← Political Beats
Political Beats
Episode 145: Andrew Stuttaford / Brian Eno
03:21:35
Scot and Jeff discuss Brian Eno's career with Andrew Stuttaford.
Loading summary
Transcript399 lines
- [00:00]
Scott Bertram
Foreign.
- [00:07]
Jeff Blair
Hello again everybody and welcome back to another edition of Political Beats, a presentation of National Review. You can find us on X at Political Underscore Beats. We're also on Facebook. You can subscribe to our feed for new episodes through Apple Podcasts or find us@nationalreview.com click on the podcast tab. You'll find all of the fine NR podcasts there, including ours. We also invite you to join us over on our Patreon page. Patreon.com Politicalbeats support us there and help the show stay ad free as it has been. There's entry level for support and some voting privileges and a few things here and there. Mid level for early access to all of our shows and you get about a higher audio quality as well. And our upper level best friends early access the higher audio quality. More Monthly exclusive content episodes this month, our favorite songs with a Woman's name in the title just released last week, remastered old episodes, playlists and more. All of it@patreon.com politicalbeats now the part of the program in which we thank some of our Patreon supporters individually. Our new supporters, Stephen Sunwald, Jesse Walker and Chris Pandolfo. Also longtime supporters Jarrett, Patrick, Thomas Barnes, Dennis Hawkinson and David Hawkinson, no relation Dan McLaughlin, Peter Berklund, Sean McCaughan, Steve Carroll, Little Tripoli and Nathan Anderson. Thank you for helping and supporting us over@patreon.com politicalbeats my name is Scott Bertram. You can find me on Xcott Bertram, my tag team partner. Standing by as always, Jeff Blair. Jeff, how are you?
- [01:54]
Andrew Stuttiford
I am doing great. Riding high, surfing the waves, swimming like dolphins can swim. You know, other people might be drowned by the flood of news that's currently engulfing us. But as for me, splish splash, I've been raking in the cash. The biology of purpose keeps my nose above the surface.
- [02:13]
Jeff Blair
Many references there. Jeff onsoteric CD Our guest on today's program, a former finance guy, now editor at National Review, Capital Matters, but also writes about much more than just economics, is a former member of the Syd Barrett Appreciation society. His website's andrewstuddeford.com stutterford on x so he is in fact, Andrew Stuttiford. Andrew, thanks so much for joining us.
- [02:41]
Guest Speaker
Oh well, it's a pleasure to be here. Looking forward to talking about the great man.
- [02:44]
Jeff Blair
Happy to have you. Before we get into the meat of the episode, we want people to know who you are. Tell us a bit about your former finance life, what you do at NR and why people should perhaps look into what you write.
- [02:56]
Guest Speaker
Certainly, as you may possibly hear, I come from England and I qualified over there as a lawyer and always had a sort of slight eye to America. But I gave up the law because I got offered a job in finance and mainly working for Scandinavians, which was to be a theme throughout my career. And I started coming to the US off and on in the 1980s, in the. In the sort of later part of the 1980s. And then after a brief detour in Toronto, I moved to New York for three years to do a financial job. And that was in 1991, and here I still am. And basically I worked in the international in different ways. I worked in the international equity markets. Then that was. The business changed. I was coming to a fork on the road. I had been. Meanwhile, I had been writing, I become sort of on the side. And they were very good about it, did freelance journalism. And that started just in a second. I was. I knew the then editor of National Review very well and he said, we need a piece on Russia. And I said, well, actually, I'm going over there in a couple of weeks. And he said, really? And I said, could I write it, really? And I said that if you hate it, I'll just tear it up and I'll never ask again. And so that was the beginning. And the second big leg from the National Review point of view was when nro, our online, started going. And there was a little, should we say, people weren't. Not everyone was thrilled with the thought of being relegated to the. This mysterious Internet. And I had written a piece which the editor of National Review by then, Rich Lowry, said, yeah, that might be better for the website. So I felt, you know, a little bit disappointed. And the. So I wrote, I went, it. It all went very well. And then Catherine Lopez, who was a Kalo, who was basically in charge, said, that was great, love the piece. What do you want to write about? And I said, well, what can I write about? And she replied, anything. So the door opened. And anyway, by the way, Andrew, that's.
- [05:29]
Andrew Stuttiford
Like my story in reverse. I mean, aside from you coming from a much better background than I ever did, it's basically what do you want to write about? Anything.
- [05:37]
Jeff Blair
Great.
- [05:39]
Guest Speaker
I did write about anything, and they were wonderful. Anyway, I got to know everyone very well. And so one thing went, led to another and I was sort of at the fork of the road and I was going actually to go off in a different direction in finance. And then it was decided that the free markets needed a bit of defending and so I was asked to set up Capital Matters and the way. And that's just me and my colleague Dominic Pinot, who you should all absolutely read. And our sort of mission is we're not sort of party political, really, but it's to defend free markets. And so tariff mania has been consuming us at the moment. And then the other. But I'm also free to go and write for National Review on, you know, I can roam beyond the field of finance. And indeed, the last piece I wrote on music, and I have written a couple, was on our old friends, the first Roxy Music. The first two albums.
- [06:46]
Jeff Blair
Yeah. And that plays into our theme today, which is the life. Not so much the life, I suppose, but the music and career of Brian Eno. It's one of Jeff's bucket list artists to do on the show. He confessed he's a little nervous, wants to make sure we do justice to all the work. So to let him stew on it for a bit longer, we'll turn back to Andrew and allow him to tell us why he loves Brian Eno, how you got into the music, and also why people should care about this stuff we're going to talk about today.
- [07:20]
Guest Speaker
Okay. Well, how I got into the music is I have a very narrowly focused sort of taste of music. I don't have a sort of. There's not a broad spread in. In any way. And I just liked a few people. And one day, you know, this would have been. This would have been 1972. And I was just beginning to sort of look around at the rock world. I mean, you know, I was British. I knew the Beatles and all that. And the. I was at boarding school and beginning to, you know, look at Pink Floyd, people like that. And then one day, some of the people, if you want to reach a certain seniority, you were allowed a record player. And I was wandering down and some. And there was a group of people in one guy's room. And he waved and said, hey, come and join us. I've got this new album. And it was Roxy Music Queen I am.
- [08:23]
Scott Bertram
See, CPL 593 8. See, here she comes.
- [08:29]
Andrew Stuttiford
See what I mean?
- [08:31]
Scott Bertram
CPL 59. Creation. I could talk, talk, talk, talk, talk myself to death.
- [08:52]
Guest Speaker
And I had heard nothing like it. And Shan Arnar, this was, I think, if I got the name right, was. I thought, is this what this is? What is this?
- [09:03]
Andrew Stuttiford
And that was Shannon Slade, currently dominating the charts. And here's Roxy.
- [09:08]
Guest Speaker
Yeah, that's right. And I thought, this is the most extraordinary music. And so I liked the first Album and I liked for your Pleasure. And this is about this time I was beginning to read New Musical Express. The music press was a very big thing in Britain at that time. And I got intrigued by Brian Eno and found that I was liking his electronic noodlings and his additions to the tracks a great deal. And then I was sad when he. I didn't know any background to it, but when he sped off from Roxy Music, I thought, I wonder what he's gonna do? And when his first album, Here Come the Warm jets, when it came out, I bought it and saw there was a bit of saving in those days. And wow, this is wonderful.
- [10:06]
Scott Bertram
Baby's on fire Better throw her in the water look at her laughing like a heifer to the slaughter Babies are fine and all the laughing boys are pinching Waiting for photos oh, the plot is so bewitching Rescuers row, row do your best to change the subject Blow the wind Blow, blow Let some assistance to the object photographer Snip snap Take your time she's only burning this kind of experience is necessary for her learning.
- [11:11]
Guest Speaker
And so he then got added to my rather small canon of people who I listened to, and particularly in the 70s. I bought everything that he came out with and he's remained in my personal canon for. Since, you know, I guess for half a century. And why do I like it so much? I like the cleverness, I think that he has. He has the extraordinary ability to find truly beautiful, to make a beautiful tune. And sometimes even in a song where he's involved either in his own right or producing, sometimes you have a moment of absolute music.
- [12:14]
Scott Bertram
We'll build a bridge across the sea and land See the sky Will die and live again tonight.
- [12:49]
Guest Speaker
And that's really what I value about him. And that's why I think that people should. Should look at him and I think don't be put off by the. There's a certain amount of over intellectualization that goes on with him. And I would recommend starting with the album with the albums from the 70s.
- [13:09]
Andrew Stuttiford
Okay, you know what? I have to pick it up from here because I know Scott will add his vids. He's the noob for me. Brian Eno is one of those, as Scott already pointed out, a bucket list artist for me. One of the people who I have felt most common, the musical bond from my earliest years of being a music fanatic and. And the reason for it is. Is very particular. I've told the story a hundred times. You know, I was just a radio listener the way everybody else in my era was until I guess maybe my high school years. Discover the Beatles. That's what happens to a lot of you. Go down the wormhole and then you become a fanatic. You know, two years onwards, you've run out of Beatles, Rolling Stones, who records to listen to and you're moving onwards and you're trying to find wokcase. So this is the original blast, the big. The big bang of rock music. How did it develop it into what it is I'm hearing now? Brian Eno, to me, for everything that I have come to value about music, that post dates him is the foundation source. He's the tap. And how is it possible? Because Brian Eno himself will confess he's not a musician. He nominally plays, quote unquote keyboards, but he never really played keyboards the way like Brian Ferry in Roxy Music himself played piano. Okay. And actually did it melodically. Brian Eno played textures. He was conceptually interested in the possibilities of music.
- [14:45]
Scott Bertram
Under a tree there is a man who counts his way close.
- [15:15]
Andrew Stuttiford
In another country in what they could represent to you. Intellectual, what they could mean. This is an attitude that so many others afterwards would pick up and run with the post punk band Wire being the clearest example of them all. Just like, you know, music is a skin suit to convey ideas. Nobody ever did it with more integrity, more interest and more empathy than Brian Eno. Because Brian Eno was me. He was the guy I wished I would be. Somebody once said to me in high school, we're walking through tower records. Do you remember Tower Records? CD stores that don't exist anymore. And they were walking through like the racks. And we're like, hey, what do you want to buy? What do you want to buy? What do you want to buy? Somebody says, hey, this album, I hear this is really good. And he picks up another Green World by Brian Eno. That's the first experience I've ever had with any of this music that we'll be talking about. And when I say any of this music, I don't just mean like Brian Eno's music. I mean, I never heard of Roxy Music. I didn't know a thing about King Crimson. I didn't know anything about Robert Fripp, Phil Manzanara. Phil Collins, even was a pop singer. To me, I didn't understand his frog roots. In high school, I only got into Genesis. Frog era Genesis. At the end of my high school years, they became my favorite band. I don't. And you know, of course played or did production work on the first Prague Genesis album I ever experienced, which is the Lamb Lies down on Broadway. I have no way of fully conveying to the people who listen to this show how much Eno, whether I realized it at the time, I grew to realize it very quickly, but lay at the roots of what it is that forever fascinated me about art rock. Precisely because he came to it from a perspective that I did, which is like, I play piano, I play guitar, I sing, and I frankly, you know, back in the day, I used to sing better than any I did any of the other things. But I'd never consider myself a quote, unquote musician. Brian Eno, for all of what he has accomplished, for all of his massive musical achievements, recorded influential otherwise, he still doesn't think of himself as a quote, unquote musician. He's a theorist. And Eno's career is proof of how far you can take just theory to genius.
- [17:55]
Scott Bertram
Then we rested in a desert where the bones were white as teens and we saw St. Elmo's.
- [18:36]
Andrew Stuttiford
Because, as I've spoken already, this is very intellectualized work. I will talk about how many of these albums sound like they were stapled together, like Dr. Frankenstein working on the monster in his lab. That is the genius, the joy of Eno, a non musician, working with the components of music to create his own vision and. And what he came up with sometimes is vastly more compelling to me than anything that, like, you know, a blues rock musician would come up with. I love the Rolling Stones. How could I not love the Rolling Stones? I wrote a book about the Rolling Stones, for crying out loud. Brian Eno did something that the Rolling Stones never could do and could never even hope to overlap with instinct versus theory and theory. At the end of the day, I suppose I'll have to confess, I'm a theory kid. Brian Eno's theory of music was accessible to everyone, whether it's his vocal albums, which, again, just are incredible stew pots of chaos, or his ambient and instrumental music, which is some of the most pacific, soothing and sort of, sort of alchemically, you know, inspirational for creativity music than any writer or thinker could hope for. He worked on conceptual levels in a way that almost no other artist we've ever discussed on political beats intentionally did. This is an episode I'm terrified of doing wrong. Because Eno has meant so much to me. If you understand why I, like anybody from Talk Talk to Radiohead to Echo and the Bunnyman to Arcade Fire, everyone who came after Eno, Talking Heads, for crying out loud. Everyone who came after Eno who was on that same wavelength was directly influenced by this man. You'll notice I didn't even mention the band U2. I've been waiting for this episode for eight years.
- [20:56]
Scott Bertram
Here he comes the boy who tried to vanish to the future of us Is no longer here with his sad blue eyes Here he comes he floated away and as he rose above reason he rose above the clouds he was 7ft 9 here he comes the night is like a glove and he's floating like a dove that catches the wind in the deep blue sky.
- [21:42]
Guest Speaker
Here he.
- [21:43]
Scott Bertram
Comes the boy who tried to vanish to another time Is no longer here with his sad blue eyes Here he comes.
- [22:05]
Jeff Blair
Here he comes I don't have much to add. I'm the guy that's coming in relatively fresh to all, essentially all of this music. And so I let the experts explain a whole lot of what's happening today and try to chime in where needed and where possible to perhaps guide those who are also coming in fresh to Eno's music. The thing is, and this is something that I already knew, but picked up more as I listened through the catalog, first of all, there's a huge length of albums in Eno's career, and I don't know how many Jeff is going to mention or has thoughts on coming in Fresh and Cold. I had a core of, I think, 11 albums, 11 that I focused on to have some thoughts today. But the thing is, in going through those albums, you already have an idea about this, because as Jeff alluded to, if you've been paying attention to the artists we've covered on Political Beats, there's bits and pieces of Eno all throughout, everywhere, whether it's the Roxy Music episode, the David bowie episode, the U2 episode, the talking Heads episode, the Talk Talk episode, and I'm forgetting more, of course. But Eno's work influence, you know, quite literally his work where he's helped with some of those artists, but certainly influence is apparent with all of those artists and many more. And so in digging through, you know, the four vocal albums and some of the more, some of the instrumental albums, the ambient albums that are going to come, Jeff mentioned he's a theorist. And I think that's going to have to come through in some of our discussion, because there's only so much you can say about a 31 minute, you know, ambient song, but you can talk.
- [23:56]
Andrew Stuttiford
About it's the same melody line that is only about 35 minutes seconds long itself.
