Story Of A Song: Everything but the Girl’s ‘Driving’ (1990)

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drivingThe 1980s are littered with Brit pop bands going ‘across the pond’ to work with US producers and musicians.

It was almost a rite of passage, or – according to some music critics of the slightly more cynical persuasion – a desperate attempt at credibility.

You could hardly level that accusation at Tracey Thorn and Ben Watt, AKA Everything but the Girl. They were headhunted by legendary producer Tommy LiPuma, who had just put the finishing touches to Miles Davis’s Amandla, and their ‘Driving’ single (released in early 1990 but recorded spring 1989) seems a near-perfect marriage of US and UK sensibilities.

I confess I hardly knew anything about EBTG when my brother first played me ‘Driving’. I just heard something extremely classy, with intriguing chord changes, a great singer and strong jazz flavour.

I didn’t know Tracey and Ben had spent much of the ’80s building up a considerable rep as ‘indie jazz/folk’ darlings of the music press and enjoying not inconsiderable commercial success too, but I was possibly vaguely familiar with Tracey’s gorgeous vocals on The Style Council’s ‘Paris Match’.

Taken from The Language Of Life album, the song was recorded in LA at the famous Ocean Way and Sunset Sound studios with pretty much the finest session players money can buy (Omar Hakim on drums, John Patitucci on bass, Larry Williams on keys/arrangements, Michael Brecker on tenor).

But, according to Tracey’s superb memoir ‘Bedsit Disco Queen’, the American musicians were totally ignorant of the fiercely independent English scene from which Tracey and Ben had emerged.

When Larry Williams found out that EBTG had recently recorded at Abbey Road, he blurted out: ‘Wow! Abbey Road! The home of the Beatles!’ Tracey’s reply: ‘God, I HATE the Beatles.’ There was a pregnant pause. Eventually Williams spluttered out: ‘You h-h-hate the Beatles?’

But such musical differences were all in a day’s work for EBTG.

‘Driving’ obviously sounds more like Anita Baker than, say, The Smiths. It’s sophisticated but still has bite, with rich chords and a glorious Brecker solo (inexplicably with a different, inferior take on my 7” vinyl version).

 

‘Driving’ became somewhat of an airplay hit in the States (though surprisingly only reached #54 in the UK), and led to several high-profile US gigs which unfortunately seemed to precipitate a crisis of confidence for Tracey.

The EBTG live band, which included future smooth jazz star Kirk Whalum on sax, whipped the crowds into a frenzy night after night, but there wasn’t much space for her subtle, low-key vocals any more.

Cue a few years of soul-searching and a distinct change of direction, exemplified by 1994’s Amplified Heart.

RIP Chris Squire (Take Three)

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chris sIt’s the beautifully-written piece you’d hope to read from a newly-awarded professor of music, but I thought it well worth quoting Bill Bruford’s tribute to Chris Squire in full (with apologies for tardiness), which I believe first appeared on the Yes website.

‘Really saddened to hear of the death of my old Yes band-mate, Chris Squire. I shall remember him fondly; one of the twin rocks upon which Yes was founded and, I believe, the only member to have been present and correct, Rickenbacker at the ready, on every tour. He and I had a working relationship built around our differences. Despite, or perhaps because of, the old chestnut about creative tension, it seemed, strangely, to work.

He had an approach that contrasted sharply with the somewhat monotonic, immobile bass parts of today. His lines were important; counter-melodic structural components that you were as likely to go away humming as the top line melody; little stand-alone works of art in themselves. Whenever I think of him, which is not infrequently, I think of the over-driven fuzz of the sinewy staccato hits in ‘Close to the Edge’ (6’04” and on) or a couple of minutes later where he sounds like a tuba (8’.00”). While he may have taken a while to arrive at the finished article, it was always worth waiting for.  And then he would sing a different part on top.

An individualist in an age when it was possible to establish individuality, Chris fearlessly staked out a whole protectorate of bass playing in which he was lord and master. I suspect he knew not only that he gave millions of people pleasure with his music, but also that he was fortunate to be able to do so. I offer sincere condolences to his family.

Adios, partner. Bill.’

 

Talk Talk: The Colour Of Spring 30 Years Old Today

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talk talkBy the release of The Colour Of Spring, there was barely any trace of Talk Talk’s previous synth-pop incarnation. Out went the Duran Duran, in came the Debussy, Traffic and Satie.

