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

Discussion in 'Music Corner' started by Lance LaSalle, Jan 21, 2019.

  1. Lance LaSalle

    Lance LaSalle Prince of Swollen Sinus Thread Starter

    I guess he's talking about the vinyl reissue of the album. Kind of a bad time to be releasing albums, market-wise! I read today that fewer albums were sold last week than anytime in the last fifty or sixty years.
     
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  2. dthomas850

    dthomas850 Forum Resident

    Location:
    Cleveland, Ohio
    Posted by Neil Finn on Facebook. Sorry, don't know how to link to the Facebook post.
     
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  3. AB40

    AB40 Forum Resident

    Location:
    Sydney
    I find Neil's children's music about as attractive as Sharon Finn's voice, so I'll avoid 'threadcrapping' as well whenever they comes up.
     
  4. BeSteVenn

    BeSteVenn FOMO Resident

    I intend to at least listen to every song that @Lance LaSalle puts up for comment. Comments and ratings on this thread have been interesting and thoughtful, and I do like a number of songs by Liam, so I'm not completely going away anytime soon.
     
  5. appleboy

    appleboy Forum Resident

    Fingers crossed they also issue a CD version with an extra disc of goodies. The label reissuing this is Needle Mythology run by Pete Pathides who is a good friend of Neil’s. They do nice things like alternate artwork and bonus tracks , bonus discs and even bonus 7” with non album b sides. They do great stuff. I’m keeping everything crossed for a whole disc of goodies ala the deluxe Crowded House reissues. That would be nice, that would be enough to make me run around the block in lockdown singing Kiss the Road to Raratonga , which will definitely keep people two metres from me.
     
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  6. Jaffaman

    Jaffaman Senior Member

    Neil Finn - Test pressing... (reposted by Team NF) | Facebook
    Posted on the Neil Finn Facebook page by me because Neil doesn’t do Facebook. Originally posted by Needle Mythology on their Facebook and Instagram accounts.

    It’s the test pressing of Finn.
     
  7. Lance LaSalle

    Lance LaSalle Prince of Swollen Sinus Thread Starter

    Yeah that would almost be too good to be true.
     
  8. AB40

    AB40 Forum Resident

    Location:
    Sydney
    Heh, I'm guessing they're Lilac Time / Stephen Duffy fans. Man, I'd love a song-by-song thread for him, but I don't know enough about obscurities and the pre-Lilac Time material.



    Bonus Chamberlin Opera Singing!
     
  9. Lance LaSalle

    Lance LaSalle Prince of Swollen Sinus Thread Starter

    Our votes for "Heavy Dog":

    1-0
    2-0
    3-4
    4-0
    5-0
    Average: 2.825
     
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  10. Dept. 99

    Dept. 99 Forum Resident

    Location:
    Columbus OH
    Thank you Jaffaman for the iOptigan recommendation. Very fun.

    If anyone has the app, turn to the Big Band Swing disc, adjust the tempo to about 115 bpm and hold down the Am chord. You won’t be disappointed.
     
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  11. Lance LaSalle

    Lance LaSalle Prince of Swollen Sinus Thread Starter

    Today's song is "Mr White" by Betchadupa. It starts at about 8.16 below.


    "Mr. White" was recorded by Sam Gibson at Roundhead Studios in July 1997, so I've included it here. The EP, Betchadupa, was released in 2000 was produced by Sam Gibson and Liam Finn.
    There are no songwriting credits on the CD itself; the band consists of Liam Finn, Matt Eccles, Joe Bramley and Chris Garland.

    I gave the lyric a half-hearted go but I just can't make out enough of it.
     
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  12. Lance LaSalle

    Lance LaSalle Prince of Swollen Sinus Thread Starter

    I think this is the best of the three songs recorded in 1997 -- the band had progressed a little since January. There's a very overt Pixies thing going on here and a bit of angry Nirvana-ish grunge -- very nineties sound overall.

    But while it might not be that original, it's pretty well done. It's clear that, like his father, Liam had a gift for melody and songwriting that exhibited from an early age, and the band overall has a good, tight sound -- as teenaged garage bands go. I'll give this one a 3.6.
     
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  13. Jaffaman

    Jaffaman Senior Member

    What's the exact name of the disc? I can find "Big Band Beat" and "Swing It" but not "Big Band Swing". Found the "Chocolate Cake" and "Not The Girl You Think You Are" loops though.
     
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  14. Turk Thrust

    Turk Thrust Forum Resident

    Location:
    U.K.
    This is just noise. It is just as ramshackle as the previous couple of songs, but lacks their charm. I can't really see anything to commend this one.

