,. 06 features
Burn Out,
Instrumental Fade Away Brake-Down whatever ha ppened to ...
Who? Formed under the guise o f The Farinas in 1962 at the hotbed of Rock'n'Roll activity that is Leicester Art College, Family went on to become arguably the most underrated rock band of the late 1960s, producing material envied by much of the music elite, including a certain Mr J Lennon. A quintet of the highest musical quality , Family comprised of Roger Chapman (vocals, sax), John Whitney (lead guitar), Jim King (tenor sax and vocals) , Ric Grech (bass) and Rob Townsend (drums). They received much attention from the press and radio at the time and were courted by The Beatles as one of their favourite bands at the time . They played massive gigs, including one at Hyde Park, and their albums have become de riguer in any muses collection. Somehow though, they have been lost in the melaise of British late sixties culture. Wha t? A strange blend of rock'n'roll and r'n'b sensibilties, combined with obscure and sometimes downright weird lyrics (What the hell bad eggs don't smell/When glossed with sleek perfume) made Family part of the hippy circuit of 1967, a bandwagon soon forming around them. When they're firs t album, Music In A Doll's House, was released in July 1968, it received the critical thumbs up, but little chart success, although they remained a major force on the underground scene. A little known fact is that The Beatles were considering calling the White Album , A Doll's House before Family took the title (and some would argue the musical glory) some three months before the Fab Four could get their LP pressed and released. Why? Family were pretty far ahead of the game in terms of musical innovation, perhaps a convenient excuse for their true lack of commercial success. Along with early Pink Floyd, they can be said to be pioneers of prog-rock and taking the initial hippy dream and transmuting it into something altogether different, although not necessarily accessible. Their second album, Family Entertainment, c harted at number six and they spent 1969 touring their next LP , Anyway, reac hing number seven in November 1970. By this point however, the curtain was drawing on drug hazed hippiedom, with the advent of Led Zeppelin and the heavy rock scene taking ove r in Britain.
can think of only three really satisfying ways of destroying a faulty dictaphone. First, to burn it, preferably on a small disposable barbecue bought for that specific purpose, so that the whole operation can be conducted without fear of getting melted plastic on your sausages, pork chops or spicy beanburgers. Second, to throw it from the top of a mountain down into a ravine full of jagged rocks. The appeal of this approach is that you can watch it splintering into thousands of tiny shards as it makes its long journey down to the valley below. The third method is to place it on the ground and jump up and down on it repeatedly, yelling 'You bastard! You wankarsed bastard twatbangle! I'll teach you to record fifteen minutes of static noise instead of my interview with Gale Paridjanian from Turin Brakes! Gaah! ' But I digress. Gale Paridjanian (a name which I am glad to be writing down rather than saying) is a thoroughly nice bloke. He also has a lot of interesting things to say about music and the music industry, things which I will not be quoting in this article. He is half of the band Turin Brakes, whose 2001 deb ut album The Optimist sold over 200,000 copies in the UK alone. The other half is Oily Knights. Oily was at film school when the pair recorded their first EP, The Door, and the song was originally intended as the soundtrack of a short film he was making. This plan fell apart disastrously, however, when they accidentally became hugely
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their previous stuff; whereas The Optimist was self-produced and relatively homespun, with the band even doing their own work on the design of the inlay, Ether Song is an altogether more glossy affair. They flew out to LA to record it, and it is produced by Tony Hoffer, a man who has previously worked with bands like Beck, Supergrass and Air. Clever production tricks aboundelectronic noises, looped and reversed samples, specially engineered atmospherics - but at the same time, the album has a strangely relaxed feel. A few tracks start with studio chatter and most of the songs, according to Gale, were treated as if it were a live recording session . The weird thing is, it works . The combination of melodic folk-pop and polished hig h -fidelity production could create a disgusting Frankenstein's m onster of an LP, b ut instead, the result is a professional-sounding second album which retains a measure of its predecessor's laid-back charm. According to Gale, working with a producer was a liberating experience, taking off a certain amount of pressure and allowing them to concentrate on the business of writing songs. Far from feeling dwarled by the big LA studios, Gale and Oily had discovered a comfortable niche. t's understandable that being put in a position where all they had to do was write songs appealed to Gale and Oily. They are, at heart, songwriters first, the grubby business of recording, mixing and mastering being just a distraction. Gale describes writing songs as 'meditative' and says that making an album is, for them, a process of investigation where themes and ideas are allowed to emerge and develop. All of which sounds fairly intellectual for two blokes with guitars. These guys evidently take music seriously, and think a lot about it both in the abstract and in terms of their own output. They make intelligent, thoughtful music, and clearly love doing so. And luckily for the rest of us, they're pretty good at it as well. Ether Song may be a philosophical work, or a meditative treatise on solipsism and love, but it's also an enjoyable album with some damn good songs on it. It deserves to do well, and it probably will, although whether it will be as big a success as The Optimist remains to be seen. Oily and Gale certainly hope it will be, and they've been taking no chances in terms of publicity. They recently performed on the jonathan Ross Show, as well as at the live launch of the BBC 's new entertainment channel, BBC3. They've been dutifully touring the country, playing to fans in all sorts of venues, including of course our very own LCR. If Ether Song doesn't top Turin Brakes' debut in terms of sales, it won't be for want of trying . Is this the aim for Oily and Gale, to sell as many albums as possible, to make it as big as they can, to attain superstardom? Strangely , and despite the best efforts of the evil dictaphone , I remember Gale's answer to this one word for word: 'We want to put a dent in people's lives, a dent that stays there.' It's a simple enough aim- to make music that 's important to people, music that moves or inspires them, music that , at a very b asic level, does something. And you can't help but feel that they're on the right track.
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So where are they now? The game was up for Family by 1973 . They did not though, take the route of many early seventies groups (Heroin deaths, summer suicide, personal Jumbo Jets) and split before they fell out, making a farewell album, It 's Only A Home, and touring to say goodbye and thanks to their fans , by now a sadly dwindling bunch. They remain much respected today, Family Entertainment hailed by some as one of the greatest albums of the sixties. If you're looking for a way in, try routing out a copy of Dolls House and Entertainment, which are available in one double album. Their material does however, remain tough to get hold of, so get down to the second h and record store.
foe Minihane
ii'ijfii 12.03.03
Turin Brakes: two weird disembodied heads are better than one.