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| Original Japanese vinyl gatefold sleeve |
After The Goldrush, or Your Choice Here, are as perfect, but this gets my vote. Musical quality aside, it established a signature sound he kept through the decades. It's not like he broke the mold, Nowhere created it. Deviations from the formula tend to be as unsuccessful as they are ambitious. The downside is, of course, diminishing returns; every record that's not as bad as we feared gets called a "return to form", merited or not. But Nowhere is the start of his Imperial period, and where that fades or rusts away is up to the listener.
But yeah. Lower the Consolette tone-arm onto Cinammon Girl and hear rock music catch fire. Every time.
A note about the cover: it's beautiful, a faultless design, but does it represent the music? The peaceful singer-songwriter vibe is more suited to John Denver. But who's complaining. Technical note - the lovely grainy softening of the image was achieved with lens manipulation at the film-making stage, a specialist process at the time. Nothing digital, of course.
To qualify for today's Bonus Blisterpak™ (the two okay-ish not-terrible albums from Summerhill and Quatrain) name another producer - aside from George Martin - who's known for working with one act.
ReplyDeleteHowdy Partner,
ReplyDeleteThis is a little one hand clapping while the pope shits in the woods, but I'd say Frank Zappa. Hear me out - every album he produced for anyone sounded like a Frank Zappa album.
As ever,
Billy Gates of the Doubble X ranch.
Yes, to a degree, you can hear the Zappa in any Zappa production, but I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing (Phil Spector?). But I'm really hoping to get someone known as a producer, not a musician, who only really produced one act. Maybe Briggs is the only one?
DeleteJust thought of another.
DeleteHowdy again,
DeleteI got a sure fire one, and then a kinda' sorta'. Andy Warhol only produced (and even that's questionable) The Velvet Underground and Nico record. The other person is Dan Healy, I know him from the Fifty Foot Hose lp, but he's more known for The Grateful Dead.
As ever (and hoping for redemption),
Billy Gates of the Doubble X Ranch.
Great choices win you mediocre prizes! Upload after the Break.
Delete"Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere" is damn fine, about as good as it gets, but if I could have only one, I am taken aback just how often I listen to "Time Fades Away."
ReplyDeleteMe too.
DeleteSo three names, one band. The band is the Who the producers are Pete Meaden (who turned them into a Mod band) and produced and wrote the A-side of their first single as 'the High Numbers' before flogging their managership to Kit Lambert for £50, Shel Talmy who took over producing the Who for Lambert for their first recording contract producing all the early singles and the first album but who then became more synonymous with the Kinks producing all their material until 1968 and continued to work with them on and off after that; last but not least Kit Lambert himself who took up the production reins of the Who in 1966 after he'd sacked Talmy, starting with Pictures Of Lily and was one of the main drivers behind Townshend taking on the 'Tommy' project as well as setting up Track Records. Unfortunately Lambert's drug taking and fiscal mismanagement subsequently poisoned the band's relationship with him and they parted not long before Track Records went down the tubes in the late 1970's
ReplyDeletePete Meaden was a manager, so he doesn't count, in spite of writing the High Numbers single. Shel Talmy was a very prolific producer, in no way dependent on the 'Oo, so he doesn't count. Kit Lambert qualifies, even though (perhaps because) he produced the Merseys, Arthur Brown, and Marsha "Underboob" Hunt. One out of three wins you a backstage pass to the upload!
DeleteThis was kind'a hard, but maybe that guy who produced the beach boys in the 60s. It may just be my ignorance of his history.
ReplyDeleteBrian was primarily known as a singer/performer/writer back then, but he also produced a metric tonne of records for other artists.
Deletehistory - useo8
ReplyDeleteNeil Young's
ReplyDeleteOn the Beach & Zuma are the chosen ones...
C'mon guys, what are you talking about?
By the way, I'm a lens/camera guy...what are you hinting at manipulation-wise on that cover photo?
It's just possible that effect is from using very grainy film, enhanced in the darkroom (you'd know better than me), but I think it was created at what used to be called the "origination house", when the original photograph was turned into film separations (for the four-color printing process) using a special filter. I used the same effect about forty years ago.
DeleteAll this technology is ancient history now. You can do just about everything in-camera (actually in-phone) - and so what.
Nobody's come up with my second example so far. Hoo hah!
ReplyDelete