Everything Blows Me Away

In a former life, I used to have another blog called Bellyflop, largely made up of reviews of music, books, comics, films, theatre, comedy gigs, you name it. I gamely kept it going for a couple of years, before abruptly coming to a halt a few months before my wife gave birth. There was a final post 5 years later, promising more, but that was it. Aside from the impact of parenthood, in those 5 years, I also had a change of job which meant a marathon daily commute to Birmingham. It was hardly surprising I didn't feel invested in creating regular blog posts, particularly as going to gigs or any form of live performance as well as 'disposable income' for buying stuff was almost completely wiped out. On a more mundane note, we must have changed internet provider at some point and I forgot to change my details on Blogger so I could no longer even log into my site. Clearly, it was all meant to be.

Looking back, I was trying a bit too hard: the reviews are rather worthy (& wordy), not particularly well-informed and laughably po-faced in parts. Arguably, I'm still travelling the same well-worn path, though these days it's pretty much all about the music.

I've been dusting off albums that I haven't played for ages, which has led me to Julian Cope's double whammy from 2005, Citizen Cain'd and Dark Orgasm. I reviewed both on my old blog on 28th December 2005, noting that the albums "mark a continuation of his return to form, likely strengthened by Cope’s reinvigorating live performances." I'll spare you the full post, but I concluded that "Neither of 2005’s albums will necessarily be a good starting point for the uninitiated, or those who gave up on Julian Cope after “Jehovahkill”. Yet, they’re proof that the Arch Drude hasn’t lost his muse, his passion for life, his desire to confront hypocrisy and injustice, or his ability to produce a coherent body of work that you can simply play loud as hell." 

 

I've played Citizen Cain'd a few times in the past week. Dark Orgasm is lined up for the rest of this week. I can see that I haven't played the latter in it's entirety since 2013 (!), which on the strength of the few songs I've sampled for this post, seems a little unjust. I'll stand by my comment above: this is Cope squarely in his Stooges/MC5 period, with scrappy-but-very-loud production and environmentally-unfriendly double CDs. However, there are some good songs in there too and both are worth a listen.

In the spirit of The Vinyl Villain, here's an Imaginary Compilation Album-style sampler of the two albums for your listening pleasure:

Side One

1) Gimme Head

2) She's Got A Ring On Her Finger (& Another One Through Her Nose)

3) Feels Like A Crying Shame

4) I Don't Wanna Grow Back

Side Two

5) World War Pigs

6) I've Found A New Way To Love Her

7) Stomping Dionysus

8) Mr. Invasion

9) Dying To Meet You

10) Nothing To Lose Except My Mind

 

1,3,5,7,9 taken from Citizen Cain'd

2,4,6,8,10 taken from Dark Orgasm

 

Everything Blows Me Away (45:51) (KF) (Mega)

 

Citizen Cain'd was a very long time in coming, with the title and live versions of songs being touted years before the album itself finally appeared in 2005. This is an early version of Stomping Dionysus, then titled Everything Blows Me Away, which was performed live on the Mark Radcliffe Show on BBC Radio 1 way back in 1998:

Everything Blows Me Away (Mark Radcliffe Session): Julian Cope (1998)