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Tuesday, Feb 26 2019, 6AM
We're paying tribute this morning to Mark Hollis, frontman of the band Talk Talk, following his death at the age of 64. Talk Talk’s bassist Paul Webb, aka Rustin Man, paid tribute to Hollis on Instagram. “I am very shocked and saddened to hear the news of the passing of Mark Hollis,” he wrote. “Musically he was a genius and it was a honour and a privilege to have been in a band with him. I have not seen Mark for many years, but like many musicians of our generation I have been profoundly influenced by his trailblazing musical ideas.” www.kexp.org
Zero 7 had this to say about this Mark Hollis cover: "Back in 2012 we were asked to contribute a track to an album of Talk Talk covers that was being made to raise money for a very worthy charity called BirdLife. With some trepidation we agreed and chose the Mark Hollis track 'Colour of Spring' from his solo album.
This was, and always will be a foolish idea. I'm not sure what Mr Hollis would make of our version but we're grateful to him for being open to the idea (despite his better instincts, i'm sure). And more importantly, we thank him and Talk Talk for their wonderful music.”
Singer Mark Hollis's brother had recently died of a heroin overdose and the impotent rage of this song is a reaction to that event. Wait for the choir to kick in and hear how much this song influenced Elbow.
Watch Bon Iver performing this cover from Talk Talk's Spirit of Eden album in Germany, 2009: tinyurl.com
Following Spirit of Eden (1988), bassist Paul Webb left the group, which reduced Talk Talk to the duo of Mark Hollis and Lee Harris. Like Spirit of Eden the album featured improvised instrumentation from a large ensemble of musicians. The demanding sessions were marked by Mark Hollis' perfectionist tendencies and desire to create a suitable recording atmosphere. Engineer Phill Brown stated that the album, like its predecessor, was "recorded by chance, accident, and hours of trying every possible overdub idea." The band split up following its release, effectively making Laughing Stock their last official release.
Listen to the original version of The Party's Over performed by Talk Talk live on BBC radio, April 10th, 1982: tinyurl.com
Simon Le Bon from Duran Duran said: “We, Duran Duran, are very sorry to learn that one of music’s great innovators Mark Hollis has died. The band Talk Talk, which he co-founded and fronted, were on tour with us in 1982; it made for a tremendous & very entertaining bill. Mark was the main songwriter of some truly great songs, including ‘It’s My Life’ & ‘It’s A Shame’.
In 1988 the extraordinary album ‘Spirit of Eden’ was released. His talent will be remembered & his music will live on.”
This song was one of the last to be conceived for The Colour of Spring, following concern from the band's management at the lack of an obvious single among accumulated work. Initially unwilling, Mark Hollis and Tim Friese-Greene accepted the task as a challenge. Friese-Greene: "I had a drum pattern loosely inspired by Kate Bush's 'Running Up That Hill' and Mark was playing 'Green Onions' organ over the top."
Frontman Brian Molko told The Independent that Placebo decided to cover "Life's What You Make It" because "it's a 1980s song that the band still enjoys and we wondered if we could replicate Gwen Stefani's global smash hit with her band's cover of [Talk Talk's] 'It's My Life'." This video was shot in Accra, Ghana, and centers on the enormous electronic waste dump there, an otherworldly and sobering environment. Read more and see the video here: tinyurl.com
Mark and his brother Ed wrote the song together but were never in the same band; Ed managed Eddie And The Hot Rods and teamed Mark up with Paul Webb, Lee Harris and Simon Brenner, which became the band Talk Talk in 1981.
Talk Talk named themselves after this song. Mark Hollis liked it because it's very direct, easy to remember and can't be abbreviated.
