hissyfit: TORONTO TIM SAYS: CATCH OF THE DAY: A PLATEFUL OF SPROUTS: PREFAB SPROUT LIVE

Saturday, 10 March 2012

TORONTO TIM SAYS: CATCH OF THE DAY: A PLATEFUL OF SPROUTS: PREFAB SPROUT LIVE

Here's where we hand the page over to Tim Patrick:
Toronto Tim Says:
A preface: You must remember, I'm from the left side of the pond, and several of the UK bands we chat about here on this blog are/were about as popular here as yuck... vegemite! We've never had the privilege of seeing for example Prefab Sprout, Blue Nile, Deacon Blue, Miracle Mile and others perform live, having never toured Canada. I've seen Lloyd Cole (who lives in the US) in all of his dour glory, entertaining but not exactly 'Mr Charisma'... one time with Grant and Robert of the GoBetweens opening. You can see we're severely deprived. However, I am getting a second chance to appreciate these experiences in retrospect thanks to the magic of the 'Internet'.

I've always thought of Prefab Sprout as a studio band... Thomas Dolby twiddling knobs, perfectionist Paddy probably doing dozens of takes to get everything flawless. Over the years I can only recall ever seeing them perform a couple of tunes on TV, usually lip-sync or a cheesy, grainy 80's video...

Recently, while continuing to whittle down my dwindling LP collection, I came across some old EPs of Prefab Sprout, nothing special there that I remembered. Still, I thought next time I'm on "Youtube" I should search for Prefab Sprout B-sides, EP's etc. and perhaps find something interesting.

As I was browsing, I came across some incredible newly posted HQ videos recorded in Munich in 1985... only about 25 views!!! This was the band in their prime I think, Paddy looking fit and confident, and as I recall at the time famously declaring himself "probably the best writer on the planet." I detest hubris, but he might have been right!

I also found some clips from the Fleadh Festival in 2000, Paddy looking very different... much older, having suffered difficult health issues and essentially retiring into self-imposed isolation. He admits to being a happy hermit, a family man who doesn't drive, hates to travel, doesn't even own a computer! I have seen and read several interviews where despite suffering many physical limitations, he's a most gracious and self-effacing soul... however maintaining an unbridled passion for music.

When I clicked on the Fleadh videos I was surprised that he'd even played any gigs since the 80's, but here was Paddy, Marty and Neil, only pregnant Wendy missing. The first clip I punched was "Cowboy Dreams." Frankly, I was expecting something very painful to watch, but I was knocked on my arse!!! "Love's a siver bullet, that blows your world apart..." Paddy was astonishing. His voice was a thing of wonder, rich and powerful and even better than the 80's! I love the studio take of Cowboy Dreams, all banjos and strings... beautiful and catchy as hell. This live version is more of a driving rocker, the band ripping it up, tight as a drum.

I found two other cuts from Fleadh... "Cars and Girls" and of course "When Love Breaks Down", both stunning! I won't gush on... watch for yourself...

Also found an old duet with Paddy and Jimmy Webb playing "Highwayman" with an orchestra which I thought was really good.

Go to: "Chaine De LeVilosophe" channel on Youtube. There are several other excellent videos from the Munich 85 concert on there.

10 comments:

Anonymous10 March 2012 at 09:37
I was at the Fleadh concert and they were great. I first saw them play the Barrowlands with loads of big glaswegians singing along to when love breaks down.

The lst time was out of the blue when the beard was zz top long and perversly they chose to tour with no lp to promote and wendy away on "maternity leave"!

