Wow – looking forward to this. One of my Top 5 bands ever being glued to the silver screen. Yep, definitly looking forward. Need to pull out the interview i did with Bill in 1984 for our little fanzine…Wayback Maschine get going!
And whilst at it … timeless beauties!
Gelesen: 22.06. – 01.07.2012 (Zeit nicht genommen), netto 434 Seiten.
Mein irischer Kollege sagte “spinal crap” und machte mir ein wenig Angst. Neal Stephenson an Mist beteiligt? Mmmhhh. Das ganze ist eine Collaboration von verschiedenen Autoren und sollte als reines Web-Projekt erscheinen – “paid content” und eBooks für iOS und Android.
Für Verweigerer wie mich wurde das ganze von Amazon nun unter ihrem Lable “47 North” in Papierform veröffentlicht.
Im Originalansatz sollte das ganze 2 Bereiche abdecken: Zum einen eine moderne Form der traditionellen/historischen Art Geschichte verbal durch Geschichtenerzähler weiterzugeben und zum anderen sollte es als Basis dienen Schwertkampf und Schwertkämpfe selbst historisch getreu zu erzählen. Inzwischen ist daraus sogar eine Software-Startup geworden, das historisch getreuen Schwertkampf in Computerspiele einbringen will.
Jede Menge Background, was ist das denn nun? Es ist eine historische Geschichte, nicht so gut wie der grandiose “Baroque Circle” aber leidlich gut. Verschiedene Geschichtslinien die sicherlich irgendwann zusammen kommen. Sehr detailiert wird die Zeit der Mongolen in Europa beschrieben und der Kampf der Christen gegen die Barbaren (oder der Mongolen gehen die (Kreuz-) Ritter oder oder oder) – spannend aber nicht überragend.
Im Gegensatz zu meinem Freund Ian empfinde ich das nicht als “spinal crap”, aber so richtig pfiffig ist das auch nicht (der “flow” ist nicht so richtig gut). Aber es ist schon gutes Futter für das Kopfkino!
Soundtrack dazu: K-9 Chaos!
PS: Wie alle Neal Stephenson Bücher in Englisch zu lesen (bzw. eine deutsche Übersetzung gibt es noch garnicht).
Rudi…long lost, long forgotten i dare to say! To me the forefathers of all bands that aimed to integrate Pop and Punk and that tried to mix eg. Beach Boys vocals with Punk (Travoltas, Windowsills and others). They where great, they where up against time and they lost it all due to … who’s fault was it anyway? Formed in pre-Punk Belfast in 1975 (if you want to list to the full account, go here – a Radio show about the history of Belfast punk) they quickly singned to the local Punk lable “Good Vibrations” and later went down to London, where it was all … already over.
When Good Vibrations missed to put their signature Song “The Pressures On” into 7″ vinyl (only released as bootleg in the 1990’s) and their fame with Paul Weller’s Jamming! Records took a death toll when Jam disbanded in 1982 they simply gave up!
The verdict:
1977 – naa, but a pure pop punk gem!
published by a cool lable – Ok, back then a rock star (Paul Weller of Jam) running his own lable for small bands was realy cool!
found in a cool shop – yes, sure – Konnekschen again (and again and again)
catching sound – great guitar taking vocal like leads, catching breaks, a splendid bridge towards the end and lovely altering of vocals style – a real sweet gem! With a better production it could have been a real hit! No, it is already, but could have made charts!
The lyrics – dark, tearfull and somewhat out of time (back then)
Read for yerself:
call out an ambulance call out the police force suddenly in the kind of life the friendship takes spicefull light the closing door of fading hope is just beyond my reach tears that run tears that run tears that run crimson in marching from my dormant cell the changing attitudes of life change was strong only to the weak and its just beyond my reach tears that run tears that run tears that run crimson one way out use it use it one way out use it use it crimson is the color of my life tears that run tears that run tears that run crimson crimson crimson (c) 1982 Jamming! Records
Listen to the 7″ version – a different version was mixed for the Rodney on the ROQ 3 Compilation:
And their signature song, here live and announcing the Good Vibrations 7″ that never arrived – “Hit or Miss?” – sure Hit:
The lads folded and went on to play in many ventures. Brian Young (Rudi 6-string man) comments on Crimson:
“Ronnie, Grimmy and I wrote it when we were still a 3 piece and the riff and intro were originally part of a song called ‘Murder on The Second Floor’ which never quite came off.. A few months later as if by magic we’d kicked it into shape and Crimson was born..!
Unlike most bands we did write our songs together..words and music..it just worked better that way.. We used to get slagged for writing ‘obscure’ lyrics – well they weren’t obscure to us – but we hated the dumb sloganeering that was so prevalent at the time (and we’d done some ourselves when we were starting out..!)..so we let people figure it our for themselves..
Crimson, like a lot of our later songs was political – but with a small ‘p’…not silly party political crap but I suppose what people would call personal politics..though we never sat down and figured that out!
Idiot English journalists used to criticize us and the Undertones for not writing about the situation here – we always did but we avoided all the dumb clichés so I guess they missed the point..as if we cared! Anyways the way we put it was that we couldn’t have written the songs we did living anywhere else but Belfast…
Crimson was our quirky way of saying that if you wanna do something with your life, or change your life or whatever, that it was up to you to do it..and that no one else would do it for ya..but that there was always hope..even when it looked impossible…we where kinda optimistic back then!”
Love you guys!