Instrumentation was generally centred around acoustic piano, acoustic guitar, Hammond organ, electric bass and drums, with the addition of quirky items like the Variophon, Mellotron, melodica, harp and dobro.

The core unit of singer/co-writer/co-producer/keyboardist Mark Hollis, co-writer/co-producer/keyboardist Tim Friese-Green, bassist Paul Webb and drummer Lee Harris distilled their sound to eliminate all but the essentials.

The opening 16 bars of the majestic, haunting ‘Happiness Is Easy’, a winning combination of man and machine (Lee Harris’s drums and a nifty bit of programming, followed a little later by Martin Ditcham and Morris Pert’s percussives) is surely one of the great album intros of the ‘80s. It hooked this writer immediately back in 1986.

The 1980s were full of albums whose big-name guest spots barely made a mark on the music. Not The Colour Of Spring; the session players are chosen with the precision of a good movie casting director.

‘I Don’t Believe In You’, a left turn into doomy, atmospheric rock, features one of the great guitar solos by Robbie McIntosh. David Rhodes’ deliciously swampy lick, with minor but important amendments, holds ‘Life’s What You Make It’ together.

Double bassist Danny Thompson’s tone is immediately recognisable on ‘Happiness Is Easy’, before ex-Average White Band man Alan Gorrie brings in some light funk for the piece’s second half.

Steve Winwood also adds some tasty Hammond to three tracks, while Friese-Green’s piano on ‘April 5th’ even brings to mind the great Bill Evans. We must also acknowledge James Marsh’s exquisite cover artwork, an auspicious start to his triptych of TT album designs.

Though to my ears The Colour Of Spring tails off around the middle of side two, the album was a hit, reaching #8 in the UK chart and #50 in the US, while ‘Life’s What You Make It’ remains one of the most original singles of the mid-‘80s.

Next stop was the post-rock magnum opus Spirit Of Eden – the retreat from pop would be almost complete.

The 5 Creepiest Music Videos Of The 1980s

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Peter_gabriel_31081978_02_400In the 1980s, big-name directors generally had no qualms about helming pop videos: Landis, Scorsese, De Palma, Fincher, Peckinpah, Demme, Friedkin and Sayles all brought their visual sense to bear on the medium.

But if you weren’t tying the song in with a movie, you had to interpret the sometimes fairly nonsensical lyrics somehow (begging the question: were ’80s lyricists ever inspired by how their words would be interpreted in a song’s video?).

Given an almost blank slate, it’s fair to say that some directors’ imaginations ran riot; sometimes the storyboards got – how shall we put it kindly – a bit out of hand, riddled with disturbing symbols, disconcerting imagery and creepy concepts.

Here are five of the strangest clips of the decade:

5. David Bowie: ‘Underground’ (1986)
Legendary director Steve Barron (‘Beat It’, ‘Take On Me’) helmed this curio which accompanied David’s appearance in the movie ‘Labyrinth’. The song (which clearly influenced Madonna’s ‘Like A Prayer’ a few years later) seems to be about a young girl’s alienation and initiation into the adult world (‘No one can blame you for walking away… Daddy, daddy, get me out of here!’), echoing the movie’s plot. But the video goes off into very odd tangents: David dissolves into the floor, has a flashback to all his previous personas and then moves into a murky underworld where he becomes an animated character. The disembodied ‘helping hands’ from the movie mime to the gospel backing vocals and David dances with muppets before he rips off his ‘real’ face and becomes a cartoon character forever. Albert Collins’ earthy, raunchy blues licks seem a bit out of place alongside this surreal stew…

4. Laura Branigan: ‘Self Control’ (1984)
‘Exorcist’ director William Friedkin was in charge of this expensive curio. Words are hard to come by. This excellent analysis says it all really. Was the video an influence on Kubrick’s ‘Eyes Wide Shut’?

3. Bonnie Tyler: ‘Total Eclipse Of The Heart’ (1983)
Directed by another future Hollywood helmer Russell Mulcahy, this expensive weirdorama was filmed at the Holloway Sanatorium, a large, unused Victorian mental hospital in Surrey. It was a very apt choice of location: virginal boarding-school teacher Bonnie seems to be either dreaming or fantasizing about her students participating in various activities including swimming, karate, gymnastics, football, fencing, singing and dancing. As you do. Apparently there’s an urban legend that the boy who shakes Bonnie’s hand at the end is Italian footballer Gianfranco Zola. Let’s hope it’s true.

