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Julian Cope presents Head Heritage

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Did anyone at the time...
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Hunter T Wolfe
Hunter T Wolfe
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Re: Did anyone at the time...
Nov 19, 2008, 12:09
Moon Cat wrote:
I've just remembered I did have a non too favourable impression of Cope after seeing him on some old pop interview thing around the time of My Nation Underground (I think!).The format was the subject sat in a chair and was asked to choose from a range of subjects on a screen and then was asked the appropriate question by a 'computer'. Channel 4, dodgy 80's computer graphics everywhere. As I recall Cope spent most of the time crawling around on the studio floor and I thought, "I like the tunes but he's a bit of a twat".
Soon redeemed himself when Peggy came out though!


That will have been 'Star Test'- a classic interview in my opinion, and actually one of the things that made me dig the dude even more and think, yeah, he's really got something... he was on his big 'atonement of w.a.s.p.' trip then, I think.

Well, I remember liking and loving songs like Reward and Treason as a little kid, but they were just great pop songs in an era of great pop, and I lost track of Julian until World Shut Your Mouth (the single) came along. Which again seemed just a great pop song, but nothing more... except... I recall Janice Long raving about Cope as an eccentric genius, so I was primed to think there must be something more. The leathers and the mic stand on TOTP certainly confirmed his eccentric appeal, but actually at that point it was his interviews in the music press that turned me on more than the music. I just loved his enthusiasm! So in terms of being a rock n' roll tastemaker that was always there, he always used the press to turn people on to his own influences, raving about obscure psych bands, Scott Walker, The Troggs, and the likes of Lord Buckley, Lenny Bruce, Mikhail Bulgakov, Lester Bangs... Corgi vs. Dinky...

I loved his whole Carry On Iggy, toy car collecting persona actually, part of me misses that guy, he was such a wide-eyed psychedelic innocent- but he had to grow and develop and he's done so brilliantly. Back to the music- I loved Charlotte Anne, but oddly what really turned me on in a major way was finding copies of Skellington and then Droolian in a little record shop that used to be next to Camden Market- Psychotronic Videos was downstairs, Steve Mack from That Petrol Emotion often worked behind the counter- I was a naive northern provincial 18 yr old come down to study in London for the first time and the whole trip of finding those weird records, never mind what was in the grooves, freaked me out- and I was freaking out anyway-

Buying a 2nd hand copy of Fried on Camden Market, with the poster, the guy selling it looked me in the eye and said, you know, this is going to be the start of a major obsession for you. He was right! Standing next to Sqwubbsy on the Poll Tax Riots and reading about it afterwards... and then the major genius of Peggy Suicide! And seeing him live for the first time at Brixton Fridge in 91... and on and on... catching up with all the older records at the same time as going forwards...

Whenever he seemed to drop off my radar, cos his new records just weren't as interesting or didn't fit with whatever else I was listening to at the time, there was always something that kept me coming back... Head-On, The Modern Antiquarian... some incredible live shows... Julian Cope has been a huge part of my life over the past 20 years, more so than any other singer, more than any other artist in any field except maybe Kerouac- my two touchstones- I could never have known exactly what was coming, but it was clear from very early on that this guy was a random mutant prototype who was always gonna go far... far out...
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