FELT (Go Kart Mozart, Denim)... Lawrence is amazing!

They were not one of the 0.001% of musicians who make it huge. So what? Who cares? I followed this band from the beginning and it never even crossed my mind that that they were competing for chart positions and TOTP appearances.

By the standards of the kind of people who liked them, I think they had a pretty good career actually. The stature of the band entirely rests upon the superb music that is contained within "Back In Denim" and "Denim On Ice". They are more than that but that should be enough. Everything they released was fantastic and still stands up today, they garnered critical acclaim that few bands achieve, didn't release anything that was aesthetically half-assed (great design, covers, concepts, clothes etc), did BBC sessions, appeared on TV, toured in Europe, even played a couple of stadium gigs with Pulp. That's a career that 99% of bands would die for.

I doubt that "Summer Smash" would have been a big hit anyway. It would have been their worst single had it ever been released. And what is the point of even speculating about this anyway? Would history have been different if they had had a single novelty hit? I'm reminded of the Dickies, who had 9 hits in the UK in the space of about 2 years. Following this, they were hampered by drug issues, bad business decisions, revolving door line-ups, quickly returning to impoverished obscurity, putting out patchy albums for decades, endlessly touring with their first two albums making up the bulk of their set. I suspect this would have been the fate for Denim, had they ever had a splash of mainstream success. Instead we got Go-Kart Mozart who I consider to be absolute genius.

Happy birthday!

For whatever reason I thought he'd be older. Happy birthday Lawrence.

Aw, happy birthday Lawrence, <3 you so much! Poem of the River for all time!

one of those bands where the interviews and conceptual stuff rivals their actual output!

have you guys heard this?? http://dominorad.io/show/lawrence_from_felt\\
i've a link to it if you wanna listen! so great!

Yeah his radio show was great.

proper link to show: http://archive.dominorad.io/lawrencefelt.mp3

was pleasantly surprised to learn that his musical tastes coincide rather eerily with mine. shack, dexys, prefab sprout fantastic something? sheesh, get out of town, loz!!

of course made a mental note to investigate win (whose existence i had been oompletely ignorant of) and sudden sway (all i had known of them was their evolution peel sessions) (he claimed during the broadcast that they were his favorite artists of the nineties!)

The two Win albums are very good.

i kind of stayed up all night a few weeks ago the first time i heard them. one of those things, like friends again, where i was like 'why didn't my obsessive record collector friends who were keyed into eighties uk pop tell me about this waaaaay earlier???'

makes me wish bimble were still here, b/c he was the sort that would post space blues on his blog and be like almost apologizing for the obviousness of it, like "of course this is basic cultural literacy for civilized ppl"

like lawrence playing wild swans... almost a tossed-off gesture

has anyone read that slim jc brouchard volume, ballad of the fan?

I wonder how he is celebrating?

Just got a copy of "Forever Breathes the Lonely Word", which Felt record should I get next?

poem of the river

really think so much of the genius of lawrence was his uncanny prescience

like making a weird moog record in 88

or taking cues from singer-songwriters like hazlewood, hardin, neil that it took almost a decade for critical consensus (at least in the circles he traveled in) to catch up with

he just made a bunch of records in accord with his affections at a given moment, and they still hold up 25 years or more later.

by and large his conceptual ambitions dwarf his contemporaries on cherry red and creation imo

thanks!

@ Neil, get "The Strange Idols Pattern and other stories". Deebank-era Felt is very different (and to my taste, superior) to Duffy-era Felt. Though "Poem of the River" is brilliant.

NP: "Synthesizers in the Rain"

thanks again!

i don't know how i feel aboot you cherry red ppl!

poem, pictorial jackson, forever, and the 12"'s are all time for me

dig the cherry red stuff,sure, but in general prefer the creation years when he gradually ironed out the pretentiousness from his system more or less lyrically and began to take cues from boring dylan years + alan mcgee pep talks + his own secret muses which were obv. working overtime in the late 80's

like pictorial is x number of songs played quickly, recorded quickly

no stagnant pools or semipiternal darkness or whatever

just candles in a church and autumn martin duffy exercises and lawrence telling it like it is while you're candy flipping

"or taking cues from singer-songwriters like hazlewood, hardin, neil that it took almost a decade for critical consensus (at least in the circles he traveled in) to catch up with"

did he know ivo at 4AD at all or anyone at cherry red, because those people were all about that stuff back then. though i guess people who run labels aren't the same as critics.

he did a single with liz frazier (sic) so i can imagine he would know 4ad people

someone i knew ruined my Goldmine Trash LP by melting candlewax on it, never got over it

Ennh, Duffy was such a disappointing replacement for Deebank. I love those later albums, for sure, and would rate "Poem" and "Forever" over "Crumbling" and "Ignite", but Duffy's organ sounds stoopid in comparison to Deebank's endlessly winding majesty. And personally I love the pairing of Deebank with Laurence's "I don't know how to sing"-early style, i.e. "The World is as Soft as Lace"

like, i think the irony is, that at the time onlookers were probably like 'this is the apex of huddling in a closet bedsit music' but if you actually go back and listen to it it's far more psychedelic material than the furthest reaches of the mancunian pill chapterhouse. mebbe i'm totally wrong, but i feel like lawrence grokked so many angles of psyche music that were played around with late eighties/dawn of the nineties. he labored with the burden of incorporating the eventual hangover and so forth w/o dwindling down into empty stabs at nihilism or broken hedonism. he recapitulated tom rush et al, and i think in a fundamentally worthwhile manner

i have my own problems with directions that he took blah blah blah, but...pretty sure that bubblegum perfume is in the running for best album art ever.

