Um, the, the one that's sort of near the end.

Yeah.

[laughs] Or the first track.

Yeah.

Ha- but s- so a deeper understanding, which definitely has pain on it or which I think is a really fantastically brilliant song.

And then they did in 2021 their la- their last album to date, I Don't Live Here Anymore, and I must say I did have that, and I played it a couple times and went, "Ah, you know what? This is, this is, this has already sort of had its day." I felt that it w- I mean, the, for me, uh, those two albums were, you know, incredibly solid.

Um, and then this third, the, well, the fifth or sixth album by them, you know, but their, their most recent.

It has to progress

was it was one of the first digital albums it was

so taking advantage of the new technology and perhaps you know it was easier to use the new technology than it had been on gaucho where there were all sorts of problems particularly with the drum machines that we're using and all that sort of stuff it feels like it's a record that sort of you know we talk when we talk about um talking uh talk talk about the difference between a band that writes some songs and then goes into a studio and records them and a band that goes into a studio and makes stuff up stevie danner i think a bit of a hybrid really i think what they did was they wrote the songs and then they went to the studio and then recorded them to perfection rather than let's go in the studio and make stuff up they might have made up the drum patterns or the drum sound but that's what took the time it wasn't you know with Talk Talk we talked about how the songs were constructed in the studio and built up of all these layers I reckon that that wasn't normally the working practice for Steely Dan I think they had the songs and they go in and record them and then it takes time because they are such perfectionists you know And it seems to me with this album that he had the songs and he goes in, the recording process is laborious, but not as laborious as it had been.

There's a sense of this is me being me, not me being Steely Dan.

I mean, one thing that people say about Steely Dan is they're quite a cynical band and the lyrics are often quite cynical, to use that word again.

And this is a lot more sort of joyous and optimistic.

It is, but also reflective.

Reflective it is, but it taps into American themes.

That's just a

Yeah, yeah, and

you can hear that.

And he loves classical guitar.

I mean, so, you know, although he...

But he's also very interested in technology and, you know, has been very much influenced by, or at least in his own way, influenced by the acid house scene and sort of like, you know, dance music and so on and so forth.

But the guitar remains a constant and it's a sort of ethereal, airy, very unique instrument way of playing you know he's one of those few guitarists where you know within seconds of hearing him you go that's Vinnie Riley you know he's very very distinctive interesting enough Morrissey chose him as the guitarist and co-writer of choice on his debut album Viva Hate when the Smiths broke up and Vinnie Riley is sort of like the guitarist on that and if you listen to that then you can hear you you know, the Vinnie Riley-isms, and on the old occasion where he turns up and sort of guests on other people's records.

I think he's on Holly Johnson's solo album, and you hear him play on that, and you go, oh, there you go, that's Vinnie in the background doing his little guitar thing.

...in comparison

you know,

eight, sunrise the famous murnau silent movie came out in 1927 so uh and of course it was the same year as the jazz singer came out i.e the time when the silent movies went talky so you know anyone listening who's ever seen a silent film will know how alien they feel to anyone you know who who's not an aficionado who's not prepared to do the work you know you can poor old students doing film A level do have to watch a silent film and Sunrise is usually the default choice and it's very difficult to win you know a younger sort of group of 17 or 18 year olds to that unsurprising and I would have been just the same when I was their age back in the late 70s so the point i'm trying to make here is that you know for a young 13 year old to listen to something was 50 years old when i was when i first came across this would have meant listening to you know the equivalent of some sort of 78 record or whatever jazz now as you said this record has had a legacy uh and although i'm sure many younger listeners if there are many younger listeners to this would say it's that rock it's not utterly alien and it's interesting isn't it that you know first of all it shows the big jump that taken place between 1926 and 76 in terms of you know the rock and roll emerging and how fast that happened and how quickly that you know all those developments that sort of like took place in the well from the 50s onwards i guess you know you know And then how here we are 50 years after the release of this record, which don't forget is one of the biggest selling records of all time.

I seem to recall 42 million copies of this record either have been sold or were sold.

You know, it's a huge, huge cultural phenomenon, massive hit record.