- [24:01]
Jeff Blair
You could talk about the theory behind it and why it works and why he Wanted to do this and was he successful? And all those questions are also very interesting. Jeff was worried, worried, apologetic in a way. You know this. He said, it's a big ask for you. It's not quite your kind of music, true. But I enjoyed all of it. I really did. There's nothing I have bad words to say about, as you'll soon see. Except, and I'll close with this as we can transition to the actual discussion. I did say this, as you might know, but by my descriptions in past episodes, I do a lot of listening now while on the exercise bike in the basement. And I will say, Brian Eno, pretty much incompatible with an exercise bike in the basement. It's not music made to exercise too. It's music made, as Jeff said, too, to work, to perhaps to clear your mind, to get focused. You could use a little more energy if you're on the exercise bike. So that's perhaps my main critique of the music we're about to hear in today's episode.
- [25:08]
Scott Bertram
In the Dark Shadow, Chance I.
- [25:28]
Guest Speaker
Help.
- [25:29]
Scott Bertram
Believers that guided the signal to the radio. But the words I received ra.
- [25:55]
Guest Speaker
If I could just interrupt a second? Sure, Scott. Jeff, what you said was actually very interesting. I was thinking back to myself and something I once read, interview or a book about, you know, and I'm not quoting this verbatim, but this was when he was talking about his time as, say, in the early Roxy days when he was this. We can discuss it, this curious figure. And he developed this cult following. And I think that when he. Either it was when he went first started going. So when he went solo and he was still, you know, doing tours, he wasn't. Didn't particularly enjoy them, but he was doing them. And someone said, well, what's this like? What's it like? And he said, you know, there's this. And he said, I'm always interested in the. In the people, the people who come and the people who show up towards the, you know, towards the. The end after the gig to say hello and all the rest of it. And a lot of them, it's the usual, you know, it's the rocks, you know. He said, I'm a little bit of a rock star. He didn't put it this modestly, but immortally. But, you know, I have the pop star type thing. But then there's always a couple of people at the back. They're normally at high school or university, quite a lot of them wearing glasses. And I like seeing those people there and I like talking to them.
- [27:18]
Andrew Stuttiford
They're the People who love this music and who are inspired this music. And I have no shame in admitting that I was one of those nerds in a far different era in the. In the mid to late 90s. This was. It was scientist music. This is an out. This is a man who put out an album called before and After Science, which we'll get to and talk about a classic title to explain his concepts as opposed to, you know, the way the Rolling Stones might have titled an album Exile on Main street because they were avoiding tax from England. You know, this is a conceptual artist who, I guess, spoke so much to me, I guess because he came from the same background that I did. And I guess that's how we'll get into sort of the early explanation. Who is Brian Eno? He's just a guy from, like, rural England who came to London at some point, moves to London, and, you know, he's still in his, like, early 20s at that point. He's. He's just a kid. I think he already has, like, one failed marriage behind him, right? And he comes to London and he runs into. Can't remember if it's Brian Ferry or if it's Annie McKay. Okay? Like, he just runs into him, like, on a train platform or something like that. And, like, they have similar, like, avant garde musical instruments and interests. And McKay plays saxophone, you know, plays nothing except tunes and synths. They're like, hey, let's form a band. There comes Brian Ferry. This results in roxy music in 1972. And now we already did our Roxy Music episode with Vince Caruso. And again, I love Roxy so much. I contend, though, that it's always really conceptually been Brian Ferry's band who wrote the music. And this became an argument over time with. With him and Eno, but also sang all the songs, played the piano, the keyboards on the thing. Eno just provided weirdness. And he provided so much weirdness, in fact, that he got attention for himself, aside from all the other star players in that group, like McKay, who played sax, and Phil Manzanaro on guitar, that there was just eventually not enough room in Roxy Music for both Brian Ferry and especially Brian Eno, who had his own ideas about sound and music, sound and vision, which will come back in the later album as we'll talk about. And before we move on to, like, what Brian Eno did after he left Roxy, I first want to ask Andrew, because, man, you were unlike the rest of us. You were there at this time. What do you think about those early Roxy, those first two ones, the self Titled one which to me will forever be defined by the weirdness of songs like if there was something in chance meeting and then for your pleasure which is in a very weird way with all the textures and you know, bizarre sounds that lurk in the backgrounds of that music. Pretty much the climax of Eno within the Roxy Music framework.
- [31:32]
Guest Speaker
And I think there's no. There should be no embarrassment about the. Your. The early nerd days. I mean. So you're speaking to a member of the now the long defunct Sid Barrett Appreciation Society. So there's. I think there's no embarrassment about that Roxy Music. They sort of. There was a haphazard meeting and they. They got together and really Brian, Enos, Brian, you know they'd all had sort of. Not really sort of musical career. You know, a bit of this and a bit of that. And it's important to understand that both Brian Ferry and Brian Eno different spellings were exactly. And they were products of the English art school scene in the 1960s.
- [32:28]
Andrew Stuttiford
Does not exist in America and frankly doesn't even exist in Britain anymore.
- [32:32]
Guest Speaker
Exactly. It's longer of its time and it was. It was immensely creative. I mean the. You know, they blurred and particularly both fairy and. And Eno were lucky in that they operated in a world where the boundary for example between music and painting art was. Have become blurred or they were allowed. They were allowed to do things. I mean there were. Eno ran into some vague problems I think in one of his articles because he really wasn't producing anything visual at all. But it was. It was a sort of free floating sort of thing. And you could.
- [33:15]
Jeff Blair
You.
- [33:15]
Guest Speaker
You could see that in a lot of British music off the time. And so they. The band was. That was. Was formed and this first album, Roxy Music eponymous Roxy Music was as I said to you when I first heard in 1972. I was. And I was young, not at that age. And I was absolutely astounded. It is a.
- [33:44]
Andrew Stuttiford
Hadn't heard anything like that. I've had my experiences like up. This is absolutely new to me and I wish.
- [33:50]
Guest Speaker
I wish I had. Maybe while we talk I'll see if I could find it. They had a guy called Simon Puxley who was there. He was sort of their publicist, for want of a better word. And he wrote this ludicrous over the top and deliberately over the top sleeve notes. Because the whole production of the first again this was new. It was partly possible because Glamrock was getting going. But this was lavish. What do you call it? It wasn't just a Single sleeve. It was a double F. And for that to happen for a sort of. Basically a first album.
- [34:42]
Andrew Stuttiford
Yeah. No words feel banned. Just like, signed on spec. Like they got the money and who.
- [34:46]
Guest Speaker
The hell were these people? And then he. So the whole thing was conceptual. They were. They all wore these. These bizarre clothes which was on the front of the COVID of the album. And I'm going on about this because it does matter, actually. This concept of, you know, this was a total production. If I was Wagner, I'd call it the Gesamtkunstwerk. And they. They wore these weird German.
- [35:17]
Andrew Stuttiford
Yes.
- [35:17]
Guest Speaker
Yeah. These weird spacey outfits. I think I can't find it, actually. Damn it.
- [35:26]
Andrew Stuttiford
No, I remember. Well, Eno on the gatefold sleeve of the debut album is like in this weird blue, like, ostrich feather. Peacock feather outfit that spreads outward. He's done up in full makeup. He's playing for a call. He's playing a guitar for no reason. Because, you know, the joke is they're all guitarists. Even the drummer and the keyboardists are playing guitars. And, you know, he looks really outrageous. He looks nothing like the way you think of the serious theorist Brian Eno to look like.
- [35:55]
Guest Speaker
Oh, no. He.
- [35:56]
Andrew Stuttiford
What I want you to understand is the connection, though, because the glam pretense. The pretense. Not the glam, but the idea of adopting personae and living within different personalities and worlds that will stay with Eno forever. And that's why he was first attracted to the Roxy aesthetic. Even though, you know, eventually Brian and Brian Ferry and Brian Eno found that they couldn't quite coexist.
- [36:22]
Guest Speaker
No. And I. And I think. But it was this fusion of. In his first album, it was the. It was the retro. I think Puxley says in the notes. I can't find the whole. Whole thing here. He does say, are we in. Are we in 1972 or 1982 or 1952? He plays with the sort of. We're not quite sure what time zone we're even in because they deliberately Hark backed the 1950s with some of the songs they. Their style, their dressing star was. Which was extremely distinctive and very mannered. Was a sort of a sort of camp pastiche of the 1950s, which. Not all the. Not all the band were too. Too happy with one. One guy who's the. They had. You don't want to be a bassist with. With Roxy Music. Yeah. No, no. That's a drama. The. The. The grandson and. And Paul Thompson, the drummer, was basically a guy. I think he worked in construction or Something like that. So he looked a little uncomfortable in this. This gear. But I think that they did, if I remember right, they gave the credit to. On the credits, they unusually listed sort of either fashion or style or something like that. No one had done that before. And everything was new. So you had this music which sort of was 1950s look back, but was also extremely futuristic. It was going to places where music really had not gone. And there were bits of pastiche and there were different. There were different songs and there was a lot of electronic stuff which was still fairly new. And especially when combined with a rock song.
- [38:42]
Scott Bertram
Without your feet and.
- [39:07]
Guest Speaker
And things were happening in these songs. And the first album, which were utterly unexpected. And this mixture, this futurism plus this nostalgia plus this 50s, plus these slower songs and the sort of random words, the. There's a chorus in one which is basically based just on the. On the number plate and remake remodel, which is, if you're going to start.
- [39:33]
Andrew Stuttiford
Anywhere, CPA 599, that's the one.
- [39:37]
Guest Speaker
And it was a number plate off a some girl.
- [39:44]
Andrew Stuttiford
Super hot.
- [39:46]
Guest Speaker
And the woman on the COVID who is in a retro 50s style with, ironically, a few gold albums of which they'd had none. They hadn't sold any albums. She was later involved with Ferry, I think, but later married and is still married, as far as I know, to Mick Jagger's brother.
- [40:08]
Andrew Stuttiford
So here's. Here's the thing, though, Andrew. So you see those 50 tribute 50s tributes to meet two HB is the one that will, like, nails it to Humphrey Bogart, right? And that has that weird, like, flute and Sax break with McKay, right? Beautiful song. And then on for your Pleasure, the second album, which is sort of essentializes this, you get the weird textures, you sort of keyboard textures that Eno puts on a song like for your pleasure, the title track, which is where it just fades off in his weird echo, like. And then I think of the Bogus man, which is like the most controversial song on that record. A lot of people hate it.
- [40:47]
Guest Speaker
I love it.
- [40:48]
Andrew Stuttiford
You know, panting like it sounds like can. Okay, but which of these two band members had the most affiliation with a group like Can? Was it Brian Ferry? No, it was Brian Eno. And when Brian Eno finally decides, okay, there isn't enough room in this band for the both of us in Roxy Music, his. It's funny, he'd already been making his way out of the group. And of course, the thing that matters most for this episode is that he met a guy who would end up becoming One of his most important and greatest collaborators, Robert Fripper. Hey, everybody who listens to political beats, You've heard me mention Robert Fripp approximately a thousand times now, not only in our King Crimson episode, but in every single other context I can find a reason to cram his guitar work into. He's my favorite guitarist of all time. At this point, he had not hit his stride. He was actually struggling through, like, a fallow period with the band King Crimson. He runs into another arty weirdo like Brian Eno. Brian, you know, can't play anything. He does textures, he does loops and synthesizers. He's not a virtuoso. He's not necessarily a guy you would think of as a bandmate, even, really. Which is why his presence in Roxy was always somewhat funny. But what he does. Yeah, Andrew.
- [42:12]
Guest Speaker
Yeah, it wasn't funny. And what. What. What happened. Two. Two things that. That happened was that there was a personal rivalry between Ferry and Nina, who are good, good friends these days.
- [42:24]
Andrew Stuttiford
Right, right.
- [42:25]
Jeff Blair
They've gotten over it since then.
- [42:27]
Guest Speaker
They were also great rivals with the ladies, which complicated thing, but basically what you had, and I am. I can remember this, is there was basically factions formed within the. The Roxy Music genardi. And so apparently I never went to a concert, sadly, but apparently there'd be one where there'd be people for cheering for Eno and others cheering for Ferry and for the band members, putting. Ferry obviously wanted to take the band slowly in the direction to which it got.
- [43:02]
Andrew Stuttiford
You're a sophisticated direction.
- [43:04]
Guest Speaker
Yeah. But also, I read an interview years ago with Phil Manza. I think it was with Phil Manzanara. Logically, it is Phil Manzanera and who was a. Who was a friend of Nino and worked and collaborated with him subsequently. After the.
- [43:19]
Andrew Stuttiford
The break, he's all over these albums.
- [43:21]
Guest Speaker
Yeah, yeah. And he says, yeah, it was a bit, you know, and he's obviously still very friendly. But Ferry. And he says. He said, yeah, it was some. You know, I like working with Brian. It was great. It was great. And it was amazing what he did. But I play things on my guitar and it's something completely different to what I'd actually played would suddenly appear. So it was a bit difficult, he said live, because you thought you were playing and you would end up hearing something completely different. And he said that took a little bit of adjustments. And what people noticed about this Roxy Music Part one, if you like, was firstly and particularly for your pleasure, which Fairey himself has said he thinks is there their best album. Well, I've Seen different views. But.
- [44:11]
Andrew Stuttiford
But meanwhile, Eno actually thinks Stranded, which is the one after he left, which I love. Very generous of both.
- [44:19]
Guest Speaker
But it was taking them into. If. If, if, if. The first album was this. Just what's lying on the floor of rock and roll. Let's pick it up and then just throw it in the air. Throw in electronics, see what happens. The second one was more stylish, more polished, but it was also veering in an experimental direction. And sometimes within the same song, you would have elements that were conventional songs with. I mean, Bogus band begins normally enough.
- [44:53]
Andrew Stuttiford
Editions of you. Editions of you begins with a really great little clever, like Brian Ferry keyboard line. And then all of a sudden Eno comes in with a quote unquote keyboard solo that is just noises. It's that notes. That's. That's.
- [45:57]
Guest Speaker
And that was the song. I took my. We call them A levels in England, the exams you take when you're leaving high school. And I took them in the summer of 1974. And that before I went off to the exams. That was always my. I don't know what you call it, my fight song. The last thing I played. So this. This goes back for me for. For a very long way. Anyway, so the second album, just before we get into Eno himself, the. You could see it was a little bit straining at the. To fit these two presences in because of what he was. What Eno was doing to the song, obviously with Ferris approval or acquiescence. But the. These extraordinary bursts like Jeff has just described, or you're getting into these long, long stuff which people hadn't liked Bogus man. Or for your pleasure. They haven't heard this repetition, this. This sort of. I don't know what, you know, very modern type of music. If you like a classic modern type of music. And then you would have songs that began on one note. I mean, Rocksho were famous for this, for how the. How their song was kept moving in different directions.
