It does not seem to have the pomposity that these orchestral versions of rock standards can suffer from.
Ainsley says
I’m afraid I wanted to stick biros through my eardrums even before the vocal started. Hideous
Kaisfatdad says
Moshing at the opera?
NPR’s All Things Considered suggest that punk and opera are not so far apart after all.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=911160
moseleymoles says
The atonal sax is (almost) the whole point of Oh Bondage Up Yours!
deramdaze says
Classical musicians “having fun.”
Mmm, never been my experience, and judging from his autobiography, it wasn’t Frank Zappa’s either.
JustB says
Well, being the 18th Century dodger that you are, I expect your experience is limited. 😉
Kaisfatdad says
Why shouldn’t classical musicians be playful and have a sense of fun?
Of course there are some dreadful stuffed shirts in that world. But there are also open-minded souls open to experimentation like the Kronos Quartet.
Here they are having fun with an obvious crowdpleaser.
Purple Haze
They would never do a Hendrix song, but the Hilliard Ensemble also had a wonderfully dry sense of humour. And an open-mindedness to experimentation. Officium is ample proof of that.
One of the best “gigs” I went to last year was the Stockholm Folkopera’s performance of Philip Glass’s Satyagraha. Visually stunning, breathtaking, full of passion. This clip gives you a small idea of what a remarkable perfornace it was.
DuCool also saw it and was completely gobsmacked.
I rest my case.
fishface says
much better the other way round….a covers band round our way do a cracking punky Mama Mia at about the same tempo as The Dickies banana splits tune.