more numbers

 

Just wanted to register the interesting (?) truth that there is another Numbers and Spotifuck thinks it's the same Numbers (the albumi Blue Café and the single 'No Smoking' are not by the early 1980s Sydney band) but I can't find any detail on this other Numbers at all. If you listen to the real Numbers a bit this more recent (but I suppose no less really real) Numbers comes up, they're not terrible. I've really got to get rid of Spotifuck but first I have to listen to all of The Real Thing's greatest hits. 

the numbers by the numbers #2

So my British copy of The Numbers showed up today, pretty swift. I am unreasonably pleased with it. Two things bear discussing. One is, the song 'I Don't Know'. I've been listening to Numerology which is the 15-year-old CD compilation of Numbers material, which mooshes both albums and the entirety of their first EP. 'I Don't Know' isn't on that CD, and I had kind of forgotten it,* except now I hear it again on this record I have to admit I absolutely had not forgotten one note of it - it is completely ingrained, it must have been playing on RRR when my portal was at its most receptive. Weirdly if anything it's been mashed in my brain with Blondie's 'I Know But I Don't Know' which is a more complicated but less pleasing song. 'I Don't Know' is classic teen angst of the kind of thing The Undertones excelled at (though it's not as rock). Two is the song 'Jericho' which is sitting at the end of side one of this English LP whereas it's not on the original version. It's a different version, and pretty special. A bit muddier than the version that was released as a single/appears on the second album, I guess it's kind of more primitive but/and still very enjoyable. 

I might spend some time comparing or I might not, but I suspect the whole album sounds a bit tougher and fuller than the original. It also has a lyric sheet, which my copy of the Australian version doesn't, but I don't know whether it did once. 

*I do have the Aust version of the album, so I've got two copies now - decadent! - but I hadn't played it for a while, I think because I had just assumed the CD was the entirety of the first album and about half of the second. Wrong.

maybe dolls - propaganda

It's been CD city round here lately as I lazily pick up releases by Go Genre Everything, Hot Palms and as promised/threatened/muttered a few days ago, Maybe Dolls. 

It's funny how this album sounds so much more dated than The Numbers' records - I don't know if that's an objective reality or just a feeling, perhaps a suspicion that with Maybe Dolls the Morrows are trying harder to be a part of some current trend. Apparently at the time they were compared to Baby Animals. I don't remember BAs well enough to have an opinion on this but I do think the first track on Propaganda sounds like a very good approximation of a lost track from the first Pretenders album. I am utterly not against that. 

Whereas almost all the Numbers' songs were by Chris Morrow completely (the story goes that he was the singer and Annalisse was 'just' the bass player almost up until they recorded their first album) these songs are co-writes between the two of them, and she is putting a lot more into her performance, but you know, I kind of liked the restraint on the Numbers records. 

This is by Brett Thomas from the Sydney Sun-Herald 15 March 1992 p. 125.  

Remember safe love? Yeah. 

SMH 19 March 1992 p. 31

And below is I suppose where they got their name from.

Sydney Sun-Herald 31 Oct 1971 p. 151

numbers (2)

Having had 'Alone' in my head all day yesterday I think perhaps I was too hasty in my 45-years-in-the-making outburst on the Numbers the other day. Perhaps what I'm really annoyed about is that they didn't have a proper trajectory in the vein of the Undertones, for instance, who packed so much progress and development into a few short years. Or the Buzzcocks, though they changed less. 

I suppose it's possible the Maybe Dolls fill this criteria (for people too bored by this to care to look it up, the Numbers was basically siblings Annalisse and Chris Morrow, and after the initial Numbers ended after two albums and some minor hit singles, they reconvened a decade later as the Maybe Dolls for another hit single and an album (actually they recorded two albums but the second one wasn't released).) (But if you were too bored by this to care to look it up, why have you read this far? Just silly).  

Picture stolen from the Maybe Dolls facebook page. I think it's a Tony Mott. 

