Rain tree crow- who else found it disappointing at the time.

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Postby liberty boy on Mon Feb 25, 2008 4:19 pm

Oh I think i disagree I think Tin Drum was a great album and much superior to rain tree crow. On tin Drum they were actually looking at the sound itself and saying let's produce something inventive where as rain tree crow had the feel of something just bashed out. But that said I have the album and tracks like pocket full of change were great moments in it. All I can say is just overall it just lacked that something special associated with Japan or indeed Brilliant trees. Blackwater I was suprised to see NME exalt to 10 out 10 rated single of the week. It surely wasn't that great a cut even to DS affionados. but at that period DS was second only to Morrssey in being the darling of the serious inkies. where as I feel even as a great fan you mustn't let your musical hero get away with musical noodling as a great work. You must try to retain an objective critical faculty. But yes for the serious rock press it seemed anything DS did had become a touchstone of serious muscial worship.
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Postby anortherncod on Mon Feb 25, 2008 5:47 pm

liberty boy wrote:I feel even as a great fan you mustn't let your musical hero get away with musical noodling as a great work. You must try to retain an objective critical faculty


This is a really good point. I think that when people have careers which now stretch back 30 years, you can allow the odd duff album. I personally do like the RTC album - but we were talking about Porcupine Tree elsewhere and, at the risk of being shot, I don't have a lot of time for their Signify album, although (according to the posts I read on PTF anyway) an awful lot of people love it.

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Postby Fire Rose 45 on Mon Feb 25, 2008 7:48 pm

Sorry, but count me in, too, as one of those who is a major Sylvian fan, but doesn't care for or listen to Japan at all.
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Postby natsume on Mon Feb 25, 2008 11:22 pm

I think if I had not been into Japan first, and especially if I was just getting into Sylvian now, I would probably not be too drawn to Japan. But I'm an 80s kid. Hard to separate my youthful enthusiasms from my enduring respect and love for David's music.

I kind of am a little jealous for those just getting into him. How fun!
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Postby liberty boy on Tue Feb 26, 2008 10:02 am

I guess the thing with Japan was they captured our imagination at the time and inspired us to follow david sylvian on his unique and singular career thereafter. And as he grew up himself he taught us to grow up with him. The alternative would be to stay Duranies and to just carry on quite ridiculously like Nick Rhodes still trying to be ultra fashionable whilst paradoxically still looking like DS circa Gentlemen take polaroids in middle age. David Sylvian stayed well ahead of his audience. And that's what makes him so interesting. And his new Image and career was difficult for alot of his fans: as late as 1988 and the Shamens tour you still had a sprinkling of gentlemen take polaroids sylvian clones in the audience with their bleached hair and white shoes, whilst the man himself hippy length hair in pony tail and esoteric instrumentals had long since left that and the early eighties behind.

I mean the Japan/Nick rhodes look stayed highly fashionable for at least another two years after Japan were no more but even so it's aways best to move on, even before your audience is ready to let you and certainly before you become superseded as Duran were to be, by the likes of Curiousity killed the cat.
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Postby Melaszka on Tue Feb 26, 2008 10:24 am

liberty boy wrote:I guess the thing with Japan was they captured our imagination at the time and inspired us to follow david sylvian on his unique and singular career thereafter. And as he grew up himself he taught us to grow up with him. The alternative would be to stay Duranies and to just carry on quite ridiculously like Nick Rhodes still trying to be ultra fashionable whilst paradoxically still looking like DS circa Gentlemen take polaroids in middle age. David Sylvian stayed well ahead of his audience. And that's what makes him so interesting. And his new Image and career was difficult for alot of his fans: as late as 1988 and the Shamens tour you still had a sprinkling of gentlemen take polaroids sylvian clones in the audience with their bleached hair and white shoes, whilst the man himself hippy length hair in pony tail and esoteric instrumentals had long since left that and the early eighties behind.

I mean the Japan/Nick rhodes look stayed highly fashionable for at least another two years after Japan were no more but even so it's aways best to move on, even before your audience is ready to let you and certainly before you become superseded by Curiousity killed the cat.


