Julian Cope Album by Album by Single by EP by Pseudonym Thread

I liked this one best, better then Peggy for me. The sound on the remaster was atrocious and I'm glad I didn't ditch the original. I tried to let my feeling be known at HH where a lot of folks agreed but the consensus was Cope could have cared less. Have not bought any more remasters since.

 

JEHOVAHKILL:

I love Jehovahkill! It was the first "new" Cope album to come out after I started collecting his stuff. So there was that anticipation factor.

The CD I got had the solid blue case, which was cool. The "That'll be the Decide" subtitle was confusing, but the booklet was fantastic, gorgeous, easily the most artistically impressive CD booklet I'd ever seen.

The music is darker, more krautrocky and guitar oriented than Peggy Suicide. It explores different styles, but someone sounds more cohesive in production, sort of like how Skellington had a similar "vibe" throughout. It sounds earthy, human-constructed. Distant. Sort of like old ruins. To me, the production fits the booklet PERFECTLY. It's a brilliant presentation.

The songs aren't as catchy, dancy, or poppy as things he'd done in the past. But the overall vibe is so focused, with hooks at the right moments... It really is an album for people who like albums (which I do).

As a work of art, this was Cope's peak. I can't emphasise enough how awesome an achievement I think this is, for Cope or any "pop" artist. It's only when we start looking at jazz that I start to get similar feelings of the awe that I felt the first moment I heard Jehovahkill, and to this day, I still get very excited whenever I put it on. This is an album that says to me "you're in for a ride!"


JEHOVAHKILL DELUXE:

Sadly, the deluxe edition of Jehovahkill has the worst mastering job I've ever heard. It's crackly and noisy and crap-tastic. Horribly frustrating. The only reason to get the deluxe edition is for the extra tracks, many of which were on the Jehovahkill Companion EPs, which many of us bought as soon as they came out. The long version of "Poet is Priest" is cool, and probably worth the price of the deluxe package, as long as you throw away (or ignore) the first disc and buy the real version of Jehovahkill. Do not ONLY buy the deluxe version!!!!


BRITT DANIEL (SPOON):

Britt contributed another song from Jehovahkill ("Cut My Friend Down") to the first Cope tribute project. You can listen to it here:

Trav's Julian Cope Site - Interpreters Volume 1 - Tiny Children (1998)

Enjoy!

 

This is a complete shock to me, because I've always found the Fear Loves This Place double single b sides to be right up there with Skellington/Droolian as my favourite Cope. Some of those tracks could have come straight off Droolian. I really love them all.

Another interesting Jehovahkill sleeve screw up is the UK factory which was printing the blue cd case refused on religious grounds, so instead of having lovely gold print on blue plastic like the cassette



we got a sticky label



also, have you noticed the promo cassette of the album (before Island made him reshape it) - it's been on EBay for months.

 

Awesome. Maybe we can convince Turntable Kitchen to get Britt Daniel to cover the entire Jehovahkill album as part of their 'Full Album Covers' project?

The 5 Most Requested Full Album Covers for SOUNDS DELICIOUS - Turntable Kitchen

 

That's great! Now we can reconstruct the original version ourselves. And I think I can see why Island were panicked! Without reconstructing it, I can imagine that album has a very 'Krautrock' vibe.

 

I've just been listening to the album again, and that early version really is Cope's Krautrock tribute album. Just about every track reflects on or mimics Neu!, or Can, or Faust, or Amon Duul II, or early Tangerine Dream (except maybe 'Soul Desert', which is named after a Can song). It makes for a very cohesive album, but it ends up a little short on Cope's own personality - ironically, if it was intended to be self-titled. KrautRockSampler would have been a far more appropriate album title. So I'm glad Island sent Cope back into the studio. In the booklet for the deluxe edition, Cope claims that those supplementary sessions yielded material that was even more wild, heavy and uncommercial, and while I understand the need for stick-it-to-the-man bravado, the facts don't bear this out, as it's a rather calm, contemplative, quirky and upbeat collection.