- [47:13]
Andrew Stuttiford
If there is something begins with one thing and it ends with like one bizarre plea for mashing potatoes by the score.
- [47:20]
Guest Speaker
Exactly, exactly. You're so good on the words. And you should listen some of the live versions. One of their songs is called Chance Meeting, which is fundamentally inspired by.
- [47:33]
Andrew Stuttiford
That's my online username during the 2010s. Yeah, I like that. I love that song.
- [47:38]
Guest Speaker
I love that song. But this is the live version on the reissue of Roxy Music that is staggering. And Eno goes wild there. And that's inspired by 1940s British movie and the Brief Encounter. And so what happens with in every Dream Home Heartaches, which is. Which is, I think, one of their masterpieces. The. It begins perfectly well. It's foreboding. It's foreboding and very atmospheric. Picture of ennui is painted. And again, I always think these, these, these are pictures in some ways. And then suddenly everything just explodes.
- [48:23]
Andrew Stuttiford
Well, no, no, no. Everything doesn't just explode, Andrew. It slowly progresses. He slowly lets you in on the insanity of this premise. Remember, in every Dream Home, our heartache begins with like, oh, I'm disillusioned, I'm sad, my wife doesn't love me, I'm in a loveless marriage. I sit out here in my swimming pool in my big mans, and I have nothing to dream of. But then I look into the pool and I see my inflatable doll. Inflatable doll Lover ungrateful I blew up your body.
- [49:06]
Guest Speaker
But you blew.
- [49:32]
Andrew Stuttiford
Inflatable My.
- [49:33]
Guest Speaker
Inflatable darling My inflatable darling Inflatable darling.
- [49:37]
Jeff Blair
I blew you up but you blew.
- [49:39]
Andrew Stuttiford
My mind and you do that. Well, the whole point is it's like it turns from seriousness until a complete joke. A joke so good that the police actually had to reclaim it later for Be My girl Sally Won't you be my girl Won't you be my girl? It's at the end of out, their first album, Outlando's De More, where it's a song about an inflatable blowup doll. Nobody could leave this premise alone once Roxy Music came up with it. But again, is a premise that I don't know. Lyrically, it's got a fairy credit, so it's got to come from him musically, just in terms of the swirling way the guitarist come back in at the end, like, you know, dream home, heartache. And of course, the comedy of it is like your dream home heartache is that you've fallen in love with your inflatable doll. But this is the sonic world that Eno brings to Roxy before he splits.
- [50:37]
Jeff Blair
But.
- [50:37]
Andrew Stuttiford
And here's the thing that fascinates me. Brian Eno and Brian Ferry are two different things. When. When Eno leaves Roxy, we get stranded. I love that album. I actually love country life. I love love Siren Roxy Music. Fantastic group. When Eno finally parts out his first solo record, it's actually something he did already. And this is the. The weirdest part about Brian Eno's solo career is that it begins on what will end up being our kind of downbeat note, which is instrumental in ambient music, his first ever Experiment sets the background really, in a way that would only bloom later for everything that comes next. And this is his encounter with Robert Fripp. As I mentioned earlier, Fripp of King Crimson is working with the Islands era band. Not thrilled with them. He's working up a new group that is, in my opinion at least, going to end up becoming the greatest version of King Crimson to ever exist. The 1972-74 band. But in the meantime, he meets up with this fellow weirdo. Crip's got ideas about guitar, he has spiritual ideas. And in fact, he's going into weird philosophical wormholes and rabbit holes at this point. He meets up with Eno, who has ideas about intellectual concepts. Can't play, but he knows how to work with technology. They come up with a record that at its time came out to 0 applause. 0 plays 0 notice, but no Pussy Footing. This puts us in September of 1972. Came out in, I think, early 73. This is a quote Frip in Eno's solo album that is just two sides. First sign is Robert Fripper just soloing, endlessly sampled, looped, manipulated, tweaked, endlessly doing what I have always referred to as essentially whale song. It's a whale song record. And then the second, the second side of it is the tastefully named Swastika Girls. Swastika Girls. Not a Nazi reference, per se. It's just more like Eno working with his sort of repeated synthesizer keyboard loops. This is purely experimental music. It's the weirdest way I think I've ever just like begun a Political Beats episode on the career of an artist. Because, you know, what is this? There's no words. There's nothing. There are just side one, side two. I will confess to you I'm fascinated by no Pussy Footing. Not just because I love Frip, not just because. Because I love Eno, but because this is the foundation stone for both of their careers. And even in these next few albums, which we'll spend a lot time on, you see where everything these people were interested in musically starts. The seeds are planted on that record. Just again, Robert Fripp playing whale song in a room full of mirrors. I cannot possibly explain to you how much no Pussy Footing as a record meant to me when I discovered it in high school. Because There Are no Words. It's just a lot of loping and mooing. But for experimental loping and mooing, my good Lord God, this is one of my favorite records of all time.
- [54:57]
Guest Speaker
It took me, I have to say, I Was a. I was a little surprised when I got it. And I. And how late.
- [55:07]
Andrew Stuttiford
How late into. Into, like, the 70s did you figure this one out?
- [55:11]
Guest Speaker
I got. I. I think I got it after I had bought Here Come. Here Come the Warp Jets. So I bought it because I think that that. That had wowed me so much. And there was only one other Reno record available. And should we say there was a certain amount of irritation when I read it.
- [55:29]
Andrew Stuttiford
You're like, where the hooks, Right?
- [55:30]
Guest Speaker
Yeah. Where the hooks. I don't think metal. Maybe metal machine music had come out in Lou Reeds.
- [55:36]
Andrew Stuttiford
Oh, God. Metal machine music is legitimately garbage. That's like the. I've had so many friends compare these two records.
- [55:42]
Guest Speaker
Oh, no, no, no. I think they're totally different.
- [55:44]
Andrew Stuttiford
Yeah, Yeah, I know, because, like, you can't listen to that record. That record is intentionally like kind of an Fu to the public, whereas no Pussy Footing. I mean, I love this record. I legitimately have listened to it a hundred times.
- [55:57]
Jeff Blair
That's not till. That's not till July 75, by the way. So a few years off.
- [56:01]
Andrew Stuttiford
There you go.
- [56:01]
Guest Speaker
Yeah, thank you. But there's a precursor. Just as I only discovered this in preparing for. For this session is that which of which I was completely. I knew that he was messing around, art school, blah, blah, blah. But there is a recording. There's a film, you know, an arty little film. Basically, it's. It's footage of a horse sort of just doing this thing messed with. And Eno was asked to write the music. And I don't know the year, but let us say, for the sake of argument is 70. 70 or 71. It's pre Roxy Music and it's called Berlin Horse. And you can find it to the joy. The joys of the Internet. You can find it on YouTube. It's pretty good. And it clearly signals some of the. Some of the. More the abstract direction in which Eno's music was going to go. And it's clearly something that meant something too Eno, because there is a Frippanino live album in. I think it was recorded in Paris that came out in 1975. And the COVID for that is a. Still messed around with, but it's still from Berlin. Berlin Horse. But no, no Pussy Footing was. I don't know if it sold particularly well in the uk, but I. I certainly remember that there was a certain amount of surprise. And it's. It's taken years for it. You see, I'm not particularly a sort of King Crimson guy, but the The. The. It's. It's grown on me over the years. The. I actually perhaps prefer the. I hate to say the Swastika Girls. The explanation of which I think they found. He found some sort of poster or something like that, which is what it's named after.
- [57:55]
Andrew Stuttiford
1973, with British memories of World War II still fresh. I liked it.
- [58:00]
Jeff Blair
Yeah.
- [58:01]
Guest Speaker
It was not. It was. It was.
- [58:02]
Jeff Blair
It was.
- [58:02]
Guest Speaker
It was a gesture.
- [58:03]
Andrew Stuttiford
It was semi punk. Semi punk. Back in the day. Yeah.
- [58:36]
Guest Speaker
So anyway, and then. And then, of course, we get to the Warm jets.
- [58:39]
Andrew Stuttiford
And now. Okay, so that's the thing. Okay. So you discover this after Here Come the Warm Jets. Now Here come the Warm Jets. I think of 73. I don't know if it came out in 74 or not. I can't care. This is a record that rearranged my brain. And I will say that I came to it after Another Green World. Another Green World was the first, as I said earlier, some friends said, buy this.
- [59:03]
Guest Speaker
I was like, sorry, 2-74. 2-74-74. Just check.
- [59:06]
Andrew Stuttiford
Right. So Another Green World, you know. My friend said, get that. It's nice. And I thought, well, this is interesting. This is peaceful. I did not appreciate what it was about until much later in my life. The next record I bought by Brian Eno was this one, Here Come the Warm jets, with him looking like a madman, posing in a portrait on, like, you know, some British room, bedsit room, you know, there's wilted flowers. Everything looks slightly insane. And that is the best way I can describe this album and its effect on me. I mean, it is the highest compliment I can possibly pay to hear Come the Warm Jets. That upon hearing it, it may well have slightly deranged me as well. And it. And I've never gotten better. I've never been cured since hearing the weirdness of this album as a rush. As a jet rush. And unfortunately, I know what Here Come the Warm jets might refer to. It wasn't that this thing is, as I said in my intro, this is Frankenstein, Dr. Frankenstein in his lab. He does not know the meaning of life or the essence of life. He is but a scientist. He has only been able to outwardly, externally understand how these things go. In fact, his understanding of music is perhaps akin to Cargo cult. Silent. A cargo cult, you know, do you remember these? In the. The. The Western Pacific during World War II, where the natives didn't understand why the planes kept landing and delivering supplies, but they would erect fake runways long after they'd gone. Just hopes that the magic planes would come back. Brian Eno makes music on this record like a cargo cult. None of this should work. It's all stapled together from my component parts. About a guy who heard about music, never bothered to learn an instrument, never bothered to learn a conceit, and just said, hey, I have a brain and I have some ambition. What can I come up with? And who are my friends? They came up with one of the most fascinating records I've ever heard in my life. Here Come the Warm jets is the sort of beginning of Brian Eno's solo career. And it's almost a shame that he never would return quite to this style of music again. But I could argue it's the capstone as well. This is music that I waited until I was at 16 or 17 year olds to hear. And once I heard it, I knew this was the kind of music I would forever identify with. And I'm very lucky that a lot of other people who created bands heard that album and heard the same thing. Here Come the Warm jets is the beginning of Eno and boy, it's the beginning. Why I have been forever obsessed with his art.
- [62:32]
Scott Bertram
The weather feels so, so much to say oh, what could be my destiny that I've already made? Why have I.
- [63:11]
Andrew Stuttiford
Actually, I want to ask Scott, because this guy has never heard any of this crap before in his life. What are your first impressions on one of the weirdest albums I've ever asked you to just embrace wholeheartedly?
- [63:24]
Scott Bertram
I try to think about.
- [64:08]
Jeff Blair
Well, I've heard a few things because we've included a few cuts on various shows. On the Patreon side, I keep finding.
- [64:14]
Andrew Stuttiford
A reason to mention it.
- [64:15]
Jeff Blair
Yes, not the very first time. For a few of these songs, I would begin by underlining the point you make that if you were to explain this, no one would think it would work. If you were to explain these songs, it must sound terrible, it must sound like garbage. Even to the design where Eno invites musical musicians based on his idea that they would not play well together, that they would be musically incompatible. The lyrics here and the lyrics stapling.
- [64:51]
Andrew Stuttiford
Vulgar staple gunning of music together.
- [64:53]
Jeff Blair
That's what I love about it.
- [64:55]
Guest Speaker
Remember, this was the guy who was also involved. One of his side projects at around this time was something called the Portsmouth Symphonia.
- [65:04]
Andrew Stuttiford
I was telling Scott about this. This will come up on Taking Tiger Mountain, in fact.
- [65:09]
Guest Speaker
And that was an orchestra difficult to find these days, but you can find it on YouTube. Basically. You didn't really have to play the your instruments.
- [65:22]
Andrew Stuttiford
No, no, no, no. No, no. The specific requirement is that you didn't know how to play your instruments. If you got too good, you're out. Because the whole point was amateurism.
- [65:34]
Guest Speaker
And the Sprouse. And the Sprouse family sued, apparently, over their rendering of also, you know, the 2001 music. Also sprach Sarasota.
- [65:45]
Andrew Stuttiford
So bad.
- [66:02]
Guest Speaker
It's so bad. So bad.
- [66:04]
Andrew Stuttiford
And.
- [66:05]
Guest Speaker
And. But I. I recommend if you choose, one William Tell Overture.
- [66:20]
Andrew Stuttiford
So.
- [66:20]
Jeff Blair
And even the lyrics here, the lyrics on all of Ito's lyric albums, the four of them, the lyrics don't necessarily mean anything at all. He would. He would play backing tracks. He'd sort of mumble to himself, find some nonsense and form those into actual words. How the words fit in the music was far more important than what the lyrics actually said. This is not the worst entry point in the world because there is more than a hint of Roxy Music that still remains. And there are Rocketsy Music contributors here. Manzanara plays on three tracks. McKay plays on a couple tracks, and Robert Fripp's here on a couple tracks as well. And it's not the most accessible thing in the world, but it also won't turn off a new listener immediately. Right. And it doesn't take much to sort of understand and enjoy what Eno's doing on Here Come the Warm Jets. It's this amalgam of art pop and some. Some glam and. And then the total and intense weirdness that he brings from the very first song, which has this sort of, you know, sideways guitar that Manzanara helped to co write. I think it's one of the more, you know, Roxy Music feel type songs on the album and probably in his solo career, it's guitar as if it.
- [67:42]
Andrew Stuttiford
Were played by a person who never had picked up a guitar. Yeah, well, even the solo everything on the album sounds like it's being played by the Portsmouth Symphonia. Say it's just like everyone's an amateur, but yet for some reason, the music that's coming out of it works. It shouldn't work. It should not work, but it works.
- [69:04]
Jeff Blair
Here's how I describe this later on in the album, which goes to the point, Jeff, on Driving Me Backwards, which is a song I really like on this. I love that song on this album. I describe it by saying it's as if you picked up a Beatles song and you dropped it on the floor on, like a concrete floor. And you pick it up and it's sort of like twisted and the speaker's bent and it doesn't quite sound right, but it still maintains that original sort of structure of being a pop song. But nothing sounds like it's supposed to sound. It's like a bizarro McCartney composition in some way. It just doesn't sound the way you expect it to. Even though there are remnants of the thing that. That. That you remember later on on Dead Things Don't Talk.
- [69:50]
Andrew Stuttiford
No. Oh, no.
- [69:51]
Jeff Blair
Yeah, well, that. Right. I think that there's a very, like, Admiral Halsey McCartney vibe on that track, but again, in a completely.
- [69:58]
Andrew Stuttiford
Oh, yeah, the children's rhyme. Oh, naughty, naughty. Oh, cheeky, sneaky. It feels very childhood. Like he's pulling out of, like, whatever he ran around with with his friends and when he was five years old.