OK I'm going to buy that UK Numbers album, what's money anyway, and I'm going to grab the Maybe Dolls album too, I'll get back to you. 

the numbers (1)

 

This picture stolen from https://historyofaussiemusic.blogspot.com/2013/09/the-numbers.html but I am pretty sure that this 'history of aussie music' site quotes extensively from an article I wrote for Mess+Noise without crediting me and even if it wasn't me that wrote it, whoever wrote it isn't credited... 

I've been listening to the Numbers CD Numerology in the car. It's a 2008 compilation released on Aztec which brings together most of the two Numbers albums, The Numbers and 39-51, alongside an EP that predates them. 

I could be wrong - this never occurred to me before and I don't know why it has now - but the first album now seems to me to be skeletal and undercooked, and the second album is a lot more polished and worthy. But in both cases it strikes me the band was let down by production - I normally never say things like that - and hung out to dry. It's weird because they had decent producers (Cameron Allan for the first, Graham Bidstrup for the second). 

They had two big hits in 1980, nowhere near as big as, you know, Dire Straits but their biggest hits. 'The Modern Song' is, by standards now and I suspect then, bizarrely stark. Annaliese's vocal is way back in the mix, the whole thing seems muffled and weird. 'The Modern Song', their other hit, is a little more conventional in sound, a mid-tempo pop number, with some catchily strange lyrics. But personally if I'd been the producer (I was 15 and very cluey) I would have put more instrumentation on there to bring out the best of the tunes, and I would have sent Chris Morrow to Byron* for a week to work out some endings for these songs and also some middle 8s or similar - just something to make them more punchy and memorable. They already are punchy and memorable, and Simon Vidale's drums are massive both in volume and impact, but the spare nature of these recordings just makes them seem threadbare rather than vital. Worst offender actually is 'Mr President', which was my favourite of their singles in this early phase - such a great record, but half the record it could be, mainly because its chorus is unvaried and the whole thing, once again, doesn't end with any aplomb. It needed aplomb. 

The singles off the second album are way better. 'Big Beat' is probably my favourite,  though 'Jericho' is brilliant too. 'Alone' is once again let down, IMO, by the production. Both these albums really sound like someone got the band into the studio to bash out their live set, and as a live set, you get all the tricks - they're such memorable tunes and the lyrics are often calculated to make you go 'huh?' 

I have heard some tracks of The Numbers in a later incarnation when they were joined by John Bliss and Colin (Polly) Newham formerly of The Reels. Now, that was an amazing version of the group, and I only wish they had recorded properly because it was incredible. 

I'm aware it's lame as to criticise something 45 years later like it's anyone's fault. I don't even know why I bothered starting writing this. I just really like them. If they'd signed to Mushroom or something like that, it all might have been very different. Look, I probably just don't get it. 

Anyway TIL there was a British release by The Numbers which seems to be a blend of the first two albums. I'm almost tempted to buy a copy and listen to it just to see if anything is different in the sound or perhaps even recording - ? I'm like that. 

*Or Bulgaria, just away somewhere to consider what could add to these great songs. 

33 at 45

I have nothing to say about this Elton John album (it's the one with the 'White Powder, White Lady' song on it LOL and also 'Little Jeannie' or whatever it's called). I just thought I could launch into a post ruminating on the increasing obsolescence of references to gramophone record speeds in the 21st century when music  is no longer seen as a tangible item that goes at a speed. I actually misremembered this album title as '33 at 45' (I remembered the reasoning behind the actual title though: 'I've made this many albums at this age'). 

You know I understand the idea mastering 12" records, even albums, at 45 for sound quality but it also slightly annoys me, selfishly, because sometimes my turntable belt slips off and I think it's more likely to happen if I go back and forth between 33 and 45 too much, or indeed, at all. So various great records like the Waterfall Person album or my Rip Rig and Panic albums don't get much play. 