The five new tracks are are pretty amazing bunch of songs to pull out of a hat, and they're pure Cope, with scarcely a trace of Krautrock. Their inclusion completely transforms the album, giving it more of the range of Peggy Suicide and imprinting Cope's own personality far more assuredly on the album. so well done Island, and well done Julian H. Cope!

I'm going to try programming the original Julian H. Cope album and adding those additional tracks as a self-contained EP (which could only be called The Subtle Energies Commission in a perverse title-track-swapping Copean swifty).

The Subtle Energies Commission EP:
Side One: Julian H. Cope / Fa-Fa-Fa Fine / No Hard Shoulder to Cry On
Side Two: The Mystery Trend / Gimme Back My Flag

I'd forgotten just how ecstatically gorgeous 'The Mystery Trend' was, really lush and warm, and 'Gimme Back My Flag' is pretty damn exquisite too, the closest these sessions got to the rarefied Fried ambience.

 

Yes "The Mystery Trend" is great!

I'm gonna try your playlist now and see how it feels.

How would you sequence the non-album cuts (the stuff on those EPs and deluxe edition)? Also, where would "Peggy Suicide Is Missing" go?

 

I haven't considered the outtakes and b-sides (apart from 'Sizewell B', which was on the original configuration) yet, but I assumed that 'Peggy Suicide Is Missing' would have always been at the end of the main album, even if it wasn't credited as its own track. I don't know if anybody here has heard that promo cassette and can confirm or deny.

 

Oh, and if you're baking your own Julian H. Cope at home, I noticed in the liner notes that 'The Subtle Energies Commission' was extended by three minutes for the final Jehovahkill album, so you'll need to edit that back down. Listening to it, there is indeed a rather obvious edit point almost exactly three minutes from the end. After Cope chants "Jehovahkill", the song seems like it's about to fade out as it faded in, but then it surges back to life. I just added a complete fade there, since the start of 'Slow Rider' is too direct and lowkey to allow for anything much in the way of overlap.

 

I tried out that original track listing, and it's certainly cohesive, but I really miss the songs that were added, as it's light on fully formed songs. It also made me realise that my major misgiving about Jehovahkill is that I find 'The Tower' a bore, and it takes up such a big chunk of the album (and an even bigger chunk of Julian H Cope.)

We've got some very entertaining detours before we get to the next 'proper' album, so let's move on.


RITE (1993)

The Indians Worship Him, But He Hurries On / Amethysteria / Cherhill Down / In Search of Ancient Astronomies

Credited to Julian Cope & Donald Ross Skinner.

‘Cherhill Down’ is an unedited version of the Heed b-side. The booklet calls it ‘Bringing Cherhill Down Part 1’.

 

I relistened to this recently and love it to bits. 'Amethysteria' is one of the best things he's ever done, an intoxicating groove that gradually gets populated with Psycho strings.

 

Rite got me interested in krautrock. It was also my introduction to really repetitive, trancy songs.

Rite had a profound influence on how I made music as well. No longer did I try to write short melodic songs. Instead, I just noodled around on the keyboard until I found something that sounded decent, and then copy-and-pasted it a bunch of times, and add slight variations on top. One of my first experiments with this I called "CopyRite": Tripecac - South or Southeast (1997-1999)

I was enamored with this style of music for a long time, and my own music kept slipping deeper into that lazy copy-and-paste territory. It's just too tempting, especially when you feel you don't have enough time to actually compose music. And it becomes addicting.

Why bother composing if you can just noodle out a groove, copy and paste it, and then improvise on the top? That's the fun part of making music anyway: the groove building and improvisation. Writing's hard. So why write when you can "Rite"?

Of course, the end result is a deluge of not-so-memorable jams. Sometimes you get lucky and little hooks emerge, but most of the time, the resulting tracks are just long and blah. Decent background music, but not much more.

So, as much as I liked Rite when it first came out, I sort of blame it for a decline in my own songwriting habits. If I hadn't have heard Rite, I'd probably be still writing little tuneful ditties and actually bothering to write lyrics.

But, as the cliche goes, Rite happens.

