Revelations And Reservations

“The Teardrop Explodes – The Culture Bunker 1978 – 1982″ – a review

It’s my own fault really. It couldn’t be any other way. I have dreamt of this set for a long long time – thirty eight years to be precise. Once I’d bought all the Teardrop Explodes’ records I turned to the more dubious side of the record fairs I attended and started to collect bootleg tapes. It began with live sets from 1981 – the summer UK tour – then blistering gigs from early 82, radio sessions, a tape of demos mixing third album outtakes, Cope solo demos and 81 studio sessions, then a Betamax video of all their UK TV appearances including a scintillating Whistle Test set from April 82 and the official live video filmed in the summer of 1981 and how could they be so different to each other? Slowly piecing together the timeline and working out how each song fitted into the chronology of the band and maybe at some point in the future I should write about it somewhere… All that knowledge stuffed in my head with nowhere for it to go. So that was my mid to late Eighties. How was yours?

And now here we all are, sitting on a rainbow with a brand new Teardrop Explodes boxed set to investigate. After all these years and the occasional reissues and archive releases, does the set make any more sense of the band, offer anything new and please those long in the tooth fans who have been waiting patiently for decades for something like this?

Well…

Of course I absolutely love it. But not unconditionally. The first two CDs are all the singles from “Sleeping Gas” in 1979 to “You disappear from view” in 1983, plus b sides, all the single mixes in one place. I’ve got a CD-R of almost exactly the same track listing, pulled together from “Piano” and the 2000 reissues of “Kilimanjaro” and “Wilder” and “The Greatest Hit” (because “Suffocate” and “Christ Vs Warhol” were on there for some reason). End to end these songs show the band’s progression from shambling post punk with a side order of “Nuggets” through psych tinged trumpet blasted pop and the final anarchic death throes of a band on the edge of haunted synth pop. It’s quite a journey in itself and it highlights two aspects of the band. Firstly it shows that Cope has a mastery of the pop song which neither of his Crucial Three bandmates ever came close to touching. (Sorry Bunnyfans) Secondly it brings forth hidden jewels from the b sides of the singles – gems like the glorious “Rachael built a steamboat”, the soaring “Soft enough for you”, the frankly baffling “Strange house in the snow” and “Window shopping for a new crown”. The first two CDs show the dichotomy of the Teardrop Explodes perfectly. On the one hand chartbound pop, on the other hand wilful experimentation – hand in hand on a series of seven inch singles which the nation bought by the truckload. One more thing – placed side by side these singles and b sides sound absolutely fantastic.

The real meat of the box set for the fanatic like me are the four CDs (or five LPs if you’ve shelled out for the vinyl box) of unreleased and rare music. CD3 starts with their first TV appearance on “What’s on” for Granada TV in early 79, Cope innocent yet cocky enough to change the lyrics pointedly to mock his colleagues on the Liverpool scene. Then were thrown into a complete live set from the very start of the band’s career – the Band On The Wall in Manchester from February 1979. Unfamiliar song titles like “Straight rain”, “The tunnel”, “Seeing through you” blasted out with speed and vigour. Of course these songs won’t be unfamiliar if you’ve read my post on this blog about early unreleased songs. The Nuggets / Seeds influence comes across clearly here, droning organs, cyclical guitar and bass riffs, the very early Teardrop sound was probably closest to Una Baines era Fall, who were clearly a big influence. There’s more live material from 1980, the final gigs with Mick Finkler, featuring their rare and peculiar cover of “Save me” by Aretha Franklin (which the set credits the band as authors). It’s interesting as a one off I suppose. There isn’t much explanation for the Cargo demos on the CD either, only that Cope wanted to record there due to the Stackridge connection. Hmm. The Cargo demos don’t sound that different from the first Peel session of the same era, and it’s not really explained why “Bouncing babies” was recorded at Cargo if it was already out as a single by this point. Were they trying to record their debut album? Who funded the recording, and if it was Zoo why was nothing released? So many questions. Onwards to the 1980 live recordings, again interesting but not that essential – similar to the second Peel session but only live… The disc ends with “When I dream” from “To the shores of Lake Placid” which was the only track released from the aborted first attempt at the debut album “Everybody wants to shag the Teardrop Explodes”. Which of course begs the question… So where’s everything else recorded for the album?

