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Soundtrack To Our Lives W/E 26/1/03
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Fitter Stoke
Fitter Stoke
2609 posts

Re: Rock Bottom
Jan 26, 2003, 22:17
If you listen properly (no irony intended) to 'Rock Bottom', its glories will, I hope, sink in. And you'll then see the good things in the rest of Wyatt's catalogue, though I don't think he's ever quite managed to recapture the beauty and originality of his 1974 epic.

Then again, you just may not like it. It's not an easy listen by any means. If ever a record justified the involved listening to which you have referred, 'Rock Bottom' is it. Background music it is not. In his excellent original review of the album in NME in 1974, Ian Macdonald said that it was one of three records out then that had no apparent antecdents (the other two being Slapp Happy's 'Casablanca Moon' - known then as just 'Slapp Happy' - and Wigwam's 'Being')..."in other words, it's pretty far out". I wholeheartedly concur.

You may well never like it. I've tried 'Rock Bottom' out on several open-minded friends over the last three decades and had mixed reactions - one guy actively hated it (and to his credit, taped it and played it through several times before coming to that judgement). Another, like myself, thinks it one of the best albums ever made. Marmite music.

I've got a fairly decent sized collection of records - rock, classical, jazz, a bit of folk and country. There's nothing on any of them that gives me quite the rush that the onslaught of trumpets at the beginning of 'Little Red Riding Hood Hit The Road' gives me. I beg you to stick with it.

:-)

DW
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