- [70:09]
Jeff Blair
Yeah. Yes, yes. Oh, perfect masters they thrive on disasters they all look so harmless. And then on that last track, the title track, Here Come the Warm jets, just Jeff alluded to the title and what it might mean. I think Eno himself has said. What it means is this guitar sound that you kind of get here and continues on the next album. Certainly the warm jet sound like this low, fuzzed out sound of the guitar that is very heavy on Warm Jets. In Warm jets, the construction is so unorthodox and strange. You have this melody line on bass and guitar at the beginning. And then, like, out of nowhere, it's accompanied by what is like a seemingly nonsensical percussion track from a different song altogether. And then they slowly merge and it shouldn't work at all because they don't sound anything alike. But then it does that. It fits. Somehow it all comes together.
- [71:51]
Andrew Stuttiford
There's that moment right there in the middle of the song where you're like, wait a second. There's two rhythm tracks playing simultaneously, and they're not in sync with one another. And you're like, what's going on? And then you realize, oh, wait, he meant to do that.
- [72:03]
Jeff Blair
Yeah.
- [72:03]
Andrew Stuttiford
And it comes together.
- [72:47]
Jeff Blair
I'm just saying.
- [72:48]
Andrew Stuttiford
Yeah.
- [72:48]
Jeff Blair
Just to close listening to this for the first time. The second time is the realization that all these pieces that have no rational reason to exist together actually do in the mind and construction of Eno. And seeing those things come together, that's one of the highlights of experiencing Here Come the Warm Jets.
- [73:11]
Andrew Stuttiford
Let me, like, Blank Frank, be the messenger of your doom and your destruction. By the way, just to point out, that's the one Blank Frank interrupts this wonderful little leisurely instrumental, like, interlude called On Some Faraway beach, which reminds me, I think almost intentionally of let's Go Away For a While. By the Beach Boys. Similar vibe, right? We're on some far away beach and there's these moaning voices going, ah, ah, ah. Brian sings a quick lyric that no one remembers. And then all of a sudden, cut blank. Frank is the messenger of your. Your destruction. And then what proceeds after that is a sonic experience that I'm not capable of rendering with my voice.
- [73:56]
Scott Bertram
Frank is the messenger of your doom and your destruction. Jesse is the one who will set you up as nice. Is the one who will look at you sideways.
- [74:33]
Guest Speaker
I just think there's a machine gun. I just think it's a musical machine gun.
- [74:36]
Andrew Stuttiford
Exactly. A musical machine gun where they're actually shooting the tape machine where this is going. Everything's vibrating, shaking. And this is pure chaos. And then it goes into the sort of calmness of oh, naughty, naughty. Oh, cheeky, cheeky dead fangs. Don't talk. Oh, no. Oh, no. What is that? This is not even supposed to be, is it? It's some sort of weird crime story. It is an art rock piece in its purest form. A cure its egg with no other reason to exist than the music itself. And then maybe to lead into. Some of them are old.
- [75:10]
Guest Speaker
And I just interrupted. It had one other. It had one other. It was also a little bit of a jibe at Fairy. Listen to the way he sings it.
- [75:25]
Andrew Stuttiford
Oh, you headless chicken. Can those poor teeth take so much kicking.
- [75:36]
Scott Bertram
You're always so charming as you peck.
- [75:41]
Andrew Stuttiford
Your way up there.
- [75:46]
Scott Bertram
And these things don't dress too well. No discrimination. Be a zombie all the time.
- [76:09]
Guest Speaker
And that is a sort of. A sort of imitation of the way that fairies sings, which I. Which I think he is now. I think that he has now acknowledged it and that was the case. And you know, Roxy Music then replied with Fairy replied I think probably with Casanova on. But anyway, you're going, Yes, I interrupt you then.
- [76:36]
Andrew Stuttiford
I mean, there's no reason to apologize. These songs all have their own conceptual reasons. And maybe inside jokes.
- [76:45]
Guest Speaker
Oh, there are a lot of. There are a lot of inside jokes floating around. A lot of, you know, there's a lot of, you know, he writes or he thinks he pulls bits and pieces on some faraway beach. I mean, he was brought up and in the east, the coastal east of England where I'm from. The southern half rather than the northern half. And that came from a dream. And dreams actually do feature. He thinks of or says where the idea came from was a dream. But he's a guy from the coast and it's very interesting to see how often there is watery and nautical themes that run through his. Run through his music.
- [78:00]
Andrew Stuttiford
But the thing is. And then there are those. These weirdly like well scripted songs that come in between all of the sort of ad hoc avant garde cut and paste Barosian nonsense. Have you ever listened to the words? As Cindy tells me, that's that that is actually like a prescription of like what, second wave feminism right there in song. Cindy tells me the rich girls are weeping Cindy tells me they've given up their sleeping alone and now they're so confused by their new freedoms Cindy tells me they're selling off their maisonettes Left their hot points to rust in the kitchenettes and they're saving their labor for insane reading and she tells me they're.
- [78:41]
Scott Bertram
Selling out their maisonettes left the hot points to rust in the kitchenettes and they're selling saving their labor for insane reading Some of them lose and some of them lose but that's what they want and that's what they choose.
- [79:33]
Guest Speaker
It's astounding. And you do. And you see, of course he was deeply. He grew up and suffered this distance, this quiet place. And they had an American base, as I recall. We certainly did, where I was nearby. But he was obsessed with Americana. He liked Phil Spector and you could hear that in Cindy tells Me, I think. But some of them, you do get these. What confuses it is amid the chaos and then there's a remarkable song called Some of Them Are Old, which is the first or for I think almost the Brian, you know, and I'm not the person coined as the Brian, you know, hymns, almost hymnal. But in the middle of it is an extraordinary piece of sly guitar work.
- [80:27]
Andrew Stuttiford
It's almost Hawaiian, right?
- [80:29]
Guest Speaker
Yes.
- [80:32]
Andrew Stuttiford
Feels like it to me. I don't know. I don't know what the intended affect is, but it's just like a weird interlude.
- [80:38]
Guest Speaker
But it is so beautiful. And it is done by a man called Lloyd Watson, who I have searched see who recorded anything else over the years. Not as far as I could confine. Maybe a lister can find something. And he was a just a pro musician, not famous, not nothing. And he was a friend of Eno's and you know, all the non musicians goes out of the window and you have the supreme beautiful.
- [82:08]
Scott Bertram
Remember.
- [82:12]
Andrew Stuttiford
And believe me, that's going to come up very soon. Scott, before we move on to, you know, Chinese strategy, do you have anything left to say about one of the albums that I just. I can't emphasize enough? This was a miracle to me to hear here from the warm jets When I was a kid, this was an album where I was like, well, I guess anything is truly possible. If this impossible album could exist, this guy managed to do it. Well, why can't any of us?
- [82:41]
Jeff Blair
One of the only notes I have remaining is on Baby's on Fire, which is one that people might know if they know anything, I guess. And it's what I said. Lyrics don't matter, but there is somewhat of a story shaping in Babies on Fire. And it's a weird one, right? They said you were hot stuff and that's what baby's been reduced to. And reduced to. Baby's on fire. And all instruments agree that the temperature is rising. And any idiot would know that. And it's a fun song. There's a lot of great frip guitar work on it. But it reminded me this is where I add things, where I can ever hear that Garry Shandling bit. He says, I met a girl at a barbecue Very pretty, a blonde, I think he said, I don't know, her hair was on fire. All she talked about was herself. You know, those kind of girls. I'm hot, I'm on fire. Me, me, me. Help me. Put me out. Come on. Can we talk about me just a little bit? That just reminded me of the Shandling bit because it's the one lyric on Here Comes the Warm jets that sort of is very apparent to even those who are not paying much attention to.
- [84:33]
Andrew Stuttiford
It demands your attention.
- [84:36]
Guest Speaker
I can't miss it because it's always the song that people sort of talk about he play. You know, he frequently played it. And in a way this album I think is. We'll get to the Taking Tiger Mountain in a second. But I think that he did a two part farewell to Roxy Music, if you like. And there are some ways that I see this as in an alternate universe. It's the third Roxy Music album in some way days. The other half of the other half, you know, separated birth. Well, is stranded. And you put them together and you have an idea of maybe this is what a third with Eno. Brian. Brian Eno. Roxy Music by. Sounded like you put the two together and.
- [85:33]
Andrew Stuttiford
And that. I'm sorry, what were you going to say?
- [85:35]
Guest Speaker
Yeah, yeah. And Baby's on Fire though, was. I mean, I think it's absolutely wonderful. The lyrics are. Are funny, darkly funny. There's a lot of dark humor. All the babies on fire all the laughing boys are bitching Waiting for photos oh, the plot is so bewitching and. But it was also a showstopper. This was this Was Eno still being a bit of a rock star. And that was great.
- [86:08]
Scott Bertram
Very clever. With my laptop. Making their fortunes selling second hand tobacco. What dancers at Chico. And when the clients are evicted, em freezing and trades and pockets all at his collection.
- [86:53]
Andrew Stuttiford
Okay. And one of the reasons why Here Come the Warm jets is so fascinating is that it is, as Andrew points out, the sort of split point where you can see where an alternate future of Roxy Music might have happened. And then you know what the real future of Roxy Music actually is. And then you see the real future of Brian Eno. And the Brian Eno future does not really tend towards those explosive, weird, avant garde jagged edges. Even though that's always been in his mind. We're going to trend ever further, often into conceptual stuff stuff. And the first evidence of that comes with his follow up. Remember, at this point, Brian Eno still thought of as sort of a solo pop star gone gone rogue from Roxy Music, but in that same art rock, you know, strategy, Griffey. And then he comes out with Taking Tiger Mountain by Strategy, which in theory is named after some old Chinese text about military strategy. It doesn't matter. There are a bunch of songs here themed about travel and China and also airplanes collapsing. This is a very bright Eno concept. It's. Well, none of it matters. This is a sonic conceit as a record. And as such, I will say of the four sort of lyrical albums that Eno did during the 70s, this was the one that took the longest to grow on me. This was the one that I think has the most slow moving songs, the most purely conceptually, as opposed to musically based ideas. There's a song here where there's an entire chorus of Typewriters, which is literally Chinese ladies tapping on typewriters. You have to really be tuned into what's going on in the song to understand China, my China. That's another point about this. This album is that these songs will float into to one another. I think that there are very few people who have not, like Me spent their entire lives focusing on a song like Third uncle or Mother Whale Eyeless. The titles themselves suggest the sort of the meaninglessness of the concepts. This is musical. This is the point where Eno really decides that the concepts are going to overtake any idea he ever had or hoped of being a pop star. He stops touring after this, more or less. That's also telling. I think there was an abortive tour for Taking Tiger Mountain by strategy. And he got in an accident. He got sick. Whatever happened, he's like you know what? There's no need for me to do this. I realize I'm a studio bound man. I understand. With Taking Tiger Mountain, I mean, I think the best way you can conceptualize the greatness of this album is to start with its opening track. Burning Airlines give you so much more. Delta Airlines gives you so much more. What was the airline that gave you so much more? I don't even remember. Remember what the ad slogan was in the 70s? Was it like United or was it America?
- [90:54]
Guest Speaker
It doesn't. It is. It was apparently one airline slogan.
- [91:00]
Andrew Stuttiford
Somebody's airlines give you so much more. So for Brian, you know, it's Burning Airlines that are flying into the ground.
- [91:07]
Scott Bertram
How does she intend to live when she's in Frog Cafe? I somehow can't imagine her just planting rice all day. Maybe she will do a bit of spying with microcambros hidden in her hair.
- [91:51]
Andrew Stuttiford
A long hallowed tradition among British rock musicians. By the way, there are a lot of air crash songs in this, this discography. But every time Eno just says, you know, when I got to China, and you have these long, slow keyboard developments that bring you into a different way that he'll be writing music from this point onward. And I know Taking Tigers. Scott, I asked you to listen to this one like five times because I knew it would take you longer to get it than any of the other ones that he did. I'd be interested in seeing whether you ever came around.
- [92:26]
Jeff Blair
Yes. Although what I would say about Taking Tiger Mountain is I think that the back half is so much more interesting than the first half. The first half is very good. And the first half has its share of, you know, sort of Eno things like you mentioned, like mother Whale Eyeless is such a fun song with Phil Collins playing drums. But the second half, like, when you get. Because, like put a straw on your baby, I think is. I think that might be the first song of the second half of the record. That's one. The one where you have that group playing that the untrained musicians on classical instruments trying to. Trying to make their way through. And it begins as something as. Right. It begins as a lullaby, begins as a nursery rhyme. And then you hear the cacophony of these people who don't know how to play violins and cellos. And it comes back and it gets really weird where there's an orchard where people are turned into crows. And then by the third verse, there are body parts around the house. A brain on the table, A heart in the chair affair. It's a Family affair as we talk about influence. I kept pinging Jeff with all these ideas once I started really digging in. And there's a band called Sparkle Horse, Mark Linkus, and Man, I can really hear a lot of Eno's ideas being transferred forward into the work that Linkus and Sparklehorse did. And of all the songs to sort of trigger that in my mind, it was this one. It was this weird, particular one that said, oh, yeah, Mark Link is probably an Eno kind of guy.
- [94:02]
Scott Bertram
There's a place in the orchard where no one dare go the last one who went there turned into a crowd There's a heart in the chair.
- [94:52]
Jeff Blair
But the more you get through the second half, I think that Jeff mentioned China, My China, which has the. The typewriter solo and this sort of chicka chicka scratch guitar that helps set the rhythm of that tune. That's a really interesting song. The title track, Taking Tiger Mountain at the end. My point on this, again, I had.
- [95:13]
Andrew Stuttiford
Shared with Jeff, that's the future for you.
- [95:15]
Jeff Blair
That's the future. So this, to me, at this point in his career, is the ultimate example, that song of lyrics not being anything more than another instrument to use. How can he work with the lyrics and just place them in the mix with all the other instruments and whatever is happening? The lyrics don't matter. The words don't matter. How do they make you feel? How do they fit within the confines of the song? Taking Tiger just has this sort of slow, low chant in the mix amongst everything else going on. And to me, that's such a clear indication of what he was thinking and where he'd be going next in his career.
- [96:06]
Scott Bertram
Oh, how we climb to.
- [96:39]
Guest Speaker
Yes. And I think the whole question of lyrics is. Is. Is a. Is an interesting one because I. The. The he very. He says repeatedly. I. I think he thinks he thought about his lyrics more than he gives away, but they were spontaneous.
- [96:55]
Andrew Stuttiford
Yeah, I agree, too.
- [96:55]
Guest Speaker
Yeah. And they. But they were. In a way, the. The singing of the words was a. The singing was a musical instrument, basically.
