my wonderful accountant sir david r
sent me the doctors of madness 2nd n 3rd albums
which i havent heard for a long long time
figments of emancipation, the 2nd, is a real corker
i guess it came out in 76 or 77
it got real bad reviews n presumably sold nothing
but its better than all them new wave records put together
i mean
whod wanna listen to the damned these days….?
anyway
its full of screaming violins and rocking guitars
and one of the best bass players ever….stoner
check out his superb lead bass on “marie n joe”
which is my fave track on the record
fluid lovely stuff
so hard to play a bass like a lead cos the strings are different
but listen to stoners melodic runs n trills just before
he collides with the guitar solo
the lyrics are richard kid stranges usual fare
alienation
drugs
love gone bad
all sung with his peculiar pronunciation
which somehow adds pathos to the songs
“and so it was we talked to the giants
the night air of summer turning cold on our skins”
“the boys in the backroom so cold and thoughtless
theyre insensitive, insufferable, insane”
gee i wish i’d written some of this stuff
when the church first appeared
the critics went on about the byrds and this n that
but there was more doctors of madness in what i did
than the byrds and all those other sixties groups
we looked like the sixties
but i was a seventies freak
and the doctors
be bop deluxe
cockney rebel
bowie
bolan
has always been my mojo
as much as i do love n revere bob n beatles n stones
to find my true sources
you must look amongst these records
a song like marie n joe off this record
probably spawned 10 of my own
not trying to imitate
but trying to re create this feeling
on my own terms
the swirling weird world of strange
his lugubrious pronunciation
the wild and brilliant violin of a chap named urban blitz
(warning: this may not have been his real name)
i love this stuff
gee its holding up well
marie n joe would be a great song in any day or age
real organic fucked up rock music
aaaah! those were the days……