Each time the sound was really clear and Paddys voice surprisingly strong ( i think I'd got used to teh more whispered delivery that he was using more and more in the later records)
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Hissyfit10 March 2012 at 11:27
I saw them a few times; liked the early gigs with a second guitarist; in the later shows it seemed that lone guitar Paddy was watching his fingers rather than thinking about singing...
Paddy Strong is great: Whispering Paddy; divine...
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Tim Patrick10 March 2012 at 11:42
You lucky bugger!!! I'm curious... Any idea when the last year was that they toured? I'm still quite stunned by the performances, and the quality of the clips. There are live tunes from Swoon and Protest Songs on the same Youtube channel. I'd forgotten how "eccentric" those tunes were at the time, actually still are!
Good observation about the evolution of Paddy's vocals on later records, a little lower register and more refined I think, but still distinguished and extraordinary. The reworked acoustic takes on the remastered "Steve McQueen" with the more mature vocals are also remarkable. I wonder if we ever see any "new" material again?
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Barryx10 March 2012 at 14:01
Rumour has it an album of new material has been delivered to Kitchenware Records and release is imminent! Also a much mooted album of unreleased material "Trapdoor Melancholy" could also see the light of day soon. I saw them in 1990 on the Jordan tour, "Doo Wop In Harlem" left a mark, check out this clip to see why, it's worth putting up with the constant buzz...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AtisWO16aTQ
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Anonymous10 March 2012 at 18:22
At last we diagree on somethign musical - for me it is strong paddy over whispery paddy everytime!
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Hissyfit10 March 2012 at 18:25
Pistols at dawn?
(he whispered...)
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Tim Patrick11 March 2012 at 07:44
I dunno, those is fightin' words... Did you read Dave's Dylan rebuke? I can foresee a cage-match in the future.
Mr. X: Nice link to live "DooWop"... sweet gospel music.
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Hissyfit11 March 2012 at 10:14
Ay, he's a feisty fella; but I reckon that we could have him Tim.
I sense a weakness to 'Chinese Burns' and afore mentioned 'wedgies'...
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Anonymous11 April 2012 at 13:00
I've rather made a niche out of tracking live Prefab Sprout - see my site at http://psgigs.wikispaces.com - and the fleadh clips are from my channel on youtube - I have literally gigabytes of live sprout audio and video, and always on the lookout for more. The most interesting live footage isn't available anywhere though, there are three songs from the post Swoon tour filmed at the Hacienda, Don't Sing, Walk On, and Couldn't Bear to be Special, filmed for the BBC's RPM show. There are some screengrabs on the site.
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‘Jones’ is Trevor Jones; principle songwriter with the critically acclaimed duo Miracle Mile, where he works alongside collaborator, arranger and musical partner Marcus Cliffe. Together they have produced nine albums, the latest of which was 2012’s ‘In Cassidy’s Care’, rated ‘Album of the Month’ by HiFi News, with respected journalist Johnny Black noting that Miracle Mile were “far and away the most unfairly unsung musical wizards ever to emerge from this sceptered isle. Big on memorable tunes wrapped around honest-to-goodness emotionally involving lyrics.”

Trevor Jones has also previously produced four solo albums: ‘Hopeland’ (2009), ‘Keepers’, (2010), ‘To the Bone’ (2014) and ‘Happy Blue’ (2016). Co-produced again with Marcus Cliffe, ‘Carver’s Law is another triumph of intimacy.
Previous critical acclaim for Trevor Jones:

“Gorgeous, as ever. Trevor Jones finds the poetry in real life; gently beautiful and genuinely moving. You may cry.” The Sunday Times

“Masterpieces of subtlety and observation clothed in sumptuous, lush melodies.” R2

“Jones is in a class of one. Near-perfect explorations of the human heart. The beauty on offer here is enough to make you weep. It did me.” Americana UK

“Achingly tender.” Folk Radio UK

“Intellectually as well as emotionally engaging.” MOJO

"Meticulously orchestrated, careful and complex, this is canny songwriting leavened by bona fide humanity." Q

“Moves you to tears and refreshes the soul. Scintillating.” Maverick

"Gentle enchantment. The loveliest melodies you've ever heard.” Uncut

“Classic pop songwriting, gorgeously realised. Jones has compiled possibly the finest catalogue of adult pop. Gently beautiful and genuinely moving” The Times

Miracle Mile: A User's Guide by Johnny Black

Despite being based in a home studio in a rural backwater on the outskirts of West London, Miracle Mile chose to name themselves after a fictional gold rush main street half a world away where, according to adventure yarn spinner Jack London, ragged 49ers would blow their hard-won nuggets on booze and broads.
They apply a similarly unorthodox approach to their career in general. The band’s core duo of singer/guitarist Trevor Jones and multi-instrumentalist/arranger Marcus Cliffe have been relentless in their pursuit of the perfect song. Not the fastest, the gnarliest or the loudest, not even the most instantly commercial, but the song whose melody, lyrics, arrangement, performance and spirit might stand the test of time, giving pleasure to listeners not just for years but centuries.
They’d be the first to admit they haven’t yet found that perfect song and maybe never will, but I’d argue that their albums — the documentary evidence of that search — deserve a place alongside the best work of time-tested tunesmiths as elevated as Randy Newman, Elvis Costello or Tom Waits.

Marcus Cliffe wasn’t yet on board when the first album, Bicycle Thieves, arrived in 1997 but already it was evident that frontman Jones didn’t fit in with the prevailing mode. There was no rage, bitterness or self-loathing in his songs and nothing at all turned up to eleven. Instead, he offered meticulously orchestrated slices of ordinary human life, transforming the mundane into the marvellous with carefully crafted lyrics sincerely delivered. Even here, though, the hypnotic sample-based "Recycletwo" revealed a willingness to experiment that marked Jones out as more than just a pop craftsman in the vein of Crowded House or Aztec Camera.

