Stranger than Fiction, Larger Than Life: the Finn Brothers song-by-song discussion thread

That’s entirely fair. I shouldn’t have generalized when my issue is with this song.

 

I've seen thinner concepts sustain a 4 minute song: like "Who Let the Dogs Out?"

Spoiler Alert: it was me.

 

Compared to so much dance music that involves taking a single line of lyric and stretching it out into a track, All I Ask is positively verbose

 

I should delay this comment until we talk about the album as a whole, but I don't remember this being the final running order. It was merely a compilation of the songs that were proposed for the album. Several on that tape were rough mixes, which seems to confirm to me that it wasn't finalised in any way. Regardless, it does seem like a disaster waiting to happen, which is an odd thing to say of an album that contains Whispers and Moans, Fall at Your Feet and Four Seasons. I've seen albums with fewer great songs than that sell by the bucket load but still...

 

Re All I Ask, these lines are excellent:

"Take the road forgotten
Don't leave me here
Oh, please let me stray
Far from familiar things"

And later on:
"Strange roads
Going nowhere"

These lines get overwhelmed by the too often said "All I ask is to live each moment free from the last". It's a nice thought, but in a song about having new experiences we should be freed from the the repetition of these lines. I might have to make a 1:30 edit to see if it works with each line only appearing once.

 

It’s unclear but I imagine you are probably right.

Certainly the track order could have been and probably would have been changed and maybe there might have been some remixing and sweetening. However it seems clear that the band (er, Neil) thought they were basically finished considering Neil’s apparently furious reaction to the fact that Capitol and management, etc thought it wasn't finished.

Many of the mixes were rough and even the ones that weren’t rough might not have been the Clearmountain mixes that made it to the finished product. It kind of seems like Clearmountain mixed one or two songs for Froom, and then Froom used them to convince Neil of the worth of the first project and get him to merge the two projects. I presume by 1991 Neil was over songs he'd worked on a year before but hearing the new mixes convinced him of the worth of some of them.
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Personally I don’t think that it’s off topic or getting ahead of ourselves to talk about these issues: it’s part of the story of the album.

When we discuss the album proper, we will just give our overall impressions and rate it overall, Most likely, as it will be Monday (if I'm not mistaken). If there were 50 users commenting every day it might make it a bit confusing but I think we can handle it.

 

Well, the Grateful Dead played a 45 minute long version of “Turn On Your Lovelight” at Woodstock...

 

The Neil Diamond song? (joke) (but just dare to imagine it)

 

That’s “Heartlight” and, yeah, that would be worse (but not by much)!

 

If this was the actual original track list that was submitted for the album, I would have liked it but in no way would it have become the acknowledged classic that Woodface is.

I’m also not convinced that, had a first Finn Brothers album been issued containing the songs that were adopted by Crowded House, it would have made a big splash either. Just look at how long it took the released Woodface to become a hit, and that was with the familiar Crowded House name and promotional muscle of Capitol behind it.

A Finn Brothers album would have resulted in the songs getting sort of lost. Sure, we’d all consider it a lost classic....but it’s sure nicer to know that a few million people bought copies of these great songs instead, isn’t it?

 

Agreed. But I prefer the two different tracklists, though in both cases I tweak themsome. Maybe because I like all the songs. I think that the original proto-Woodface is a good, dark album but actually is a bit more commercial than Temple of Low Men.

Not sure if I agree. I think that the Finn Brothers would have released their stuff on Capitol, and Capitol would have pushed it. Hale Milgrim was a huge fan.

"Weather With You" (and to some extent the other singles) were the reason Woodface became a hit, not the Crowded House name.
Crowded House didn't yet seem to have much cachet in the UK at the time. Anyway, we'll never know.

Sure. Not sure why it matters, but I wish for the artists who bring me pleasure to have success. And if Crowded House had broken up there would have been no Together Alone, a tragedy for the universe.

 

I think it would have been a good, but not great album and would have found it quite a comedown from TOLM, mainly because I don't really like "Dr. Livingstone", "Sacred Cow", or "Fields Are Full of Your Kind" and am only lukewarm on "Left Hand". The rest? Grade A for sure, but that's a weak 1/4 of the album for me. As I've said, I can't separate out the Neil songs from the Neil/Tim songs on Woodface because I first came to the album as simply a "Crowded House" album and heard it that way for years before learning of the back-story on its creation.

Possibly. I don't know the terms of the Capitol contract, which I assumed was just for "Crowded House" and not for the Finn Brothers. Indeed, when their first album came out in 1995, it wasn't on Capitol (at least in America; not sure about the rest of the world). Also, I'm not sure that Capitol would have liked the idea of promoting two albums at roughly the same time when they were so focused on trying to establish Crowded House as a worldwide success (both breaking them in Europe and restoring their commercial luster in the US). Crowded House had had some success in individual European countries with some of their singles, but, no, they largely hadn't been successful in Europe at the time of Woodface's release, although the success of Paul Young's cover version of DDIO did apparently help give them inroads to the UK audience, at least going by what I remember from Bourke's book. It seemed to help "Fall At Your Feet" become their first big UK hit. I think the name "Crowded House" was at least a taller leg for them to stand on than "Finn Brothers" would have been.

It doesn't matter to us as listeners, but, for me personally, since so much of my favorite music consists of artists that have never broken through to a large audience, I find it somewhat refreshing that one of my favorite bands/albums DID actually make a pretty big splash. It makes me feel not so alone in the world!

