Slapp Happy/Henry Cow Desperate Straights

[winkersnufs]

G'Morning on a Thursday ~

After all the years since I discovered this release... I always seem to enjoy a listen to/of 'Desperate Straights'

Is this an absolutely fine release or what?

Carry On
Chris Buckley

[Steve F.]

Is this an absolutely fine release or what?

What?

I really like it - but I love Acnalbasac Noom even more.

I'm really sad I won't get to see Slapp Happy at RIO this year....

[adap2it]

G'Morning on a Thursday ~

After all the years since I discovered this release... I always seem to enjoy a listen to/of 'Desperate Straights'

Is this an absolutely fine release or what?

Carry On
Chris Buckley

I have it on vinyl Chris. You can take a selfie with the album cover when you come over.

[NogbadTheBad]

What?

I really like it - but I love Acnalbasac Noom even more.

I'm really sad I won't get to see Slapp Happy at RIO this year....

I'm really happy I will

[mx20]

Logged-in (a rarity) just to say: This is my favorite Cow or Slapp -related release, bar none. Unpopular opinion about unpopular music? Yes, I suppose so. But it's g**d****** perfect. As much as I love the other Henry Cow albums (esp Unrest & Western Culture) and Acnalbasac Noon, THIS one hits me differently. I have vinyl & the recent CD remaster (which sounds great, IMO).

[flytomars]

This and Casablanca Moon (not acnablasac) are my favourites, together with Ca Va which is a personal favourite.
Heck, right now I heavily dig "live in Japan" which is basically just the trio playing live, the songs are so strong that nothing else is needed.

[Progbear]

This is the album where Dagmar Krause became Dagmar Krause. Unless you count her side of the I.D. Company album. I love the two albums with Faust, they’re like a very twisted and “ironic” version of commercial pop/rock music with highly idiosyncratic lyrics courtesy of resident egghead Peter Blegvad.

Desperate Straights is absolutely a different animal altogether. Here they plunge headlong into latter-day “art song,” with Kurt Weill and modern classical influences to the fore. You can definitely hear the seeds of Art Bears and News From Babel being planted here.

This and Casablanca Moon (not acnablasac) are my favourites

Absolutely the opposite for me, at least with regards to CM/AN. The original recording with Faust is far superior to my ears; the richer arrangements of the Virgin re-recording are interesting, but they frequently sap the energy out of the tunes. Plus it sounds like they told Dagmar to “tone it down,” which no one ever ought to do. And whoever told the guys they should be singing “Mr. Rainbow” instead of Dagmar (and even worse, spell out the joke at the end) ought to be smacked in the back of the head. The re-recording of “Half-Way There” is likewise a travesty. CM is the Smiley Smile to AN’s Smile.

[Udi Koomran]

One of my favorite albums ever a perfect marriage

[Zeuhlmate]

Long time since I heard it last time, just re-listened (LP).
Great tunes, much better than I remembered -
The sound is bad, typical Virgin recording. That might be what kept me from returning in a long period.
But again, somehow its a part of the charm, you can get used to it, and feel that this is how it should sound: Flat, recorded in a gym hall on a school, and a pillow over the speakers.

Would love to hear some good cover versions.

[Scrotum Scissor]

a perfect marriage

Yes, strangely enough; the most radically experimental and 'rehearsal-intensive' progressive act encountering the oddest yet most refined pop band in all of Europe. One of the most peculiar aspects of Desperate Straights is that it doesn't even uphold full coherence of the parts in all of its songs. Yet still it succeeds tremedously in coming off as the perfect merger of the two. Moore and Blegvad fit neatly in with the avant-garde stylings of the Cow, and Cutler even sounds like he's having fun in playing "Strayed". However, "Caucasian Lullaby" remains the Cow axis' most determined stab at pure 'new music' from the 70s, and even then it fits along those other ditties.

[Steve F.]

However, "Caucasian Lullaby" remains the Cow axis' most determined stab at pure 'new music' from the 70s, and even then it fits along those other ditties.

Caucasian Lullaby always felt like it just went on forever and ever for me; I wish they had just had had a few more songs to end that album with....

I dig your new avatar, SS!

[Scrotum Scissor]

^ I tend to think of it as some kind of conscious move; after such a set of brilliant and sometimes both fairly simple yet intricate tunes, there's that sudden backdrop at the end. And it's amazingly moody/gloomy too, verging on ambient-like in structure and duration. Interestingly, it's also one of very few Cow compositions having Cutler credited as writer (here along with Moore).

Re; the avatar - yes, I'm the adolescent SOB chameleon with a thousand different mullets for show. Lovely 'stache as well. It's my 80s elitist alibi. Although it might not even actually be me in the first place. Or else...!

[Steve F.]

^ I tend to think of it as some kind of conscious move; after such a set of brilliant and sometimes both fairly simple yet intricate tunes, there's that sudden backdrop at the end. And it's amazingly moody/gloomy too, verging on ambient-like in structure and duration.

I'm sure it's conscious. And I like it, 'sort of', but it's too fucking long (for me)

Interestingly, it's also one of very few Cow compositions having Cutler credited as writer

Lyrics!

[Udi Koomran]

"Caucasian Lullaby" always strikes me as filler

[Steve F.]

"Caucasian Lullaby" always strikes me as filler

Hey!

Didn't expect you to agree with me, Udi, but happy to have you in the camp!

[NogbadTheBad]

"Caucasian Lullaby" always strikes me as filler

Its a filler.

[Scrotum Scissor]

It's a killer!

[Buddhabreath]

<Dig>!

For me Desperate Straights is one of the best song albums ever made ("Caucasian Lullaby" controversy notwithstanding) it has a dozen gems from (mostly) Moore & Blegvad fertile minds.

Haunting, ineffable, enigmatic, atmospheric and sublime. IMO, if our culture endures, people will be digging this up a hundred years from now and marveling at it... but maybe I'm nuts!

[calyx]

Interesting bit of trivia from some old e-mail correspondence with Peter Blegvad.

Q: Had you begun a writing relationship with John [Greaves] already at that point or was "Bad Alchemy" the result of SH and HC beginning to work together ?

PB: John and I hadn't written together before "Bad Alchemy". We were at the Manor studio. Slapp Happy didn't have enough material to finish the album ("Desperate Straights"). Chris Cutler and Anthony Moore went off to work on "Caucasian Lullaby" together. John and I found a piano somewhere. He began to play a piece he had recently written, I sang a text I'd been tinkering with. Almost instantly, text and music seemed made for each other.

Conclusion : Whatever one thinks of "Caucasian Lullaby", it was responsible for the birth of one of the greatest writing partnerships ever !

[Steve F.]

Conclusion : Whatever one thinks of "Caucasian Lullaby", it was responsible for the birth of one of the greatest writing partnerships ever !

Great story. thanks.

[Conti]

^^^^Yes, great story. Thanks for sharing.

[Udi Koomran]

Conclusion : Whatever one thinks of "Caucasian Lullaby", it was responsible for the birth of one of the greatest writing partnerships ever !
Dunno reading it seems he is not referring to Caucasian Lullaby
There is no text on Caucasian Lullaby...

[Udi Koomran]

But it does incline Caucasian Lullaby is indeed filler

[Buddhabreath]

Well filler or not I kinda like it. Thanks for the anecdote - glad I dug up the thread now!

[Mister Triscuits]

Delighted to see this thread pop up after playing Desperate Straights on my way to work this morning...well, most of it...I had to stop in the middle of "Caucasian Lullaby" because I had arrived!