- [97:07]
Andrew Stuttiford
Also that he was inspired to write the lyrics from the textures of the music. The music would suggest, oh, well, this sounds Chinese. Or you can definitely get that off of Burning Airlines. Right? That little. You have a little Ching Chong thing going there. Of course. Well, you're gonna. You're gonna find yourself thinking about themes. And that's the way Eno, again, as a non musician, he's just like, well, I'm just gonna work from the ground up. What do I hear when I think of this? This is gonna govern everything he does. Whether you realize you're not friends, I guarantee you I will explain to you how this approach governs what he does from the rest of his career onwards. The title, the idea will emerge from the texture, emerge from the music.
- [97:56]
Guest Speaker
Yes.
- [97:56]
Andrew Stuttiford
And far too few people do this. And I think it's so well executed.
- [98:01]
Guest Speaker
And in a way, he is halfway between. There are many others who have done this, but I go back to Sid Barrett and, you know, when you're talking about me, there's a huge connection between my liking for Brian's, you know, the. The. The. The. The song albums, the four albums. I like Sid Barrett, but Sid Barrett, when they. They issued. They issued an album of unreleased stuff called Opal many years ago now. And there's a song on it called. Called Just Call. It's called the Word Song, and it is. And. And Barrett actually was. Was a good. Was a good lyricist, but he. This song, all he does is he. With very immaculate diction, just recites a series of words and on the other end of the extreme. But the words are all perfectly enunciated. They just don't make any sense. It's a fascinating and clever choice of words, and they're just seamlessly part of the song. And then you go to someone like the Cocteau Twins, who just sort of talk nonsense language, who sometimes. Which took that to the. That completes the process, if you like. And Eno was already there playing around with this in this year.
- [99:23]
Jeff Blair
One more song before Jeff can perhaps say, I have to mention Third uncle, if I may, which is such a fun track. And you think it's what this is, 1974, early five, still years before punk would break. But this is it in its essence. The quick fire lyrics, the odd couplets that. That bass line really pumps. The drumming is crazy. Manzanara plays an incredible part. This is really an amazing track and one of the good ones from. From the album.
- [100:05]
Scott Bertram
It.
- [100:44]
Andrew Stuttiford
For me, actually, the True Wheel is the one that, to me, captures Taking Tiger Mountain. In fact, it even begins with we are the 801, which would be like Eno Frip, Manzanera's live band. 801 live band. Yeah. We are the central shaft, the true wheel around which everything spins. Very Chinese concept, by the way, as well, if you understand Chinese political ideology. But there's this moment near the end of the True Wheel where it just descends into a Manzanera repetitive guitar line which is just. And you actually simultaneously understand that, okay, this is a band playing music, but you actually think well, is the CD skipping? Is the machine stuck? Is it in a loop? Is the wheel caught in a spoke as somebody thrown a spoke into the true wheel? It's a fascinating sonic evocation of like this giant machine that continually spins around until somebody chucks a sabot into the gears.
- [101:59]
Scott Bertram
Here we go.
- [103:01]
Andrew Stuttiford
Again. You know, conceptually, had those ideas worked on those levels. There were very few artists I ever knew of when I was young that could do this. I still don't know very many of them. That's why this album might have taken a lot of time to grow on me. But it has really, really, really grown in my estimation.
- [103:20]
Guest Speaker
And if you want to start anywhere, I have to say I'm very interested to hear you say that, Jeff, because when I bought the album and. And that was in vinyl days, the. The track I almost wore out was the True Wheel. I just thought, I mean, I mean, the Dean Eno had already sealed the deal with Here Come the Warm jets. But the True. I don't know what you. How you spike the board. I don't know what you would say, but when I heard the True Wheels. Oh, God, this is astonishing. And I just played it. I can remember I played it again and again and again.
- [103:57]
Andrew Stuttiford
Hypnotic repetition. So many people go for that mode. There are so many musical artists who are like, I'll do this. You know, the Fall based an entire career around it, obviously. Just saying when it hits that, that second in the True Wheel, you actually forget where you are. And this is almost. We'll find out. I think as, you know, develops his conceits, it's what his intent has always been. He kind of wants to sort of lull you into a mode where you suddenly forget your place in the song in. In the narrative and. And you're just in this groove, that groove on the True Wheel. I can understand exactly why you were obsessed with it. It's what got me into it. And it. It's just what becomes more and more clear as he moves on to the rest of, you know, the stuff he's going to be doing during the 70s. Before we get there, though, I just, you know, he released a couple of non album singles during this time. We didn't talk about Seven Deadly Fins because, you know, the Finns, they're vicious. We know this. But I really has. As anybody heard. Has anybody heard Brian Eno's cover version of the Lion Sleeps Tonight? Which he can't. I'm having.
- [105:05]
Guest Speaker
I have the 45.
- [105:07]
Andrew Stuttiford
Oh, my gosh. It's actually just incredibly sweet. It's very. It's very delightful. And it's also with that little drum beat, that little artificial, like, drum beat. That's what you're gonna hear next on his next album. But yeah, just gotta point out that, yeah. Eno doing all this avant garde, you know, path breaking stuff also, you know. Hey, what's the thing about. In the jungle, the mighty jungle. He sings. It's so N too. The lion sleeps tonight. It's once the multi layered harmonies come in at the end of it. Yeah.
- [105:44]
Guest Speaker
I love.
- [105:45]
Andrew Stuttiford
And just a lost one off all day.
- [105:47]
Scott Bertram
Hush my baby don't fear my baby the lion sleeps tonight. Hush my baby don't fear my baby the lion sleeps tonight.
- [106:29]
Guest Speaker
You probably know this, but you fast forward. He actually did a version with John Kale of Ring of Fire.
- [106:37]
Andrew Stuttiford
Yes.
- [106:38]
Guest Speaker
Ah. Which is. Which is superb and.
- [106:43]
Andrew Stuttiford
But no, surprisingly faithful in its own way.
- [106:45]
Guest Speaker
Yeah, exactly. But Jungle is lovely. Lips tonight. But the way he plays with it. And the Seven Deadly Fins, which is a berserk story about seven Finnish sailors on leave and what they get up to. Nothing good is fantastic. And it's also the collision point is again, the nod to the rock star. You know, there's a bit of glam, there's a bit of proto punk, and there's a bit of the old Roxy there too. It's a marvelous. It's a great song. And it is now finally available online as well.
- [107:20]
Andrew Stuttiford
Well, and what comes next is the. As I already mentioned, the first album that my friend back in high school. Hey, Akshay. Thanks. Thank you for the tip. This is what got me into Brian Eno. Before I had ever heard of Roxy Music, before I'd ever heard or cared about King Crimson, for that matter. Another Green World. An album that I almost. I fear we will not. Not do justice to describing to this day. I don't really think there are many other records that are like this. The ones that come closest are by bands like Talk Talk. Spirit of Eden might be the thing that I think I identify emotionally closest with. Another Green World. It ain't rock, folks. This is not an album you listen to for hits. This is not an album you listen to when you want to jump around the room, when you're getting ready to go out to the club or on that big date or to the big ball game. This is an album for contemplation. This is an album that I think even Eno himself sort of classified as an album of air. The next one would be an air. An album of water. This is an ethereal record of music that, I mean, in the words of Frank Zappa, will move the molecules around your room, I found to be a source of inspiration. As I'm actually going to argue for the next several records, Brian Eno's albums from this point onward, because of their intellectual cast of mind, because of the concepts, the arguments he's making behind them, become uniquely inspiring for me. This is not only creative in and of itself, these next few records are the source of creativity within me. And it begins with Another Green World. Scott, I know this is one of the few Eno altogether problems that you immediately said. Yeah, I see. I see what you people mean about this stuff. So do you want to start?
- [110:03]
Jeff Blair
Yeah. Oddly, it's the one that first, I want to say spoke to me, certainly not in the way that Jeff has described. But as I'm just combing through and listening as I go about my day, this is the one that I first connect to and sort of understood what, you know, was trying to accomplish. And I. You know, the other vocal albums are vocal albums. This album only has, I think it's. Five of the 14 tracks have lyrics and the rest are instrumentals. And I guess we should tell the story here because it happened before the recording of this record. It's going to play a much bigger factor in the music to come. But I think it's evident here to a point I'm making a second. So. So the beginning of 75 is when Eno was in an accident. He was crossing the street. He was hit by a taxi. He was seriously injured. He was in the hospital. And he had a friend bring him this album of classical harp music on a day where it was raining. And so he was in bed and it was too weak to adjust the volume on the record player. And the friend left and he put the record on. And the. This harp music is just playing right at or just below the level of the raindrops, like, bouncing off the window. And this is where he has the idea. And you guys can certainly flesh this out for what would become ambient music. Music that is made not to be listened to actively, but listened to passively. And I think we can talk much more about that to come. But this happens before Another Green World. And this is a much calmer album. It's an album that the songs aren't happy, the songs aren't sad. The songs don't really have tension or release for the most part. They're a little shorter, too, than some things he was doing previously. They just exude this calmness for the most Part. Except in certain places. I mean, Frip Solo and St. Elmo's Fire is the most incendiary part.
- [112:16]
Andrew Stuttiford
There are songs of transcendence on this record, whether Eno intended them or not. And I will get to that.
- [112:22]
Jeff Blair
So let me say a few things about a few songs. One is, in the middle of all this, you do have one of his more normal pop songs. It's not his most pop moment that I think would be to come. But I'll Come Running is such a pretty song. This sort of nonsensical love song, in a way, waiting for your loved one to return and then I'll come running to tie your shoes. It's this piano led song with a little bit of frip and some oohs and some ahhs. It's sort of. It's sort of the most. Most natural moment on the record.
- [112:58]
Scott Bertram
And I'll come running to tie your shoe I'll come running to tie your shoes I'll come running to tie your shoes I'll come running to tie your shoes.
- [113:45]
Jeff Blair
And around. This is Weirdness in Dark Trees. I think that might be the song on the album that first sort of appealed to me or first sort of let me into this window of what Ena was working with.
- [113:59]
Andrew Stuttiford
And I wonder In Dark Trees.
- [114:02]
Jeff Blair
Yeah, you say that. And I think some. I thought Tangerine Dream, which Andrew mentioned before we started recording Tangerine Dream, who did the soundtrack work on a great James Caan film called Thief. And as I listened to In Dark Trees, I could hear this song placed right next to everything else that Tangerine Dream created for Thief. And, you know, they were sought out for that movie because that's exactly the mood that wanted to be set. You know, the Thief, if you've seen it, it's all darkness and shadows and neon sort of flashing off puddles in the street and In Dark Trees just gives off that exact same vi. And I think my brain made that particular connection. There's no lyrics at all. It is. It is just this wonderful track.
- [115:02]
Andrew Stuttiford
Scott, let me interrupt you for a second to tell you that the same song in Dark Trees made an incredibly visceral. Visceral identification in my mind as well. But nothing like what you said. Maybe you grew up in the Chicagoland area. I grew up in the woods. I had dark trees behind my house, like giant pines and, you know, big, you know, forest behind me. Those were the dark trees. And that's why, I guess, I suppose I identify it with David lynch as well. You know, the Owls have a Secret on the Pacific Northwest stuff. But what does that say about the versatility of the textures, the musical textures that Eno's working with on this record record and is going to be working with, you know, in the future. You can get those things out of it. He is going for images, he's going for your head, he's going for your brain. He's realizing the music only does part of the work. And your imagination is doing yes, if not 50, maybe 75% of the work on a lot of these songs.
- [116:08]
Jeff Blair
And that to me, is how this album closes with this string of four songs that starts with Becalmed, which is one of the most accurate song titles in music history. It is just Eno playing a piano through a Leslie amp and a little synth. And it is this very calm piece of work. And everything merges with Night, which does have some lyrics, but it's again, very calm. Song Spirits Drifting title says it all.
- [116:36]
Andrew Stuttiford
Yeah, the titles will tell you Eno worked with titles almost more than anything else during this era. He needs you to understand what the. Towards me, everything merges with the night. He sings it in that cadence and boy, do those synths sell it. And then right after that, Spirits Drifting after the night has come, you know, then spirits are drifting.
- [117:47]
Jeff Blair
So yeah, this little synergistic, this little portion at the end I wrote down, it's almost a dare. It's almost a dare to see if you can can passively listen to these tracks. Don't actively listen passively listen to these songs that are trying to set this mood and trying to trying to allow you to put your thoughts and to completely calm you out. And this is where, and you mentioned this band earlier. This is where I hear the talk talk comparisons begin to really come into play. This and Spirit of Eden, which you mentioned, these last four songs, this little sweet at the end I think is clearly again, just as we talked about the last song on Taking Tiger Mountain, the title track track. So it would lead to what's next. These four songs also lead to the ambient sound he's aiming for Andrew.
- [119:02]
Guest Speaker
And I said, yeah, I'm very interested in both your response to the, to the album because you, I, I, you heard it for the first time in a different way to I did. And that is because you were hearing it in a way in a post Eno world or a world where, you know.
- [119:30]
Andrew Stuttiford
We knew had defined a lot of my sonic textures that I'd already without even understanding. He was responsible for them grown to love. Like, hey, every kid who grew up on U2 didn't understand what Eno, like, contributed to that until it was much later. Yeah.
- [119:46]
Guest Speaker
And so when I. So when I got to this album, which. Which I obviously love, but my first reaction, the. I mean, where was I. I was. I was about to go to university, that sort of age, and I thought, what's this? And I did not fall in love. I mean, I like the songs, of course, and I loved the. The jagged opening of Skysaw. What's not to like about that?
- [120:16]
Andrew Stuttiford
That.
- [120:17]
Guest Speaker
But the other stuff, what was this? What was this? And this is an album, obviously, which is considered important just for the reasons that, you know, you say that this is this. This is really now definitively pointing the direction which, you know, is going. And it is a wonderful album. But I will say for someone like me who would come to Eno via Roxy, Darren, it. Although I, you know, I liked all the. I love the tangent. I love Tangerine Dream. You know, I was, I was getting there. And even the pre Autobahn craft work. But the, the. The. This was a surprise. And I have to say that when I first heard it, I thought, okay, there's enough good tracks on this to redeem it. I, yeah, I will continue listening to it, but I gotta think about these other ones. And it took me a while. It took it. It took me a while. And obviously I got there and you know, Professor Eno taught his. His class. Well, I got the message, but it took a while.
