Date: Mon, 12 Jul 2004 13:21:41 -0500 From: "Billy G. Spradlin" To: audities@smoe.org Subject: Re: The ELO Issue Message-ID: 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