https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ubBpu3MHmtM
Mott the Hoople at peak glam let it rip with one of those ain’t-life-on-the-road-a-drag raveups that makes it sound so damned fun you want to quit everything and join the first half-assed band that crosses your path, and never return, just go-go-go … at least as far as Memphis.
“I heard the Pixies pretty much right out of the box. I even liked them. But for some reason, I just didn’t care that much. Blame hip-hop, I guess, which was kicking seriously hard at the time, ripping shit up all over. Guitar based rock music just didn’t seem that relevant anymore, regardless of how tight, explosive, intense, poetic, funny it was. I was wrong, which I finally figured out once Doolittle showed up.” (Philip Random)
A Led Zeppelin rocker from 1975’s Physical Graffiti, but for Philip Random, it was more of a 1988 record. “A pivotal year for me. At the time, it was just something to be endured, one of those phases where the winter winds never stopped howling, even in the middle of summer (figuratively speaking of course). The Winter of Hate we ended up calling it. Aliens with a hunger for human flesh had taken over all the world’s governments and the only thing worth laughing about was that nothing was funny anymore. Musically, this manifested in a lot of pure raw noise as even punk/hardcore wasn’t really fierce enough anymore. Or maybe I was jonesing for some honest, raw, nasty blues – the kind of stuff Led Zeppelin had in ample supply on their biggest, longest, last truly great album. Man did it sound right!”
“In which Canada’s The Guess Who, on the verge of genuine BIGness (they’d be outselling the Beatles in 1970), smell the wheat and get cosmic, reference the Bible and otherwise lay down the elusive truth for all god’s children. Seriously, note the title. It’s not The Key, but simply, significantly, psychedelically KEY.” (Philip Random)
They sold their share of records, but Love and Rockets never really got the respect they deserved. Serious fans of Bauhaus (the band from which all three had come) stayed huddled together in windowless rooms awaiting the resurrection of their main man, Peter Murphy (which never really happened). Serious art types were too busy getting their ears shredded by the likes of The Jesus + Mary Chain. Meanwhile David Jay, Kevin Haskins and Daniel Ash kept cranking out some of the coolest, best psychedelic sounds since the 1960s.
“Ivo being the lead off track from the Cocteau Twins third album, the appropriately named Treasure. Because it is just that: a dense and ethereal journey into the kind of dream where nothing’s ever fully in focus or quite makes sense. Or as a friend once put it. This is music you can eat, except the flavors are so exotic, you can’t really describe them, so you just keep on eating.” (Philip Random)
Randophonic 