Across The Pond
Peter Saville, The Kooks, Oasis and Spiritualized in this week's Across The Pond
Peter Saville, album art designer for many popular Factory Records offerings, recently spoke of Joy Dision/New Order's inter-band bickering and sometimes indifference when it came to album artwork...
"Complete liberty...Strangely out of disinterest. It was New Order's disinterest and agreed policy of disagreement that allowed it. When Ian died, the natural hierarchy which would have naturally formed in Joy Division...because that's what happens in bands, at the beginning everyone's equal, y'know, if you've got a van you can be the manager...that's how it is. But once they enter the music business, a proper manager is put in place and it's, "The drummer's not very good, is he?" and "We've got someone else with a drum kit..." The natural hierarchy crystallizes around the central figure which is usually the writer/singer and that? what would have happened had Joy Division signed to a record label or a proper record company, and had Ian survived. He would have gradually, even against his own free will, turned into a Jim Morrison-type character and that's who you would be working for if you were doing a sleeve or taking a photo or whateverŠyou'd be working for that person. Ian died, leaving behind the band, with no defined hierarchy. Three equal people, all of whom needed each other. Nobody really took the responsibility of being the writer ?it took a decade before that happened. So they remained a democracy and very quickly, as most bands do, they started to hate each other and decided things by ignoring them. No more agonizing over album presentations because New Order looks to be a thing of the past.The heavenly sounds of Spirtualized were once again heard this past Friday at the Apollo Theatre in New York. Front man Jason Pierce performed acoustic renditions of classic numbers, and wore an old astronaut suit for Spacemen 3's "Walking With Jesus," all while being backed by a string quartet and gospel choir. A new Spiritualized album is said to be complete and is due sometime next year.
Youngish Dylan-like punkers, The Kooks, are set to perform a short stint of radio station promotional events this December. Chicago's very own 93 XRT will be hosting a VIP only event December 12 at a soon to be disclosed location. Those of you of lesser importance, take note that the follow to Inside In/Inside Out will be available via Astralwerks in spring of 2008.
Oasis are making expedient progress on the follow-up to Don't Believe The Truth. Speaking with Reuters, Gallagher claimed the untitled release would compare to the seventh U.K. albums of the Beatles and the Rolling Stones, "Revolver" and "Beggars Banquet." Liam said, "There's lots of cool parts man, really, we're throwing everything at it."
This weeks Single Of The Week goes to Reading's Pete and The Pirates with undeniably catchy "Knots."
Posted by Joe Roth on Nov 21, 2007 @ 12:00 am
