After parting ways with the good Mr Green yesterday I found myself with enough time on my hands to pop into the HMV shop opposite Centrepoint, there to purchase a couple of CDs. These were, in no particular order, a collection of the early Kinks's singles, the ones that came out on Pye, and the recording of Havergal Brian's Gothic Symphony made at the 2011 Proms.
Not much in common between the two CDs, you may be thinking, but I see both writers involved as guys who were very much out of step with their times, and whose strengths issued from their lack of any real connection with those times. Listening to Davies's magical Autumn Almanac is a powerful reminder of just how much of a musical outsider the great Kink was.
After crossing back over to Centrepoint I finished my afternoon sojourn in the city by proceeding to read a couple of chapters of Trollope's The Prime Minister whilst standing on the steps outside, trying not to pay too much attention to all the many aspects of the scene ahead of me that seemed to be demanding that I look at it. Again I was aware of being wonderfully out of time in my tastes. And, in a slightly glorious way, I didn't care.
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2 comments:
Hi Mr. Connor! About musicians being out of step with their times: I've recently come across the work of this band called Sparks. They broke through in the early 70s with albums like 'Kimono My House', which you may have heard. They've started coming up with interesting newer material in the 2000s, though - I was pretty hypnotized by this performance.
My apologies for taking so long to reply to this most interesting heads up! Loved the performance in question, and can confirm that I was listening to the brothers at the time in question as they got fairly extensive play on the radio. I think I would have bought Kimono My House if I'd have been in possession of the necessaries at that time. It got excellent press and Sparks were definitely seen as 'the next big thing' in some quarters.
The problem was that they unfairly got themselves classified as an oddly American version of glam rock and didn't seem to follow-up their debut with any depth (at least, that was the narrative in the music press and guys like me, who couldn't afford to take chances buying albums they were not entirely sure of, tended to accept what they were told in those days, even if they were suspicious of the controllers of the narrative.) If they'd have arrived four years later they would have been seen rightly as part of an intelligent new wave emerging from the States, and properly listened to.
What is nice to know is that, despite the neglect of listeners like myself whose ears were too readily closed, they carved out a worthy career and body of work.
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