Inspiral Carpets, "Cool as **** EP"

If ESPN can milk "30 for 30" well past their 30th anniversary, then I can run my series of 20 records I haven't heard in 20 years (since starting the blog in January 2000) well past year 21.  We will get to 20 eventually, I promise.  This will be the sixth in the series, and I have the next six records already lined up, waiting to be heard for the first time (with near certainty) since the 1990's ...

Out of the Madchester Big Three, Inspiral Carpets are, and were, by far the least famous.  The Stone Roses had the best peak musically, Happy Mondays had the best notoriety and were uncannily in the right place at the right time to capitalize on their limited talent (in no small part thanks to their label, which did all they could to promote the myth).  Inspiral Carpets had a longer peak than either of them (and a better peak than the Mondays) but could never quite transcend their reputation as a somewhat geeky number three in the Manchester hierarchy.    

I wore my "Cool as F***" shirt (without the asterisks) a good luck charm in tests and exams for years.  So this EP has a unique sentimental value that no other record in this series can match thus far.  

The record itself is a US-only release that compiled a few of their early singles and was released as a sort of lead-in to their debut album "Life".  

The Carpets' formula is on display from the opening notes of "Joe" -- blasts of shiny organ over shuddering bass and syncopated beats.  There's a clear nod to the Fall (and perhaps even the Mondays) in its minimalist bluster and shouty-lite vocals, but without the grit and upheaval that you get from the best of the Fall.  More creative, catchier melodies would come with the "Life"-era singles.  

"Find Out Why" is silly and awkward but nails the chorus in a way that "Joe" can't touch.  "So Far" has barely a glint of a decent melody and comes as every bit of the blatantly tossed-off B-side that it was.  "Out of Time" mostly exists in order to be an easily shoutable chorus in live shows, but as a two minute slice of bouncy pop, it certainly accomplishes its intended goal. 

The EP ends with the 16-minute "Plane Crash", which starts as an homage to "Bob Dylan's 115th Dream" before launching into an extended organ jam punctuated by churning guitar-based noises and other airy sound effects.  "What Goes On" it's not.  Singer "Tom Hingley" declares, on record, that "it's only been ten minutes" toward the end of the middle jamming portion, suggesting that they were going long purely for the sake of doing it.  A couple of years later, they'd get it right with "Further Away", a 14-minute monster with nary a wasted note.  But "Plane Crash" is certainly not the tense epic that I remember it being.  

How about that t-shirt though?  It supposedly sold better than any of their albums? 

Jim Steinman RIP

I just heard about Steinman's passing this past weekend.  I wrote about "Bat Out of Hell II" recently and since then, I have been feeling sentimental about Steinman's contributions to music.  I knew about many of his non-Meatloaf compositions for some time but it was only a year or two ago that I stumbled upon the knowledge that he co-wrote and produced some of Sisters of Mercy's biggest hits ("This Corrosion", "More", "Dominion").  It makes perfect sense once you know, at which point you can't unhear Steinman's influence in future listens.  And it figures that Steinman would be the best person to bring out the OTT hilarity in goth rock.  

Which was the more impressive achievement, BOOH I or BOOH II?  The first album was famously rejected by every major record label but went on to become one of the biggest selling albums ever.  It's hard to understand why no label thought it would be marketable, considering that the 70's was a decade full of overproduced histrionic rock excess.  The 90's gets repped (by rock fans) as the decade of grunge and alternative rock, but the truth is more complex.  In the early 90's, Bryan Adams, Tom Petty, Aerosmith, and Eric Clapton hit their commercial peak.  Each was highly recognizable thanks to heavy rotation on MTV and some memorable videos.  So there was plenty of space for rock "veterans" even as the landscape was shifting.  However, each of them were active during the 80's and continued their success into the 90's. By 1993, Meatloaf was a burnout and a nobody who made a completely improbable comeback to the upper strata of the industry.  Even more improbable was how BOOH was promoted as a Big Event Album despite Meatloaf not being relevant for over a decade.  "I'd Do Anything For Love" hit the airwaves/MTV and its astonishing success seemed almost preordained.  That speaks to Steinman's continued clout in the industry, the value in the BOOH name, and of course, the unexpected quality of the album.  The music was a black sheep completely out of place and out of sync with everything else happening at the time.  There was no indication that this type of music would make a comeback -- and in fact, it didn't.  Steinman-inspired rock wasn't a returning fad, BOOH II was in a bubble of its own success.  It was influenced by nothing except itself and inspired no copycats. It appeared out of nothing and then vanished into the ether.  BOOH I is the better album, but BOOH II's triumph ran contrary to all sense and logic of the time, and still stands as the more impressive overall achievement.