Talk Talk had started out as a synthpop band, groomed to follow the success of label-mates Duran Duran by EMI with the pop pleasures of songs like ‘Dum Dum Girl’ and ‘It’s My Life’, later covered by No Doubt. They’d only used synths, Hollis would later claim, because they couldn’t afford real instruments and the musicians required to play them, so, following the chart success of their first two albums, The Colour Of Spring saw them pursue a more ambitious goal with the benefits of the cash they’d accrued.The band’s hearts, however, seemingly lay elsewhere, in the album’s two considerably more abstract tracks, ‘Chameleon Day’ and ‘April 5th’. It was further in this direction that they chose to travel when EMI sent them into the studio, unchecked, to record iLaughing Stock. The label were hoping for another global chart smash, but instead, as David Stubbs memorably put it in Uncut in 2002, “when they re-emerged, it turned out that they had done what every megapop band talks about doing but so rarely does – i.e. what the fuck they wanted.”
This album features vocals from Richard Ashcroft, Thom Yorke and Mike D and includes contributions from Mark Hollis.
Mark Hollis' self-titled album is noted for being extremely sparse and minimal; AllMusic called it "quite possibly the most quiet and intimate record ever made". The album did not mark a return for Hollis to the music industry or live performance; he stated at the time of the album's release that "There won't be any gig, not even at home in the living room. This material isn't suited to play live."
Paul Epworth, producer of bands such as Horrors, Bloc Party, Primal Scream, Florence & The Machine, U2, and many, many more said: "Trying to find the words to express my sadness about the passing of Mark Hollis.
Hearing Spirit Of Eden blew my 18 year old mind to such a degree I set out to try and learn how on earth they had created this transcendent masterpiece. That search turned into a career."
“XO,” as Smith told an interviewer in 1998, means “hugs and kisses,” the sort of thing people throw in at the end of letters. A more arcane, connotative meaning was “fuck off.” “But that’s a really rare meaning I didn’t know about,” Elliott explained, apparently sincerely.
Australia-by-way-of-Tasmania band, Quivers are back with new song “You’re Not Always On My Mind”, their first release since debut LP We’ll Go Riding On The Hearses. Make sure to catch Quivers at SXSW this year. quiversss.bandcamp.com
This was The Pogues' first single to feature Spider Stacy on vocals. Happy 7th best day of the week!
The Church were live in the KEXP studio, hosted by DJ Morgan in 2017: bit.ly
Colin Roach was a 21-year-old black British man who died from a gunshot wound inside the entrance of Stoke Newington police station, in the London Borough of Hackney, on 12 January 1983. Amid allegations of a police cover-up, the case became a cause célèbre for civil rights campaigners and black community groups in the United Kingdom. Although the lyrics do not mention Colin Roach directly, the entire album is essentially dedicated to his family, and contains a photograph on the inner sleeve of his sad-faced parents standing in the rain in front of a poster of their son. Below the image is the inscription: "God's place is the world; but the world is not God's place."
Sharon Van Etten is playing a sold out show tonight at The Fillmore in San Francisco. Hear "Seventeen" again with the KEXP featured song of the day: bit.ly
Listen to Nilüfer Yanya talk about learning the guitar lines in songs by The Libertines as a kid, hearing her Turkish dad's love for Turkish music, her artist mom's encouragement to be a musician, and her new album: n.pr
Johnny Cash's birthday! He was born in 1932 - that would have made him 87 today.
I believe this video is from the Johnny Cash TV show... Watch Johnny and Ray performing Ring of Fire together: bit.ly
See Social Distortion performing "Ring of Fire" live at Austin City Limits Music Festival in 2011: bit.ly
Reznor was sent the video while in the studio with Rage Against the Machine’s Zach De La Rocha, and, when the pair sat down to watch it, any doubts he had about the cover were long gone.
“We were in the studio, getting ready to work and I popped it in,” he recalled. “By the end I was really on the verge of tears…there was just dead silence. There was, like, this moist clearing of our throats and then, ‘Uh, okay, let’s get some coffee.’” See that video here: tinyurl.com
Hurt received a Grammy Award nomination for Best Rock Song in 1996, but ultimately lost to Alanis Morissette's "You Oughta Know".
