Well this is some nerve of the Carpets if you ask me
Completely missed this at the time - didn't even see the advert
The Egyptian artwork even seems to nod slightly to the artwork of the Miles album
I mean, not quite, but the Mati Klarwein artwork is a bit Nubian, ancient-to-the-future, mythscience vibed.
Plus Miles did an album titled Nefertiti and "Pharoah's Dance" is the opening track of Bitches Brew.
So what other examples are there of bands heisting iconic titles and dragging them through the mire of their own mediocrity?
I suppose there's "Wonderwall" but the original is not all that in the first place...
The Boo Radleys entitled a (pretty enjoyable) album "Giant Steps". I vaguely recall reading at the time it was an explicit nod to Coltrane.
ReplyDeleteThe Replacements entitled an album "Let It Be" after the group drunkenly agreed the LP would be named after whatever song came on the radio next.
Corporate rockers Matchbox 20 named their very inessential "best of" compilation "Exile on Mainstream".
Ah perfect example - cheeky monkeys the Boo Radleys (never really 'got' them I must say)
DeleteThe Replacements's Let It Be is much better than the Beatles's Let It Be
Exile on Mainstream... funny I am just this minute listening to Exile In Guyville which might actually be better than Exile On Main Street.
(I am a doing a track by track comparison, for reasons, and enjoying both albums immensely, despite the chopping back and forth, but for the life of me cannot detect how the successor record correlates to the original, either sonically or thematically).
Reminds me of course of Pussy Galore's cover of Exile on Main Street, which then inspired Ciccone Youth's The Whitey Album, which originally going to be a cover of The Beatles but that concept went by the wayside.
There's Def Leppard borrowing 'Hysteria' from the Human League, but that was never really a classic. Two somewhat different interpretations of the sound of Sheffield.... Although the League's Rock'n'Roll Part 2 and the Lep's Rocket are actually not so far apart at all. Has anyone done the deep dive on whether Phil Oakey and Joe Elliott used to hang out at the same glam rock clubs?
ReplyDeleteAs another possible tribute to / improvement on an influence, Daft Punk's Discovery surely owes a lot to the ELO album. Similar sonics, sci-fi imagery and airbrushed artwork. And the "very disco" pun, of course.
DeleteDid they really borrow the title? Seems like a word that might have come to them independently, from the atmosphere at their arena shows in the USA...
DeleteThey must surely have gone to some of the same gigs in Sheffield, Roxy Music and the like...
Yeah Daft Punk, that's a good one... I think it's also some meaning to do with the idea of the child's relationship to pop, that very wide-eyed / wide-eared openness to anything streaming out of the radio
DeleteWas a student in Sheffield in the 90's and went drinking a few times in the pub (now closed I think) where Def Leppard did a lot of their early shows. Can't remember the name of it, but it was behind the supermarket in Broomhill. They had lots of Lep memorabilia - gold microphones in glass presentation cases etc.
DeleteWas still a thriving hard rock scene with dedicated pubs in Sheffield at the time, which I regret to say I thumbed my nose at.
Whodini had not really gone away, but in 1986 they were "Back In Black", an LP that inexplicably did not include a rap/metal crossover.
ReplyDeleteSonic Youth’s Bad Moon Rising: a very conscious attempt to place themselves in a tradition.
ReplyDeleteThe Inspirals one is particularly good because of the size of the gulf between the inspiration and the derivative. It’s like Prefab Sprout titling an album Reign In Blood.
ReplyDeleteYes Sonic Youth were quite the rock scholars - and keen to connect to a/ America and b/ Rock with a capital R, having started as quite the Anglophiles (the first record is very PiL, very 99 Records)
DeleteConnected to this but slightly different would be bands who incorporate homage-heist into their name - the Brian Jonestown Massacre, the Mooney Susuki
ReplyDeleteSometimes it's done in the album title rather than the band name. Acid Mothers Temple did that a lot. Did Butthole Surfers start it with Hairway to Steven?
Mind you the Yardbirds did that really on, didn't they?
DeleteAnd the Rolling Stones even earlier.
DeleteI have never understood the Yardbirds thing. They sounded as much like Charlie Parker as Starsailor did like Tim Buckley.