- [121:31]
Andrew Stuttiford
What's fascinating to me is, of course I came from a completely different world, as I already told you. Somebody just said, pick this out of the racks, kid. Kid. And so I did. And when I got it, I'll admit I threw it on. I was like, this is weird. I will not lie and pretend that, like, oh, I immediately took to it as if to the manner born. No, it was a very weird cure its egg. There were some songs that were recognizably pop, but then there were too many instrumentals. Right. I didn't understand what the purpose of them were, why he was doing this, where they were going. In the context of. Of his discography, it makes a ton of sense in retrospect. But at the time in for me, it would have been 1995, 6, 7, something like that didn't make any sense. This is an album that has made increasing levels of sense to me every year afterwards, to the point where there are moments on this that have inspired me and comforted me in ways that you could never have anticipated. When you plucked it out of the Tower Records rack Or when, you know, were even in college trying to explain to somebody else, who's Brian Eno, why does he matter? There are songs like St. Elmo's Fire on this where, you know, it's, it's, you know, he's talking about the lyricist, you know. Yeah, we were the sailors. We were in the blue August moon. We were sailing here and there. We went to the desert and we saw St. Elmo's Fire playing irons upon the ether. And you have a keyboard moment that is matched with the greatest guitar solo in history. I will emphasize to you that I have lived my life listening to guitar solos by all manner of types. Blues, avant garde, rock, classical, anything that involves a guitar. What Robert Fripp does here, playing essentially a Paganini violin line on a guitar in real time is spiritually moving. And I've mentioned this once already, at least before on, on Patreon. It's the greatest guitar solo I've ever heard. It is the sound of God's breath breathing down upon the masts of the ship. And you see the lightning bolts, you know, playing back, back and forth, the bolts of fire flying back and forth across the ether. And it's all represented on, you know, a guitar line. I mentioned earlier when you said, like Brian Eno himself may be a musical amateur, but he's made friends, okay? And some of the best friends that you could ever hope to make. None better than Robert Fripp on St. Elmo's Fire, with which for me, you know, just that guitar solo alone, you know, that to me is the essence of music, the essence of great music. 17 year old kid heard that. That was me. I was 17. And I said to myself, can you really top this? I still, at 44, do not believe you.
- [125:16]
Guest Speaker
Yeah, no, it is absolutely a story. It was one of the ones when I, 20 years before, so to speak, first heard. It was one of the. The tracks that I clung to. It was so clear, it was so wonderful and. But it was also pop song. It was also a pop song.
- [125:35]
Andrew Stuttiford
That one was. But you know, what wasn't is an instrumental. And this is hard to talk about. The big ship, it's. It's three cores, four chords, right? And this, they don't always follow in the exact same sequence difference. It's keyboards, it's synthesizers. It fades in, it fades out. Can you hum this? I don't know how I could even hum the melody line. It goes dumb, dumb, dumb, dumb, dumb. That makes no sense. You'll just have to sit through 4 minutes and 25 seconds to understand that the big ship that's coming might as well be the mystery train.
- [126:14]
Guest Speaker
Yes.
- [126:15]
Andrew Stuttiford
You know, the mystery train comes to take your baby away. The big black limousine, the heads to the Cadillac Ranch. I'm doing American insights, but of course, maybe this is more British, more European, continental to understand. It's just the big white ship that carries you across to the. I. I'm actually thinking of Tolkien, you know, the white ship that carries you across to the. You know, the eternal. Eternal lands. This is a song of transition. I have played this at the time.
- [126:48]
Guest Speaker
I mean, this is. This. This is. This is. This was. This was one, if you like, was my. In some ways, along with the title track, was my. My doorway into. Gateway into what? You know, where. Where he's going. It is. It is a. It is a piece of stupendous beauty. My image of it, by the way.
- [127:10]
Andrew Stuttiford
Persistence sails on forever.
- [127:13]
Guest Speaker
That's right. And it's never. It's in the distance. It comes close, you know, it gains and then it goes away. And. And if you can listen to it. I have listened to this. I have known no idea how many times. You can listen to it on YouTube. It's the. The song is fairly brief, but you could listen to it in incredibly elongated versions, some of them way too elongated. And I was sometimes listen to one that is, you know, double the normal length or something like that that people have fooled around with. But. And I. It is a. It is. I. I'm not. Well, I am actually, you know, I. I get human contrary to what people think. And they. They. I find it profoundly moving. And I realize just how moving it was. And I think. I think that would be pleased by this. When I went to see the film after the tour, which is a. Which is a marvelous film about David Foster Wallace, and it ends with him, you know. Well, it ends on a. On an upbeat. Except you have the foreshadowing.
- [128:30]
Andrew Stuttiford
You have to remember what happens later. Right.
- [128:32]
Guest Speaker
But he is. He is. He's somewhere in Midwest and he's at a church hall, I think, in a dance. And it slows a little bit and then in comes big ship. It was also used in the Dying.
- [128:46]
Andrew Stuttiford
Girl, Me and Earl and the Dying Girl, which is an inexplicably moving movie. Movie. I don't know.
- [128:53]
Guest Speaker
I totally agree. I thought, goodness me, I'm really moved. And then the emotional high point of moving both is. And it has the big ship in it. And in the case of the. After the tour, you have the narrator, if you like, remembering David Foster was. And that's what introduces it. And if you forgive me, just reading out a quotation, this is something. And I wondered why this movie. It does just moves me amazingly. And everyone reacts to songs emotionally in different ways. And this is not exactly me, but I was fascinated to read this written by David Foster Wallace himself in none of his books. I've read in the the Pale King, which I think was a posthumous book published posthumously. This is what he says. This song is making me feel both warm and safe. Aoka cooed, like a little boy has just been taken out of the bath and wrapped in towels that have been washed so many times. They're incredibly soft and also at the same time feeling sad. There's an emptiness at the center of the warmth, like the way an empty church or classroom with lots of windows through which you can only see rain in the street of sad as through. Right at the center of this safe, enclosed feeling is the seed of emptiness.
- [130:18]
Andrew Stuttiford
I was unaware of that, actually, and I'm a fan of David Foster Wallace. I have never read the Pale King, but when my mother passed away, I didn't have a lot of time to say talk with her. She was under sedation. So I played this song and that was the only thing I could do. And that's why that song means a lot to me, I guess.
- [131:13]
Guest Speaker
Yeah, I can. I can understand. I mean, it is comforting, but it also, like Foster Walter, I think, gets that there's a sadness there in this song song. And it's also a. It's just a. As if you're glimpsing something. My mother always used to say, funnily enough about. She was doubtful about my music. She said, I sometimes think they don't really. Your songs don't really have a beginning and an ending and a way. This does clearly, but it doesn't also. And I don't. But it is incredibly. Because I have listened to it for years and years and years and years and I've been very moved by, you know, when I'm alone. It's a cheering up one, but sometimes, you know, you feel sad too. And then there was this burst of interest in it when after the, you know, after the tour came out and I started Googling it to find there were thousands and probably many, many, many more than thousands of people who just adored this track. It meant everything to them.
- [132:32]
Andrew Stuttiford
Yeah, it's hard not to listen to that album and still think about Spirits Drifting as the last song mentions. More importantly, for Another Green World, what this takes us into is an Era where Eno, after having done this, this an album, an album that was wildly praised, incidentally, this one was a huge success, critically, not commercially, because Brian Eno, let's not kid ourselves, was not going to be selling a ton of records no matter what. But everyone loved where he was going with this and he was determined to not repeat himself. So he headed where I think in retrospect, it's obvious he was always trending into ambient music.
- [133:14]
Guest Speaker
It.
- [133:15]
Andrew Stuttiford
Andrew Stutterford brilliantly mentioned that accident that Brian Eno had earlier, where he was stuck in that hospital bed and he was just not able to adjust the volume. What could he do? Another Green World was one result of that. But the other results of that were a series of instrumental albums, which became kind of the legacy that I think most people associate Eno with in the modern era. When I remember growing up as a kid, people thought of Brian, you know, as like, oh, he's that guy who makes drifty ambient soundscapes, right? And then when he's not doing that, he produces U2. But, you know, obviously in the 70s he was a very different creature. None of this really starts until 1975. Discreet music is an album that I think really tolls this era. But before we get to that, I just want to mention the other Frippino. Com on, you know, the collaboration between the two of them. Of course, they will show up on lots of other collaborations in other people's artists discographies. But Evening Star 1975, the first half of it is just a long tone poem with, again, Eno providing synthesizers, sort of soundscapes, and then Robert Fripp playing as much lyrical guitar over it as he came can. And the result is one of the more rewarding experimental records of the entire decade. The second half, I think the second half of a lot of Eno albums in the ambient or instrumental genre are gonna sort of be devoted to experiment, experimental stuff that doesn't work out. An index of metals on this record, I think isn't very good. But Wind on Water, Evening Star, Even Song and Wind On Wind, the first side of this record, which are all segued together, is a lyrical vision of pacific beauty. And it's the place Eno would be heading most obviously on his next record, Discreet Music, this is the one where he said he specifically wrote it in response to the accident. Couldn't adjust the volume. Wanted some music that would just be on in the background, be soothing. I find it hard to explain the appeal of Music with no Words. The title track of this Album occupies the first side. It is, I think, 35 minutes. 30 minutes. It's unbearably long for a vinyl LP side. I only ever experienced it on CD, thankfully. Discreet music in 1975 is literally five keyboard notes recombined. And yet it is one of the most satisfying pieces of. Of ambient music I've ever heard. I use this song to be creative myself. I write to it. This is, in a weird way, the best advertisement I could ever make for ambient music would be the album Discreet Music, where Brian Eno says, here's something that will. And this is always his rubric for ambient is that it. It will not. It will reward attention, but it does not demand it. You can put this on at any time, at any place, unless, you know, you want to have an active party and you will be productive. It's a genre of music I find hard to explain to people who aren't, I guess, in the mood of contemplation, but it's one that's always had a huge place in my life. Sky, do you have anything to say about this kind of glacial stuff?
- [137:44]
Jeff Blair
I wanted to actually point out something that we haven't yet, and I'm not a professional engineer, but discrete music is made the same way that no Pussyfooting was. And part of Evening Star was, which was this system in the studio that they developed with, you know, two, two reel to reel machines essentially to create this primitive looping system of audio. And so this is how you get that sound. Meaning as. As this. As the sounds, as they both claim.
- [138:15]
Andrew Stuttiford
Credit for it, incidentally, you know, Frippertronics became Robert Fripp's version of it. And you know, Eno has his own. Yeah, as the.
- [138:22]
Jeff Blair
As the. As the audio moves through, everything shifts and changes and things will decay different rates and as you add something in that's fresh and new and then it will decay and fade away at different times. And so you have the ability to delay and sort of manipulate the way the sound pops back through on the two reel to reels and hopefully I made that make some sense. But that's how you get some of the sounds on those rip albums. And that's how you get the sounds on discrete music. You have this, you know, side one that really long. I think, like I said, 30, 32 minutes long. It's just synth and delay. It's just synth and the reels. And as you point out, it's. It's meant to be played at low volumes, I think, you know, said even at one point to the extent that it's frequently falls below the threshold of audibility. Like frequently. Maybe you can't hear it. And that's okay. Okay. So what I wrote down as I.
- [139:24]
Andrew Stuttiford
Listened, like explain to people what the use experience of this thing is. It's like put it on when you've got an hour, like to spare. It's like whatever.
- [139:45]
Jeff Blair
What I wrote down about this. And you know, there are a couple other ambient albums too. Is almost everything else we've ever discussed on this show. Is music designed to make you feel something, to make you feel love or hate or empathy or pity or aggression or. It's meant to make you feel something and stimulate you.
- [140:09]
Andrew Stuttiford
It's meant to stimulate you. When this is meant to pacify you. Right.
- [140:13]
Jeff Blair
This is explicitly designed to essentially make you feel nothing or at least make the music make you feel nothing. You might feel something, but it's because you're sort of set at ease by the meditate itself.
- [140:24]
Andrew Stuttiford
I mean, the whole point is to put you in a place where your brain can do its own work as opposed to the music.
- [140:29]
Jeff Blair
There's no real.
- [140:30]
Guest Speaker
It's not in the way.
- [140:32]
Jeff Blair
Right?
- [140:32]
Guest Speaker
Yes.
- [140:33]
Jeff Blair
Right. There's no real escalation. There's no release. It exists, it changes, it moves. And then I wrote down my question. Are you even supposed to remember it? Is this music meant to be remembered in any real way other than serving its purpose when it plays?
- [140:51]
Andrew Stuttiford
So I can't home discreet music.
- [140:53]
Jeff Blair
Right.
- [140:54]
Andrew Stuttiford
I've listened to it thousands of times. I couldn't hum it. I don't. I. I can hum some music from airports, amusingly enough, but I cannot hum this. And that's not the point. It's. I prefer this to those, believe it or not, probably because I can't hum it because it serves its purpose so well. Well, yeah.
- [141:14]
Guest Speaker
It's always just. And credit. Credit Scott, I think mentioned the harp music and it was Judy Nyland was the person that. There are various origin stories but. Which gave him that fateful record which then inspired. But it's just meant to be there. And it is actually, I think has an ability for. For. I can't think of a better word. I mean for prettiness. It's a nice. Well, the whole album tasteful. And it was also significant to go. And I. Like we've discussed this before the show is that Jeff and I, we both write to this because it's not in the way. It's just there. It's an old friend. It's been with me a long, long time. Interesting observation. You made about Vine Vinyl. I think it was you, Jeff or Scott, one of you. It was no fun listening to it on vinyl. Vinyl, particularly when you didn't really know what was going on. What was this? Because I loyally had got out to buy the album. The other thing about it was it was at the time understood as a statement that, you know, yeah, there's Brian, you know, the different Persona you mentioned here am I. I'm sort of serious guy here and I want to get this out because. Because it came out. There were. There were actually on the. The. The label, the obscure. I think it's called, Obscure label. There were four and they're all basically what you might call avant garde or modern. There's a guy called Gavin, Brian Briars, who did an amazing. His one on Obscurus is strongly recommended. So it was. It was a statement by Brian. You know, look at. He's saying, look at this thing that I don't want you to hear. But he was clearly, you know, making it, putting. This is his manifesto.
