Let's talk about Nikki Sudden, Dave Kusworth, and the Jacobites

Listening to Nikki's final album this morning and decided we need a new thread. Seems there's been a flood of archival material released since his death. Anybody hear any of it?

Feel free to chime in about anything related to Nikki, Dave, or the Jacobites....

 

Haven't heard any of it. I've got Robbespiere's Velvet Basement which I think I set aside the other day to listen to in the next couple of weeks as I've not played it often.

 

I'm honestly not familiar with his solo work, but I was just listening to the first Swell Maps album last night and it's still a stunner, some exhilarating art/noise that teeters just on the brink of all out chaos. And he had a great rock & roll name.

 

Does his more trad rock direction after SM put you off, or is it just something you've never gotten around to?

 

This discography isn't complete by any means, but it covers a lot....

NIKKI SUDDEN
Waiting on Egypt (UK Abstract) 1982 + 1983
The Bible Belt (UK Flicknife) 1983
The Jewel Thief (UK UFO) 1991
Seven Lives Later (Ger. Glitterhouse) 1996 + 1997 (Idiot Savant) 1997
Egyptian Roads (NZ Indies) 1997
From the Warwick Road to the Banks of the Nile (UK Sucksex) 1997
Red Brocade (Ger. Glitterhouse) 1999
Liquor, Guns And Ammo (Chatterbox) 2000
The Last Bandit (Ger. Glitterhouse) 2000 (Bomp) 2001
Waiting On Egypt / The Bible Belt (Secretly Canadian) 2001
Treasure Island (Secretly Canadian) 2004


NIKKI SUDDEN & DAVE KUSWORTH: JACOBITES
Jacobites (UK Glass) 1984 + 1988 (UK Regency Sound) 1993 (Secretly Canadian) 2002
Lost in a Sea of Scarves (Ger. What's So Funny About) 1985
Pin Your Heart to Me EP (UK Glass) 1985
Shame for the Angels EP7 (UK Pawn Hearts) 1985
Robespierre's Velvet Basement (UK Glass) 1985 + 1988 (UK Regency Sound) 1993 (Secretly Canadian) 2002
The Ragged School (Twin\Tone) 1986 (Secretly Canadian) 2002
When the Rain Comes EP (UK Glass) 1986
Fortune of Fame (Big Hits and Stereo Landings) (UK Glass) 1988


NIKKI SUDDEN AND THE JACOBITES
Texas (UK Creation) 1986
The Last Bandit EP (UK Creation) 1986
Dead Men Tell No Tales (UK Creation) 1987
Heart of Hearts (Sp. Por Caridad Producciones) 1995
God Save Us Poor Sinners (Chatterbox) 1998 (Bomp) 1998
Texas / Dead Men Tell No Tales (Secretly Canadian) 2001


NIKKI SUDDEN & ROWLAND S. HOWARD
Kiss You Kidnapped Charabanc (Creation/Relativity) 1987
Kiss You Kidnapped Charabanc / Live In Augsburg (Secretly Canadian) 2002


NIKKI SUDDEN AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION
Groove (UK Creation) 1989 (Giant) 1990
Back to the Coast (UK Creation) 1990 (Rockville) 1991
Groove / Crown of Thorns (Secretly Canadian) 2002


DAVE KUSWORTH
The Bounty Hunters (Swordfish/Texas Hotel) 1987

BOUNTY HUNTERS
Threads: A Tear Stained Scar (UK Creation) 1989 (Giant) 1990

 

The debut from the Jacobites is a real dud imo, so this is indeed the place to start:

Reissued in 2002 as it was originally intended (double album).

 

this is the best thing those guys did in my opinion , the rest I never really enjoyed despite trying hard

 

No doubt they're not everybody's cuppa, but I'm kind of surprised you only like one song. This is the sort of thing I'd think would be in your wheelhouse, so to speak. Too derivative?