DeleteGiven that George Michael was a fan of Joy Division's 'Closer,' is it too much of a stretch to imagine that when he titled his album 'Faith,' he was aware of the Cure album with the same name...?
ReplyDeleteNine Inch Nails released a live album called 'Still' -- so that might have been a direct homage to Joy Division's semi-live 'Still.'
If we're going by album titles, then Steely Dan's debut 'Can't Buy a Thrill' is lifted from Dylan's 'It Takes a Train to Laugh, It Takes a Lot to Cry'
Probably more likely he titled it after the surefire worldwide smash single he knew he had on the album!
DeleteLyrics turned to titles - or band names - is a vast topic.
Panic! At The Disco is a kind of twist on the lyrics of Smiths's "Panic" (I assume, anyway)
A Certain Ratio from an Eno lyric
Delete
ReplyDeleteCocteau Twins comes not from Cocteau but a Simple Minds song.
Moonshake from the Can song. Negativland after the Neu! song. Slowdive from the Siouxsie and the Banshees song...
Earth took their name from an early named used by Sabbath, right? As did Saint Vitus.
In that sort of zone, Boris got their name from a Melvins song.
Go-Kart Mozart, Lawrence's post-Felt, post-Denim venture, comes from a line in "Blinded By the Light" - I like to think via the Manfred Mann's Earth Band version rather than the Brooce original
Radio Birdman via a mondegreen in The Stooges's "1970"
Saint Vitus of course from a Sabbath song, not an early Sabbath proto-nym
DeleteCamper Van Beethoven.
DeleteI've always loved the stage name John Wesley Harding.
Shakespear's Sister borrowed from The Smiths (surely not Woolf)
Republica named themselves after New Order's 1993 LP.
Would Elvis Costello count...?
Also if we're talking mondegreens, Oneohtrix Point Never takes a prize of some kind.
Yo La Tengo - There's A Riot Going On - the cheeky monkeys! and they replace the G missing from Sly's Goin' On.
ReplyDeleteHaha that from Yo La Tengo is hilarious. I discovered only recently that There's a Riot Goin' On was titled as an answer to What's Going On. But Sly Stone didn't have a song with that title, which is why it's a blank track on the album!
DeleteCan't believe no one has mentioned the Lightning Seeds.
ReplyDeleteIf we're going album titles, then surely some sort of terminus is reached with Mark Eitzel's (ex-American Music Club) 1998 album "Caught in a Trap and I Can't Back Out 'Cause I Love You Too Much, Baby"
Tip of the hat also, to Sunn O))) who take their name from [checks notes] a brand of amplifiers.
Where is Lighting Seeds from?
DeleteIt’s another mondegreen, from Raspberry Beret.
DeleteThe Prince lyric is 'thunder drowns out what the lightning sees'
DeleteAaah, just seen what a mondegreen is ...
Delete"American Thighs" took its name from a well known AC/DC hit, iirc.
ReplyDeleteMustang Sally inspired both this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ArhqgaVVCAo
and this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fzb3uirGs4g
Also this: https://youtu.be/Jn2PNlhvy8E?si=igzbuXneJhLIZc_G
DeleteAnd this! https://youtu.be/y6aUbrZYjYE?si=YVg697YLi6p8dmix
DeleteJust to note that Bitches Brew contributor Joe Zawinul released an album in 1967 called The Rise and Fall of the Third Stream, which I guess must've been inspired by William L. Shirer's The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. Zawinul was originally from Austria, of course. Eek!
ReplyDeleteThere is a band called Starsailor which is quite a nerve given the gulf between them and Tim Buckley, especially the track "Starsailor" itself
ReplyDeleteIn a further "ideas well above their station" move, Starsailor's debut was produced by a pre-scandal Phil Spector! (his last ever production job, apparently).
DeleteMetallica's Black Album was of course a pale shadow of Spinal Tap's magnificent original.
ReplyDeleteMy God, how did I forget this one:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iaBBgnj4_tw
Which absolutely in no way inspired this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rmKdgQdCrYU
Mgmt did a song called "Brian Eno" I just noticed - wonder what Uncle Bri thought about it?