 

I know what you mean, but aren't the Rite CDs are designed to be listened to in a certain way? I love melodic songs and I love raucous hard guitar thrashing punk. There are situations where one will do and the other won't. Aren't the Rite CDs and Odin designed for assisting you during your trip to Another Place? Particularly if you happen to be totally out of it inside a longbarrow.

 

I enjoyed listening to Rite, a lot, as I do krautrock, afrobeat, jam bands, jazz, etc. I enjoy listening to long songs.

However, the "problem" I encountered is that when I started dabbling in making long jams rather than tightly written songs, I found it hard to go back. REALLY hard. Composing music and words is a slow, sometimes tedious process, and requires setting aside chunks of time to focus only on the composition. Groove-based jamming doesn't require any real planning or large chunks of time, and is often very relaxing and fun: instant gratification. However, groove-based jams tend to be not nearly as memorable as the carefully written stuff. And over time the willingness and ability to compose gradually atrophies.

I think this is what happens to a lot of "real" musicians, not just me. I think the "guilty pleasure" of jamming out ideas "in the studio" is so addictive that it becomes the modus operandi for a lot of artists, and over time they lose the knack of actually writing stuff out beforehand.

Basically, if someone's ability to compose hooks, chord changes, and clever lyrics is greater than their ability to improvise over repetitive grooves, then over-reliance on "studio jamming" results in a net loss (creatively).

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Rite might be enjoyable as a side project, but it didn't herald a "new, improved" Cope in the same way that Skellington did. Just consider the huge improvement from My Nation Underground to Peggy Suicide and then compare that what happened between Jehovahkill and Autogeddon. In terms of songwriting, Rite represents the beginning of Cope's decline. He crafted a few nice songs here and there over the following decades, but never had the same focus (or hooks-per-minute) that he did prior to Rite.

It all comes to this: when I first listened to Rite, I was still basking in the sonic glory of Jehovahkill, and completely optimistic about Cope's future output. He sounded like he was taking a break in preparation from something even bigger and better.

But bigger and better never came. Just album after album of what in the long run ended up feeling like disappointment. When I listen to Rite now, I feel sad, frustrated, and a bit betrayed. I had such high hopes for Cope when I listened to Rite the first time. What happened???

-----

Anyway, that's just how I feel. I know other people like large chunks of Cope's later work as well. It will be interesting to hear people's perspectives in this topic; maybe someone's appreciation for some later material will seep through to me, and I will finally start to "see the light" in Cope's post-Rite endeavors. This is where the "adventure" truly starts for me, and I look forward to it!

 

That's interesting. As a non-musician I'll take your word for it - I'll never understand the creative process that you musos undertake.
I just think that Cope seemed to be able to switch from abstract to pop songs at will throughout his career, it's just often the will isn't there. 20 Mothers was an accurate title from my point of view - all good catchy pop songs, and there are many others littered throughout his later career imo. I mean - look at Julian In The Underworld for example - it's probably more melodic & catchy pop than anything in the present top 20 (not that I would have a clue what's there, I'm just guessing!).
I hold Autogeddon in very high regard too - I've never accepted the prevailing view that it's a drop in quality after Jehovahkill, because I've always really enjoyed it. In fact, I think I prefer it to either Peggy or JK.

 

Well, those are some strong feelings. I'm not one to argue taste, I really don't care for his pre-Peggy stuff as much as I do everything else. I will say that I think his songwriting just got less immediately catchy after Peggy.

As for Rite, I heard it long after the fact, and compared to Rite 2 and Rite Now, it's kind of weak. Weak in that I've heard the music that influenced it, but it pales in comparison. On the other hand "Give The Poet Some" from Rite Now, is right up there with the best kraut-a-thons.

Backtracking to Jehovahkill, it's a fantastic album that I also only heard in hindsight but played the hell out of. I threw it on again today, and I too hear the sonic glory, but I also hear the embryotic bubbling of the style Cope would assume for the rest of his career. Singular, heady songs which didn't try to entertain or pacify label execs or jaded fans.