    1.5/5.
     
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  15. AB40

    AB40 Forum Resident

    Location:
    Sydney
    If you want to play 'Not the girl...', this is what I sketched out last week on the keyboard, 1 bar of each 3 beat loop:

    Verse

    F / F / Bbm / Bbm / F / F / C / C
    F / A / Dm / Dm / Bbm / Bbm / C / C

    2nd repeat is slightly different

    F / Bbm / F / F / F / Bbm / C / C
    F / A / Dm / Dm/ Bbm / Bbm / C / C

    Chorus

    Bb / Bb / Bbm / Bbm / Dm / Dm / Am / Am (repeat sequence)

    I think the bridge was something like this, but I never double checked it:

    C / C / Gm / Gm / C / C/ Gm / Gm
    Em / Em 7 / F / Bbm / C7 / C7

    Note it's the added instrumentation that creates a seventh chord, you can't do it on an optigan alone, but it should be close enough. (I remember creating a 7th on an harmonium driven song by faking a G chord with an E bass and a higher E E-bow drone in the instrumentation).
     
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  16. Lance LaSalle

    Lance LaSalle Prince of Swollen Sinus Thread Starter

    Tomorrow, I'm going to start with Steel City, so I've written a few words today to introduce it as tomorrow I've actually got the first full day of work since the 6th of March...albeit tomorrow's work will be unpaid.

    Tim was busy, if less high-profile than Neil, during the mid-90s.

    After the 1996 Finn Brothers tour and his work with Andy White and Vika & Linda, Tim wrote no less than two significant works, the first of which would not be recorded/performed for 20 years and not released until December 21st 2019; the second of which saw a limited release in 1998 and is one of the most obscure things he has ever done.

    The first project, The Fiery Maze, came about after Tim had become entranced by Australian poet Dorothy Porter's 1994 verse novel The Monkey's Mask. (which was made into a film, later: The Monkey's Mask. )

    Recognizing a certain lyrical quality to her verse, Tim began a correspondence with the poet culminating in the two of them writing several songs together. The songs languished "in a drawer" for decades, played nowhere but in Tim's car; Tim noted in a 2016 interview that his children had grown up with the songs.

    Rather than presenting it as an album when it did see the light of day, it was presented theatrically, performed as one piece, rather than performed as a pop/rock concert and a rehearsal of the show was later releaesed as an album.

    I'm going to wait until 2016 when it was recorded to hold most of these songs up for discussion; however, at least one of those early demos has emerged on a streaming service and I'll hold that up soon enough. (Another song from the project was recorded in 2008 and I'll hold that up when we get there.)

    The other project was called Steel City, or more accurately Dein Perry's Steel City, and was a musical accompaniment to a theatrical tap dancing show that was produced and performed in 1998. Information about this show is maddeningly hard to come by -- in fact, basically impossible.

    Apparently it was performed in Australia and it seems a tour of the West Coast of North America was planned but never happened or didn't go beyond a performance (In Vancouver?). (I can't imagine that such a show would be profitable and perhaps financial backing was hard to come by. --All speculation.) The CD of the show saw very limited, Australian-only release, on Columbia records and then disappeared without a trace. In addition, promo copies seem to have been printed in the US, possibly to promote the short tour that never happened.

    It's very difficult album to buy, --I'm trying to purchase a copy now, but the (Australian) seller doesn't want to ship internationally. It's even more difficult to find than Tim's other obscure sound track, The Les Patterson Long Player, though that's vinyl only and so not worth buying for me -- the MP3 copy I have is enough.

    And that's a shame, because, unlike The Les Patterson Long Player, which is mostly forgettable film score fluff, interspersed with what sound like Escapade or Big Canoe outtakes, I think Steel City is really pretty good (if overlong); and, along with the 1996 "Comet" demo, which we've already discussed here, it marks yet another musical transformation for Tim that would last for several years.

    Whether due to the influence of his new wife Marie Azcoma, the musicians he chose to work with, the change in his voice or just personal taste, this music Tim in this period did was rockier and harder edged than anything he'd done previously in his solo career; it's a change that also suited his newer, older voice. The painful damage evident in 1994's Altitude had developed into a more gravelly, gruffer instrument in general in which the piercing, rangy flexibility of old was exchanged for a more limited, but more emotionally expressive tone.

    I feel that from Altitude on, Tim, now in his late forties, finally laid to rest his pop ambitions to make music that seem to come more from the heart and had less of an eye on the charts; yet he still seemed aware of popular music trends (Wilco and Lucinda Williams were two artists from this period that he's spoken glowingly of in concert.)