I'm not sure I totally agree. I think if something is good, it remains good, even if it's no longer in fashion (indeed, many music critics still cite Tin Drum as a seminal album). Groups that become "superseded" by the latest Next Cool Thing, and become irrelevant as the tide of fashion rolls on, tend to be ones that were all style and no substance in the first place(something I'd never say was true of Japan - or of late Japan, at any rate).

I also think you're conflating music and image in your comment in a way which, to me, doesn't quite apply. While I think Sylvian was a hugely influential and widely underrated fashion icon in the early 80s, and that's not necessarily something trivial, in fact it's a serious cultural historical observation (when people say that Jackie O defined the look of a generation, nobody takes that as a trivial comment or suggests that it's undermining the seriousness of JFK's political career, so I've never understood why some Sylvian fans think that talking about how much we loved the white hair and make-up is trivialising him as a serious musician), I can see that early 80s clothes can look a little comical now. But I don't think good early 80s music dates so comically or obviously as the clothes did.

I personally prefer DS's solo stuff to Japan, but I like Japan as well, and I think it's stood the test of time well. I think they're very different, though, and different people may prefer either, according to their taste.

But, as to the topic, I kind of know what you mean about RTC - for me it's a Paul Daniels album (I like it, but not a lot). I think that, had personal issues not intervened, though, it could have led to some fantastic work. I get the sense listening to it that they were only starting to explore the possibilities of working together again and that a second, third or fourth album could have been stupendously good.
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Postby liberty boy on Tue Feb 26, 2008 12:01 pm

Did a brief conversation ending in divorce have anything to do with the rain tree crow sessions? Or was it from Kin? I would have quite liked him to have gone further into neo-classical compositions. The music from Kin showed he could have become a serious classical composer.
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Postby liberty boy on Tue Feb 26, 2008 12:31 pm

As to fashion and looking good yes i agree it's not an element to be disparaged.

David sylvian did look pretty good and the white hair image does stand the test of time although some of the clothes obviously not completely- the bowies drawn up to the breast plate lol.Like you say the problem always is that times move on and what seemed the height of cool can later look embarrassing. Though we never think it's going to happen to our era at the time. When I look back at the family pictures from the eighties I sometimes envy my father lol as he's the only one who can look at them embarrassment free, though at the time such people in their ordinary attire and boring haircuts were square and naff to us teenagers. You realise later on there's something to be said for being impervious to the fads of the time.

I remember the emergence of baggy in 1988 literally abruptly consigning the pleated bowie trousers of the early eighties to the sales racks.

It could be said David sylvian was up with the times - by then sporting shraggy hair and jeans. And even musically it must be said he prempted some of the acid house culture. The so-called techno ambient offshot of dance music and E culture had an obvious sylvianesque element.
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Postby Astronaut on Tue Feb 26, 2008 12:46 pm

liberty boy wrote: And as [DS] grew up himself he taught us to grow up with him. The alternative would be to stay Duranies and to just carry on quite ridiculously like Nick Rhodes still trying to be ultra fashionable whilst paradoxically still looking like DS circa Gentlemen take polaroids in middle age.
I mean the Japan/Nick rhodes look stayed highly fashionable for at least another two years after Japan were no more but even so it's aways best to move on, even before your audience is ready to let you and certainly before you become superseded as Duran were to be, by the likes of Curiousity killed the cat.


OK Libertyboy! I won't post what I'm thinking right now as I don't want to cause offence to anyone. But a reply on this matter will be forthcoming later when I've got the time to write at length ...
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Postby liberty boy on Tue Feb 26, 2008 3:48 pm

Well if you're a girl you liked Duran Duran. Don't worry about it. It's my fault if I'm being antagonistic.
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Postby Melaszka on Tue Feb 26, 2008 5:56 pm

liberty boy wrote:Well if you're a girl you liked Duran Duran.


Grrr. Boo. Hiss. General menacing teeth-gnashing noises.
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Postby Astronaut on Tue Feb 26, 2008 6:38 pm

liberty boy wrote:Well if you're a girl you liked Duran Duran. Don't worry about it. It's my fault if I'm being antagonistic.
That sort of remark isn't going to help now is it? Can you be any more patronising?