 

I think a big part of the sea change with Cope that takes effect after the Island years (but was already apparent on Jehovahkill and, to a lesser extent, Peggy Suicide and its b-sides) was simply that he was over trying to be a pop star. He'd written some of the most sublimely infectious pop of the 80s. It hadn't really taken commercially, the label demands associated with being a pop star (see: My Nation Underground) did his head in, and - perhaps most crucially - he had a raft of new and more pressing interests, political, ecological, spiritual and archaeological, and was far more interested in using his music to explore aspects of those interests, and pop songcraft was often beside the point to those expressions. I find this latter part of his career less satisfying musically (plenty of good stuff, but also a hell of a lot of misfires), but absolutely fascinating in so many other respects. He makes a conscious decision to be a cultural figure rather than a mere pop star and, to everybody's surprise, he kind of succeeds. This is the era where he guarantees that his obituary will not be "singer with The Teardrop Explodes, had a minor pop hit with 'World Shut Your Mouth' " - and I suspect that's the point.

 

I wasn't gonna do it because there's too much there, but I couldn't stop myself.
I managed to put my thoughts together about Jehovahkill and Rite. There's no denying Jehovahkill is a landmark album. More of his own personality is in it than Peggy Suicide imo, and it is a better album.

FEAR LOVES THIS PLACE B SIDES

1. Paleface
Crunchy feedback guitar overload. A lovely Skellington/Droolian vocal sung right into the mic adds to the loose take one garage character. It has a very primitive, subconscious feel.

2. Nothing
Even more primal - as basic as it gets - a Dictaphone demo. It's as if an acid trip has stripped away the ego and all superficiality and sent him back to infancy - hence the musical box sound. There's nothing left of his adult sophistication. It's a very simple melody, and he is experiencing the waves and wind for the first time. There is nothing new to know - he is already in tune with the earth.

3. Starry Eyes
Nothing to do with the Roky Erickson song. It's New York 90 degrees summer heat driving you mad. It's an artificial city, but suddenly you are taken back to 4300 BC - the Stonehenge civilisation. There was an alien War of the Gods. Ancient reality becomes myth. Ancient architectural skill that created the early Neolithic monuments has been forgotten. Man loses his spiritual link to the Earth. he is now left with little tubs of grape jelly that he doesn't want. It ends with a beautiful verse about Man stretching out his arms embracing/experiencing the Earth, represented by the ancient cross of the Callanish stones, which has since been stolen from its original meaning and reused as a symbol for Jesus.

4. I Have Always Been Here Before
Ties in well with the above song.

5. Sizewell B.
A nice bassy Krautrock funk jam with a good bit of stressed out saxophones. Another primitive Droolian vocal, great feedback guitar at the end and howl/wail crescendo which is all through Jehovahkill. I don't know what it's got to do with nuclear reactors though.

6.Gogmagog
Krautrock guitar thrash. I like this sort of earsplitting guitar/synth drone better than Rite TBH.


JEHOVAHKILL

1. Soul Desert
A nice intimate introspective love song. It sounds like he's right in front of you. Nice flanged guitar. 13th Floor Elevators bass run.

2. No Hard Shoulder To Cry On
It's very lush - as is most of Jehovahkill. The sound seems to be recorded so well, and I don't think it has anything to do with the gold colour of the cds. An Autogeddon anti-driving song. Julian's voice on this is beautiful. "I need security but I hate safety" seems to sum Julian up.

3. Akhenaten
"Turn the track up as loud as it can take it!" This is pre 21st Century and it's not loud a all - now we are really used to LOUD!!! A key song - a bit of a sequel to Starry Eyes - Julian's full indoctrination to the Neolithic Psyche happens here.

4. Mystery Train
It sounds like a Peggy Suicide outtake. Nice, but it would have fitted better on Peggy. A bit of an outlier from the album.

5. Upwards At 45 Degrees (My favourite track)
He manages to convincingly recreate alien abduction. May be referring to the John Mills Quatermass series where the harvesting of human beings occurs at Wembley football stadium. The backwards bass is unbelievable in this. It sounds so real. Jehovahkill has fantastic bass playing. Everything changes at 3 minutes to a brilliant freakout with flanged guitar, awesome vocals (the Skellington Out Of My Mind On Dope & Speed cackle of gleeful insanity makes a comeback) great bass and handclaps.
An amazing ending (you can hear the very last note on the fadeout).

