| Author | Message | ||
     XY765 Member Username: Judge Post Number: 168 Registered: 01-2006 |
here is a link to an MBV site with ten songs for download including a rocking Peel session from the 'Isn't Anything' era...enjoy... http://www.planetjesterz.com/mbv/music.p hp | ||
| Kurt Stephan Member Username: Slothbert Post Number: 1232 Registered: 04-2005 |
Thank you, XY! | ||
| joe Member Username: Dogmansuede Post Number: 113 Registered: 07-2006 |
they're unreal! i never knew they covered map ref... | ||
| Allen Belz Member Username: Abpositive Post Number: 188 Registered: 09-2006 |
Another big thank you from this quarter... | ||
| C Gull Member Username: C_gull Post Number: 61 Registered: 05-2005 |
Brilliant - remain one of my favoutite bands. Saw them in about 1990 and just wish I could remember more about it - very loud. | ||
| Randy Adams Member Username: Randy_adams Post Number: 989 Registered: 03-2005 |
Hey, this was a very handy sampler for me because I'd never heard MBV except for one song Kurt (I think) sent me to illustrate what is meant by "shoegazer." Think I'll pull something out of Amoeba's stacks this weekend. | ||
| spence Member Username: Spence Post Number: 1247 Registered: 05-2005 |
Saw them a couple o times, but it was always a very mad/heated/shambolic pub type riotous affair, the music got lost amongst all of this. I can see why they were loved, on record I quite liked them, on listening to these clips they haven't stood the test of time very well, the wWire cover is ok, but pointlkess really. Bands covered songs in those days to prove a point rather than to enhance a song. Belinda was really striking to look at and they played a whole range of jaguars\jazzmasters. my claim to fame is that i was signed to their very first label Lazy Records with my group Elizabeth Jane! | ||
| C Gull Member Username: C_gull Post Number: 62 Registered: 05-2005 |
Spence - interesting comment about MBV not having stood the test of time. I just watched the video clip of Only Shallow and thought how it still sounded great. on the other hand listening to Entymology, I was really disappointed as I hadn't listened to Josef K for years, used to be a big fan, but this felt very dated to me. Maybe the dating is in our ears as much as the music eh! | ||
| Pádraig Collins Member Username: Pádraig_collins Post Number: 1208 Registered: 05-2005 |
I don't think Loveless has dated at all Spence; and never will. It wasn't of its time, but it also was not ahead or behind its time. It's timeless. | ||
| Jeff Whiteaker Member Username: Jeff_whiteaker Post Number: 488 Registered: 10-2004 |
yawn... Okay, sorry, I'm feeling feisty today. I do like their song Strawberry Wine. That's about it, though. | ||
| Pádraig Collins Member Username: Pádraig_collins Post Number: 1211 Registered: 05-2005 |
If you're feeling feisty perhaps you can come up with something more original, and feisty, than "yawn..." | ||
| spence Member Username: Spence Post Number: 1249 Registered: 05-2005 |
Pad, C Gull, yeah its all down to one's ears I guess. Reagrds JK, well I haven't stopped listening to them since I first heard em 26 years ago, so they are bound not to sound dated to me! I do think their sophistication and distinction is still pretty cool, even by today's standards. The latter JK for me is really on the money, stuff like the Peel session. | ||
| Jeff Whiteaker Member Username: Jeff_whiteaker Post Number: 489 Registered: 10-2004 |
oh c'mon padraig, don't take it personally, i'm just messing around. besides, i couldn't think of anything more apt than "yawn." i guess i never got the shoegaze thing. i think that for me it sounded like it was all about the wall of noise, but if you scratched beneath that, there wasn't much in the way of songs there. that's just my humble little opinion, though. just couldn't find anything there to connect with, which is why i prefer MBV's pre-shoegaze stuff, like 'strawberry wine.' and 'loveless' had a few songs that were kind of catchy, but that album always bored me to tears. to this day i've never understood why so many people rave about it or speak of it as some life-altering experience. but then, people have said the same thing to me about my love of brian wilson, particularly 'pet sounds' and 'smile' era beach boys, which for me was exactly that life-altering experience. as spence says, "it's all down to one's ears," ultimately. | ||
| Randy Adams Member Username: Randy_adams Post Number: 990 Registered: 03-2005 |
Shades of our Crowded House thread here. I'm still getting some sort of sense of what is "shoegazer" music. Along with not listening to the radio, I've usually not read the music media and because of this I don't get the various little labels applied to specific short-lived eras of music. I confess that most of the labels applied to music made in the last 15 years or so seem a bit artificial, but I'm probably just showing my age and nothing else. Having just gotten both halves of "Lullabies to Violaine," it does sound to me like a lot of the early Cocteaus that I love so much fit into the "shoegazer" category what with the huge cavernous wall of sound element. But, of course, there's Elizabeth Fraser and those lovely melodies. I thought the MBV tracks on the link supplied by XY were sufficiently interesting to explore further and therefore I will. I have a special weakness for bands with two different singers, particularly when one of them is female. But I also think I know what Jeff is getting at, where the sound of something ends up trumping its substance it can ultimately prove unsatisfying. Since I'm a song guy I'm often likely to line up with his viewpoint, but I do have a secondary appetite for trashy garage rock and MBV might fit in there. | ||
| Pádraig Collins Member Username: Pádraig_collins Post Number: 1215 Registered: 05-2005 |
OK Jeff, fair enough. I've always thought that underneath the wall of sound on several songs on Loveless there are great soul songs. If I ever meet Kevin Shields I'll ask him if he is as big a soul fan as I suspect he is. | ||
| Allen Belz Member Username: Abpositive Post Number: 192 Registered: 09-2006 |
Personally I don't think "Loveless" is about surface/underneath as much as the breaking of cross-dimensional barriers: each song (and yeah, I'd say they're songs) sounds like they're playing on several different levels of reality at once, and the playing is causing one level to bleed into the next. I remember it making me literally nauseous the first time I heard it, like the room was tilting, but three listens later and I couldn't get enough. | ||
| Jeff Whiteaker Member Username: Jeff_whiteaker Post Number: 490 Registered: 10-2004 |
Padraig, oddly enough, I can sort of see what you mean about the soul thing, at least for certain songs. But as for the white-people-doing-soul thing I've always drifted towards Orange Juice, early Style Council and stuff like that. I think "Loveless" also achieves a certain sound or sort of alternate "reality" that maybe people like Allen really love. I can see Randy seeing similarities between MBV and the Cocteau Twins, and people have often asked me how I could love the Cocteaus so much yet not like "shoegaze". My answer would be there is a very fine line between the two, but that the Cocteaus just have a way with a tune (be it pretty, flower, shimmery, or depressing, grey and minor key - like the early stuff) that the shoegazers never seemed to have. Liz's importance cannot be overstated, but for me, Robyin Guthrie's melodies were often quite beautiful back then and just worked on many levels, and were every bit as important to the equation as Liz. |