CD4 seems to cover the period from Summer 1980 to the end of 1981, creating an alternative version of “Wilder” from session tapes, radio sessions and live shows. There’s so many anomalies here that I get frustrated. “Dialogue between” – an early version of “Window shopping for a new crown of thorns” – is even more haunted and freaked than the version on the b side of “Colours fly away” but… March 1980? Seriously? Maybe a year later but not 1980. Cope sounds off his head – yet he’d not tried drugs in March 1980. So how does that work? Next comes “For years” – listed as recorded in Alan Gill’s flat, but it’s from the October 1980 BBC session for Mike Read. Next comes the “strings” version of “Suffocate” which was recorded in 1982 with members of the Ravishing Beauties but appears chronologically here because the original studio version was recorded around this era in the timeline. And so onwards. Mistake after mistake after mistake. Even worse there’s absolutely no context within the sleeve notes or the track listing about the sources of the recordings.

Let me take an example.

“Passionate friend” is presented here as a “Bearshank Lodge” recording from April 1981. That’s all the information you get. You don’t have the context to understand the importance of the recording. In April 1981 the five piece band which had toured the US in the winter and spring were sent to Bearshank Lodge to attempt to record the second album, already called “The great Dominions”. The Stranglers had recorded their third album there so it was a professional recording studio rather than a place to rehearse. It was here the band tried to record songs like “The culture bunker”, “The great Dominions” and “Passionate Friend” but pretty much failed. Some recordings were passed to the BBC for broadcast – the April 81 session recently discussed on the blog – but “Passionate Friend” was binned and rerecorded in the summer at Genetic Studios, Martin Rushent’s studio. (Even that studio is misnamed as Generic in the book) This is only mentioned in passing in “Head on” – the failure to capture “Passionate Friend” first time. What’s odd is that it’s quite a lifeless recording, while versions from the US tour are more – ahem – passionate, have a totally different intro (later used as the start of “Strasbourg”) and later lyrical tweaks (later utilised in “The greatness and perfection of love”) So maybe that would have been a more interesting choice?

I could continue to nitpick my way through the rest of the box set and frankly I will. Let’s face it, I’ve paid my money for this and I’d like it to be as good as it can be. All of which makes me sound ungrateful. The problem is… I’ve waited a long time for this and I wanted it to be perfect. I want comprehensive sleeve notes, song by song analysis from Cope, Tate, Balfe, Simpson, Finkler. Hell, I want accuracy. Is that too much to ask? The book is ok, there’s no photos after 1980 which is peculiar and the text is taken almost word for word from Mick Houghton’s book “Fried and Justified”. And the book does admit that. But it frustrates me that I could write a better set of sleeve notes than what is provided with the boxed set. Sure, Cope has handed over tapes for the project but there’s a distinct lack of input from anyone in the band itself. This makes the box such a frustrating experience for me. There’s even a picture of some of the tapes and they are so tempting – yet they’re not in the boxed set.

