Cardiacs: Classic or Dud?

Tim was around after a Spratleys Japs reunion gig about three years ago and me and imago blurted out some things about how important his music was, and he managed to give us a thumbs up. I felt guilty in retrospect wondering what kind of effort that might have required, but it still meant a lot, and his being there (and at other such gigs, despite the assumed difficulty) was testament to his unwavering commitment to the Cardiacs universe.

He was truly visionary in the way he stitched songs together (and unstitched them, and sewed them back together again in the wrong order) and in those beautifully lysergic lyrics that dissolve and reform in different interpretations no matter how many hundreds of times you hear them.

I wrote a bit here

https://critterjams.wordpress.com/2020/07/22/the-leader-of-the-starry-skies/

I agree there is something utterly unique about the way he wrote songs. Like geniuses in other fields the more you study him the more you feel like his brain was just wired a different way. He's influenced so many people but nobody can really write the way he does. The only thing that comes close is Magma, or maybe Zappa at his absolute best. You feel like you're listening to pop music from an advanced civilization or something. And I'm still amused that for all his boundless creativity he still decided end the first disc of StG by ripping off Faust, one of the few tunes in existence with that same tilted sensibility

Sad to hear all this. I didn't really know much about the nature of his condition.

It's so fucking weird, after all these years I'm still having conversations about Cardiacs all the time and I'm still foisting various tunes onto friends and colleagues whom I think/hope might be receptive.

Only yesterday I was chatting with a mate about Jon Poole/Bob Leith's pre-Cardiacs band 'Ad Nauseum' who were one of a small tribe that appeared to be beholden to that early Cardiacs sound and how great their record, 4 Little Boys is.

its weird for me too, as I wrote about up there I really haven't listened to a Cardiacs LP in full for a long time, I'd hear bits and pieces here and there but it made me feel too sad to actually listen to one of their albums. at least until a few days ago, when I put on StG and figured, "okay now's the time to get into all this stuff again"

frogbs, I nearly posted something earlier about how I don't usually think of In A City Lining as a favourite Cardiacs tune but it has the unfailing ability to make me forget about any silly fug I may be dallying with, often to the point of actual laughter.

I've been deep in a Spratley's Japs phase recently and only a few days ago was frantically scribbling out the notes and timings for the solo to 'Don't You Aill...' because I'm making a little lockdown cover versions EP and fancied having a go.

listening to A Little Man right now, god this is brilliant....DA-DA-DA-DA-DA-DA-DIVE!!!

16 of us cared enough to post something. That isn't enough, but it's better than zero I suppose

I think, for ILM at least, it's about what I would expect, spent the whole day yesterday talking/thinking about Tim and listening to his music.

Oh of course (and me too!) - nothing against anyone here or really anyone not here. Just the eternal anguish towards a largely unfeeling world

Everyone posting here probably knows but the board recordings of three songs from the Panixphere / Japs concert in December might not be available to download indefinitely.

https://theconfinementtapes.bandcamp.com/album/confinement-release6

XXXXXXXXXXP - There's a nice, long interview with Kavus on YT, filmed only two weeks ago in which he talks about LSD with a 'never say never' attitude, ideas of another singer and getting Craig Fortnum in to orchestrate and so on.

Obviously, Tim's estate is now to be curated and considered in the past tense more definitively once Jim or whoever decides what is best.

yeah I always held out hope that we'd eventually hear it

Aside from that, the fight to ensure his music gets its rightful dues goes on

I bounced back and forth between Facebook and the discord server yesterday, since I was working a double and wasn't busy at all.

the more you study him the more you feel like his brain was just wired a different way

This is pretty much what I come away thinking whenever I listen to Cardiacs. Sometimes I wonder why more bands haven't tried to copy their style, and I think it's mainly just that no one else can write like that. Always loved those Special Garage Concerts rehearsal videos where it's like seeing actual people playing this stuff in this setting somehow makes it even harder to understand how these songs can exist:

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

RIP Tim

Do you think that the lack of clear spatial positions in the shed was always the idea? I know Tim didn't finish the editing. But if course it's easy to say it's totally in keeping with the concept.

The first three things mentioned here that Carl Dreyer does 'wrong' in The Passion of Joan of Arc apply to the Rotten Shed I think.

https://www.bfi.org.uk/news-opinion/news-bfi/features/passion-joan-arc-carl-dreyer-style

Kav's interview explains that they wanted it to be uncomfortable, full of junk and sweaty, loud.