2. Peter Gabriel: ‘I Don’t Remember’ (1983)
This forbidding track, remixed from Peter Gabriel Plays Live, was never going to get a happy-clappy ‘Sound Of Music’-style vid, but it’s still pretty out-there. There are echoes of Bowie’s ‘Blackstar’ in its conflation of poverty, physical threat, trance-like states and religious reverence. ‘I Don’t Remember’ is certainly one of the most distinctive vids of the mid-’80s but seems way too menacing for wide appeal.

1. The Jacksons: ‘Torture’ (1984)
The track seems to be about the ‘torture’ of relationship breakdown but director Jeff Stein and designer Bryce Walmsley (hi, Bryce!) over-egg the concept something rotten here. It pretty much comes on like a manual for trauma-based mind control. Both Michael and Jermaine refused to appear in the video, which ran over time and over budget, driving its production company into bankruptcy. Almost unbelievably, a wax dummy of Jacko was rented from a Madame Tussaud’s in Nashville and appears in three sequences including the tragic and really quite sad final salute. Stein recalls the shoot as ‘an experience that lived up to the song title’ and says it was so stressful that one of his crew members lost control of her bodily functions. Vigilant Citizen has put together an excellent analysis of the video.

Any more for any more? Let me know below.

Sadao Watanabe: Maisha

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sadaoAh, the joy of tape-to-tape machines.

One day, when I was about 16, my parents’ cool music-biz friend Steve brought me round a pile of cassettes, all tape-to-tape recordings, two albums per tape.

That was an important little selection right there: Little Feat’s Last Record Album, Steely Dan’s Katy Lied, Talking Heads ’77 and a few others that have skipped my mind.

Sadao Watanabe’s Maisha was also amongst them, an album/artist I’d never heard of. He’s a highly-regarded Japanese sax player who has performed in many different idioms from straight ahead to bossa nova.

He’s probably best known for his late-’70s jazz/funk material when he borrowed Grover Washington Jr’s band (Steve Gadd, Richard Tee, Eric Gale, Ralph McDonald and Anthony Jackson) for some huge home-country gigs and a few fairly popular albums on CBS.

Maisha is a fairly light jazz-funk album of a mid-’80s vintage, but on reflection it’s got more in common with MJ’s Thriller than anything by Spyro Gyra or Shakatak. This is due to a really phenomenal rhythm section and very subdued production with no blaring synths, drum machines or digital reverb. Instead, it’s a lesson in groove construction. Drummers John Robinson/Harvey Mason and bassists Nathan East and Jimmy Johnson have seldom played better.

Yellowjacket Russell Ferrante’s keys are typically tasteful, sticking to Rhodes and acoustic piano rather than synths, while Jerry Hey adds brilliant horn arrangements to various tracks. Paulinho Da Costa is his usual effervescent self on all manner of percussion. And finally, guitarists Carlos Rios and David Williams play beautifully, the latter of course a mainstay of Thriller.

 

In general, the musicianship is loose and spontaneous, a world away from the studied session-head sounds usually associated with the ’80s LA studio scene. Mason marshals the band through ‘Paysages’ with a fantastically loose interpretation of the famous Bernard Purdie shuffle.

Herbie Hancock pops in to contribute a ridiculously great synth solo to ‘What’s Now’ (which is surely due a big-band cover version) while Brenda Russell’s refreshingly artless vocals feature on the Calypso-tinged ‘Tip Away’ and infectious ‘Men And Women’. And not even Stanley Clarke could have bettered Nathan East’s bass-and-scat solo on ‘Good News’.

Unfortunately Sadao’s sax chops get a bit swamped by all this classy playing, but he does have a lovely tone, almost like an alto-playing Stan Getz, and writes several memorable themes on the album.

 

The Pop Group: Where There’s A Will…

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pop groupPunk’s tributaries reached far and wide post-1976.

Save country and classical, there was barely a music genre that wasn’t affected by it.

But one of the most singular and unclassifiable collectives to emerge from the punk boom was Bristol’s The Pop Group, who just for a few years fused all their passions – reggae, dub, free jazz, funk, Erik Satie, Beat poetry, Dadaism, Situationism – into a gloriously chaotic unit.