I'm sure that some of the songs that ended up on Together Alone would have seen release in some form, and perhaps in even better forms than the ones on that album. Who knows?

 

Absolutely!

 

In Europe, The Finn Brothers wasn't Capitol, but it wasnt Discovery either: it was EMI, (who owned Capitol); obviously the two had a new contract in 1995.

Crowded House hadn't broken up yet then, so there must be some story behind the Discovery release.


I think that Crowded House and Capitol were done with each other in the States! AT the time, anyway. But EMI UK was thrilled with them.

But yeah, the details of the contract are something we can only speculate on. I assume, but have no idea, that Tim was just a contractor, seeing as how quickly he departed (and I assume the same for Mark. And for CH Mach II, I assume Neil is the sole shareholder.) ON the other hand, Tim is hardly going to sue Neil, they seem to have a very healthy relationship.
But all of this is pointless speculation on my part.

Not possible!

 

I think the big issue with the Finn Brothers as a commercial entity was/is the name. No name with "Brothers" in sounds cool. I recall an interview with them when Finn came out: they adopted that name for their "band" because they thought adding the word "Brothers" made them sound like a family folk band. Of course, they had to abandon the name Finn because there was a US band of that name.

Whether songs like It's Only Natural or Weather With You would have overcome that hurdle, who can say. But I think the name Crowded House was known well enough in the UK - at least in the industry - to give them some assistance.

 

As Sure as I Am. I had to go back and have a play at this as I couldn't bring it to mind. Not a good sign..... 3.

 

I suspect you're right but I wonder how much of Neil's reaction was simple ego - the embarrassment and hurt of having something you've made rejected. And also, at that time, he was in a fragile place: CH had teetered on the brink of collapse, he'd had to back track on his decision to sack Nick and then, to cap it all, the people who insisted he reconsider Nick's position now rejected the album he'd made with Nick.

 

But...but..."The Doobie Brothers"!

 

Oh, we're going to have some fun discussions in another month or so!

 

. I think deep down he knew it wasn't a hit, and Hale Milgrim and Grant Thomas, and Gary Stamler and Thomas Whalley were fans who were trying to help him out. And he knew he was more excieted by the Finn project for a reason.

He was pretty high strung. It's funny how different the affable public image of Neil in interviews and concert differs from the portrait Bourke paints of him in the late 80s and early 90s. Not only Neil, the whole band, really.

And Bourke obviously loves them, it's not like he's doing a hatchet job.

 

Given some of Neil's recent decisions, I'm not sure that this has changed a great deal.

 

It's actually pretty normal, when I think about it. I mean, most of us act differently in public and anybody who's run a small business or has responsibilities goes through some stress and handles it in different ways.

 

I have worked in the music industry for many years (both as a free-lancing music journalist and at a music copyright company) and have studied music law etc, so I think this is the story regarding Capitol / Discovery: when record companies (in this case, Capitol) sign deals with bands (in this case, Crowded House), the contracts often feature clauses about possible future solo records or side projects. Usually, it means that if a band member wants to make a solo album the record company has the first option, but they aren't obligated to release such a solo album (a separate contract will have to be drawn up). I don't have any inside information what it said in Capitol's contract with Crowded House, but I think the Finn Brothers album in 1995 was proposed to Capitol. They probably weren't interested (in North America) so Tim and Neil were free to shop it around and signed a deal (for North America only) with Discovery. In the UK and Australia, EMI was happy to take up their option.
I believe it was a similar scenario with Tim's Escapade - Split Enz had an international deal (outside Australasia) with A&M, so they would have had first option on any solo album. A&M in North America picked it up, while in Europe the album was released on Epic Records (in April 1984, some seven months after its release in Australia).

I've read that it was the UK band Fin (Fin (2) ) that forced Tim and Neil to change their duo band name to Finn Brothers after the first duo album had been released in Europe in October 1995 (the Discovery release in North America was in mid-1996 if I remember correctly). I think the UK band Fin actually sued Tim and Neil but that this was quickly resolved out of court. Ironically, I believe there is an American jazz group also called Finn Brothers that had released records long before 1995 but apparently they didn't bother to sue Tim and Neil.

I've further read that when Tim joined Crowded House, he fully joined as a shareholder, not just as an employee. From memory there was some complicated, legal financial matters that needed to be sorted, and was, and at that point the four of them were equal shareholders (sharing any profits from merchandise, touring profits etc - but also equally sharing any touring losses). Mark Hart was probably "just" an employee on a retainer before being asked to join in December 1992. When Peter Jones later replaced Paul, it seems, he wasn't an official member (as in shareholder, invited to band meetings, having a vote at such meetings) but was an employee, not more, not less.

As for group names with Brothers in them implying family folk, how about the Marx Brothers?

 

Interesting, I've always thought of it to be the opposite of this. I feel he is using the phrase "As sure as I am....." to prove how absolutely sure he is of all the things he mentions in the preceding verse by comparing them to something he knows he is definitely sure of ie. "that I'm as happy as sin in a fear shaken world".

I guess this kind of ambiguity is one of the joys of Neil's music.

This song probably suffers from being on an album of slightly better songs that are more instantly hooky, and most of which have already come before it in the track list. Nevertheless a solid 4/5

 

great info!