Sunday, July 22, 2018

Reeves helps rework Bowie's 'Never Let Me Down' album


From Georgie Rogers:

BBC 6 MUSIC INTERVIEWS: DAVID BOWIE LOVING THE ALIEN BOXSET WITH REEVES GABRELS AND MARIO MCNULTY

The 12th October will see the release of the latest in the series of career spanning David Bowie box sets. So far the first three have covered from 1969 through to 1982.

The next is called 'LOVING THE ALIEN' and reflects 1983 - 1988.

The eleven CD, fifteen-piece vinyl set which includes newly remastered versions of Bowie's most successful period - starting off with 'LET'S DANCE' which propelled him into a commercially mainstream stadium-filling stratosphere, then it's follow up 'TONIGHT', 'NEVER LET ME DOWN, the live album 'GLASS SPIDER (Live Montreal '87)' and the previously unreleased 'SERIOUS MOONLIGHT' live album.

Now the accepted wisdom is that while 'LET'S DANCE' was all killer, and 'TONIGHT' has its moments (Loving The Alien) but 'NEVER LET ME DOWN' wasn't Bowie's finest moment, and admittedly the 80's production hasn't aged that well.

So this set includes a complete re-versioning of the album.

Early this year engineer Mario McNulty - who had remixed the album's track Time Will Crawl back in 2008 with Bowie - he got in the studio with drummer Sterling Campbell, bassist Tim Lefebvre (who played on Blackstar) and guitarists Reeves Gabrels and David Torn to record a new version of the album with Bowie's original vocals.

Reeves Gabrels was David's guitarist from 1988 through to 1999. He was also in Bowie's heavy alt rock group Tin Machine and plays in The Cure. I spoke to him for BBC 6 Music about the project...


Listen to the BBC 6 Music interview here (Bowie segment starts at 44:25, Reeves interview at 46:24). They also talked to Reeves about The Cure, and say they'll air that part in a couple of weeks.

And here's more info on the project from Rolling Stone:

Also exclusive to the box set is a 2018 reworking of Never Let Me Down with new production and instrumentation overseen by Bowie producer/engineer Mario McNulty. Longtime Bowie collaborators including guitarist Reeves Gabriel and drummer Sterling Campbell, Blackstar bassist Tim Lefebvre and composer Nico Muhly also contributed to the project, which was born out of Bowie’s desire to rerecord the 1987 LP that he called “a bitter disappointment.“

“The seeds of this new reimagining of the albums were first sown in 2008 when Bowie asked McNulty to remix the track ‘Time Will Crawl’ and record new drums by longtime Bowie drummer Sterling Campbell along with strings,’ Parlaphone wrote of Never Let Me Down (2018). “The track was issued on the iSelect compilation to much acclaim and, in the notes for that record, David remarked ‘Oh, to redo the rest of that album.'”

In early January, the musicians involved entered New York’s Electric Lady Studios to fulfill Bowie’s wish and remake Never Let Me Down, which now features a guest appearance by Laurie Anderson on “Shining Star (Makin’ My Love).” The 2018 reworking also boasts “newly ‘remixed’ artwork reflecting the album’s subject matter and features unseen images from the original cover photographic session from the archive of Greg Gorman.


Posted by Craig at 9:47 AM

Cure article in new Rock & Folk

Posted by Craig at 9:30 AM

Killing an Arab: The Cure try to reclaim their most controversial single


From the New Statesman:

Killing an Arab: The Cure try to reclaim their most controversial single

Can a song about murdering an Algerian ever be benign?

By Calum Bradshaw

“It should be a great gig – but they won’t play “Killing an Arab”” – this was the last text message my dad, at home, sent to me before my phone battery died in the sweltering heat of The Cure’s 40th anniversary celebration concert at London’s Hyde Park earlier this month.

My dad grew up on The Cure. He had the hair, the platforms, and the drainpipe jeans. He’s stuck with them through every sea change and slump. Against the grain of critical consensus, he reckons that “they’re at their best pre-“The Caterpillar”” – he’s a man who likes OG Cure, from “Boys Don’t Cry”, to “A Forest”, and the band’s first ever single, 1978’s “Killing an Arab”. If not for the inconvenient timing of his wedding anniversary, I’m sure Dad would have dusted off the Doc Martens and hopped on the train to the gig with me.

“Killing an Arab” is a short, spiky track with a colourful history. Written by frontman Robert Smith while he was still at school, it was released in 1978 with the B-side “10:15 Saturday Night”. Its main chorus line runs: “I’m alive / I’m dead / I’m the stranger / killing an Arab.” Its been called either racist or misunderstood in equal measure, and in Hyde Park – despite my dad’s convictions – The Cure played it.

The song draws its inspiration from the central action of Albert Camus’s novel L’Étranger (The Stranger), which follows a protagonist who murders an Algerian man on a beach after a love dispute involving the victim’s sister. This Arab, as he is continually referred to in the novel, is never named, and the protagonist, detached and unrepentant, is executed for his crime. The novel is an exploration of the nihilism and narcissism of its protagonist, and is held up as a crucial component of the 20th century canon. Sadly, few of the skinheads who turned out to early The Cure gigs had swotted up on their existentialist literature, and somewhat missed this memo.

Instead, racist interpretations saw Smith fighting a rearguard action over a song that, as he said in a 2001 interview with now defunct Canadian music magazine Chart Attack, he “had no idea that anyone would ever listen to... other than my immediate school friends”. When The Cure played at Kingston Polytechnic in 1979, they were asked not to include “Killing an Arab” in their set, over concerns of a racist message. It was widely dropped from radio playlists, and the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee asked for the song to be withdrawn from sale – it later reached a joint agreement with the band and copies of the singles collection Standing on a Beach were marketed with a sleeve sticker denouncing anti-Arab interpretations. The sticker read:

“The song ‘Killing an Arab’ has absolutely no racist overtones whatsoever. It is a song which decries the existence of all prejudice and consequent violence. The Cure condemn its use in furthering anti-Arab feeling.”

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Posted by Craig at 9:27 AM

Roger at the British Grand Prix

Posted by Craig at 9:20 AM

Cure discussion on We Dig Music podcast


Posted by Craig at 9:17 AM
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