BOC: A "dizzying excursion into Pearlman's world"

[Jon Jarrett]

On Tue, 14 Sep 2004, Carl Edlund Anderson wrote:

> It's a fine line, I suppose, but there often seems to be that
> indefinable bit of soul that makes you recognize a band as that band
> even when the sound and even lineup can change radically.  And other
> times, even apparently minimal changes can completely chuck the band's
> "soul" out the window.

        This has always struck me very much with BOC. Even after the
Bouchards' departures, there's almost always a kind of breathlessness and
excitement about BOC that keeps my attention. It's one of the things I
missed in the Brain Surgeons before I finally adjusted to the fact that
this was a Different Band.

> Motorhead still sounds like "Motorhead" to me, though there are
> (surprisingly ;) actual objective changes to the way their songs work
> and sound (surprisingly). God knows that _Magical Mystery Tour_ sounds
> damn little like _Please Please Me_, but it sounds like the Beatles
> (wheras, say, John Lennon's solo stuff generally doesn't feel really
> that "Beatley" to me).  _Spectres_ sounds a lot different from _BOC_ to
> me, but still like "BOC".  _Club Ninja_, erm, doesn't, for some reason.
>   I was, however, willing to believe in _Imaginos_ as a "return to form"
> (though it sounds little like other BOC albums) until I learned it was
> nothing of the sort ;)  Still cool, though :)

        Motorhead will always sound like Motorhead as long as Lemmy plays
a Rickenbacker that fast :-) I reckon _Club Ninja_ fits my BOC template
personally, it's just not very good, but it sounds more like a BOC record
to me than _Mirrors_ and tRbN do in some ways. The latter is good and
heavy on the lurking menace though which is what saves it for me.

        The only time I've really felt a BOC record entirely lacked that
excitement was _Curse of the Hidden Mirror_, and after that it was quite
hard to find in _Long Day's Night_ too. And it looks sadly as if in that
respect LDN is just capturing the current live show accurately... Yours,

Jon

ObMP3: ICU - `Hurricane Fighter Plane'
--
                Jonathan Jarrett, Birkbeck College, London
    jjarrett at chiark.greenend.org.uk/ejarr01 at students.bbk.ac.uk
  "As much as the vision of the blind man improves with the rising sun,
       So too does the intelligence of the fool after good advice."
       (Bishop Theodulf of Orleans, late-eight/early-ninth century)