Is Scott Walker supposed to be funny?
Fatback
6,746 Posts
This goes with the Nico thread.: Under hipster latepass revoked part 2.I just got 1-4 and I'm sitting here wondering what the hell dude is going for? It's often so retardedly over-the-top, I feel like there's some inside joke that I'm missing.3 seems to hold the most potential so far.
Comments
No joke. Another acquired taste, which I've had for years.
Three is held up as his best by most, but I like Scott (or 1) almost as much.
How much you dig Scott depends somewhat on your tolerance for French chanson, Tony Bennett and melodrama in general. I ride for all three.
PS Where my Birdman at (the other charter member of the Scott Walker fanboy collective)
Fatback, be careful. You shouldn't be listening to so much scott all at once, we dont want to lose you.
I've been listening to Scott for a couple of decades and I've never heard anything about them ever having had anything to do with each other. I don't doubt though that had they met the hatred would have been palpable (along with Morrison's vomit).
you are on fire today.
I was on the phone with Fatback trying to ascertain if he had come across a grip of Scott LPs, or what had precipitated this thread! If he had an LP of 'Scott 4', I wasn't about to get scooped on the PM from some hipster!
I find Scott 4 most satisfying personally, probably because it is all his own songs, and it carries a thoroughly downbeat mood through to a suprisingly hopeful conclusion. A very strange record from a strange artist before he became almost completely opaque (Tilt, The Drift) over the last 10-15 years.
Anyone have a download link to the Scott documentary???
And Funky16Corners and I bonded over Scott almost 15 years ago....back when we were young men without a care in the world (or in my case, without a pot to piss in!). Scott got me through some strange times, no doubt.
Scott 4 is the one.
Are you at all familiar with chanson, Sixties English MOR pop or Jacques Brel? Because I can imagine how his shit would sound the way you describe it if you weren't. Dude is/was most definitely a Europhile, and into the three B's - Brecht, Brel and Bergman - in a big way. As for the sound of those records, a lot of the producers, arrangers and musicians that Walker worked with during his early solo career had a bit of an experimental, avant-garde tendency that they rarely got the opportunity to exercise on the daily. This is partly why a lot of library music from that period can sound kind of oddball - working on that shit, as a lot of them did, gave them a similar free rein. They weren't really used to working with popstars who had original and interesting ideas about the music they wanted to make. The thing about Walker is that, in the UK at that time, he was absolutely massive - bigger than the Stones, and almost bigger than the Beatles at one point. He sold shitloads of records as part of the Walker Brothers, so when he went solo, his label let him do pretty much whatever he wanted, which was songs based on Bergman movies or about the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia, or English translations of Brel songs about masochistic love affairs and mortality. And people actually bought that shit in their millions. Well, up until Scott 4 at least.
I think I know what you mean about it sounding over the top, and the kind of overblown grandiosity that characterises a lot of the music on those records might sound strange. I kinda like it, though, but then that's what a lot of English pop sounded like in the Sixties - at least, the stuff which didn't take its musical pointers from American forms like jazz, r&b, blues or gospel. Walker was running in completely the opposite direction from that and he got weirder and weirder. Dude is, for me, a true original, and he is deadly serious. If you get the chance to see the recent documentary on him, "30 Century Man", try and catch it - it's a fascinating examination of his career arc, and it also contains some studio footage from the sessions for "The Drift", his most recent album. The scene where he's recording himself punching a huge side of pork to emulate the sound of someone being beaten up is
"The Plague" got comped on this, which I recommend unreservedly - even the shit from "Tilt" and the "Pola X" soundtrack, which is by no means easy listening.
I enjoy but it also doesn't make me want to run out and buy the rest.
If I came across cheap OG's I would definitely pick them up.
I am missing only 'Scott 4' in any LP form, but have UK version of 'SCOTT', US press of 2 and 3, and a UK version of 'Til the Band Comes In', which I consider the end of 'the Scott Walker sound', and has some of his most subtle singing. After that he went into country/Tim hardin-influenced territory, then 'Climate of the Hunter'(which I never dug much) was after the Walker reunions, which began his move into more esoteric and dense recordings.
If anyone has UK pressings of 3 or 4, hit me up. Did they ever repress 4 on vinyl anywhere?
Oh, and pick this up when you see it:
not a perfect bio, but certainly sheds more light than you are likely to find elsewhere. Stories of the Walker Brothers playing in Japan really paint a picture of the deafening mania of Japanese Walkerphiles!
I read the piece on Gary Walker & the Rain in the recent Shindig! and the most
interesting part was about how they were received as superstars in Japan just
because of Gary Walker's celebrity there. Most of the band was accustomed to
gigging in UK nightclubs, and suddenly they were being chased down the streets
of Tokyo by screaming teenage girls ... while in their own country they couldn't
even get a record deal.
He's a hero of the war
All the neighborhood is talkin' 'bout your son
Mrs. Reiley get his medals
Hand them 'round to everyone
Show his gun to all the children in the street
It's too bad he can't shake hands or move his feet
He's a hero of the war
You can see his picture in the local news
Mrs. Reiley seems the girl next door is nowhere to be found
Once you couldn't keep that boy from hangin' 'round
Never mind dear, you're with your mum once more
He's a hero of the war
Like his dad he gave his life the war before
It was tragic how you almost died of pain when he was born
With no husband there beside you through it all
Ring the bell if you get hungry or you fall
You're a hero of the war
Why those teardrops on your cheek? it's so absurd
Feelin' empty it's the emptiness of heroes like your son
And what made him leave his mother for a gun
Driven forward driven back and nothing more
He's a hero of the war