Wednesday, July 23, 2008

Wish I'd Said That

Noel Gallagher of Oasis, telling an interviewer in this month's Mojo that his group's new album won't be one of those back to basics deals:

"There's too many multi-instrumentalists in this band to do anything minimal. Anyway, I don't like concepts following around records, that's the Brian Eno curse. I think a lot of bands fall down on that -- they get the concept first. Travis, for instance...poor lads. Those kinds of bands always end up with fucking Brian Eno pulling out a deck of cards, saying 'Play it like it's orange....'."


Heh heh. U2, please pick up the white courtesy phone....

16 comments:

David said...

Eno's truly the Teflon Don of production. Nothing bad ever sticks to him. People only tend to remember his greatest hits and not the misses. Certainly the latest Paul Simon and some of those experimental tracks with James count as misses. I'm sure if he tried producing Oasis it would end in fisticuffs, but you have to admit, Eno & the Gallaghers would be a pretty funny reality show.

Wendy said...

U2, please pick up the white courtesy phone....

Hey now. Them's fightin' words.

Seriously.

Eno may be a pompous twit, but sometimes he gets it right. Orange notwithstanding.

TMink said...

I too find the statement funny, but then Eno has produced a lot of music I really enjoy, some of it his own. But I get the point about just rocking out and being too damn cerebral.

Trey

Noam Sane said...

I found that Paul Simon record to be exceptional. Great songs, beautifully produced.

There are many approaches to making art. Whatever works, whether it's TM or flash cards or drugs or whatever. They're all of a piece.

I'm not sure which approach Oasis takes, but obviously nothing has worked so far.

steve simels said...

For what it's worth, I like a lot of Eno's stuff, both as a solo artist and as a producer.

That said, he's indisputably a pompous artsy twit and I think Gallagher pretty much nailed him.

dave™© said...

That said, he's indisputably a pompous artsy twit and I think Gallagher--

--is the same?

Noam Sane said...

Gallagher pretty much nailed him

Is there a bigger pompous twit than Noel Gallagher? At least Eno has some decent music to his credit.

Shades of knucklehead Conservatism: anybody who doesn't do things just like me is an idiot.

steve simels said...

Apparently I'm not the only person here who doesn't care for Oasis.

Eno's still a poser, though.

steve simels said...
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Noam Sane said...

Oasis is derivative garbage, that's hard to miss. Hari called 'em on it.

Not sure exactly what being a poser entails, but I think Eno is genuinely weird, not pretending to be.

He's no Rick Springfield, obviously.
But I'm glad he's around.

steve simels said...

Did I say poser?

I meant full of shit and a crackpot.

Doesn't mean I'm not glad he's around....

Wendy said...

There's actually a syndrome (I wish I could remember what it's called) where people describe things as sensations that don't fit ... the number 7 could taste like vanilla, stuff like that.

So maybe, to Eno, you really can play something that sounds orange.

Or he just a pretentious asshole, which is equally believable.

David said...

This Eno-bashing has gotten way out of hand. "Play orange" sounds funny, because it is, but in a recent issue of Mojo or Uncut, Johnny Marr, who is definitely not a pretentious asshole, was describing bands he liked, and sounds that he made on record, in terms of color. He described his own playing as silver and blue among other hues; and at one point he described the sound Oasis made as brown (and it wasn't a compliment). I don’t think Eno is a pretentious asshole for giving creative directions like play orange, anymore than Johnny Marr is for likening music to color. It’s nowhere near “a soupcon of Camembert” from Sideways--it's not Bob Weir trying to capture the sound of “thick air” on the Warner Bros. dime. It’s unorthodox directions for unorthodox people. Talking Heads and U2 needed to be guided to the next level by someone like Eno. I don’t think the Rick Rubin approach would have worked; sometimes those Oblique Strategies cards really come in handy. He also knows when to be a realist: after all, he lists a “Roland 4B four-colour offset machine” in the credits of Before and After Science. I’d say he’s just a very creative nerd at heart.

Who Am Us Anyway? said...

And Dylan said, "The closest I ever got the sound I hear in my mind was on Blonde On Blonde. It's that thin, wild mercury sound. Its metallic and bright gold, with whatever that conjures up. That's my particular sound." That's one invocation of color & texture that has always struck me as pretty accurate -- I don't think such language is necessarily pretentious. As everyone here knows, sound is a hard thing to describe & we all just do our best.

steve simels said...

Once more for the record -- the fact that I find Eno a poser does not preclude my also admiring a lot of his work.

steve simels said...
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