The song has been frequently used in a number of media, including commercials, movies, trailers and television shows. By 2014, it had been so widely used that the Huffington Post opined "Sorry, Everyone, It's Time To Retire M83's 'Outro'". However, as of 2018, the song continues to be used in numerous new media. You can find a list here: tinyurl.com
Lost Under Heaven closed with this track when they performed live on the Morning Show October 31, 2018. See their in-studio here: tinyurl.com
Mark Hollis’ influence has often been referenced by musicians, including Elbow’s Guy Garvey. “Mark Hollis started from punk and by his own admission he had no musical ability,” he told Mojo. “To go from only having the urge, to writing some of the most timeless, intricate and original music ever is as impressive as the moon landings for me.”
The influence of the layered texturing and ambient leanings of Talk Talk's Spirit of Eden is now evident in a disparate array of artists: from the post-rock of Tortoise and others that emerged in the 90s to associated Talk Talk bands such as Bark Psychosis and Catherine Wheel, through the trip-hop of Portishead, DJ Shadow and Unkle (whose 1998 debut Hollis played on) to the vocal fragility of Antony and the Johnsons and the natural world references of British Sea Power, finally arriving at latter-day Radiohead – and Wild Beasts.
"It is absolutely impossible to discuss Lo Moon's debut album without discussing Talk Talk. The resemblance is just too glaring. A kind observer might describe them as heirs to that group's flexible but (previously) unique sound, resurrecting that potent cocktail of naturalistic atmospheres, electronic instrumentation and impassioned, pleading vocals and revamping it for a new generation." - Clash Music: tinyurl.com
The The said about Mark Hollis via twitter:
Very sorry to hear the news that #MarkHollis of #TalkTalk has died. He was behind some of the finest albums of the 1980s / early 1990s. R.I.P.
On the Record is a video series where rock stars gush about their favorite records -- in exactly 45 seconds. Click here to watch Shearwater give it up for Talk Talk: bit.ly
"Mark has always been very secretive and I think he is now retired from music, which as a fan is really sad - but I'm sure he's not sad! There isn't enough mystery around bands any more and the enigma of Talk Talk and Mark Hollis suits me just fine. - Jimi Goodwin from "Why I Love The Enigma Of Talk Talk & Mark Hollis" By Doves' Jimi Goodwin Read the interview: bit.ly
This was dropped from the set list of the Joshua Tree tour when they discovered during rehearsals that Bono could not hit the high notes consistently. As a result, it was never performed live until U2's 30th anniversary tour opener in Vancouver on May 12, 2017. Bono explained in an interview with BBC Radio 2:
"I used to write songs that I couldn't sing. And sometimes that was OK because the strains of the notes I couldn't reach was part of the drama, but occasionally they would really just wreck the next show," he said. "So I just left 'Red Hill Mining Town' off. But since then, I sing a bit better — or at least I've learned how to sing."
Strand of Oaks will be live on the Midday Show at 1pm on April 26th! That night you can see them again at Neumos! Find all their tour dates here: www.strandofoaks.net
This song was cited as a turning point by Corgan in an interview about Siamese Dream: "I can remember bringing in 'Rhinoceros', which didn't sound like anything else we had. But after a while you get used to playing 'Rhinoceros', so you bring in something that's a little weirder."
“Seconds” comes from the Human League’s breakout album Dare. (That’s the one with “Don’t You Want Me?” on it.) But where Dare was the album where the Human League went full mass-appeal, “Seconds” brings the group back to its stark, chilly postpunk roots. LCD Soundsystem’s version is a faithful recreation, and Murphy really does sound a whole lot like Phil Oakey on it. But it’s a treat to hear this song performed with a monster rhythm section rather than with the primitive drum machines of the original. Hear the original: youtu.be
“I Believe In You” is about both Talk Talk’s frontman Mark Hollis, and his older brother, Ed Hollis. Ed became addicted to heroin, and this entire song is one final plea from Mark to Ed to give up heroin and to live with himself.
Sadly this plea came too late – Ed died in September 1988, the same month this single and "Spirit of Eden" were released.