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I don’t know a better band for annoying the neighbours. At their best, The Pop Group sound a bit like an avant-garde jazz band trying and somehow failing to play like Chic, run through Adrian Sherwood’s dub effects.

But they are pretty damn exciting in small doses and offer textures that are genuinely surprising. I generally turn to them as an antidote to the Ed Sheerans and Ellie Gouldings of this world. They also came up with some of the best cover artwork of their era.

The Pop Group emerged from a gang of West Country teenage music fans called The Bristol Funk Army who apparently would wear zoot suits and brothel creepers and listen to heavy ’70s funk. Meanwhile, vocalist/lyricist and Last Poets fan Mark Stewart was getting a serious political awakening, hellbent on documenting his research into consumerism, nuclear power and US foreign policy.

The band’s lifespan was pretty brief, limited to two albums (the debut Y was produced by UK reggae legend Dennis Bovell) and three classic singles – ‘She Is Beyond Good And Evil’ (not about Thatcher, according to Stewart), ‘We Are All Prostitutes’ and ‘Where There’s A Will’, which was released as a double A-side with The Slits’ ‘In The Beginning There Was Rhythm’ in March 1980.

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They apparently lost thousands of pounds of revenue by mainly playing benefit gigs for Cambodia and Scrap The Sus (stop and search law). It was a very volatile time and they definitely put their money where their mouth was.

Their last gig before an amicable parting of the ways was the Campaign For Nuclear Disarmament benefit in Trafalgar Square on 26 October 1980 in front of 250,000 people.

Mark Stewart spent the rest of the ’80s pursuing a fascinating solo career, while Gareth Sager and Bruce Smith formed Rip Rig & Panic (later featuring Neneh Cherry on vocals), and Smith has also been PiL’s drummer since the mid-’80s.

The Pop Group’s sound has also been massively influential on a host of punk/funk bands over the last 20 years or so including Radio 4, Primal Scream and LCD Soundsystem.

And guess what – they are back among us again. They released a superb comeback album in 2015, Citizen Zombie, and have played live fairly regularly since 2011. It’s a pleasure to report that the rage and weirdness are very much still there.

But back to ‘Where There’s A Will’. This recently unearthed clip has become a favourite (I love the studious Belgian host attempting to make some sense of this insanity), an antidote for anaemic, safe music everywhere. Not even Chris Morris could have come up with anything more grippingly bizarre.

For much more about The Pop Group and early ’80s music, check out Simon Reynolds’ excellent ‘Rip It Up And Start Again‘.

9 Embarrassing (But Great) Moments From ’80s Music TV

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grace There’s no escape these days.

Maybe your band were given a rollocking live on children’s TV or you turned up for a late-night interview slightly the worse for wear and made a bit of an arse of yourself thinking no one would be watching anyway.

Alas. It’s all retained for posterity on YouTube, and some smart aleck was poised with his finger on the VCR record button, primed for just such an indiscretion.

Some of these clips (parental discretion advised) I remember watching live, others have shown up occasionally on ‘TV Hell’-type compilation shows over the years, but they all make for great – if sometimes uncomfortable – viewing.

9. Five Star on ‘Going Live’, 1989
No, the Essex Jacksons were never the critics’ favourites, but this rhetorical question from a young caller may well have had more of a detrimental effect on their career than any NME scribe ever could.

8. Jools Holland interviews Andy Summers, 1981
Jools turned up in Monserrat while The Police were recording the Ghost In The Machine album, and he managed to ridicule their erstwhile guitarist’s demonstration of funk guitar (at 5:30). You must admit, Julian had a point…

7. Matt Bianco on ‘Saturday Superstore’, 1984
Yep, another nightmare phone-in situation, a subgenre full of guilty pleasures (from 1:00 below).

6. All About Eve on ‘Top Of The Pops’, 1988
The infamous appearance during which singer Julianne Regan and guitarist Tim Bricheno were blissfully unaware of the song’s playback in the studio. Cue lots of schoolyard sniggering, but the Eve had the last laugh – their single rose UP the charts the following week.

5. BA Robertson interviews Annabella Lwin, 1982
The singer/presenter comes seriously unstuck when broaching the gender issue with Bow Wow Wow’s superbly-spikey frontwoman (I say ‘woman’ – she was only 16 at the time…).