And yet when it’s right it’s absolutely fantastic. There are revelations which amaze me. It’s a dream come true to have the backing track of “The Butchers Tale” as high quality audio at last, not hidden under layers of tape hiss. There’s demos of “Falling down around me” and “Not my only friend” which are new to me and are beautiful and heartrending. The Club Zoo performances are usually spot on and demonstrate what I always said – that lineup was the best version of the Teardrop Explodes. Also why on earth didn’t that lineup go into the studio and record songs like “Log cabin” and “Clematis”? The final CD is a hit and miss affair and just frustrates me. “Kwalo Kobinsky’s Lullaby” is here from “To the shores of Lake Placid” but the album is credited as January 1981 not 1982. Tiny little mistakes which niggle… There’s repeats from “Zoology” – the clanking version of “You disappear from view” isn’t a patch on the BBC version which is just Cope on electric 12 string and voice and occasional synth from Balfe. The Cope and Balfe demos are fascinating curios, I adore this version of “Count to ten and run for cover” – the comeback single that never was – and “Icarus #1” is a lovely version of the song recorded for the BBC as “Buchanan”. But “Ouch monkeys” and “Terrorist” meander without vocals “Pussyface” is nice but lacks a vocal. “Your big lies” is eleven minutes of wasted time. The Steve Lovell version of “Camera Camera” is interesting for one listen. And yet the beautiful twelve minute bliss of “Flipped out on LSD” is edited to four minutes, losing its power. I would rather have had 12 minutes of that than 12 minutes of “Your big lies”. And again there’s the frustrating feeling that there’s other stuff from this period which would have fitted better – the original mix of “Not my only friend” from the third album sessions for example.

Sigh.

I really really hate to be so down on this boxed set. It’s something I’ve dreamt of for years, the kind of dream project I’d put together. It could be better. There’s so many little niggles and anomalies. Like the demo of “World shut your mouth”. That’s not February 1981. It’s Cope’s famous Casio MT40 – you can hear it on his first few Peel sessions. Maybe 1982? More likely. Ditto the version of “Screaming secrets” – sourced from “Cope’s Notes” a few years back. That’s a more recent recording, Cope’s voice is deeper now, no way is that Troy Tate’s guitar. The Teardrops never made a decent studio recording of “Screaming secrets” – the BBC Richard Skinner version from August 81 was too slow – but there’s plenty of great live versions, not least the version from the April 82 Whistle Test show.

Which brings me to another thought. Why not compile a companion DVD of TV appearances and promo videos? That would have been a nice surprise. Sure it’s all out there in YouTube but it would be nice to have everything in one place. Maybe that’ll happen in the future?

So how could this have been improved? Some of the abandoned first album recordings, more live recordings from the Alan Gill and / or Agius / Hammer era (there’s some cracking US soundboard tapes out there) some of the abandoned third album recordings (without the horrible mixing and late 80s effects on “Everybody wants to shag…”) maybe the complete BBC sessions – the Peel session from December 1981 yet again remains unavailable – and a DVD of videos and TV broadcasts. Even that bizarre footage of “Strange house in the snow” that someone sent me. Oh and a decent book with decent sleeve notes with decent input from the band.

I’m not saying I’m unhappy with this box set, I’m just saying it could have been better and that’s what frustrating about it – it’s a wasted opportunity. But then maybe that’s the moral of the story of the Teardrop Explodes. They could have done better but when they were great they touched the heavens but like Icarus they flew too close to the sun and crashed to earth in a mess. But what a glorious four years they had and what a glorious collection of music they left behind.

As to what happens next to Exploding The Teardrops… That’s up in the air. Based on the music on this box I’d need to amend a lot of the early blog entries and there’s still a long way to go on the story. On the other hand I have been approached to turn the blog into a book by a small independent publisher (you can probably guess which one) so maybe that could be the future. I suppose that depends on demand and desire really. We’ll see… In the meantime I’ll keep listening to this set and place it alongside all the other releases. I love it even though it slightly misses the target. I’ll be fascinated to see what other fans think of the set – there seem to be similar murmurings of complaints online. This isn’t a box for the casual fan – but can you really be a casual fan of the Teardrop Explodes? I think not. Once you get sucked into the melodramas and the melodies they can take over your world. Or maybe that’s just me? Yeah, probably just me then.

(This post has also been published today at my other blog A Goldfish Called Regret where I write about music which isn't The Teardrop Explodes)