Best track on DOG MAN STAR

sounds good, ilxmail if you can!

It sounds great on some tracks, but not others. It sounds immense on 'Introducing the Band', but sucks on 'New Generation' ... There's moments I think that Butler had a point, but having heard his own productions I'm not convinced it would have been the album it is if he'd produced it. It would have been too far in the other direction - far too clean.

v otm

fwiw, if you compare with the production on his McAlmont&Butler stuff, right after, it's quite different and not sure it would have worked with DMS material, indeed !

ok Niels !
Not sure how it works, though.

As for the production/arrangements issues between Butler and the others, I also think they were right in editing "The Wild Ones" and change the ending.
Butler's version with the jam at the end is not bad but it's not as good as the final cut.

AIXTC, works fine for exchanging contact info, but nm my email is kern.cooper at gmail

OK, sent !

Yeah, certainly but still, I find it very annoying and weird for the artists.
As someone who makes music, my experience is that there are times when you have a rush in creativity and it's very precious and rare so you should go with the momentum and produce as many things as you can because that won't last forever.
And seeing young bands/artists spend like 4 years between albums seems crazy and a huge waste to me. And it's worse when it's between their debut and follow up.
I find it even harder to understand nowadays when you can upload and share new stuff so easily...
Anyway.

― AlXTC from Paris, Thursday, October 19, 2017 9:53 AM (two hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I think it's largely to do with the way the music biz has changed in the last 25 years.

For a lot of people who play in bands nowawadays, being in a band is not their only job. Even lots of well established acts work a day job in between gigs/albums because unless you're a huge marquee name the industry doesn't pay like it used to, and that all impacts on the amount of time you are going to have to write songs or be in the studio. For the UK at least, gone are the days when bands could just live on the dole when things got quiet.

This is also I think why a musical career(and the arts in general) can often feel like the domain of the privileged, because it seems like only those who were already pretty well off survive long enough to get big, yer Mumford & Sons and the like.

Sure for smaller acts but even fairly big acts (Vampire Weekend, Haim, Grimes, to name a few I have in mind right now) take years between albums !

those track by track notes may be where Dan Bejar read about the original title for The Wild Ones:

BA: It used to be called 'Ken', I think.

BB: That's right.

BA: Which I think was the name of the guitar tech we had.

BB: Ken was the guy who was going to be me in Suede. Basically two people applied to the advert. The first guy had come along and he told you that you'd sound better if you sounded more like Led Zeppelin.

BA: I don't even remember this.

BB: Yeah, and his name was Ken. It stuck in my mind: I know what Ken looks like and what he was like, and what he had to do. He's always been at the back of my mind.

I guess ultimately the story of DMS is quite sad since it's a (band) breakup record and Butler never got to play those songs live

But at the same time it wasn't sad at all because the equally excellent Richard Oakes arrived and then 'Together' and 'Bentswood Boys' were written and then Coming Up, which turned out to be their biggest selling album worldwide.

yeah, I agree that it's very sad for Butler (not necessarily for the rest of the band, as you mention).
He was on fire creatively and this was basically his chef d'oeuvre (he made great things afterward but it was never the same level again).
And he never got to finish it nor play it and present if to the world.
Psychologically, this must have been horrible for an artist.

As we all know, he didn't help himself by alienating himself from the rest of the band in numerous ways. Doing interviews slagging off other band members when you're in the middle of making a record is not the best thing to do.

Psychologically, it doesn't seem like Suede was healthy for him.

Isn't there some TV clip of the band shortly before his departure where he just clearly does not gaf?

Sure, the responsibility of the break up is certainly shared by all members of the band and especially BB and BA.
So even if he made some mistakes that doesn't make it less sad for him.

I'm not sure it's Suede that wasn't healthy for him since he'd been in the band since the beginning and apparently, everything was OK, particularly with BA.
Success (and all the things that can come with it) on the other hand...

If I remember correctly, Butler wasn't liking what Ed Buller was doing and wanted the band to self-produce. I can only reach the same conclusion as the rest of the band did, which is that what it sounds like is that what Butler actually wanted was to produce the record himself, which would have alienated the rest of the band further as they would have been keen to have their say.

The end result would have probably been a very cleanly produced record with no life, a great deal more "dry", with stuff like the outro to 'The Wild Ones' left untouched and an overlong version of 'The Asphalt World' ... then the band would have split up.

i saw them in philly after this came out and BB was gone and it was kinda...sad. i was hoping for the new age of bowie and it was a little embarrassing. but maybe it was just a really bad show.

I'm not sure it's Suede that wasn't healthy for him since he'd been in the band since the beginning and apparently, everything was OK, particularly with BA.