4. Grace Jones attacks Russell Harty, 1980
An intractable Grace is seriously miffed by Russell’s back-turning.

3. Shakin’ Stevens attacks Richard Madeley, 1980
Humour is clearly the animus here, but the sight of a lagered-up Shakey throttling the grannies’ favourite is still quite something.

2. Dexys Midnight Runners on ‘Top Of The Pops’, 1982
Did someone at the BBC really think the song was an ode to Scottish darts player John ‘Jocky’ Wilson rather than soul legend Jackie? Or was it a pisstake? (It was a pisstake and apparently Kevin Rowland’s idea… Ed.) I love the juxtaposition of Kevin’s intensity and Jocky’s grinning mush.

1. Wayne Hussey on ‘The James Whale Show’, March 1990
Just into the 1990s, but what the hell. The Mission mainman seems to have wandered into the studio after a long night on the razzle, but he met his match with the confrontational Mr Whale.

The Clarke/Duke Project

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stanley_clarke__george_duke-the_clarke__duke_project(epic)This one really divides people. The Clarke/Duke Project probably could and should have been a lot better given the talent involved and their stellar track record.

But the album shouldn’t be judged by jazz standards – by the early ’80s, these two protagonists of ‘fusion’ realised that jazz/rock had hit a massive dead end.

A fresh approach was called for. Earth, Wind & Fire’s effortless blending of funk, soul, disco, jazz, Latin and rock offered a new direction to all kinds of musicians, including Clarke and Duke.

So, leaving any kind of jazz credibility at the door, our heroes embraced their inner George Clintons, Frank Zappas and Stephen Bishops to make a really weird but occasionally enjoyable album of funk, disco, AOR and cheesy soul balladry (it’s surely up there in the ‘least classifiable albums of the ’80s’ list). In short, this was Stanley and George’s Tin Machine – you were either for or against.

My schoolfriend Seb and I were huge Stanley fans, but even we eyed this with some trepidation when we came across it around 1989. It had a pretty dodgy reputation even by ’80s Stanley standards. It’s certainly neither artists’ best work, but it’s worth a listen.

So, straight in at the deep end. It’s fair to say that most John Coltrane and Dexter Gordon fans will struggle with the ‘Louie Louie’ cover… But Clarke and Duke deliver great solos and the vocal jiving is good value.

Clarke’s ‘I Just Want To Love You’ is a minor disco/soul classic with a great bassline (later appropriated for Kylie’s ‘Spinning Around’). ‘Touch And Go’ is very pretty in a post-‘Sailing’ kind of way while the vapid ‘Sweet Baby’ miraculously delivered a big US hit (#19). The closing ‘Finding My Way’ is effective and quite unique in its way, a kind of pomp-funk/rock epic with a cool descending bridge and interesting structure.

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JR Robinson’s ultra-solid, ultra-dry drums are very high in the mix and sometimes feel like they need a bit of air. Clarke impresses with a huge range of basses, guitars, sitars and cellos (and some very Santana-ish Piccolo lead bass playing) while Duke sticks mostly to squelchy synth basslines, acoustic piano and an occasional bit of trademark Mini Moog.

The album sounds very stripped back to modern ears and has a slightly ‘demo’ feel to it, but it was a hit. Two further collaborations followed, lasting into the early ’90s.

One thing’s for sure – Stanley and George were great friends until the latter’s death in 2013, and you can really hear it in the music they made together.

Story Of A Song: Bill Bruford’s ‘Palewell Park’ (1981)

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The 1980s were a pretty good time to be a songwriting drummer; Sheila E, Phil Collins and Don Henley all flourished, and probably a few more too.

Not that master Yes/King Crimson sticksman Bill Bruford had any particular desire to match their commercial standing as the decade got underway. He was quite happy gaining harmonic knowledge (with the assistance of keyboardist Dave Stewart), making sizeable contributions to the percussion community and composing incredible pieces of music like ‘Palewell Park’.

In a way, it was the culmination of his work with the Bruford group which had released three studio albums between 1978 and 1980, two featuring the brilliant Allan Holdsworth on guitar.

Palewell Park, East Sheen, London

Palewell Park, East Sheen, London

This track has a special resonance for me as Palewell Park was a childhood hangout, site of many great cricket, tennis and football games as well as a fair few teenage hijinks. Bruford apparently lived nearby during the piece’s recording at Surrey Sound in Leatherhead (also the studio The Police used for their first two albums) and wanted to write an ode to the area.