- [144:00]
Andrew Stuttiford
Is there a world where you can make musical manifestos and get them released on EG Records? Because you had enough clout commercially. I mean, you had enough cloud artistically. People believed in the idea. And Eno would. Would actually drop some of this. He would. He would do a couple of interesting collaborations from this point onwards with, you know, artists like Cluster. I. I guess people don't know their German Kraut rock and they ought to. But yeah, this is a German Kraut rock group, primarily instrumental, very much into the idea of field recordings and the ideas of capturing natural sounds, natural world beats and rhythms. And this, of course, will, in fact him and everyone he works with. What's most important to understand is that in the meantime he's pursuing these intellectual ideas, his next record. And I don't know how closely you. I don't even know how closely it's possible to listen to music for films. 1976 is music for Films, which, again, purely instrumental and a complete put on, no less. Because he said music films in the liner notes, he says, like, yes, this is music used on soundtracks for various things, TV productions. It's all a lie. None of it was ever used for anything before. None of it could be. It was all very clearly written and queued up for his own purposes. Some of it sounds like outtakes from another green world. In fact, it's just a bunch of small, brief themes where he gives them suggestive titles like Sparrow Fall or Behind Wire Blocks or something like that. He wants you tension. He wants you to explain to yourself what the music must mean given the title suggested. These little three minute, two minute squibs, fascinating stuff, but obviously not meant for a public audience. And in fact what he would do at this point is sort of retreat into working with other folks. I can't believe we'll do a Brian Eno episode without mentioning David Bowie. How can we not mention what happens in 1976 when. When Eno meets his other great collaborator, David Bowie, one of his three great collaborators, and he says, hey, let's do a bunch of albums in Berlin, let's detox, let's get away from the world. Bowie is doing his thing that we've covered in three episode depth on political beats already. I won't go back there there. But what you need to understand is that Eno didn't produce these sessions. He's not yet a producer, he is a collaborator. He co wrote and again conceptualized things for Eno, or rather for Bowie. When David Bowie wrote a song called Breaking Glass on Low, he was like, you know what? That doesn't need to be two and a half, three minutes long. Why don't you just leave it at 126, let it fade out. And then when Bowie went on vacation, he took Bowie's kid, Zoe Bowie. Bowie, young Zoe Bowie into the studio and wrote Warzawa, that great instrumental that. That opens side two of Low with. Later on he co wrote Heroes for God's sake. On the album Heroes, you don't want to hear me phrase it here because I've already done it once already. He returns with those ideas and with an eye on the other people on the music scene. The new modern, late 70s punk, post punk music score scene that no doubt David Bowie himself has probably played a role in getting him into with his last lyrical record. I mean, not as last. He'll do one in the 90s that I don't particularly want to discuss. But the last of this class era. And the title could not be more suggestive. 1977's before and after science star got.
- [149:22]
Scott Bertram
It light four duckies and a big black car the road is shining the wheel slide the knack of tackles the engine draw A ship is turning in the cash the. The innocence Insider. It will come, it will come, it will surely come.
- [149:51]
Guest Speaker
King.
- [149:59]
Andrew Stuttiford
This is the last of this tetralogy. I was about to call it a quadrilogy. That's not good. I'm not going to mix my Greek and my Latin here. No, this album is the final step in a progress that Seemed to almost, in retrospect, inevitably lead here it's a bit more, I guess, robotic. There's a bit more, you know, there's. Those first few albums recorded almost on the spur of the moment. Everybody walked into a studio, said, what do you have? Throw it at the wall. And then another Green World happened. Then ambient music happened, and now we have the last. In this thing before and after Science, There are a lot of people who would say that this is the final and greatest achievement of Eno's career. I could make an argument for any one of the four albums we've already discussed. But boy, I understand that there are songs here that again inspired me as a child to become a post punk fanatic. I've never deviated from it. This was the second Eno album I ever bought and I don't want to step on anyone else at this point because this one's the capstone for me.
- [151:16]
Scott Bertram
Mind that their minds really move in a vibe. So it's much more realistic to imagine such ballistic sand reside to be trapped on a leap in the vine back water. We're sailing at the edges of time.
- [152:06]
Guest Speaker
Yes. No, it's. It's. It's a. I don't know whether I.
- [152:12]
Andrew Stuttiford
We don't have to.
- [152:14]
Guest Speaker
I don't know how I quite. I ignore it. I'm not quite.
- [152:19]
Andrew Stuttiford
I just remember thinking of myself as a pirate on a jaunty pirate ship when I was like 16 years old. Singing Backwater.
- [152:27]
Guest Speaker
Backwater is a great song. Exactly.
- [152:29]
Andrew Stuttiford
Just sailing on a rugged tide. I don't know why I had these childhood images. This is one of those albums, along with Abacab of all things by Genesis that sort of inspired creativity within because the words were not there to spell it out. That left you to make up your own story.
- [152:44]
Guest Speaker
And that, you see, that's very interesting you make that point because one of my favorite tracks on the. On the album is called Julie with the beautiful song. It's absolutely beautiful song and I've always seen it as very restful and it's two people again we have to see again. Again. There are. It opens. I'm on an open sea Just drifting as the hours go. It's very languid and he's with a girl. And I read that and yeah, I thought it was lovely and pretty and the music, it all works. And apparently there's a. A theory quite common.
- [153:29]
Andrew Stuttiford
I've heard this theory.
- [153:30]
Guest Speaker
This is describing either the aftermath of a murder or about to be a murder. And good Lord, no wind disturbs our.
- [153:39]
Scott Bertram
Coloured sail the radio is silent. So are we. Julie's head is on her arm. Her fingers brush the surface of the sea. Now I wonder if we'll be seen here or if time has left us alone. The still sea is darker than before.
- [154:42]
Guest Speaker
But I think. I imagine Eno would be absolutely delighted that people are having this. This sort of speculation. I saw it totally differently. I saw. Think you're now in. You know, he doesn't have to apologize what he's doing. He. He's made his big statement. He. He plays his pop stuff. He plays. He has his nod and Jeff Scott Bar. Talk more about this to Talking Heads. He tries. He sings a song called King's Lead Hat, which is actually an anagram of Talking Heads. And he tries to sing a little bit like David Burn. And you. You can see the. What's going on there, there. But it also has these. These. These noodlings. A beautiful little song called Here He Comes. And I. I think the one which I like. We go back again. The borrowed concept of the hymnal, you know, and which is Spider and I, which is an extraordinary, ordinary track which basically ends the album. And it's quiet, gentle, and, as always, you know, is able to combine a sense of quiet with a sense of power.
- [156:12]
Scott Bertram
We knitter where to catch one tiny fly For a world without sound we sleep in the morning.
- [156:34]
Andrew Stuttiford
Well, there's no question that Diablo album is very much divided into two sides. There's the more kinetic first half and then there's these contemplative, sort of slower. I can't call them ballads. There's nothing. There's literally nothing on this record that could be described as a ballad. But these are slower songs and they're much more keyed towards keyboards. I could go into every one of them track by track. Scott, before I do, do you have any thoughts?
- [157:00]
Jeff Blair
I must say that my favorite tracks already have been mentioned, which I, I guess means we all have good taste together, to your point. Yeah, it's an album with two sides, but it's one of the reasons I like it, especially as an introductory piece, because the first half has some of the more angular, weird Eno, and the back half is the more calm, ambient Eno. And they're both, I think, spectacular halves. Backwater.
- [157:29]
Andrew Stuttiford
It's hard not to feel how Skysaw From Another Green World World is very clearly mirrored by no one receiving before and After Science without that giant Robert Fripp guitar. You might not notice it, but it's the same rhythm. It's the same chord changes, too. In.
- [157:58]
Scott Bertram
It needs natural way. It needs as a way.
- [158:21]
Andrew Stuttiford
It's the same. It's, it's kind of easing you, you into where this is going to go into a very different place.
- [158:27]
Jeff Blair
Yeah. Andrew mentioned King's Ha lead hat, which is meant to be talking to me, though it sounds more like Devo and, you know, would produce Devo's first album a year later, too. That kind of sludgy low end, those sharp synth stings and then that catchy.
- [158:44]
Andrew Stuttiford
Stealing my notes.
- [158:46]
Jeff Blair
Yes.
- [158:47]
Andrew Stuttiford
Okay, so, Scott, you're stealing my notes. This is, this was written. You have to understand, everyone associates Eno properly. And I'm gonna, I was gonna mention this at a little bit later, explaining what happens after this. Everyone associates Eno with Talking Heads, but remember, this is like he's recording this in what, early 1977. He has not worked with Talking Heads yet. He's only heard about them, heard them on the radio. In fact, he doesn't know much about them at all. He's only heard people say, this guy yelps. This guy yelps. He has heard Devo, however, because Devo has been around since 1976. And so kings lahat made anagrammatically, that's the way you would pronounce it. Anagrammatically, it's a tribute to Talking Heads. But musically, it does have a lot more to do with Devo than you would suspect. And I did not think that you would pick up on that.
- [159:46]
Scott Bertram
Jesus over there is he takes his Surely come Kings that have come it will come.
- [160:30]
Jeff Blair
Tight 2 is insanely interesting to me. I, I, I sort of foreshadow this Here He Comes, which Andrew mentioned that that, to me, is the single most normal commercial track in the entire canon. It's just such a fun pop song. That wonderful synth pad, the vocals, the oohs, the ahs. It has a bit of a country list to it. In fact, some of the synths sort of like pedal steel facsimile. It's almost, it's almost there, but it's not quite. It's just a wonderfully constructed song.
- [161:09]
Scott Bertram
Alone among the dragonflies Here he comes here.
- [161:46]
Jeff Blair
And then you get into the just truly beautiful part of this album. Andrew also mentioned Julie with. That's a tremendous song by this river is excellent. Spider and I closes things out and just beautiful music to end this. And I think by this point, you know, it's the last album that he'll do in this, in this era that has lyrics at all. And when you listen to. When I listen to Julie with I Wonder why there are lyrics. It's not necessary. It's not necessary.
- [162:17]
Andrew Stuttiford
In fact, the most. Most of the songs on the second half of the record, the lyrics don't even enter into, like, what, two minutes into the song? I sometimes have to go back and check to make sure that, like, is that an instrumental track or are there lyrics stashed away later on?
- [162:32]
Jeff Blair
Right, right.
- [162:33]
Andrew Stuttiford
Because he establishes his tone far more with the music and synth pads than he ever would with words. Words at this point are becoming secondary.
- [163:04]
Scott Bertram
Here we are stuck by this river, you and I Underneath the sky that's ever falling down, down, down Ever falling down through.
- [163:33]
Guest Speaker
Yes. Although I've just picked up. Make sure I remember this right. Spider and I. He said Spider and I sit watching the sky in a world without sound and to me I find this extraordinarily moving thing. Thing. And then maybe it's just me again. I listen to the lyrics of this one and when I hear the last two lines, I wonder if that's a. I think of it. I pair it sort of with the big ship, because it is the last three lines. We sleep in the mornings we dream of a ship that sails away a thousand miles away. And to me, me, that conjures up the big ship.
- [164:18]
Andrew Stuttiford
I wouldn't doubt it. And I'll tell you why. Because he's been so conceptually, like, unified. He aims with an arrow in terms of his conceits during this period. They're all heading in the same direction. He's, like, simplifying, paring away anything frilly or unnecessary from his concepts. I almost sometimes feel like I hear it, like, happening in real time when I listen to the second half of the album. Album, that sort of fades away in the silence.
- [164:46]
Guest Speaker
Yes.
- [164:46]
Andrew Stuttiford
As you just said, you know, the lyrics sort of fall by the wayside. Scott mentioned it himself when he said, like, half of these, you know, where are the lyrics? They come in two minutes later. I mean, that's the intent and. And it, you know, for people who are rockists, like, I've always thought of myself, in fact, as a rockist, it's sort of hard to. To, you know, let go of, because, like, I wanted more of this music. I. I can't tell you how much more. I would have loved five eighties era Brian Eno albums that sounded like before and After Science, Another Green World, Taking Tiger Mountain. We didn't get those. We didn't get anything like that. He moved from that point into the ambient world where he first actually self consciously started titling album albums like ambient numbers 1, 2, 3 and 4. And then into purely instrumental stuff for a long time. And in fact, you know, as a, as an adjunct to that, became a producer, an active producer, sort of the, the prelude to this though was his collaboration. I think. Actually I want to mention one thing first, which is music for airports, which is a thing that he did right after. Before and After Science. We don't have to talk about about it for very long. It's one of those records I actually will find myself throwing on. It's just two sides, four tracks. 111-22-2122. And it was in theory something that, you know, and we need to take this with a grain of salt. He said he wrote it so it would be played at airports to soothe people who had fear of flying. You know, because air travel back in the 70s was really tough. You know, those planes would be hitting the ground every now and then. You know, it still happens these days. And so the idea was you'd sit in front of the soothing music and you'd feel a little bit more comfortable where you're strapped in. I don't buy it for the same reason. I don't buy that music for films was actually intended for films. There are two tracks on a four track album that are horribly unsuited for flying. They're spooky, they're ominous, they're very, very. They're colorful. I love them, I like them. As a person who likes music, I would not put this on before I got on an airplane. However, that said, the final track on the record, Two two sort of like echoing sort of, you know, synth lines. It feels like actually to me it's like, you know, midnight after the stadium at the end of the Natural, when Roy Hobbs, you know, blew out the lights and it's all over and, and the good guys won. Then you hear Two two playing. That's the way I've always heard it in my mind. It's beautiful background music, but again background music. The thing he really needed to know is that at this point he began producing Talking Heads and more songs about buildings and food. Fear of Music. He starts co writing songs like E Zimbra on, on Fear of Music. Great album. And then it all culminates with Remain in Light where Brian Eno is the co writer on every single track. How did that happen? And you may say to yourself, my God, what have I done?
- [169:10]
Scott Bertram
Into the Silent Water, under the rocks and stuff.
- [169:33]
Andrew Stuttiford
Same as it ever was. Well, that happened because he had a certain musical fusion with David Byrne, lead singer, songwriter, of Talking Heads. And I guess for the purposes of this episode, because we've already talked a lot about Remaining Light once, we need to talk about My Life in the Bush of Ghosts at least a little bit. This is to me the key late period Brian Eno musical production. It's a collaboration with Byrne, but my God, it happened. It was recorded, done before Remaining Light was even got into the studio before they had written it or routine it, anything but. This is the blueprint for what you love about Once in a Lifetime, what you like about Cross eyed and painless Houses in motion, all that. It's my life in the Bush of Ghosts. And this is an album I might point out that neither David Byrne nor Brian Eno sing a word on. That's the idea.
- [170:34]
Jeff Blair
Speed of destruction, Speed of grief I.
- [170:38]
Scott Bertram
Bind you with chains of iron I bind you how to let me bound in heaven.
- [170:43]
Jeff Blair
Loosen your hold and come out of her now.
- [170:47]
Andrew Stuttiford
Shista.
- [170:49]
Scott Bertram
Out, out.
- [170:50]
Andrew Stuttiford
Jezebel, come out now. Go ahead, out.
- [170:54]
Jeff Blair
In the name of Jesus.
- [170:55]
Andrew Stuttiford
Come on, Destruction. Come on, Destruction. Come on, please, Jezebel, you're gonna listen to me, Jezebel.
- [171:02]
Jeff Blair
Go ahead, sister.
- [171:04]
Andrew Stuttiford
Keep learning.
- [171:05]
Jeff Blair
Jezebel abandoned you. She was intended by God to be a virtuous woman.
- [171:10]
Andrew Stuttiford
You have her right there.
- [171:11]
Scott Bertram
Her husband is the head of the house.
- [171:16]
Andrew Stuttiford
And in doing so, what they did is they sampled. They sampled sermons from televangelists, they sampled church choruses, they sampled Muslim choruses, much to their dismay. Later on, they basically helped invent the genre of world beat music sampling with this one record that very few people know about, but I have treasured since I was in college. Does anybody I know? I begged both of you to listen to My Life in the Bush of Ghosts. Did anybody get around to doing it or is this going to be a one man show?