Oh weird, I posted that clip without having any idea that was one of the main topics of the Kavus interview! Really have to watch that

Yeah, it's a kind of potted history of his time with the band and beyond.

maybe an unpopular opinion but there is one guy whose melodic sensibility reminds me of him - John Linnell

Got up the other day and learned this news and just thought "Huh". Couple of hours later put on a file of radio sessions which is on on my phone in case I'm in the mood on a late night walks home or whatever & the first song it throws up is Duck & Roger the Horse which starts with the ABC ident and I immediately start crying. The closest musical relationship I've ever had is with this man and this band. The music, the lyrics, the performances, all the visuals and the newsletters and the whole conceit of what they were doing, everything about it just made so much sense to me. Spent the past day listening to albums and catching up on live videos etc on youtube. I'd give anything to see them all again, backlit and lined up at the edge of the stage, low keyboard drone, wind machines blasting confetti all around and the audience losing their minds wondering what's going to happen now?

^^^^

thank you for introducing me to this band back in 2006, everything

Just want to say i really liked your write-up Frogbs.

I think Rhodri Marsden's eulogy was really very good and spot-on in a lot of ways.

I was lucky enough that for a few years Tim and I had quite a lot of mutual friends, ne'er-do-well musicians mostly, so I got to meet him a fair bit, usually at gigs and/or in pubs.

The two bands I was in at that time were tight with The Monsoon Bassoon and we played the same bills or would go see each other's gigs and Rhodri is dead right, Tim would stand down the front at your gig with his big, lovely Cheshire cat face. You did get the impression that a lot of his favourite music was indeed made by his mates.

He was charming and would give you huge unexpected bear hugs and kisses whenever you saw him.

A favourite memory, one night, walking from the tube to see The Monsoon at a gig up near Dingwalls and seeing Tim heading the same way I asked him how things were going with the next Cardiacs release - which would have been Guns - and instead he was excitedly jabbering about Spratley's Japs, I remember asking him about the Incredible String Band song Cosmic Boy, mentioning how it had reminded me of Sea Nymphs and we geeked out over how good the album 'Liquid Acrobat...' was.

My proud claim to fame, we got asked to support The Sea Nymphs at The Bull and Gate - iirc, it could have been The Monarch - I remember looking to my right, mid-song and seeing Tim watching us from the side of the stage, he was checking out our fancy pedal-work and I got all nervous incase I muffed up.

I never saw him after he got sick. He had an amazing circle of old friends around him, as you all know and I'm sure a visitor's queue of people from his periphery would have been never-ending.

But, my wife and I sent him a care package once he was settled in the care home, a box of CDs and box-sets that my wife had brought home from her record company job, I remember calling Kavus up and asking if Tim liked Jethro Tull and Bill Nelson's Red Noise. I hope he got them.

Some friends I was in a band with in the early 90s were good mates with Sidi Bou Said and I guess other people in those circles. One of them was part of this Lewisham (?) crowd and the other was responsible for me first seeing Cardiacs in 1990. Saw the band often over the next few years but having caught the tail end of the big line-up the gigs innevitably changed when four (?) people had left and the band was playing with backing tracks and a new guitarist and drummer. Well, you know. Not that it was bad, just different.

I only met Tim once AFAIR. I may have mentioned it was in a pub in Islington, I just happened to be wearing a battered yellow daisy Cardiacs t-shirt and he came and sat opposite me and said "alright."

Was the show with The Sea Nymphs at The Falcon? That's my memory, it was the last time I went there before it closed as a venue.

It *was* the Falcon, my bad. Sean Organ was playing Selling England By The Pound in between bands.

I was always a bit torn about them playing with backing tapes. Sacrificing a certain amount of spontaneity and generally complicating things seems unnecessary when it would've been just as good or possibly better just doing it live as a four-piece.

thank you for introducing me to this band back in 2006, everything

― imago, Friday, July 24, 2020 5:17 AM (five hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

You're welcome. Wouldn't have done it for anyone else hahaha.

:)

still wondering who the guy was that introduced me to them and if they post here or are in the FB group

My introduction: bought the Nighttracks EP without having heard them, judging from the photo that they must be some kind of relatively mainstream, female-fronted indie band that I hadn't heard of before because that was the kind of stuff Janice Long played on her show. When I put it on I was a bit crushed at first that Sarah Smith wasn't the singer and that they didn't sound like Girls At Our Best. But, like frogbs, I got hooked by "In a City Lining" and played it about a hundred times and then got into Buds and Spawn and played that about two hundred times. Played it to my friend who said she hated them and that we'd both seen them when they were on The Tube so that must've went over my head. I'd also seen the Marillion tour years earlier, which was my first big concert I ever went to but I arrived while Marillion were already onstage and I don't know if they even played at the Glasgow show.