Someone on YouTube very aptly described ‘Palewell Park’ as ‘a contemporary piece for piano and bass’. It doesn’t fit comfortably into any genre, but it’s a pretty remarkable composition coming from the pen of a ‘drummer’, and one who doesn’t even feature on his own composition (Stewart played the piano).

Jeff Berlin, Jon Clark, Dave Stewart, Bill Bruford in 1980

Jeff Berlin, Jon Clark, Dave Stewart, Bill Bruford in 1980

The 26-year-old Jeff Berlin lays down one of the great pieces of post-Jaco bass playing. With just a touch of chorus pedal, he sticks to the pretty treacherous melody in the first half and then stretches out to play a fantastic solo over the changes, a total lesson in melody construction, with no gimmicks.

Next up for Bill was a reunion with Robert Fripp and one of the great albums of the ’80s, King Crimson’s Discipline.

Nik Kershaw: The Riddle

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the-riddle-54d854ab5fe83After several years playing guitar in cover bands and fronting East Anglia blue-eyed-soulsters Fusion, Nik Kershaw wrote a few poppy-sounding tracks and suddenly found himself thrust into the solo spotlight.

But he didn’t fool anyone with the snood, fingerless gloves and mullet – it was obvious from the get-go that Nik was a superb musician and songwriter. He had a voice a bit like Stevie Wonder (though my dad rightly identified something Numanoid too), played guitar a bit like Allan Holdsworth and wrote clever, catchy pop songs with prog, metal and funk undercurrents.

He also had some very famous fans in the US including Miles Davis and Herbie Hancock. But his image, dreamed up by some wags in MCA’s marketing department, probably didn’t do him any favours – Smash Hits summed it up perfectly, calling him ‘the thinking man’s Limahl’!

The Riddle is probably his best album. It was recorded pretty quickly to cash in on the unexpected success of his debut Human Racing, though featured a fair amount of post-production courtesy of the excellent Peter Collins who later produced Rush’s Power Windows and had previously worked on Musical Youth’s ‘Pass The Duchie’.

It features a very solid but expressive rhythm section (Elton John sticksman Charlie Morgan and ex-Secret Affair bassist Dennis Smith plus a great guest appearance from Level 42’s Mark King on ‘Easy’). Kershaw’s use of synths was kind of revolutionary, with intriguing sequencer patterns and subtle, almost subliminal pads. He also had invaluable input and some ZTT flash from keyboardist Andy ‘Relax’/’Two Tribes’ Richards throughout the album.

Yes, The Riddle screams the mid-1980s, but every song on it is memorable and has a very distinct flavour. On a songwriting level, Kershaw always knows how to keep things interesting for the listener. ‘Know How’ is a case in point – initially coming across somewhere between Level 42 and Talking Heads, it veers into prog territory with its superb pair of instrumental breakdowns.

Miles apparently recorded a cover of the very pretty ‘Wild Horses’ which has never seen the light of day. Hollywood-baiting ‘City Of Angels’ and eco-themed ‘Roses’ have more than a hint of Steely Dan about them, partly due to the use of the famous Purdie Shuffle, nicely reformatted by Morgan.

‘Wide Boy’ and ‘Don Quixote’ have lots of interesting melodic modulations under their pop sheen. ‘Easy’ is a brilliant band performance and crafty composition with a nutty middle eight, while the closing ballad ‘Save The Whale’ is also musically rich. And though the title track divides opinion, to say the least, check out its two-chords-per-bar middle-eight for a great example of Kershaw’s craft.

The cover photo was taken at Chesil Beach in Dorset. The Riddle peaked at #8 in the UK and went multi-platinum. The lead single was the title track which reached #3 in the UK. ‘Wide Boy’ peaked at #9, ‘Don Quixote’ #10. Three top 10 hits from a sophomore album – pretty damn good.

Nik was massive for approximately 18 months. He played Live Aid in July 1985 but then waited until autumn 1986 to follow up The Riddle – probably a mistake. The screaming girls were growing up fast or moving on to a-ha. He was developing as a musician and songwriter but gaining a much more ‘selective’ appeal, in the words of Spinal Tap’s manager Ian Faith.