The first two Rip Rig and Panic albums were released as 2 x 12" 45s (the third was a standard 12" 33). I am not entirely sure what the rationale was, but I'd bet there was an element of Virgin records saying to the band, 'this is how much we love you, we're not going to invest in videos or anything (I wonder if they did? The only video I have seen of them is not really video, it's their appearance in The Young Ones) but we will double the manufacturing/shipping cost of your albums'. I assume the cost was not substantially passed on to the consumer - you can't really call these double albums. I do remember a time, incidentally, when quality was generally assumed and quantity was most important (hence all those budget-priced 'Golden Hour of...' albums, I guess) and I know The Numbers, oddly enough, bore the brunt of this when it was revealed that their first self-titled album was under 30 minutes long (which is why the second album's title sardonically references the playing time). I also recall people saying in 1979 when Lipps Inc's album Mouth to Mouth came out that it was only 28 minutes long (though Wikipedia says it's just over half an hour) and this was more scandalous than the fact that it only had four songs on it. Half an hour seemed to be the magic number for album length, despite the fact that you could feasibly fit 30 minutes a side on an album - well, just - but it would be quiet and of course the grooves would not be as deep. Nevertheless, the music industry profited for a long time from the weird scenario whereby too much music on a record was regarded negatively by 'serious' consumers (if the Lipps Inc album had gone over 45 minutes, it would have been seen as a different kind of scam, although that's a bad example of something 'serious' consumers would be interested in). Todd Rundgren, as always, is an interesting case though an outlier, once again as always. The first Utopia album, if I remember correctly, has a song that goes just over 30 minutes and takes up one side of the album. (yes I do remember correctly and here it is to look at not listen to:)

You can well imagine Todd working backwards from the knowledge of how much time he has to play with. Healing, which came out a few years later, came with a 33 rpm 7" single which was a case of 'uh oh, there was too much stuff to fit on one 12" record, had to give you this as well'. I bet the 7" went at 33 because there were enough snobs in the world who never used the 45 speed on their turntable - for all I know, there were turntables made that just went at 33, because people were such adherents to the snobbery of 33-dom. It's still messing with the form/expectations though because of the way Todd is toying with audiophile expectations (over 30 minutes a side?! does it sound tinny?) or that snob aspect ('ugh, a single'). Since you can't set and forget a single, and it has to be pretty fuckin' special for you to play it that often, there are certain expectations around it aren't there. That makes me want to play that single now - 'Time Heals' - sounds like Hall and Oates, a lot. Well, H&O and TR have shared geographical/generational heritage so that's not surprising. I played the other side and have already forgotten it, I'm sure that says more about me.

The other group who regularly turned to 45 as a speed of choice is Pere Ubu.

Song of the Bailing Man (above - I just noticed, some clever clogs trimmed off the first numerals in '10' and '11') was the first of their records to be mastered at 45, then David Thomas' Sound of the Sand and Winter Comes Home, the famous 'disappeared' album. 

After that it was back to 33s for Thomas/Pere Ubu material (or more commonly since then, CDs) but I do have a copy of Lady from Shanghai which is two 45 12"s. 

There are some other anomalies. I wonder what the reasoning was behind the way this Albert Ayler album was put together? I mean it's possible that someone figured the two variations on 'Ghost' should sit together so if you put an LP on, you don't have to listen to the 'same' track twice, although to be fair, if you're that into Ayler you're probably not going to grizzle too much about that. Looking at those timings - three tracks over 10 minutes, and only one track under 4 minutes - it possibly made sense to have one long disc and one shorter one (I'm not even sure you could have three sides at 33 - I could be wrong). I'd have to imagine that the 'EP' is not an 'EP' for audiophile reasons and the decision to master it at 45 was probably arbitrary. 

I'm going to assume that it was Public Image Ltd and Metal Box which started this schemozzle, and while I don't really know I am also going to guess that the idea of releasing an hour-long album as a three 12" 45s with one or two songs on each side was a statement in itself. The packaging was of course in part about getting away from convention in all kinds of ways, including the way in which you were expected/ the way you expected to play a record and how it would be 'sequenced' (though there were sides A-F, and 'Careering' was always going to come after 'Poptones'), unless you yanked your needle off or plopped it on in particular places). Of course once CDs came along with a random/programming function, that was all swept away

What is probably more/most interesting is the seriousness/ephemerality associations with formats. 45s were for kids/girls, and albums were for men/proper people. It's just incredible that people were unable or unwilling to view these prescriptive restrictions for what they were. But Nancy's trying to tell me something... what is it Nancy?

'Shut the fuck up'