― Matt C., Monday, 19 August 2002 15:29 (twenty-one years ago) link
― mark p (Mark P), Monday, 19 August 2002 16:06 (twenty-one years ago) link
― Yancey (ystrickler), Monday, 19 August 2002 18:16 (twenty-one years ago) link
― Aaron Grossman (aajjgg), Monday, 19 August 2002 18:21 (twenty-one years ago) link
― Siegbran Hetteson (eofor), Monday, 19 August 2002 18:47 (twenty-one years ago) link
― keith, Monday, 19 August 2002 22:16 (twenty-one years ago) link
by far
― geeg, Tuesday, 20 August 2002 04:53 (twenty-one years ago) link
pitchfork is wunderbar, even though i never read other people's shit
― Brad Haywood, Tuesday, 20 August 2002 12:52 (twenty-one years ago) link
― f4df, Tuesday, 20 August 2002 15:16 (twenty-one years ago) link
― electric sound of jim (electricsound), Wednesday, 21 August 2002 00:08 (twenty-one years ago) link
― lyra (lyra), Wednesday, 21 August 2002 03:23 (twenty-one years ago) link
― alex in mainhattan (alex63), Friday, 23 August 2002 15:59 (twenty-one years ago) link
For some writing I'm doing I'm trying to find reviews of Eno's 'Here Come The Warm Jets', from when it came out ('74). Save this gem from RS:
This record is annoying because it doesn't do anything. The songs aren't strong enough individually or collectively to merit more than a passing listen. Save for some incendiary guitar work by Robert Fripp during "Baby's On Fire," the instrumentation is pretty tepid. In fact the whole album may be described as tepid, and the listener must kick himself for blowing five bucks on baloney.
i've not had any luck so far. Is there a database somewhere to find old, original reviews that I don't know about?
― Le Bateau Ivre, Sunday, 26 March 2017 16:31 (seven years ago) link
there's the christgau review, of course, which is actually a little hard to find because it's categorized under plain "ENO":
The idea of this record--top of the pops from quasi-dadaist British synth wizard--may put you off, but the actuality is quite engaging in a vaguely Velvet Underground kind of way. Minimally differentiated variations on the same melody recur and recur, but it's a great melody, and not the only one, and chances are he meant it that way, as a statement, which I agree with. What's more, words take over when the music falters, and on "Cindy Tells Me" they combine for the best song ever written about middle-class feminism, a rock and roll subject if ever there was one. My major complaint is that at times the artist uses a filter that puts dust on my needle
― Karl Malone, Sunday, 26 March 2017 17:56 (seven years ago) link
(oh, i left off his letter grade, which was A)
you're asking for a database of contemporaneous reviews, though, and i don't know about that. other than christgau and rolling stone's archives (and maybe creem?) i'm not sure that one exists
― Karl Malone, Sunday, 26 March 2017 18:01 (seven years ago) link
rock's back pages has a couple mentions, but it's subscription based
― mark s, Sunday, 26 March 2017 18:04 (seven years ago) link
Thanks Zach, that's actually very helpful! I was looking for Xgau but couldn't find it. Nice juxtaposition with RS too, though that was probably expected around that time? Interesting times.
A db of old reviews should exist imo.
― Le Bateau Ivre, Sunday, 26 March 2017 19:28 (seven years ago) link
Two more good ones:popmatters.com75 or Less― lyra (lyra), Tuesday, August 20, 2002 11:23 PM
― lyra (lyra), Tuesday, August 20, 2002 11:23 PM
I had 387 reviews up at 75orLess, but after the label took over and the reviews stopped, Mark fucked up the site so badly that there's not even much of an archive anymore. :(
― Ⓓⓡ. (Johnny Fever), Sunday, 26 March 2017 20:18 (seven years ago) link
:'-(
― Le Bateau Ivre, Sunday, 26 March 2017 20:59 (seven years ago) link
bangs in creem:
I've had Here Come the Warm Jets in import copy since early spring, and the best of it still stuns and fries me every time I slap it on. Side two does tend to meander a bit, but side one has one of the most perfect lineups in years, solid and throbbing primitivo all the way but with the strangest increment of avant-girdings, like a cross between Nico's Marble Index and Slade. Don't worry, Eno may like synthesizer but this isn't one of those doodley-squats like George Harrison's Electronic Sounds -- these are hard-driving, full-out rock'n'roll songs with consistent percussive force, slashingly economical guitar solos by Fripp and Roxy's Phil Manzanera (who is the most exciting new guitarist since James Williamson, whom he technically far surpasses), and the consistent acidulous edge of Eno's vocals.
Which is where the real twisto action comes in. This guy is a real sickie, bubs, sick as Alice Cooper once was sposed to be, sicker by far than David Bowie's most scabrous dreams. What will you make, for instance, of a song which begins with diabolical electronic telegraphy and the lyrics "Baby's on fire/Better throw her in the water/Look at her laughing/Like a heifer to the slaughter/Baby's on fire/And all the laughing boys are itching..." Don't tell me about the sleaze in your Silverhead -- Eno is the real bizarro warp factor for 1974. It's like he says in "The Paw Paw Negro Blowtorch": "By this time I got to looking for some kind of substitute/I can't tell you what kind, but you know that it rhymes with dissolute..." Meanwhile, the drums are pounding and the guitars are screaming every whichaway in a precisely orchestrated cauldron of terminal hysteria muchly influenced by though far more technologically advanced than early Velvet Underground. Don't miss it; it'll drive you crazy.
http://music.hyperreal.org/artists/brian_eno/interviews/creem74a.html
― Thus Sang Freud, Sunday, 26 March 2017 23:47 (seven years ago) link
this has links to a whole bunch of period reviews:
http://www.moredarkthanshark.org/eno_interviews.html
― Thus Sang Freud, Sunday, 26 March 2017 23:59 (seven years ago) link
Hey thanks, thats very helpful!
― Le Bateau Ivre, Monday, 27 March 2017 10:30 (seven years ago) link
I don't know if they cover Eno, but I just came across http://www.rockscenester.com , a "complete and completely free online archive of Rock Scene magazine (1973-1982)."
― ArchCarrier, Monday, 27 March 2017 11:25 (seven years ago) link