Since it’s a wet weekend, here’s the latest in a series of tiny quizzes.
Here’s an extract from a review in the NME. No clues: no year, no journalist name… Which album do you think is being reviewed?
“The music here is like latter-period Brahms, with a luscious velvetiness and an erotic warmth about the melody that makes it almost too sweet and rich a fare”
You’re on trust not to Google it – it’s an honour thing.
6 Wives?
Interesting…
That was my thought and I will propose Tony Tyler as the author.
Don’t know if you’ve looked further down the thread…?
Goldfrapp – Felt Mountain
Interesting…I could see that.
ABC Lexicon Of Love
I had a feeling…
Roxy Music – Avalon
Certainly has a degree of luscious velvetiness…
The Associates – The Affectionate Punch?
The Blue Nile – Walk Across the Rooftops?
These are interesting choices – if you had to plump for just one? Which has more luscious velvetiness and erotic warmth?
The Associates
Tindersticks 1st.
Yum!
Sade -Diamond life
Prefab Sprout – From Langley Park to Memphis
Anita Baker -Rapture
Which one are you putting your bet on?
From those 3, I’d pick Sade
(it was a consideration before I plumped for ABC above)
I’ll put my money on the Sprout!
The Brahms reference is intriguing. Trying to think what NME journalist would reference Brahms – Ian MacDonald maybe? So if we’re talking 70s maybe Roxy – Stranded?
Schoolboy error. The journo was referring to Miss Brahms, not the German keyboard botherer. More seriously, I can think of a number of NME writers would be perfectly capable of referencing Brahms without ever actually having heard anything by him.
Good point.
Kraftwerk – Computer Love (the single)
That is an intriguing choice – but the OP states that it’s an album being reviewed. So are you going for the Computer World album?
Oh alright, then. But there is more than one melody on the album. By pressing down a special key, it plays a little melody.
Colour me surprised you didn’t suggest Shostakovich 5th. 😉
Did they review it in the NME?
No but rules are for squares maaan.
Shostakovich 5th? “Luscious velvetiness and an erotic warmth”? Which performance have you been listening to?
They used to wheel out these references to classical composers in the 60s when Lennon and McCartney were making everyone get carried away with themselves. So Sgt. Pepper. Crazy I know.
The Nice – Five Bridges
Is it The Motors?
Big reveal tomorrow.
It’s an odd one – I can’t work out whether the writer is using withering sarcasm or genuinely believes it. Or were they on serious druuuugs when they wrote it? Or did they write the review without listening to the album, seduced by the cadence of their own words? Or all of these at once?
Hard to say…
Luscious velvetiness? How about Hot Chocolate?
Time for a small clue, while neither confirming nor denying any of the suggestions so far:
The review was written during the 1975 to 1985 decade, when NME strode the world like a colossus.
Also – full disclosure – I own this album and I can detect no Brahmsian “velvetiness” or erotic warmth – but then I’m not a writer for the NME…
Well, you’ve certainly kept us all nicely entertained all weekend. Outside it’s minus 5 and very snowy, so luscious velvetiness and an erotic warmth were just what I needed.
Oh, I say!
How about “The Feeding of the 5,000” by Crass? I realise it’s a bit of a long shot, but you never know.
I was torn between Crass and the Angelic Upstarts’ Murder of Liddle Towers. Th4n again, the Upstarts weren’t really NME territory, so maybe Sonny’s Lettah by LKJ.
Similarly, might this finally be the time for The F*cking C*nts Treat Us Like Pr*cks by Flux of Pink Indians?
I’ve got to guess right one day, surely?
Well……if you say so…….
I’m not as clued up on them as you, of course, but “latter-period Brahms, with luscious velvetiness and erotic warmth”?
I’ll have to take your word for it.
The Style Council. Cafe Bleu. Pretentious crap about pretentious music?
There’s a thought!
Was he Brahms and Liszt when he wrote it? Which could explain a lot.
Propaganda- A Secret Wish. Paul Morley…?
That’s a thought – a bit of OTT descriptives for ZTT…? Would he have had to declare a financial interest before he wrote the NME review?
