How good is Nick? Is there anyone who doesn’t like him?
Well, actually yes. As you do with the people you think are brilliant, you become an advocate, introducing him to others. But is Nick’s stuff – always but always written from a male perspective – really only a guy thing?
Despite my best efforts, I’ve always struggled to get women to see it.
Like this song here. Near genius, witty and touching – to me anyway.
But usually women tell me its ‘depressing’
No…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dUHWh810L0M
Nick Lowe – a man’s man?
by 45 Comments
Obviously I mean generally rather than exclusively.
Not that I’ve spent a lot of time trying to get women to like Basher, but yes, that’s been my experience.
Well there are always quite a lot of women at his gigs and Caitlin Rose likes him, her version of the majestic ‘Lately I’ve Let Things Slide’ is almost as good as his.
I went to see one of his Union Chapel gigs last year with The Light. There were a lot of couples there, though it could be that the women were there to accompany the blokes rather than the other way around, much as The Light was. I remember the first line of I’m a Mess, a song with a similar sentiment to Slide, being greeted with a very female sounding whoop of approval from somewhere way behind us, and Basher’s wry grin in response.
Sadly I haven’t seen NL live since Rockpile days – now that really was a boy’s night out. I almost went to the Byron Bay Blues Fest for him alone – which is surely a measure of how much I like him.
As a young man he wrote delightful and driving ditties, gradually becoming more maudlin, until now he comes over as a noughties Denis Norden, all hangdog misogyny. Sorry, have largely given up. I’d take a million Surrender to the Rhythms to I Trained Her to Love Me, even if you choose the latter to be ironic.
http://i1347.photobucket.com/albums/p703/11sLament/denis-norden_1217815c_zpsftkjpdar.jpg
(Nick Lowe, earlier today)
Too many people, too few facilities, lots of traffic and generally speaking way too much full-on, ersatz look-at-me Byron experience.
mrs duco01 has a couple of the earlier Nick Lowe albums.
Her favourite track is “Marie Provost”, I think.
Mrs T likes him. I find “I trained her to love me” mysogenistic but he’s talking from that viewpoint blah blah, I still don’t like it. I really like most of his stuff. I find people who don’t like him tend to be those who object to the whole idea of songwriter, craft, etc. Takes all sorts.
Maybe, but I’m talking about women who are music fans with sound, in the main, taste. Neil Young , Ian Dury and Jim Morrison would fit the songwriter craft thing, wouldn’t they?
(Possibly not Morrison).
I only really know (and like) ‘Jesus of Cool’ and the stuff he did with Elvis Costello. I have a general awareness of him but no fully-formed opinion, due to ignorance rather than anything else.
I don’t know what that tells you; nothing, really. So he’s kind-of on my radar as being ‘important’ and I know about him rather than actually listening to him.
If you’re a big unmanly poove like myself, his stuff is a bit blokey, yes. Having said that, I think he’s good – not great, but good. Has had some good moments. Hated his awful American accent on I Love The Sound Of Breaking Glass. Tend to like his later, wiser stuff.
I quite strongly dislike that very stodgy meat and potatoes Rockpile scene and much of the associated/later Stiff gubbins: again, extraordinarily blokey, pint-of-Pride-and-a-packet-of-cheese-and-onion stuff, but Nick Lowe has a wit and a lightness that makes him better than his stablemates.
The reverence he gets from a very specific demographic confuses me a bit, cos he’s not THAT good, but then I can’t stand Danny Baker.
I’m with you re Rockpile, glorified pub rock. His earlier and later phases are my favourites. “Impossible bird” is a good place to start @rubyblue.
I’d suggest that, for anyone that already likes Jesus Of Cool, the next sensible step might be Seconds of Pleasure or maybe just a best of. Leaping straight to Impossible Bird (which is possibly my least favourite of all his albums) seems like quite a big step.
You seem to use the phrase”Glorified Pub Rock” pejoratively but it’s surely a good thing when its as glorified as Rockpile were. They were one of the finest live bands I’ve ever seen and are at the top of my list of ‘Bands I’d like to see reform’ (above Talking Heads).
The Impossible Bird stands as his high water mark, and probably the only Lowe album which I need all of. It would be a fine place for the curious to start, and it was the one which snagged me.
I have found that the albums since then either slide away into Nat King Cole territory, or contain songs so spare that they sound half-finished, and that the earlier albums can be taken care of with a decent ‘best of’.
PS – DFB is quite right when he says that Quiet Please is a great best of for anyone looking for a career overview.
Well speaking as a laydee, I really like what I know of Nick Lowe’s stuff. A propos of nothing in particular, I realised long after the event that I first saw him c. 1974 at one of Harlow Town Council’s fabulous free concerts in the park, the Brinsley Schwartz gig.
But then, I’m not one who listens too carefully to lyrics – I get more a sense of the shape of the sounds the words in the song make, if that makes sense. My daughter on the other hand “hears” the lyrics before she gets a sense of the melodic structure of the song, and she’s a musician to boot.
