{"id":2974,"date":"2012-08-16T14:33:13","date_gmt":"2012-08-16T19:33:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/?p=2974"},"modified":"2013-11-18T15:01:07","modified_gmt":"2013-11-18T20:01:07","slug":"record-of-the-issue-brian-enos-the-bbc-sessions-by-pat-cochran-from-tlv-162","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/record-of-the-issue-brian-enos-the-bbc-sessions-by-pat-cochran-from-tlv-162\/","title":{"rendered":"Record Of The Issue: Brian Eno’s *The BBC Sessions* (by Pat Cochran, from TLV #162)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/span><\/p>\n

What an embarrassment of riches we here in Oxford, Mississippi<\/strong> have in The End Of All Music<\/strong>. It\u2019s already a truly great record store. You can pop in, hang out, listen to records, or maybe listen to Jack Pendarvis<\/strong> spin some ancient, bizarre vinyl lunacy. You can get the skinny on all sorts of new sounds\u2014newly recorded records, spectacular reissued LPs, a whole fat and delightful passel of stuff to placate your auricular fetishes. If the store only had an employee willing to insult and excoriate you for buying, say, Bongwater<\/strong> LPs or the Frida Lyngstad<\/strong> solo record it would feel just like 1985 again. Alas, the folks running the joint and working there are all patient and scholarly gents of a very high order.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"Recently, I picked up a wonderful album at the store, one that I\u2019ve been playing pretty constantly for the last couple of weeks. It\u2019s an Italian bootleg by Brian Eno<\/strong> called The BBC Sessions<\/strong><\/em>.\u00a0 Brian Eno, if it\u2019s the case that you\u2019ve been living under the proverbial rock and don\u2019t already know who he is, was the heavy sound scientist in the earliest version of Roxy Music<\/strong> who later went on to record and release some of the most gleefully perfect records of the 1970s. His solo records are rife with all sorts of exuberant sonic thrills, wild and giddy affairs plump with glittery bliss. In the 1980s, he dropped his sonic soul science on groups like U2<\/strong> and Talking Heads<\/strong>, in the process moving them all in great leaps to higher peaks. The guy\u2019s genius is consistent and, moreover, fun.<\/span><\/p>\n

These BBC session recordings have been floating around for a while. Brian Eno has never seen fit to release them or include much, if any,\u00a0 of this stuff amongst his reissued catalogue. So, the Italian bootleg source is necessary here. And, what\u2019s here is fascinating, certainly the most tough and punked-up junk he ever committed to tape. Shortly after Eno left Roxy Music in 1973 or 1974 he enlisted an unlikely group as his backing band, a glammed-out pub-rock combo called, rather unfortunately, The Winkies<\/strong>. Despite their name, The Winkies rocked hard\u2014burly and brawny rock and roll with generous amounts of rhythmic space. They were cut from the same cloth as the\u00a0 early-1970s Rolling Stones or The Flamin\u2019 Groovies, but tighter and more taut, quick focused blasts of stunning rock and roll heat.\u00a0 Eno was wise to enlist them as his backing band. The versions here all come from recordings for DJ John Peel<\/strong>\u2019s Top Gear program for BBC Radio 1 in 1974. The songs are radically rearranged from the studio versions, recalibrated for maximum rock action. \u201cThe Paw Paw Negro Blowtorch\u201d from Eno\u2019s first LP, Here Come The Warm Jets<\/em>,\u00a0 is here cheekily remade and re-modeled into something sounding pretty much like a version of the Rolling Stones in which heroin and the blues are replaced with pharmaceutical amphetamine and musique concrete. In other words, it just sounds sonically badass. The LP is really worth buying for this track alone. Other Eno warhorses get the makeover treatment, too \u2014\u201cBaby\u2019s On Fire\u201d sounding like Doctor Feelgood with a Vocoder and an oscillator, \u201cI\u2019ll Come Running (To Tie Your Shoes)\u201d like more speed-laced proto-punk, The Winkies somehow managing to presage the righteously stiff, white funk of Gang Of Four<\/strong> and The Au Pairs<\/strong>. There is also a nifty version of the Peggy Lee standard \u201cFever\u201d that\u2019s nothing short of riffed-out magnificence.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"The LP title is a misnomer. Not all the tracks here are from BBC radio sessions. \u201cSeven Deadly Finns\u201d and a fine, though wholly odd, version of \u201cWimoweh\u201d (the South African folk number made famous by The Weavers<\/strong> in the 1950s and later given the Hollywood hit machine treatment as \u201cThe Lion Sleeps Tonight\u201d by The Tokens) are both obscure studio single B-sides cut during aborted sessions for that first Eno album. \u201cThird Uncle\u201d and a stunning, ferocious version of \u201cThe Fat Lady Of Limbourg\u201d are actually live recordings from the 1976 Reading Festival in the UK featuring the legendary 801 as the backing group. Of course, as with most bootlegs, there aren\u2019t any liner notes here and the pressing itself is of only functional quality. But, brother, let me tell you\u2014I\u2019d play this stuff to death if it were only available on a 20th generation K-Mart C30 cassette that somebody spilled Pepsi all over and left in the hot sun. It\u2019s crucial and I\u2019m happy to finally own it.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

What an embarrassment of riches we here in Oxford, Mississippi have in The End Of All Music. It\u2019s<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":238,"featured_media":2977,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[190,542],"tags":[2426,2424,2427,2417,2428,2419,5,4,2429,2423,2422,2418,2425,367,2416,2420,2421],"class_list":["post-2974","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local-business","category-records","tag-bongwater","tag-brian-eno","tag-frida-lyngstad","tag-gang-of-four","tag-jack-pendarvis","tag-john-peel","tag-mississippi","tag-oxford","tag-pat-chochran","tag-roxy-music","tag-talking-heads","tag-the-au-pairs","tag-the-bbc-sessions","tag-the-end-of-all-music","tag-the-weavers","tag-the-winkies","tag-u2"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/08\/brianeno-frompat.jpg?fit=350%2C348&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2974","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/238"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2974"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2974\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2977"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2974"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2974"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2974"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}