And it came out in 76. and as you say at a sort of turning point it certainly effectively marks the end of the Eagles career because the Eagles have been building up to this it doesn't come out of nowhere as you said their fifth or sixth album I can't remember which one you said um but it's um uh you know and it was it was it was everywhere it was one of those records that everyone knew you had a copy of it and although Punk Made you not want to acknowledge your liking of certain bands, Pink Floyd, yes, you know, the prog rock bands certainly fell by the wayside.

And though, you know, intrinsically, there was a little bit of you that didn't have much time or certainly for me, you know, for those American guitar, rock, etc., etc., I don't think that this was one that I would have, you know, I would have immediately gone to sell

But this is a record that's

the work of a group of musicians.

they've sort of like...

Out of respect, perhaps, for Mark Hollis, who sadly passed on quite a few years ago now.

But also because, you know, the past is the past.

The past is another country.

They do things differently there.

Also because they've got their own careers.

You know, Rustin Mann and O-Rang and the groups that they were sort of playing in and Bark Psychosis, you know, etc.

we should try double tracking that try on with an acoustic bass as opposed to an electric bass you know let's see

It doesn't shout out.

No, and maybe that's perhaps... maybe to some extent the difference between sort of male success and female success so the female success tends to sort of downplay itself maybe and you know maybe she doesn't i don't know yeah but yeah um certainly she doesn't have the the status as a musician that uh would possibly be afforded to her had she been um white perhaps and had she been a male do you know what i mean uh although this is a product of her sort of her-ness and her cultural background, I suspect.

Interestingly enough, another little player there that we should mention, again, not trying to do any disservice to Patrice Russian, is that the guitar player on this one is a guy called Paul Jackson, who also did work with Michael Jackson, played on Thriller, played on True Blue by Madonna, and played on our friend's Squiddy Politi's Cupid's Psyche.

And interesting enough, also cropped up on Carol Beyer Sager.

So there's all the really weird interconnections.

But what I'm guessing here is that Jackson, Washington, Gerald Albright are who is a superb musician wants to play with the best and she gets the best and therefore she gets the best out of them interesting enough Freddie Washington goes on to play bass with the live touring Steely Dan as well so although I don't think he did any of the later records with them he plays with the band so another testament to his musical abilities because you've got to be pretty damn good to play in Steely Dan haven't you So yeah, so you have, interestingly enough, again, we said this when we talked about OMD, the orchestral renews in the dark, not a good entry point for this to watch the video.

You mentioned the 12-inch single, that would absolutely be the way in, and fortunately, you know, Spotify and Best Dogs on CD, you can often find these extended mixes and listen to them in that form.

She did one Top of the Pops performance as well, which I've seen, which is maybe better than the video.

And it's got sort of Keith... sort of a very intense image of him focused on the keys leaning over yeah the beautiful curve of the piano there yeah it's it's lovely

and the use of the white space because obviously this is a double album with which is largely white so it reminds you of joy division and closer doesn't it to some extent in the same way because they use the black and white picture in the middle of and so i'm not saying several was you know ripping off or anything like that but i you know anyone who grew up liking music and liking record sleeve design in the 70s and 80s was no doubt looking at ACM you know with admiration and I think you can see elements of that design in Factory and also on 4AD as well who sort of like used you know also a record label that used record sleeve design in an absolutely staggering way so was the fact that this is a one-off event.

Jarrett, interestingly enough, is still alive as we communicate.

And this year, at the Barbican, I went to see this being performed, but not by Keith Jarrett.

And that was a really interesting experience.

So basically, what happened was...

It's an improvised piece of work and, you know, therefore it is be known unto Jarrett.

It

also having that slightly arty quality they did

and what I was going to say is obviously where do they start on Factory so originally they're a Factory Records band so they release Electricity their debut single on Factory which is the Manchester label obviously run by Tony Wilson that we've spoken about a great length obviously you know the big father figure if you like of Joy Division and New Order and many many more and but there's a sort of rivalry as far as I understand it as a southerner between Liverpool and Manchester in terms of who's got the best music and as you said Liverpool sorry OMD orchestral manoeuvres in the dark come from Liverpool and so I suspect being on a Manchester-based label might cause some sort of slight problems and very interestingly they they soon the you know electricity is a relatively successful single and they're signed up interestingly enough by a label called dindisk and dindisk is an offshoot of virgin okay it was run by carol wilson um and um And a lot of the smaller labels also did it in reverse.