Oh come on, it's fairly well known that this wasn't the case!

Hum. I'm not sure BB wanted to produce himself (for the simple reason that he didn't how to do it at that time !) but he definitely wanted more input in the production decisions.
From what I understand of the situation then, the crisis was more personal than artistic (BA was in full drugs habits and partying, BB was depressed/had just lost his father, there was a huge communication breakdown within the band...).

xpost
what ? that BA and BB get on well for a while, before success ?

eheh, I was at the FIRST gig R.Oakes ever played with Suede !
It wasn't a proper gig but a radio session in Paris. I even remember it was BA's birthday !
I hated Oakes so much... (it was pure jealousy !)

No, it's very well known that Anderson and Butler weren't getting on, and neither were Butler and Gilbert, for that matter. It's also fairly well known that Butler wanted to self-produce Dog Man Star... I mean, this is all in Love and Poison!

Nah, BA and BB were very close for a while, until the band went successful.
And as for Gilbert, the tensions started during the DMS sessions, iirc.
and as for BB wanting to self produce the album, I really doubt it (and I don't think I have ever heard or read it from them).

Well, read Love and Poison again, then (if you ever have)

OK maybe. He clearly wanted more input in the production work anyway, whether it was doing it all by himself or have some things done his way.
But the production issues were only one part of the crisis.
In interviews, BB and BA have admitted, later, it was mainly a problem of (mis)communication and personal issues.

BB also had huge issues with BA's lyrics, iirc.

I think it was mainly with "We are the pigs" !

Or "Stay Together?"

Following the death of Bernard Butler's father, relations within Suede started to deteriorate. Butler kept to himself on the following tour of the US, while the other band members "indulged in probably the worst excesses of their career". Butler travelled to concerts by himself or on The Cranberries tour bus, rather than travel with his bandmates. This influence became prevalent as Butler later stated, "Whatever I did on Stay Together was the A to Z of the emotions I was experiencing... defiance, loss, a final sigh."

What was intended as a couple of days' recording stretched out to two weeks. It was later revealed that the song had almost 50 tracks of recorded material on it. According to an entry in Simon Gilbert's diary in the biography Love and Poison, Butler objected to the lyrics in "Stay Together". The entry read: "Lyrics not to be printed on cover of single in case his mother reads it. '16 tears', obviously paedophilic!". The lyrics for "The Living Dead" were also criticised by Butler, at the time he said: "I've written this really beautiful piece of music and it's a squalid song about junkies".

It is known that throughout the decade after its release, the band have largely disowned the song, perhaps because it reminded them of the problems within the band at the time. On the single Anderson says, "I don't think the fuss about Stay Together was justified, I think that was just hype," He shrugs. "I just find it a bit bombastic. I don't think the lyrics are that good either. It's okay, you know, it's okay. I think the b-sides are much better". However publicist Phill Savage suggests that Anderson "can't believe he wrote it about that girl, Anick" (Brett's girlfriend at the time), which is why he has no feelings for it. Anderson has described "Stay Together" as one of the few points in the band's career where hype dictated its success

Things were so bad he was riding with the Cranberries! I can't imagine.

iirc it was BA who had issues with "Stay Together", wasn't it ? That said his lyrics and performance ARE terrible on that song !

Ahah

I disagree, I think 'Stay Together' is a great song. Both Anderson and Butler had problems with it for different reasons.

Butler also had a problem with 'Killing of a Flashboy' and he's wrong there too.

stay together rules so hard.

actually this is still my idea of what a band/artist should do instead of waiting like 4 years between 2 albums like bands do nowadays...

King Gizzard And The Lizard Wizard have released six albums in the last 2.5 years and toured all of them

What was his issue with "flash boy" ?

"it's a squalid song about junkies"

it's Suede tho

re:Stay Together, I'm not sure I'd ever heard it before yesterday when I saw it so highly praised, it didn't make a great initial impression but it's growing on me.

I have a weird relationship w Suede since I've listened the first 4 albums to pieces but never really dug into b-sides/non-album singles. I know esp the b-sides are highly acclaimed but I ever got into them, I used to own Sci-Fi Lullabies but for some reason I never put it on.

Like there was a window of opportunity in which Suede's music was able to make a big and lasting impression on me, but then after that I became less open to "new" Suede sounds.

It's strange you should say that - if I had to take just one of their albums to the desert island with me, it'd be the first disc of Sci-Fi Lullabies!

Maybe I'll get into it someday, I try every once in a while. Listening to the first track now, it certainly sounds good.

Yeah, disc 1 of scifi is their best album with the s/t. Simply wonderful.

yep