 

Not a fan of their voices to start with , Sudden in particular
the songs dont do much for me either
One of those artists i "should" like but i dont
oh yes they have another good one , Pin your heart to me ,

 

Wonderful stuff. A unique slice of English eccentricity. Although there are some obvious influences that are proudly woven into the sound, they inhabit a very strange world that is both romantic and ramshackle. It is not going to worm its way into the popular conciousness but the work of Nikki both solo and with the Jacobites will endure because it has a huge heart. It is both tender and tough and takes you into some very odd landscapes. Son of a French Nobleman will be up there with the best on my ipod in terms of repeated plays over a long period along with many other tracks from the Jacobites discography. It grows and grows without a chorus and leaves you at a cliff edge waiting for more. Green Shield Stamps is like someone looking back at a schoolboy's diary years later without embarrassment and with genuine affection for those long lost days of innocence. That is just one element of a man who should have a much higher profile. Take the Stones, T Rex, Mott the Hoople and mix in a certain fragility and wistfulness and a vocal style that was unselfconscious, fake or copycat and you start to unlock a catalogue of material that is criminally low profile.

 

Wow! Thanks for that most eloquent contribution! Great to have an obvious fan join the conversation. Please let us know what you consider to be the highlights of his/their discography.

 

His last performance, I believe.

 

Probably my fave from Robespierre

 

I will get back to this thread later but am really tired at the moment. Was listening to Treasure Island earlier which is a nice accessible album. Always enjoy listening to that. Nikki Sudden however has an interestingly diverse catalogue of recordings which deserve investigating for differing reasons. I can understand those who skip through tracks in isolation not tuning in. Some things do need to be lived with and they somehow click into place. I'm guessing that newcomers to Bob Dylan may have similar issues and a resistence to a 'different' vocal style but Nikki lacks the high profile which may encourage more perserverence.

 

Dave Kusworth & The Bounty Hunters album was re-issued a year or two ago after being out of print for 20 years..any fan of The Jacobites is sure to love this.I think it's by far Dave's best album..Here's his take on 'I'm Your Puppet' (one of the bonus tracks on it)

 

Review of the 6 disc box set from a couple of years ago. I'll be working my way through it over the next few days.

Nikki Sudden - The Boy From Nowhere Who Fell Out Of The Sky

He’s returned to the sky, but his legend lives on

At a meagre 49 years, Adrian Nicholas Godfrey’s life was both tragically short and inversely proportionate to the sheer volume of his output. Yet, while that prodigious creativity went criminally overlooked by a wider audience during his lifetime, Sudden himself lived alongside rock’s movers and shakers; he counted such luminaries as Annie Nightingale, Mike Scott and Johnny Thunders as friends, while the tracks collected here for as definitive a retrospective as can reasonably be compiled contain collaborations with the likes of Peter Buck, Ian McLagan and, from a session that Sudden recalled with pride in his autobiography, Mick Taylor.

Compiling a definitive discography of his Bolan-inspired catalogue (Sudden was as much the king of the eccentric rhyming couplet as The Boppin’ Elf ever was) would be like herding cats. As a musician, he wandered itinerantly across his favourite cities: London, Berlin, New York, recording at the drop of a hat and, legend says, pressing miniscule runs of the results while annotating them in his archives as being “official” albums.

Tracks from his more properly released albums make-up the first two discs here: his early issues alongside his brother, Epic Soundtracks, in Swell Maps; his initial work with long-time collaborator Dave Kusworth as The Jacobites; and key solo albums Waiting On Egypt and Bible Belt, where, in his stated quest to use “the best musicians available”, Sudden recruited Mike Scott, Anthony Thistlethwaite and Kevin Wilkinson, and, in doing so, had a hand in the embryonic line-up of The Waterboys. (Sudden was working in the Rough Trade store and writing for Zigzag when he first encountered Scott, then of Another Pretty Face, and played a significant role in Scott’s early career.)

