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| From | "Sager, Greg" <greg.sager@bankofamerica.com> |
| Subject | Rockpile (was: The ELO Issue) |
| Date | Tue, 13 Jul 2004 04:27:35 -0500 |
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Date: Mon, 12 Jul 2004 13:21:41 -0500
From: "Billy G. Spradlin" <bgspradlin@cablelynx.com>
To: audities@smoe.org
Subject: Re: The ELO Issue
Message-ID: <auto-000056306264@cablelynx.com>
You cant give Lynne all the blame for "Information" and "Riff Raff" - I
thought there were some good songs on each LP despite the stiff programming.
Rockpile was one of the greatest bands of the late 70's-early 80's and both
Edmunds and Lowe lost thier focus and direction after the breakup.
Dunno if I agree with that last phrase, Billy. (I seem to be giving Tam
O'Shanter a run for his money as Audities' Mr. Contrarian this week.) In
terms of focus and direction, I think that Dave Edmunds went right back to
what he'd been doing before Rockpile after the band broke up, which was
painstakingly re-creating pre-Beatles rock'n'roll records in the studio,
usually with a minimum of outside help, using as his material both oldies
and contemporary songs that lent themselves to being recast in a Buddy
Holly, Everly Brothers, Chuck Berry, or Phil Spector vein. In fact, Rockpile
wasn't all that radical a deviation in terms of his aesthetic ideal; what
was novel about Rockpile as far as Edmunds was concerned was that it
involved a sustained four-year bout of collaboration with three other
musicians onstage and in the studio. But, as *Information* and *Riff Raff*
proved, quite often the wrong collaborator is worse than no collaborator at
all.
Nick Lowe? I don't know if words like "focus" and "direction" really suit
him as much as they do Dave Edmunds. While Edmunds has had a clear career
path and musical aesthetic, the Basher has always seemed to kind of amiably
meander from one thing to the next. In other words, I'm not sure that he
ever had the focus and direction to lose in the first place. He seems to
have now settled into a nice pocket as a traditionalist country crooner, but
I'm not so sure that that's a reflection of anything other than Lowe's
advancing age; give him credit for realizing that he's really too old to be
flexing the "Switchboard Susan" and "Half a Boy and Half a Man" muscles
anymore. I've noticed that lots of roots-rockers get more and more country
and less and less rock as they grow older -- it's a pattern first
established by a significant number of rockabilly stars of the 1950s.
I think that both Edmunds and Lowe recorded some great music as solo artists
both before and after Rockpile (especially Nick Lowe -- regardless of his
low-key approach to his career and his chronic refusal to take himself very
seriously, he's someone whom I think is criminally underappreciated as a
songwriter and recording artist). And I praise those two solo careers even
as I lament the all-too-brief nature of Rockpile's lifespan, and wish like
hell that Nick, Dave, Terry, and Billy would tour and/or record together
again someday.
Gregory Sager
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