What had started essentially as a recording project had become a five-piece live band by the time the follow-up, Candids, was released in 1998. Loaded with nagging guitar hooks and dynamic vocal interplay, it included one particularly affecting piece, "Small Ad," which featured just one line of lyric, the heart-rending couplet, "Baby’s shoes, never used." With those four words, Jones conjured up a yawning abyss of grief that other writers might struggle to evoke in an entire album.

Jones quickly realised that live performance was not his forte and retired to the womb of the studio for 1999’s third album, Slow Fade, which also saw the birth of the partnership that would lift Miracle Mile higher still above the norm. Marcus Cliffe, in demand as a player for Steve Earle, Emmylou Harris, Daniel Lanois, Mark Knopfler and others, was drafted in on upright bass.
Immediately the music took a more intimate turn, with Jones exploring the little things that illuminate the big things. Almost every song offers up at least one unforgettable line, like "I'd rather be ashes than dust" in "Everybody Loved You," or the concept of filling the void left by his loss of faith "with despair and metalware" in "Starwatching."
Slow Fade was further enhanced by the delicately filigreed swirls and swoops of England’s finest steel guitar maestro, B.J. Cole, whose style sat so well with Jones and Cliffe that he has become virtually a full-time member of the band.

And then, out of nowhere, catastrophe struck. Trevor Jones’ beloved sister died in tragic circumstances. It’s typical of the man that, rather than wallowing in his grief as he had every right to do, he dealt with his loss in the quiet, honest dignity of "Sister Song," the achingly lovely tribute that concludes the fourth album, Alaska. It can’t have been coincidence that the album, despite its meltingly beautiful musical landscape, was named for one of the coldest places on earth.

By the time of Stories We Could Tell in 2004, Miracle Mile were drawing critical plaudits in every significant British magazine and newspaper, along with comparisons to such pop pluperfectionists as Prefab Sprout and the Blue Nile. Critics were noting that Miracle Mile was fast becoming a repository of timelessly romantic music fueled by the same shamelessly emotional human concerns that inspired the great standards. More than this, it was being noticed that while most bands go into decline after two or three albums, Miracle Mile were getting better, perhaps because they’d avoided the trap of trying to be contemporary, and had no need to be more outrageous than the competition, largely because they didn’t see music as a competitor sport.

The sixth album, Glow, showed up in 2005 and found Jones and Cliffe further expanding their musical palette mixing Celtic folksiness with slow, semi-industrial percussion on the inspirational "An Average Sadness," blending Badalamenti guitars with Bacharach horns on "What Kate Did Next," and opening "Strange Sympathy" with a beautifully synthesised string orchestration before letting the song melt seamlessly into a laid-back country-rock rumination on the gap between aspiration and acquisition. Glow was also their most lavishly packaged disc, gorgeously presented at no small cost to themselves.

Album No. 7, Limbo, offered fifteen songs overflowing with sensitively wrought melodies and heart-fluttering lyricism. If it’s not a contradiction in terms, Limbo was even more quietly passionate than usual, deliciously understated and, at times, devastatingly tear-jerking.

‘Cassidy’s Care’ followed in 2012 and received similar critical acclaim.
Miracle Mile may just be too concerned with timeless quality for their own short-term commercial good. They’ll never sink a fang into the jugular when they can plant a whisper of a kiss on that sensitive spot at the nape of the neck and set off a tiny ripple that will, in the fullness of time, explode in the heart. I, for one, wouldn’t want it any other way.
Johnny Black

“Trevor Jones finds the poetry in real life; Marcus Cliffe anchors it in the sweetest pop. Gorgeous as ever. You may cry.”
Sunday Times

"Gentle enchantment. The loveliest melodies you've ever heard."
UNCUT

“Gorgeous melodies, hooks galore, intelligent lyrics that demand and repay careful listening, beautifully produced instrumentation, and an overall effect that combines poignancy and joy in equal measure. Music and words come together in a state as close to perfection as makes no difference, and leaves you with a delicious ache that makes you hug yourself with the sheer overwhelming joy of hearing such wonderful music. The beauty on offer here is enough to make you weep. It did me."
Americana UK

“A little oasis illuminated by musical creativity, glimpsed like a lovely mirage. Intelligent tunefulness that doesn’t kowtow to passing trends has always been as rare as fish fingernails, but it’s here.” Mojo

“Classic pop songwriting, gorgeously realised” The Times

“Moves you to tears and refreshes the soul. Scintillating.”
Maverick

“A tender sadness. Songs that have universal resonance.”
Netrhythms

"Trevor Jones has produced a gorgeous pop album that few will hear — unless there’s justice in the world.’ The Wall Street Journal

“Jones has compiled possibly the finest catalogue of adult pop. Gently beautiful and genuinely moving”
The Sunday Times