6. Know (Cut My Friend Down)
Primitive regression again, but this time it's a bad trip. "Get my ass back to the egg!...Gouging out my own eyes...Afraid of fitting in...Trying to climb back in my head" The howl returns for good reason.

7. Necropolis
A good Neu workout with Doggen Foster on guitar from TC Lethbridge and eventually Brain Donor.

8. Slow Rider
Another one that could have come off Peggy Suicide. Is it about cannibalism following an aircrash? I don't know.

9. Give Me Back My Flag
Global warming (sorry Houston) - another Peggy style song with an explosion ending.

10. Poet Is Priest
A lovely Neu/Krautrock epic. That'll Be The Deicide comes from this. The essential 21 minute version is excellent and much more fun. 20 mins goes by quickly.

11. Julian H. Cope
Self-referencing light relief poetry.

12. The Subtle Energies Commission (or the Jehovahlkill title track)
Krautrock jam opener of the original album. Seems to be anti-religion.

13. Fa Fa Fa Fine
Could have been a hit single. The problem is it gets boring very quickly imo.

14. Fear Loves This Place
Julian's most sophisticated hit attempt. If the first verse rhymed maybe it could have been a classic hit. Good bass runs again.

15. The Tower.
An epic fantasy tale which I think is about a woman from a matriarchal society being reborn as a man as the result of dark magic. She wakes up at the side of the road and eventually becomes accepted, until one day she starts to use her "extra length". I can't really work out the ending, and I've listened to a live version from the Highlands and Islands 2002 Tour. Maybe it's about the end of the Neolithic matriarchal societies. I still can't work it out. Even Julian describes it as "A song about really weird ****". It's a really great track that ONLY Julian could have the nerve to write.

16. Peggy Suicide Is Missing
Back to the egg again. A good ending to the album after The Tower.

17. This Is My Kin and Vivian.
I love this sort of thing - nice stripped down acoustic demos recorded on a basic tape deck. A bit similar to Nothing. It would have been a shame to lose these - it's worth getting the Deluxe version for them

18. Michael Rother
Is an OK guitar instrumental.

19. Gone
Similar to Paleface but without the pizazz.

20. You Gotta Show
Just a sort of acoustic and wah wah guitar jam.

21. Sqwubbsy The Olmec
The Clangers meets Talking Heads.

22. Free
A good heavy early 1970s rock guitar jam (a bit like Free) which builds and builds to a climax.




RITE

1. The Indians Worship Him, But He Hurries On
A loose, jazzy feel to the drums, overlaid by freakout guitar feedback courtesy of D R Skinner. Piano led - sounds like a rain dance.

2. Amethysteria
This one sounds to me like 1970s Barry White disco over a jazzy keyboard.

3. Bringing Cherhill Down Part 1
A bit like a 20 minute mantra. A funky dub reggae rhythm. It's a bit soporific tbh, but maybe that's the whole point? It gets more interesting towards the end when he introduces more variation and dub echo, but by that time you're probably out of your tree and asleep anyway. He took off the vocal because it roots it in reality - provides too much stimulation. I like my funk to be a lot less s.l..e..e...p...y.

4. In Search Of The Ancient Astronomies (Ravebury Stones full version)
It's time to WAKE UP! You've fallen asleep and that joint has set fire to your tent.
The insect robots from Ravebury Stones are STILL relentlessly advancing. It's taking them a very long time indeed.
Quick! Use that fire extinguisher! You're so stoned it takes you 10m 45s to figure out how to operate it.
The robots continue relentlessly advancing, but even now they're such a long way away you've still got time to put out your tent fire and get away from the longbarrow with your stash and play a bit of Peggy Suicide guitar.

 

Fantastic write-up!

The vocals at the end sound to me like a very specific channeling of Yoko Ono. I could imagine JC seriously grooving to Plastic Ono Band.