Neil, yeah get Poem of the River. If the long instrumental sections grab you then go for Splendour of Fear (the best Deebank-era record imo). If you prefer the shorter songs from Forever Breathes then go for Strange Idols Pattern.

scott, dunno, just going by old interview with him circa '87 where they cite his prominently displayed record collection. a friend of mine was friends w/ivo, and his quote on lawrence was something like, 'oh, he's a really unhappy person', which i guess rings true with the portrayal of him in the Creation book, which makes him sound like a depresso

bubblegum perfume is in the running for best album art ever.

I would agree, if it read "songs from the cherry red years" ;)

theres an interview from that felt fanzine of a few years ago where he's talking about the primitive painters / 7 canons phase and not being able to afford the services of envelope 23 but getting some mates of vaughn oliver to turn in a 4ad knockoff sleeve. I imagine he must have ben almost part of the 4ad crew by proxy at that point. it seems like he was mostly just obsessed with elektra in the phase running up to forever breathes the lonely word.

yeah he was! let the snakes and some of the other creation artwork is william s harvey tribute all the way

not joking about poem of the river btw. my favorite record by them. ya could probably sustain yrself for a day or two on portions of it.

did a quick check on deebank and looks like he did two solo records, years apart- anyone heard them?

Felt discography with great sleeve scans.

i've heard inner thought zone, it's about as good as the title implies

heard the first one. it's...like the more indulgent moments of felt's cherry red catalog. not unpleasant by any means, but not something i'd get super-excited over i guess

ah well, thanks

i go back and forth w/felt. like sometimes i'm like eh, insufferably pretentious and possibly twee in all the wrong ways

but then i listen to riding on the equator or stained-glass windows with fresh ears and meditate on the bubblegum perfume artwork and i'm like "fuggetaboutit,,,these guys..."

or like "dark red birds". it's just some guy muttering over organ stabs and someone playing the most boring ersztz nick drake guitar parts ever. and somehow it adds up to the greatest sunday morning or friday night song ever. all-purpose conciliatory vibes and more

@ brownie, if you own Absolute Classic Masterpieces, there is a Maurice Deebank solo track on there ("Dance Of Deliverance"). It sounds like Pink Floyd.

no i don't have it, but will look for it

i like pink floyd well enough

xpost So in love with Elektra they did this ...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g1F6Dj_jCLs

You know on that Big Star box, where all the reviewers commented on how no one at the show on the live disc appeared to be listening to the band. I see your Big Star and raise you Felt in 1987 in Greenock

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6q66mrCKV6k

i don't understand why of all the beach boys to cover he did 'be still' but hey it works

so lawrence to do that

his cover bests the original imo

Do many of y'all have "Absolute Classic Masterpieces Vol. 2"? I believe it was a Japan-only release but it's 2 discs of the Duffy era that's so well chosen it stands helps build the case vis-a-vis the Deebank era.

I've got ACMv2, would have to dig in the cd boxes but I'm pretty sure it's a Creation issue, sleeve design to match vol 1 but in white rather than grey. I'd have a hard time choosing between the two eras, tbh; the Deebank stuff (esp. The Splendour of Fear) has moments of utterly transporting magnificence ("The Stagnant Pool" in particular), but I do really love the poppier Hammond ie. Duffy driven sound. I always loved the way they'd intersperse the albums with brilliantly odd EPs as well, I think right until the end Lawrence just did whatever he wanted and as del points out upthread it's taken a couple of decades for people to catch up with him. Best band of the 80s for me, no question.

yeh, i like the creation stuff better, not b/c i think its inherently "better", but more that i think around that time he took cues from classic canonical singer-songwriters and heartily embraced that role, as opposed to merely enterprising to be a quirky-ish indie band. "she lives by the castle", sheesh, it could have been written by willie nelson or somebody. so impressive

Most of the back catalogue showed up on Spotify fairly recently so I've been rediscovering loads of Felt in the office and kitchen at home (where I do majority of Spotify listening). Can state categorically that no type of work or cooking related activity is not improved by blasting "I Will Die With My Head In Flames" and "Ballad of the Band" on repeat play.

Totally love Poem too though, dig Lawrence's insistence on Television style crediting of the guitar solos on a track-by-track basis. Think my fave bit is the soloing on "Riding on the Equator", could listen to that all day.

yes!

Had an extremely pleasurable morning of compiling and ripping all Felt single and EP tracks into a single playlist.

Three of my favourite Deebank-era songs were non-album singles ("Something Sends Me To Sleep", "My Face Is On Fire", and "Penelope Tree", which is probably my favourite Felt song).

The Duffy-era singles are mostly very dark and sinister, fantastic. "The Final Resting of the Ark" 12" and "Space Blues" 12" are just great. Terrific songs cut with Sakamoto-esque CP-70 instrumentals from Martin Duffy.

I hope he did something nice: Bob, Pete and Sarah popped round with a bottle of Malibu and some antiseptic wipes or something ...

My only complaint with "Absolute Classic Masterpieces Vol. 2" is they left off "September Lady", "All The People I Like Are Those That Are Dead" and "I Can't Make Love To You Anymore". Granted, they weren't singles, but still. I added them to my digital version. ;-)