Fun fact! I last saw Julian Cope, playing another solo set, nine years ago in this very venue. At the time I half had it in mind that he’d effectively become a writer and antiquarian, and this might well be the last time I saw him live. Yet I now discover that someone I spent my Twenties near-obsessed by has put eight albums out without my knowing. So much for the internet keeping you informed.
As he has to remind someone shouting for the psychedelic wigout ’Safe Surfer’, only some songs switch to this one-man-band treatment. So if he somewhat curiously plays only two numbers from his latest release, ’Self Civil War’, that might be a factor. One of them falls a little flat as it is, ’Your Facebook My Laptop’ clearly being more of a rocker.
Yet the album I did acquire from the CD stall, 2018’s ’Skellington 3’ keeps up the Skellington tradition of a series of sketches, worked up and laid down quickly. (The whole thing was done in two days.) Which of course plays to Cope’s strengths, making mad stuff up on the spot then giving it a great hook. Yet while their more basic instrumentation would surely lend themselves to this show, curiously they don’t get a look-in. Still, there’s times I suspect Cope may be mildly eccentric…
Perhaps interestingly, the more epic numbers do translate. A version of ’Autogeddon Blues’ is nothing less than gripping. In fact it’s the earlier, poppier songs which tend to lose something. Of course they’re from far back, when he was still writing songs with titles like ’Passionate Friend’, before they were called things such as ’Cromwell in Ireland.’ But that’s not the problem. In fact one of the great things about Cope is that as he went culty he hung on to his pop sensibility.
It’s more that hearing those songs feels like opening a shiny new toy on Christmas Day, they seem to exude bright primary colours and invite playfulness. But when reduced to one voice and one guitar, ’Greatness and Perfection’ loses some of it’s greatness and perfection. Yet it varies from song to song. ’Treason’ fares significantly better, perhaps because it’s more wrapped around the vocal.
But really Cope’s such a character he could have just gassed on and left us all entertained. Even the great Mark E Smith needed your Auntie on bongos to make it a Fall gig. Cope can just show up. Rock music only really works when it’s aware of its own ridiculousness. Cope clearly knows he has to be both bard and clown, and excels in playing up both. When his playing hand seizes up and requires relief (not of the euphemistic variety), he turns it into a to-camera advert for the merits of Deep Heat. He explains his disdain for folk music: “That’s music written by the folk. You can’t have music written by the folk. It has to be written by professionals!”
At one point he recounts his Syd Barrett era, when the music industry has effectively written him off as an unsaleable casualty, pumping the audience for panto cries of sympathy. Which for me was a slightly strange moment. I first saw him, not more than half a mile from this spot, still in the throes of that time. And rarely has a performer seemed more frazzled, more psychically dishevelled. To see that figure turn into this consummate showman is truly something.
But don’t just take my word for it. This is ’Greatness and Perfection’ followed by ’Autogeddon Blues’, alas cutting off before the end…
No comments:
Post a Comment