Not sure it’s only the lyrics which tend to polarise masculine/feminine allegiance to an artist – I went to see Wilco and was just about the only woman there. Tom Petty and Pearl Jam, Isle of Wight Fest 2012, hardly a woman in sight up to 50 feet from the stage.
I’ve never thought of him as ‘hangdog misery’ but it’s along the same lines as (largely female) critics, have observed, in my experience. He says he writes from the ‘imaged viewpoints’ of – I guess- men but there’s a wittiness that changes everything. ‘Witty’ of course is entirely subjective.
That should be hangdog ‘misogyny’ but the point remains.
‘Hangdog Misogyny’ – three more from them later. . .
Misery – misogyny – is there a difference?
@twang Thanks- will add to the ever-expanding list of ‘things I really should have listened to and haven’t but now will’.
I like him a great deal, as may be evinced by the name of a band I put together, just for the sake of playing some ’70s Pub Rock stuff (and mainly Basher Lowe’s Rockpile-era songs, at that!)
Gin!
Aha!
Who shall I tell him has recognised him…?
Nah, let him work it out……
He does the best version of ‘Alison’ that I have ever heard live. Yes, including by the other guy
First two albums then jump to Party Of One, then the Brentford Trilogy onwards. I just like his world weariness, wistfulness and lyrical turns. I don’t find him blokey, I Trained Her To Love Me is not an example of his typical output but also not to be taken at face value either(unless you want to be wilfully dense). He’s usually preoccupied with his own failings and his adoration of the opposite sex. Rockpile and Brinsleys are a different time and place.
He’s a bit of a silver fox rather than a Norden
‘Quiet Please’ is a great comp – that’s the place to start @rubyblue
I think Mr. Lowe is immensely good – in my household “Where’s My Everything” is considered among the five best songs ever written – but sadly after “The Impossible Bird” he suddenly became aware of ‘songwriting craft’ and lost his wit and The Swing. Maybe it was the bad influence of hanging out with Hepworth and Ellen too much.
I flew to London especially for his gig at the Palladium (a few days after 9-11) – Jerry Reid was the support! – and Lowe’s acoustic “(What’s So Funny About) Love Peace And Understanding” left everyone stunned. Great gig.
Last album – The old magic – first track ‘Stoplight roses’. He still has it in spades. If I can’t articulate the ways of love than no-one can. Genius.
He not I – fucking editing is shit.
My other half loves him, as do I. All periods, pretty much.
That’s just what I was about to post.
Have got into him in recent years mainly through the Word, and far from ashamed about that.
This is probably my fave…
(Soulful Wind)
Starts off in fairly predictable (nu / alt) country style but the chorus is an unexpectedly sweet delight.
I find his lyrics, although often bittersweet, to be far from depressing. Yes it is probably largely ‘man’s music’ but so be it, or indeed, so it goes…
Great singing on ‘Shelley, My Love’ and, yes, he is of the school that is afraid to look at the failings and foolishness of much male behaviour, particularly when desire kicks in…and then when it departs too.
*unafraid* – oops
Dare I suggest that precious little music by female artists concerns their failings as women (apart, of course, from their misfortune in choosing appalling men). Who knows, perhaps they have none.
Whether self-pitying or not, there is a universe of self-critical ‘male songs’ out there. Just, y’know, saying.
Try some Jenny Lewis
Or some Kristin Hersh
I once saw Tricia Yearwood introduce a song with “you know, it occurred to me the other day that I have recorded 72 songs and in only three of them the woman was wrong. And actually in one of those she wasn’t really wrong, she just made a mistake”….
Does Carlene Carter ever admit to that sort of thing, I wonder. Hell, I’d be pissed at just losing my father -in law from that relationship…….
I think he’s awesome in pretty much all his guises and tend to think of it as glorious pub rock, rather than glorified. I was too young to see Rockpile (just) but have seen him many times solo and always come away feeling enriched. What more can you ask for from a gigging experience? The rest of the band I play in probably groan every time I suggest a Nick Lowe song as a cover…..
The bass player doesn’t mind…
Took me a while to get into Mr Lowe, but his songs are wonderfully put together. He aslo walks a deft line between earnest and laid back.
I don’t like his on stage joke, ” I’m now going to play a medley of my hit” and then Lowe goes onto play ‘Cruel To Be Kind’ which didn’t chart as high as ‘I Love The Sound Of Breaking Glass’, his other top twenty UK hit.
Now. If he threw in his biggest money earner, ‘(What’s So Funny ‘Bout) Peace, Love And Understanding’ (off the back of 17 million copies sold of The Bodyguard OST) that’s demonstratively three hit songs, so he could quite easily play a medley of his ‘hits’, the disingenuous sod.
Mrs Wells is a big fan especially maudlin misogynist later period as it has been variously described.
She loved his concert and was particualry impressed by the razor sharp crease in his pants.
We had his version of True Love travels on a Gravel Road at the end of our wedding ceremony last year.
I like (not love( his recent records). They are a little samey, this also comes across live, another song about how bad a husband/lover/man I am/was and it’s in the same tempo as the previous one.