Be-Bop Deluxe: Live! In the Air Age
1977
EMI Records
Format I Own it on: Vinyl
Track Listing: 1. Life In The Air Age 2. Ships In The Night 3. Piece Of Mine 4. Fair Exchange 5. Shine 6. Sister Seagull 7. Maid In Heaven 8. Mill Street Junction 9. Adventures In A Yorkshire Landscape 10. Blazing Apostles
Eastside Records (now Double Nickels Collective) is my favorite place on Planet Earth. I pulled this out of their dollar bin and the owner was kindly enough to give it to me for free and said that I can just take anything I wanted out of the dollar bins at any time. He also always takes at least a dollar, sometimes five, off the price of each record I buy. Even if they never did these things I would still consider it my favorite place on Planet Earth.
Last time I went in they were even nice enough to set aside a Jam record I'd previously told them I'd been looking for for a really long time. If you're ever in the Tempe area and are looking for vinyl, no other record store even compares.
This is the record I'd searched high and low for. I'd already had every other record by the Jam on vinyl, but I just couldn't locate this one. For the last decade, it didn't matter which record store I went to, I'd always make a bee-line straight to "the Jam" section and inevitably be disappointed. Anyway, Eastside is really the reason my record collection is so massive. That and when I first discovered FYE.
I can't remember if I talked about this before I not, but I'd lived next to an FYE for awhile and just never went in there. It never crossed my mind they had vinyl, but I went in one day out of sheer boredom and they had so much incredible shit in there it blew my mind! And everything was in the 2 to 3 dollar range. I basically forked over a good part of my paycheck and walked home with a couple hundred records...
From what I can tell all that great stuff must have just been sitting there forever and the right person just never went in the store. I've gone back there a million times since then and they've never restocked. Every once in awhile they'd get a new record or two in, but the selection and prices were never the same. So, essentially, I had picked over an entire record store and now they're going out of business...
I forgot why I'm talking about FYE at this point...Oh yea...The reason I have so many records boils down to FYE having a huge back-stock of old punk, obscure classic rock and new wave records for 2-3 bucks apiece and Eastside Records, where I got this Be-Bop Deluxe record...
I'm fairly new to Be-Bop Deluxe. I'd certainly heard the name, but it wasn't until early in 2013 that my wife came home with a copy of "Modern Music" (which, I'll cover tomorrow) that someone had let her borrow. I listened to it and liked a lot of it, and when I saw this live album in the dollar bin, I thought I'd kill a Saturday afternoon checking it out. (Oh yea, the sweet album cover with a "Metropolis" screen shot didn't hurt either!)
Be-Bop Deluxe is very hard to talk about for some reason. To this day I've never really read a description that quite captures them. There's nothing about their sound that immediately jumps out at you as startlingly original, and at the same time their influences are very hard to pin down. I can't imagine someone falling head over heels in love with the band after hearing them for the first time, and I also can't imagine someone really disliking it either.
They're sort of a super-slick, harder rocking take on progressive rock. But not prog in the "Medieval-Past-That-Never-Exised" sense. They have more of a retro-futuristic vibe going. There's also a very faint whiff of glitter in their guitar detail. This comparison would probably piss off any self-respecting Be-Bop fan, but I'm going for it...Imagine Styx possessed of great talent, taste and a hot-shit guitarist. When I say, "hot-shit guitarist" though, you're imagining "diddle diddle diddle diddle..." Get that out of your head...Bill Nelson isn't a wanky guitarist at all...He's all about long, singing, sustain-y guitar lines...Extremely composed and melodic...Although all the band member's do a fine job, it's really all about the guitar...The vocals (which are also provided by Bill) are so low-key they almost don't register. It took me a few listens to even remember what the vocals sounded like, but I could immediately spot that guitar tone a mile away...
This record was released after the band had three albums under their belt (technically this was released after "Modern Music" but was recorded before, so there are no "Modern Music" tracks included) and was released in different configurations, as far as I can tell...Some people talk about a white vinyl single album with an accompanying 7-inch ep that plays back at 33 1/3 speed to accommodate the long running time of the tracks.
The grand surge of "Sister Seagull" can't help but steal the show, but still...I'm going to have to go with the sleek future pop of "Maid In Heaven" as my personal favorite. I'm a huge sucker for that muted "Chukka Chukka Chukka Chukka" guitar part that Bill does after the first line. It kind of reminds me of a more-guitar oriented Billy Joel track. Again, I'm sure Be-Bop Deluxe fans would chew me out for saying that. It's a good thing nobody reads this blog!
Still, I can't deny the band clicks best for me when they pursue a more power-pop sound...At times I find myself spacing out to some of their more laid-back electric-piano-y material, but they immediately snap my attention back in place the moment they set some of Bill's orchestrated guitar lines to a tasty hook...Yum yum!
(Puts on red velvet smoking jacket and puffs a distinguished pipe that, to the audience's surprise and delight, blows bubbles...)
(Audience guffaws uproariously and applauds...Fade to black...Cut to "Sister Seagull"...)
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