ReplyDeletehttps://youtu.be/_f_jaqLLPTU?si=cdR8riPD9MEEI2Qr
So tired, soul searching
I followed the sounds to a cathedral
Imagine my surprise to find that
They were produced by Brian Eno
Past the gates, quite stark
The roses trimmed and the windows dark
I see the walls through a limestone crack
Not red, not blue, not yellow but black
And all the spaces left for you
If the sky was synthesized you'd probably know
He taught me many things
The wisdom of oblique stratagems
The prophet of a sapphire soul
Presented through creative freedoms
And everything I say is true
'Cause if I was telling lies it'd probably show
I can tell that he's kind of smiling
But what does he know?
We're always one step behind him
He's Brian Eno, Brian Eno
When I was stuck he'd make me memorize elaborate curses
Tinctures and formulas to ditch the chorus and flip the verses
My whole foundation came unglued
When I tried to humanize by ambient light
Dipping swords in metaphors, yeah
But what does he know?
We're always one step behind him
He's Brian Eno, Brian Eno
He promised pretty worlds
And all the silence I could dream of
Brian Peter, George St. John
Le Baptiste De La Salle Eno
Well, all alone by the oldest stone
Where the shade trees grow
The creature by the water
Feature with a ghostly glow
Yeah, he's making sure that time's preserved well
We reap what we sow
We're always one step behind him
He's Brian Eno
Yeah, I can tell that he's doing well, yeah
But what does he know?
I'm always one step behind him
He's Brian Eno
Yeah, dipping swords in metaphors, yeah
But what does he know?
I'd like to see him plant a forest 'cause I don't know
Brian Eno
I can tell that he's kind of smiling
But what does he know?
I will always be a step behind him
He's Brian Eno
Yeah, he's making sure that time's preserved well
We reap what we sow
I'm always one step behind him
'Cause I don't know Brian Eno
Half Man Half Biscuit also did 'Eno Collaboration'
DeleteBlimey on the same album Mgmt also have "Song For Dan Treacy" - as in the Television Personalities
ReplyDeletehttps://youtu.be/qICsQ8lT4Ko?si=ca6MsMa1PJwvO0po
I suppose it is the next logical extension of the TVP's own efforts like "I Know Where Syd Barrett Lives"
He spends his time or maybe half of his time
Or part of the time wandering
'Round the creeks and cobble stones
Of Hackney lanes
With a tear in his eye
As the children walk by, he's thinking of a song
Then stops to paint a picture of a frown
Walking around
Dan Treacy's smile, leaves you trying
To decide who's the victim, what's the crime?
No rest for the mind
That's seen it all before
And I don't know where he lives
But he's a myth of a man
And Texas Bob the cameraman
Is off to fix his seat before the show
Yeah, but where did he go?
To know when your time's up
You flip the glass and watch the hours quickening
Oh, oh, oh
In the back of the station
Fluorescent lights about to quit their flickering
Well, he speaks his mind
He says, "What is crime?"
Dan Treacy's eyes
Stop in the middle of the park
When the underground is dark
He's a poet, he's a lark
He starts thinking about a place that no one knows
And when the creeks run dry, he stays frozen in time
Strange lights in the sky start blinking
I can see the car outside but he's listening
Ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh
He's listening
Ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh
He's listening
Ah, ah, ah, ah
And he's making up his mind
He made his mind up
To get things done and overcome
He made his mind up
Yeah, he's gonna let it go
He made his mind up
In the park and at the station
He made his mind up
Yeah, he's gonna get it done
He made his mind up
Yeah, he's gonna get it done
He made his mind up
Yeah, he's gonna let it go
No matter the time, oh no
When the creeps run by, oh, no
He's making his mind up, oh, oh, oh
Yeah, he's gonna get it done, oh, oh
Yeah, when the creeks run dry, oh, oh
Said yeah, he's gonna listen to his soul
Said yeah, when the creeps walk by
"Come here, boy, look me in the eye"
Bow to the heart, back to the beat of Dan Treacy
A couple more examples in the ain't-we-cool esotericism zone
ReplyDeleteBeck's album Tropicalia
the name The Dream Syndicate
Oh another one, and very on theme - clever so Momus with a recent tune called "Life With Eno" - https://youtu.be/e1q6Mu0ORJY
ReplyDelete