I always assumed that the lines "I'm making soup from your bones / I'm clogging up your drains" was a reference to the British serial killer who was discovered because the council investigated blocked drains at his house and found they were clogged with body parts. I thought it was John Christie, but after a quick check it seems that's not how his crimes were discovered. I have an even vaguer memory of Cope in an interview referencing Christie (and Jim Jones) in relation to the song 'My Nation Underground', which might be why I made this (mis)connection.

Googled it: the culprit was Dennis Nilsen. Maybe that's also who was referenced in 'My Nation Underground'.

Like 'Head', the song proper is over in under two minutes, and then it goes into a blissed out sunny psych coda. Maybe it was too short to be a single.

 

Thanks for the comment. We are all going to have different opinions and disagree about stuff, but that's the whole point of a discussion thread isn't it! If we all thought the same way there would be no point.

You could be right, but what about the line "You are in the Lear jet, me I'm in the jungle. Coming through the skies. Yeah - coming at each other. I'll rip you to shreds." though?
Maybe it's just about generalised cannibalism.

 

According to the wikipedia page for My Nation Underground, the Dennis Nilsen connection is discussed in Head On / Repossessed, if anybody has that to hand. And I have no idea how that might or might not relate to the rest of the lyrics of 'Slow Rider', though the first thing I thought of when you cited those lines was Serge Gainsbourg's 'Cargo Culte', with its jet crash in the jungle of New Guinea ending the story of Melody Nelson.

 

Yeah, I am enjoying people's different perspectives. I used to be very immersed in all things Cope (creating mailing lists, discussion forums, tribute cds) back in the 1990s but gradually lost touch with the other fans. I think when Head Heritage got going, there was less need for what I was doing, and I gladly let things dwindle away, because running discussion groups by hand (back then) was a lot of work!

So anyway, I haven't really been exposed to what a lot of other people think of Cope's later stuff... mostly what I read on AllMusic and review sites, and that's about it! It's nice to get some personal reviews, especially since our opinions have had a couple of decades to evolve!

 

That sounds possible. I've mislaid our copy of Repossessed since last week unfortunately.

It's very hard to find people who are into Julian's music. If you like his later stuff you are definitely a bit of an Outsider. I think the last time he actually had any general recognition was Try, Try, Try which got him on Top of the Pops in the UK.
I have occasionally checked out your site in the past. As you imply it is a very deep labyrinth of opinion and information! Another one I've seen is the Mellotron reviews site which is a good alternative view of his later albums.
Planet Mellotron Album Reviews: Julian Cope

The Jehovahkill period was the first time I saw Cope live. I was at the sold out Town & Country gigs in London the same week he was booted off Island Records - January 1993. It was a fantastic show - 3 hours just about. IIRC the first hour was from his latest album, the second hour was acoustic/repartee, and the final hour was greatest hits. If I remember the gigs had been postponed because 'he fell down stairs' or something.
I've still got a dodgy VHS of it which they were selling flyers for outside - if I can find it I'll post the setlist.
I still have my Jehovahkill Tour T-shirt (and it still fits me! ), but his face is a bit cracked up after so many wash cycles.

BTW, was Rite the first K.A.K. mail order cd? I can't remember if I got it at the gig or by post.

 

You're really testing my memory now. I got Skellington and Droolian mail order from a London record store (Sister Ray, I believe), but were they also available mail order from Julian?

I honestly don't remember where I got Rite, and assume it was the same way. The first thing I remember receiving directly from KAK / Cope was the 'Paranormal' single, and that was after I purchased Queen Elizabeth in a more conventional way. That's what put me on the mailing list for all those megalithic postcards and alerted me to subsequent releases, until the internet took over.

Edit: ooh, here's a nostalgic image

 

Correction to the above:

Checking the release chronology, I definitely received The Skellington Chronicles direct from KAK, which came out before 'Paranormal' and Queen Elizabeth, and I'm pretty sure I found out about it via the postcard seen above, so I was already on the mailing list, which suggests that I had bought Rite direct from KAK.