I was introduced to them by a friend who did their live lights for a short while, he posted a nice thing about Tim on Facebook yesterday.

Here it is:

So sad to hear of Tim Smith, singer of The Cardiacs' passing... aged 59. He suffered brain damage from a heart attack in 2008 and never fully recovered.

The Cardiacs were 'support' band for The Wildhearts when I was doing Wildhearts' merch/lights in 2004, the early formative days of my career.
I'd never heard of the Cardiacs before and I remember when they first kicked in full blast at the first gig. I'd never heard anything like it and it took me about 2 or 3 gigs to get my head fully around it. I ended up doing their lights for the tour including at the Astoria, and they were definitely the first band I lit which didn't follow conventional rhythm rules (or rules in general). It helped shape the way I still work today. Kept me on my toes and ready for anything!

Tim was a kind sweet warm man off stage, clearly a mischievous twisted genius bubbling under which would surface when he was front and centre and screaming to a half bewildered half entranced crowd.

I don't generally do eulogies because the internet is inundated with them but meeting and working with Tim (and his band/music) was one of those moments in time that instantly affected me in a positive way and shaped what I am now. Plus the Cardiacs deserved way more exposure than they got.

Give em a listen if you haven't before. Just don't expect to get it right away!

It's so weird that steve Wright played them loads on his afternoon show for a few weeks after Is This The Life? was released, that was my initial exposure and I guess I must have thought they were a slightly angsty, punky band.

I carried the name around with me until they started popping up in Levitation interviews along with Tim's name, then I bought Heaven Born on a whim when I was visiting London in 1992 and, apart from March and Helen And Heaven which remain two of my favourites to this day, I really wasn't terribly fussed about it.

Then in 1993 after a move from Scotland down to London, I discovered my flatmate had a VHS copy of Maresnest which I watched, equally compelled/repulsed, then watched again and again until the penny dropped and then, of course, the usual Cardiacs mania kicked in, luckily I had not too long to wait before the reissue campaign happened.

god what was it like when STG dropped, already being a fan of theirs

Pretty epic, realising it was going to be a double, Michael(Moke) who taped gigs and sold bootlegs in Camden at the weekends had heard it already and I remember him describing it as the most amazingly epic thing.

I was buying the Organ zine at gigs and they were talking about it long before release and a little later Org put out the Belleye CD single with three tracks, and then there was a bit of an agonizing wait for the album in true Cardiacs fashion.

sad lol

In-fact, Manhoo might have even come out just before the album too, possibly? idk

After it's release, I even recall a little bit of half-hearted dissent from some folks, too much Poole, drum machine etc:

lol, the ships and irons purists :D

Alex In NYC was one who weirdly adored HBAEB and loathed STG, when they're clearly a brilliant continuum imo

Bellyeye had been out for quite a long while before Sing To God showed up. I think Manhoo was played by Mark Radcliffe in advance and I taped it, but it was the less epic single version. I remember playing the CD on a discman on the train to Stirling the day I got it. When the album showed up it took me a while to appreciate it totally, since I got fixated on a handful of tracks like Insect Hoofs on Lassie and Doglike Sparky. I sorta ignored the second disc for a while.

It was tough finding the records in Scotland. There'd be like one copy in one shop. Seriously if there was something being released I'd go round all the record shops every day so no other bastard got it. Other than the Marillion tour I'm not aware of them playing there till about 1992. Thank the stars I went down for the Maresnest filming as that was the only time I saw the full line-up.

Are you the guy shouting 'show us yer bottom!!' in-between songs? :)

No, that guy clearly is English. I'm from Ayrshire.

Actually, now I think about it, I remember hearing the edits in the Manhoo single and thinking it odd, so StG must have been out beforehand.

Totally agree about fixating on certain songs at first and for a long time, Dog Like Sparky, Manhoo, Flap Off You Beak, Wireless, the second side definitely suffered at first.

XP - Just kidding, I know, me too. I think we've maybe talked about this before on an Ayrshire thread. But I do wonder who that guy is from time to time.

on a personal note that little twangy bit on Flap Off You Beak ("they're not alive..") was when I realized this was absolutely the best band in the universe

the climax of that song is probably the 30 seconds of music that, if pushed, i'd ask the aliens to preserve