Sudden’s Beau Brummel dandyism in turn partly inspired The Waterboys’ song The Late Train To Heaven, where he appears “dressed in velvet and scarf”, encapsulating his flamboyancy and zeal. For a period they seemed to cross-fertilise each other’s talents, sharing contributors among whom the almost mythical vocalist Max ‘Lizard’ Edie (Elizabeth Wilcocks) is captured here on the fragmentary …be the same.

Aside from culling highlights from his better-known work, this box set rescues a myriad of ad-hoc collaborations from his exhaustive archives, including an entire disc devoted to a full-band radio session cut in Berlin during October 2000, and another of radio sessions spanning Sudden’s entire career.

It’s an ambitious undertaking (previous best-of releases such as The Last Bandit can’t possibly compare), and there is an occasional “if only” pang. Missing, but worthy of inclusion, is his appearance on the classic Cult Figures 7” Zip Nolan, based on the comic strip character from Sudden’s beloved Lion comic of the 60s, and the passionate cover of Marlene that he cut for a Kevin Coyne tribute album. On the other hand, the inclusion of Mister Fox from the vinyl-pressed edition of the seminal What A Nice Way To Turn Seventeen fanzine, a collaboration with Mike Scott, is a joy. The dedication and love this collection represents is staggering.


Easy Action | tbc (6-CD)

Reviewed by Ian Abrahams
http://recordcollectormag.com/reviews/the-boy-from-nowhere-who-fell-out-of-the-sky

 

Nikki's voice is an aquired taste I guess, but since he had such limited control over it it's also one of the most honest voices in pop/rock IMO. Someone who knew him posted on the wonderful Nikki/Epic Soundtracks Facebook group something to the effect that he was a rare combination of a shameless cliché and the real deal, which I guess is pretty accurate.

I'm a huge fan and can appreciate pretty much all of the catalogue. It's all very passionate stuff as he kept at it pretty much DIY style for decades with very limited commercial returns but with a staggering work ethic, 100% determination and purity of vision. It's like a huge weird maze with endless discoveries and quality "new" stuff is unearthed by his estate and Easy Action Records to this day. I could go on forever but the mid-80s stuff that he released together with Dave Kusworth as the Jacobites is pure magic and every single release is worth tracking down. Easy Action is re-releasing the "Shame for the Angels" EP for RSD and that's a good "way in" as well as one of the finest indie 7" of the 80s...



Needless to say I'm also a big fan of Kusworth and Nikki's brother Epic Soundtracks but that's for some other day...

Parts of my Sudden/Kusworth/Soundtracks collection can be viewed under the #nikkisuddencollector hashtag on instagram for those interested.

 

Nikki Sudden was a nice guy. I was emailing him before he died because he was selling the new Marineville remaster which he was rather proud of. When I mentioned to him that I had the Rough Trade CD already, he offered to take it in part exchange. I was warmed by the offer but politely said I'd like to pass the old CD on to a deserving friend. As it happens I kept both.

Like Tristero, I love the 1st LP. It's like TV21 (the comic book) meets The Faust Tapes. Very Midlands, very British take on experimental rock and really like no other. Up there with This Heat, L.Voag, The Homosexuals. UK-ness at our best.

Sorry off topic. Had to get that one of my chest.

 

Wonderful to have another huge fan on board! Great stuff kj, and your collection is jaw-dropping.

 

Before I forget. Just went through my emails and found some files Nikki Sudden sent me. His discography (a word doc, i can post if anyone would like it), some pre-release Maps CD PDF artwork and this photo:

 

I played The Ragged School album to death back in the day. It always reminded me of a very British version of Neil Young crossed with the Stones and Dylan. I picked up his last album too and remember liking it, but haven't played it in awhile.

 

I saw him live at The Dublin Castle in Camden Town, London (late 90's) with a friend who was a huge fan. I remember being massively impressed, despite never having heard a note before or since !

 

I wrote the string arrangement on this beautiful single which he did near the end of his life.

 

Just stumbled across this on Spotify this morning. Killer live album!