As for Nick Rhodes trying to remain "ultra fashionable" that is just hysterical. Who on earth have you been looking at? Nick Rhodes might reasonably be called ultra stylish, he certainly likes designer labels and is usually colourful and flamboyant, but he hasn't been "ultra fashionable" for a long time now nor, I suspect, would he want to be. He's comfortable with a certain look but, far from remaining static, his style has changed gradually through the years. Yes he still wears make-up (and I agree it doesn't always suit) but he does not walk around looking like an advert for GTP! And the bleached blonde look - oh pur-lease ... do we have to talk about this again? Nick copied David? Yes, so what? David copied Andy Warhol or maybe he borrowed the bleached fringe look from John Foxx, who got it from Andy Warhol, who was satirising Marilyn Monroe who was emulating her heroine Jean Harlow, and so on and so forth. If you're as old as I think you are then you probably had a bit of a homage to Sylvian hair-do as well, so that makes you as derivative as Mr Rhodes.
as late as 1988 and the Shamens tour you still had a sprinkling of gentlemen take polaroids sylvian clones in the audience with their bleached hair and white shoes
Don't forget a large number of people reading this forum are young Japan/Sylvian fans, both male and female who still enjoy looking like the early 80's David and the Adolescent Sex shaggy haired David too, and view him as something of a fashion idol. As Richard Barbieri himself said (about Nick Rhodes and others imitating Davids' look): " ... it's all part of growing up and developing your own style. If, as a group, we've inspired someone to do something, thats fantastic". Comments like yours are not helpful.
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Postby sisterlondon on Wed Feb 27, 2008 7:49 am

liberty boy wrote:Well if you're a girl you liked Duran Duran. Don't worry about it. It's my fault if I'm being antagonistic.


Total wrong. Some of the biggest Duranies I know are guys. And before you wonder, they are straight. Generalisations are bad man, very bad...
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Postby liberty boy on Thu Feb 28, 2008 5:56 am

Not at school you couldn't get away with liking Duran Duran if you were a boy. Some might have liked Planet earth but once the group were established they were made fun of in the rock press- tagging them as vain and so on.I'm trying to think back what boys did like at the time. I think they liked the Police or the Jam or later Frankie goes to hollywood. My brother used to play Visage, The human league, soft cell, Heaven seventeen, John Fox, Ultravox, Japan and Spandau ballet. I think boys were on safer ground with the type of groups that appeared on whistle test or the tube. But alot of the pop stars of the time seemed to appeal to girls more than boys- George Michael, Paul Young, Nick kershaw, Howard jones, kajagoo - they used to bring magazines like jackie or just seventeen into school and stick these people on their pencil cases.
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Postby Melaszka on Thu Feb 28, 2008 7:02 am

liberty boy wrote:Not at school you couldn't get away with liking Duran Duran if you were a boy. Some might have liked Planet earth but once the group were established they were made fun of in the rock press- tagging them as vain and so on.I'm trying to think back what boys did like at the time. I think they liked the Police or the Jam or later Frankie goes to hollywood. My brother used to play Visage, The human league, soft cell, Heaven seventeen, John Fox, Ultravox, Japan and Spandau ballet. I think boys were on safer ground with the type of groups that appeared on whistle test or the tube. But alot of the pop stars of the time seemed to appeal to girls more than boys- George Michael, Paul Young, Nick kershaw, Howard jones, kajagoo - they used to bring magazines like jackie or just seventeen into school and stick these people on their pencil cases.


Don't get me started. I get very annoyed when people say that we are living in a "post-feminist" age where feminism is "unnecessary", as women already have "equality." The fact that attitudes still persist that girls don't really understand or appreciate music and only like bands who look pretty and they can "stick on their pencil cases" demonstrates how far we still have to go. Oh, and the attitude that any band more popular with girls than boys must, by definition, be musically cr*p.

Musical talent is difficult to define objectively, but I think most people who know about these things would say that Duran Duran and George Michael had more musical talent than Spandau Ballet or Frankie Goes To Hollywood. They've certainly had more staying power.
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