Wasn’t Paul Morley married to a member of Propaganda at one point?
Yes, he was & remained on good terms.
1975 to 1985 you say- then it’s got to be Metal Machine Music by Mr Reed….. it’s the velvetiness that gave it away
Big reveal at 18:00 GMT today.
Band/album/writer – someone above has one out of the three correct!
About 34 minutes to go – and the thread has ground to a halt.
Any last minute thoughts?
Bowie – Low comes to mind but I don’t know why.
Okay, the big reveal:
Writer was Paul Morley, reviewing in the NME, 16th September 1978
Album was Tormato by Yes
Remarkable, on so many levels!
@Leffe-Gin got the writer: but no-one got the band or the album – can’t say I’m surprised!
I was confident about the writer because he was always shoehorning his small amount of knowledge in classical music into his reviews. I just guessed the album and artist because of his connection (and mine…)
But Tormato?!? In 1978?
Well, quite…I’d have expected a good shoeing from the NME – not Paul Morley’s Purple Prose©…
In 2014 Morley published a book about how classical music was the future not that boring old rock music. He wrote a Guardian article at the time in which he suggested that at the time of the Tormato review he had nothing but disdain for classical music, if he even considered it at all. It would seem as if perhaps he was being economic with the truth given the Brahms reference:
‘During the 1970s and 80s, I mostly listened to pop and rock music, when even the likes of Captain Beefheart, Henry Cow and Popul Vuh were filed under pop. However far out I went as a listener, though, classical music seemed connected to a dreary sense of uninspiring worthiness that was fixed inside an ideologically suspect status quo, lacking the exhilarating suggestion of new beginnings, a pulsating sense of an exciting, mind-expanding tomorrow. There was something monstrous about it, as if in its world there were lumbering dinosaurs and toothless dragons, refusing to accept they were extinct. Next to Iggy and the Stooges and the Velvets, it sounded frail; next to Buzzcocks and Public Image, it sounded pompous. While I wrote for the NME between 1976 and 1984, interviewing stars from Lou Reed and John Lydon to Sting and Mick Jagger, I didn’t think about classical music – it was from the past, back when the past stayed where it was and wasn’t as easy to access as it is now.’
For some reason, I assumed it was a prog rock album. As I’ve never consciously listened to a single one, whether it was Tormato or Yessongs would have been a distinction too fine for me. Or even Close To The Edge – the tribute album to Bono that apparently inspired The Art of Noise to make their sublime single ‘Close (to the Edit), a band featuring… one Paul Morley.
These connections make me feel like James Burke.
How proud you must be – on so many levels.
The only level I’m on from that era, fs, would be the Down Down Hitmakers’ album from 1975.
That’s about as far removed from prog as it’s possible to get, I think.
Let’s call the whole thing off.
That would explain my level of perplexity. I have never knowingly listened to anything* by Yes as I am allergic to prog.
* I did hear Owner Of A Lonely Heart a lot. I don’t mind it either. But it’s not prog is it.
I saw Yes 1973 Reading Festival, I have no recollection of them.
Wrecked again (as Michael Chapman might put it…)?
I couldn’t rightly comment.
It’s a Trevor Horn production.
I think it IS prog. With this song, there are all kinds of unexpected whizzes and bangs, plus a guitar synth solo and lyrics about eagles. Come on!
Nah – OOALH is pop music.
Having said that, Tormato is a very long way from being Brahmsian…
You say Tormato, I say you can’t even spell tomato.
Edited because I just realised that Diddley posted a much better version of the same joke.
And, by a strange quirk of fate I have arrived home to find a copy of “a sound mind” by Paul Morley waiting on my doorstep. The by -line is “how I fell in love with classical music (and decided to rewrite its entire history” …………if Morley has one fault it is excessive modesty
Did I do so much winning?
Like them or loath them, Yes records must be amongst the least erotic music made. Not recommended for getting in the mood with your lady love. Owner of a lonely bed more like.
Begs the question: what was going on in Paul Morley’s head?
Brahms and LisZTT.
*Gentle ripple of applause from the stands*