In other words, they set off offshoots that perhaps would target a different sort of market.

So I guess the Virgin had perhaps been associated with the hippie music and Gong and Mike Oldfield and all that sort of stuff.

And maybe somewhere in the late 80s, you know, Branson wants to get wise to the new thing.

I mean, remember, of course, Virgin also put out the Sex Pistols.

And maybe, you know, they need anyone who knows.

Yeah, yeah,

mean that was known for his sort of his use of getting that there's a particular drum sound

absolutely and apparently when they made this kenny morris and really white said let's record the drums separately which had not been done as normal now just as an anecdotal sort of throw in the mix there i mentioned the pogues uh which really white also produced uh the most famous song he produced by them was of course uh fairytale of new york which was a lily white production and uh you know i I didn't know that he was married to Kirsty McColl, who was the singer on that album and who was killed in the tragic boating accident.

A couple of years after, they were separated at the time, but she was there in Mexico or something, wasn't it, with her children and rescued one of them while on a motorboat.

They pretty much tore her in half, so what a tragic story.

uh experience that was but lily white is obviously the other player so what we've got here is a series of lots of things all coming together at the right time um and uh you know and there's no rule book so we can do what we want and what's amazing is that given all that freedom and a fairly big record label probably to open some you know give them some time in the studio to make this and they come up with a record that is like nothing that's ever come before and actually sets up goth music if you want if such a thing exists as a genre you know it's like a manifesto it's a manifesto it's a template but you know if you don't have suzy you don't get the cocktail twins you know you don't get i don't know sisters mercy you don't get you know you know on that sort of gothy sort of theater of hate you know whatever all of those guys But it's, you know, Joy Division even, you know, sort of like, you know, you don't get those.

And so what's really interesting is when you listen to the screen now, I think, when I played it recently, picked up a copy of it on vinyl, what a surprise, and I just thought...

I can see why I didn't like it then, because it was so outside of your comfort zone in terms of everything, and then all those characters we've already put forward about, oh, Susie, she's a girl, a woman, her abrasive voice, can't quite pin it down, you know, the musical arrangements are not things you've heard before.

And weirdly, I suppose, the thing is,

I think it's extraordinary.

to sort of come at this and why are we now re-talking about this group so when we've talked you know let's take we've been talking about The Scream by Susan Devanchi there's a debut album arrives out of nowhere to some extent fully formed and launches their career.

We've also spoken about where that career goes because we have discussed Tinder Box, which was a later, I think, seventh album, which we talked about some time ago.

So what's interesting about the D-Lines is, of course, the fact that they...

this is a band that's emerging very, very slowly and have been around for a long time because prior to the D-Lines, Lauten was in Richmond Fontaine, which was an Americanary country, rocky American guitar band.

He's also a novelist and his books are very, very good.

I've read all of them apart from the most recent one that's coming out I think in the next couple of months.

yeah and it is yeah it is about the atmosphere and the texture and the emotion rather than you know a conventional sort of polished as you say yeah photograph another

A Maori word,

that's right.

The longest word ever, you know, so it's not...

So you get a little confused about it.

So he finds the longest word, and it's a mountain, isn't it, in New Zealand? and then sings it and he would have thought that at the time of course and again this will probably be problematic to modern listeners he was making allusions to native american culture because you know they'll use it but but it's not it's a sort of it's a maori word uh but they use it to sort of suggest the sort of like you know the tonto being the uh the native american you know this is the sort of like the land of our fathers and this is the language that we speak so that And it is a long word, and Rupert Hines sings it quite a few times in the song, and he speeds it up, doesn't he? So part of the fun of it is in the middle at eight, I think, or the middle bit, he has to sing it even quicker.

So it's like a massive long tongue twister, which I say, none of us are going to replicate.

So yeah, but behind this one-off novelty hit, whatever you want to call it, were two albums that the band made.

Turner Bob Geldof Christopher Thompson Twins Stevie Nicks Rush The Waterboys Susan Vega sorry Suzanne Suzanne Vega yeah uh duncan shake the fix howard jones