    In between these projects, Tim contributed a track to a various artist CD called Native Tongue: Loudspeaker, released in 1997. The track, "Marina", features Tim reciting a T.S. Eliot poem over some ambient music, and I've decided not to hold it up for discussion: though it's interesting enough on a compilation playlist of Tim Finn oddities from the period, it's not really a song and, frankly, I just think the conversation around it will be predictable and dull.

    I also have found evidence of a 1997 Tim-written piece called "Kangaroo Palace Theme" which was written for an Australian TV show called "Kangaroo Palace", but performed by a Davey Spillane -- I've never heard this anywhere. As a completist, I'd love to but when BudBudaBuddha from Hungary, one of the biggest Tim fans on Earth, doesn't have it...it's probably plain not available.

    So starting tomorrow, March 30th, we'll begin discussing the songs from Steel City.
    The line up will be:
    March 30th:
    1. Steel City (Tim Finn)
    2. Overture (Finn)
    3. Truss Dance (Finn)
    4. Spirit Level (Finn)
    5. Old Car (Finn)
    6. Drop Out (Finn, Marie Azcona)
    7. Walking (Finn)
    8. Smoko Duet (Finn)
    9. Rock & Roll Girl (Finn)
    10. Absail (Finn)
    11. Forklifts (Finn)
    12. Where I Live(Finn, Mike Chunn)
    13. New Car (Finn)
    14. Road Trip (Finn, Azcona)
    15. Finale (Finn)
    16. Glide (Finn)
    • April 15th: Steel City album
    • April 16th Raise (Tim Finn?) -B-side to the Steel City single
    • April 17th: New Friends [home demo] (Finn/Dororthy Porter), originally releaesd on MySpace, I believe
    • April 18th: I See Red (Tim Finn) Tim Finn with Regurgitator, released as a B-side in 2001, but recorded "in the late 90s".
    • April 19th: Empty Head, Betchadupa
    • April 20th: "Don't Dream It's Over (Neil Finn) Neil Finn, 1997 -- Diana, Princess of Wales Tribute
    • April 21st: Last One Standing (N. Finn) (followed by Try Whistling This and several bonus tracks-- probably 7 bonus tracks, plus there are some 1999 Neil Finn songs, a couple more Betchadupa songs and the Underwater Melon Man songs from Neil and Tim which I'll get to here before moving on to Say It Is So in late-May or so. Hoping nad assuming we are all alive by then!
    .
    (the rest of the Try Whistling This album)
    .
    Note: there are a number of demos and tracks that Tim's released for streaming on various platforms over the years and the dates of their recording/release are unknown to me -- I've asked on frenz.com and no one there really seems to know exactly when they were released. If the date is unknown, I plan to lump them all together in discussion when we get to 2013.
     
    Last edited: Mar 29, 2020
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  17. AB40

    AB40 Forum Resident

    Location:
    Sydney
    Also: If anyone mucking around with it finds the loop for 'Paradise', let us know.
     
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  18. AB40

    AB40 Forum Resident

    Location:
    Sydney
    Lance. My memory seems to be recalling some kind of movie by that Tap Dancing Troupe. Was it filmed rather than toured?
     
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  19. Lance LaSalle

    Lance LaSalle Prince of Swollen Sinus Thread Starter

    No idea!

    The only thing I've found is a review and it was of a theatrical show -- they basically said the music was good but a bit overpowering and drowned out the sound of the taps. Otherwise, I've found what appears to be some speculation and second hand knowledge on frenz.com.
     
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  20. AB40

    AB40 Forum Resident

    Location:
    Sydney
    False alarm. Yes, the movie was called 'Bootmen' and came out in 2000, but Tim's not mentioned on the very limited details on IDMB. Maybe if someone has both seen this obscure movie and heard this obscure CD they could tell us if it shares any of Tim's music.
     
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  21. Lance LaSalle

    Lance LaSalle Prince of Swollen Sinus Thread Starter

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  22. BeSteVenn

    BeSteVenn FOMO Resident

    There is a six-part making of for Steel City on YouTube on the official Tap Dogs channel. Really looking forward to the Steel City discussion.
     
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  23. Lance LaSalle

    Lance LaSalle Prince of Swollen Sinus Thread Starter

    THANKS!
     
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  24. dthomas850

    dthomas850 Forum Resident

    Location:
    Cleveland, Ohio
    Mr. White....yeah, they were really trying to sound like Pixies on this one. Still, not a bad song, although I'd have to say Derelict is my favorite of the three.
    3.25/5
     
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  25. Dept. 99

    Dept. 99 Forum Resident

    Location:
    Columbus OH
    Sorry. Big Band Beat.
     
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