- [171:55]
Scott Bertram
It?
- [172:29]
Guest Speaker
No, no, it's not going to be one man show.
- [172:30]
Andrew Stuttiford
I love this record so much. It's the. It's a blueprint for musical future. Talk about things that influence people that I ended up loving. Radiohead doesn't exist without this. Kate Bush doesn't even exist without this.
- [172:44]
Guest Speaker
Now you, you, you made an art. When we, when we were swapping emails about, about this, this, this, this show, we, we, we. You, you mentioned. It's absolutely right, of course. How much Moby got from Moby.
- [172:59]
Andrew Stuttiford
Play Play is, is literally my left in the Bush of Ghost Part 2. Exactly.
- [173:04]
Guest Speaker
I love Good Old Boy.
- [173:06]
Andrew Stuttiford
It's a good album. By the way, I don't dislike that album One Pit, but I know where it came from.
- [173:10]
Guest Speaker
I mean for me this was, this, this was, I mean there are certainly tracks on it I like like and have, have, have, have listened to for again, many, many again. I bought loyally bought the album and was, was, was a little startled and I can't remember because it was, because again this was new. I mean sampling was around but it was, you know, it was, it just, it was, it wasn't gimmick as opposed.
- [173:46]
Andrew Stuttiford
To like a conceit that you would pawn.
- [173:49]
Guest Speaker
And there were a couple of tracks on this. I, I really liked what this is. Everyone, you know, everyone has personal views on music. I, I, I, I, I got it and I like, I thought was very interesting and, and I, and I like the idea of found sound because, and, and, but the, to me the problem which is personal problem is that, that it is, it is very, it's very, a lot of it is and I just, that's just not a thing I generally like. So that's really got into very much my thing. But I, but, but there's, there's, there's a couple of tracks, one I highlight in particular called the Carrier which I, which, which I think is absolutely sensational and it's, it's a very interesting as always with you know, and, and, and David Byrne in this case it's a fascinating experimen can strip away my anti polyrhythm which isn't, which is not all universal prejudice but, but if I forget that it's, it's a very worthwhile record to listen to.
- [175:01]
Jeff Blair
I listen, I listened and it bursts out of the speakers right from the very first track. America is Waiting and In the first 30 seconds you have like five different types of rhythm happening. I compare it to. There's a Wilco song called Magazine called Sunset and it's total Jay Bennett because In the first 12 seconds there's like four different kinds of piano synth type instruments being played. That's the way I think about these rhythms that start the album on America is Waiting. There are just multiple things coming at you from different instruments. Some aren't instruments, some are just boxes being hit or tin cans being tossed or whatever it might be that they use to get the rhythms they want. America is waiting for a message of some sort or another. You could say it's influential. You could also just say it's prescient in sort of predicting where people would go with some of this stuff because.
- [176:48]
Andrew Stuttiford
That'S something that haunts me. Is it set the future? Yeah.
- [176:52]
Jeff Blair
And the thing is these days you look and you could do all this stuff very easily through. I mean, the program I'm using right now, Adobe Audition or Pro Tool or, you know, digitally, all this stuff is very easy to do, relatively easy to do. You know, back then, totally different world, totally different concept. The process of just getting the samples, transferring them, having them play where they should land.
- [177:16]
Andrew Stuttiford
Did you read over that? I see that thing that David Byrne wrote where he said like, yeah, we didn't have that technology available to us back then. And as it turned out, all we did was just. Just play it randomly and it just seemed to work. And then he talks about this is the brilliant part. He says, like, well, the mind naturally will make those connections for you. It will seem to think like it's supposed to be there. Even if it wasn't, even if it was just chance. The mind maps those things onto it. And that's the genius, is the genius of this album.
- [177:49]
Jeff Blair
It's not a perfect record. There are a few places where I think they get stuck in those loops. Like Jezebel Spirit, which was the single. And first of all, like, good luck working that as a single. But there's most of that kind of gets a little stuck in the rhythm. But there are places where it's really good. The song on here for me is Regiment, where Frit plays on it, Chris France plays on it from Talking Heads. Just a deep bass groove, just an undeniable groove in that one. And this kind of snakey, Middle Eastern esque, like sitar influenced guitar sound that works its way through the whole track. Regiment's the best thing on this record.
- [179:20]
Andrew Stuttiford
Yeah, well, I mean, I think at this point we have to point out that Eno basically devotes the rest of his 80s to ambient music to the point where he'll put out it.
- [179:30]
Guest Speaker
I think.
- [179:31]
Andrew Stuttiford
Actually Andrew already mentioned Thursday afternoon. This is late 86. He puts out this album. It's a CD, it's just one track. He beat Prince to the. Remember when Prince did that with Love Sexy Scott, where he's like, you have to listen to my entire. Well, at least Prince had like 12 separate songs. This is just one hour of ambient music. You gotta. If you really like that moment at 45 minutes into Thursday afternoon. I'm sorry, my friend, you're gonna have to find a way to use that skip thing and hold it all the way there. That's the ambient kind of a style that, you know, would be working with throughout the 80s. I actually, I'm not gonna lie, every one of these albums has a place for me. I'm I'm into things that we're not really going to be discussing today. The Pearl by. It's a collaboration with Eno and Harold Bud. It's beautiful stuff, but it's mostly based around Harold Bud's piano, which sort of wanders around parapetically. It's his concept more than it is Eno's. Eno provides the soundscapes behind it. There's another one, actually, also ambient number four. They'd gotten up to four at this point, by the way, called on land. Land. It's Eno's idea of, like, you know, forbidding soundscapes of, like, land things, you know. He's talked about water. I mean, before and after Science, he classified as a water album. This was his land album. And it does. It's interesting to me, in fact. You get ambient noise like crickets. You know, like, you get wind and, you know, things that you would identify as natural sounds playing in the background of some of these pieces. But it. Is it. Is it music that I can comment on? No, not really. It's something that I remember enjoying while it's on. I do want to say at least one thing about Apollo. He put the album out in 1983. It was intended to be a soundtrack for a film. The film only came out, I think, 1989. They had to spend time doing legal rights clearing as Apollo atmospheres and soundtracks. The film is for the benefit of all mankind. I've seen the documentary. I saw it in school when I was a kid. And I did not at that time, realize I was listening to Brian Eno's music. But I was fascinated by the visual images. The images, of course, are of the Apollo space program. The private footage that was taken by not only the program, but the astronauts themselves from takeoff all the way to on the moon. Things that you never would have thought you'd seen. I guess, at this point in 2025, we've seen them now. Back then, it was new. It was new to me as a child. The music here I've always loved, perhaps for that reason, but also because as a soundtrack for space exploration. Everyone's been catching up to this one, you know, for the last 50 years. Apollo is one of those ambient things that is. It sort of now defines the cliche of what I think interstellar music ought to sound like. I know I asked Scott, did you listen to this? Did you? Because I. I wondered if you had any thoughts.
- [183:09]
Jeff Blair
I didn't get to this one.
- [183:10]
Andrew Stuttiford
Apologies. Oh, no. Do you have any thoughts yourself?
- [183:15]
Guest Speaker
Yeah, I. This. This one didn't this one didn't, didn't really work for me. The, There are moments where they feel.
- [183:25]
Andrew Stuttiford
Like weightlessness and they, they, they represent floating in middle air, you know, without any gravity. By using country music.
- [183:33]
Guest Speaker
Yeah.
- [183:33]
Andrew Stuttiford
By using like pedal steel guitars and for some reason to my mind at least it works.
- [183:38]
Guest Speaker
Yeah. So, so for my space music, I, I, I, I hate to revert back to, to. Well, this was the Pig Floyd with Sid Barrett. You know, astronomy dominate and it may be be. There's a great band I think called, they have a track called Go. It's called something public broadcasting or something. It's a Welsh or Welsh band and a very interesting one incidentally. And to me the, the, the Apollo has, has all sorts of memories and they are in some ways slightly less deep spacey and in some ways this is more of a deep spacey type album. But for that this album is the.
- [184:25]
Andrew Stuttiford
Middle of every Pink Floyd 1969 concert. And to me that's a good thing.
- [184:30]
Guest Speaker
Yeah, I love, you know, set the controls and having sun is.
- [184:33]
Andrew Stuttiford
Yes, set the controls for the heart of the sun, basically.
- [184:36]
Guest Speaker
Yes, it's one of my permanent and but also the more jagged interstellar overdrive. So I need to give this more of a listen, I think. I, I, I, I I I think I have listened to it several, several times but I was sort of ho hum a bit ho hum about it maybe, maybe now. Inspired by you, Jeff. In fact, definitely inspired by you. I, I, I, I Go give this one another. I've heard Ascent and all that, but, but hear the rest of it more probably.
- [185:02]
Andrew Stuttiford
All right, well I guess that brings us to the end more or less of the episode because the, the sort of the tail end of Eno's career is, is less as music makers producer in the 80s. I guess really the story begins when Brian, you know, meets you two. He got bounced out of Talking Heads. Basically his Talking Heads was worried that he was trying to take them over. And I think Tina Waymouth and Chris France were like, no, we're the actual collaborators here. I prefer you remain the producer. So then he went and found his way over in 1984 to produce Unforgettable Fire by U2 too. By the time we get to the 90s, he's directly collaborating with the most important pop band in the world. This is where we talk about Eno as celebrity producer. I know Andrew, you, you're not, you're not as big a fan or an expert on this era, but boy, Scott and I, we grew up in this era. I Know, each of us have at least a few Eno produced favorite songs that we want to discuss. Even just standing outside the U2 discography, for that matter. Matter. So, Scott, do you want to, you know, pass a few comments on what Ito brought to the rest of the world with all the ideas that he had previously developed?
- [186:17]
Jeff Blair
Well, it's. It is kind of amazing to think about how much of that era and stretching into the next decade is shaped by Eno and Daniel Dunois, who worked together at one point too.
- [186:32]
Andrew Stuttiford
Yeah. On a Apollo, for that matter. It's. It's Lan Wa who's playing all those goofy guitar country licks, in fact.
- [186:39]
Jeff Blair
Yeah. And he made some good albums.
- [186:41]
Guest Speaker
He made at least one good album, which I have.
- [186:44]
Jeff Blair
Yeah.
- [186:44]
Andrew Stuttiford
He also produced oh Mercy by Bob Dylan and Time out of Mind.
- [186:47]
Jeff Blair
Yes.
- [186:47]
Guest Speaker
Oh, really?
- [186:48]
Jeff Blair
A lot of those.
- [186:49]
Andrew Stuttiford
Great job.
- [186:50]
Jeff Blair
Those classic artists, legacy artists, later era albums generally have a credit from him somewhere. Did he do a Willie Nelson one too? Am I misremembering that?
- [186:59]
Andrew Stuttiford
No, wouldn't be surprised. Prize.
- [187:00]
Jeff Blair
I think he did. So you've got. You've got, you know, you choose string of albums that. That he produced. Unforgal, Unforgettable Fire, Joshua Tree, Octung Baby, and then I think he did all that you can't leave behind as well.
- [187:13]
Andrew Stuttiford
I noticed that you didn't credit him with Rattle at Home because who would want to?
- [187:16]
Jeff Blair
Yes. It's not one of the.
- [187:18]
Andrew Stuttiford
Don't give that him to him.
- [187:20]
Jeff Blair
He doesn't deserve that.
- [187:22]
Andrew Stuttiford
What?
- [187:23]
Jeff Blair
He produced a few tracks for Coldplay in the late 2000s, if my memory is correct.
- [187:31]
Guest Speaker
Yes, he did. He did do La Vida, what's it called?
- [187:37]
Andrew Stuttiford
I want to call it La Vida Loca, because.
- [187:39]
Jeff Blair
Yeah, that's the song, though.
- [187:41]
Andrew Stuttiford
But. But I know you're talking about Viva La Vida, which is something like.
- [187:45]
Guest Speaker
Exactly, exactly.
- [187:47]
Andrew Stuttiford
Yeah. And even if you just hope he didn't. Did he produce Clocks? Tell me. He didn't produce something that was just John Leckie.
- [187:52]
Jeff Blair
It was just him. He just did the Viva La Vida album. Yeah. And if. Even if people think they don't know Eno, they of course, absolutely know Eno. Because. Because I just learned this this week, inadvertently. I don't remember where I saw it. He wrote. Composed the startup sound for Windows 95, so.
- [188:11]
Guest Speaker
That's right. Oh, yeah.
- [188:12]
Andrew Stuttiford
I thought everybody knew that.
- [188:14]
Jeff Blair
I did not know that. So for everyone who's started Windows for a decade or so, that's something that Eno also composed.
- [188:21]
Andrew Stuttiford
Do you know how much he was paid for that?
- [188:23]
Jeff Blair
I don't I believe that was the.
- [188:26]
Andrew Stuttiford
Real story, that he was paid millions upon millions of dollars just for, like, less than 1.5 seconds of probably every time.
- [188:34]
Jeff Blair
I mean, it's, It's. It's a royalty thing, right? Every time it gets played, he's.
- [188:39]
Andrew Stuttiford
Someone heard it. Yeah, no. Okay. For my part, I will definitely say that Eno, as a producer, banged U2 into shape. I like U2 a lot as a post punk band, but there's no question they found their soul when they had Brian Eno there to let them, you know, indulge themselves. Sometimes you've got Elvis Presley in America, right? But sometimes. Sometimes you got bad. Sometimes you got a sort of homecoming. Sometimes you got the Joshua Tree and now me as a whole. And then the one that I really have to mention when we're talking about what Eno brought to you too, is Lemon. And the reason I have to mention this because I already did this on the show. Lemon, mate, actually be my favorite YouTube so song which is uncharacteristic and will get me in trouble. But when Bono, at that point, having blown his voice out long ago, goes into falsetto and sings about lemons as they're lemons, he doesn't actually know how to say the word lemon. That falsetto combined with that Eno sound, the keyboard sound, the click track, everything that is keyboard based in that sound, you can clearly really traced to the heritage of Brian Eno. And then he himself comes in to sing the middle eight. A man makes a picture, a moving picture that is Brian Eno suddenly resurfacing from. Wait, where has it been since we've heard this voice? It resurfaces on Lemon, which I'm still convinced to this day is the greatest YouTube song of all.
- [190:18]
Scott Bertram
The Road to Run and Dreams Stay Behind. These are the days when we look for something over.
- [191:17]
Jeff Blair
All right, there we go. The end of the episode. The part where we give you the two albums to recommend the five songs you must hear from our featured artist, Brian Eno today. And as we normally do, turn it over to our guest first. You can read him over@nationalreview.com Capital Matters. He's editor there on X at a stage. Stutterford, Andrew Stutterford, go ahead and give us your two albums and your five songs.
- [191:42]
Guest Speaker
Okay, well, my. The. These are. Believe me, I spent half a night thinking about this one because there's so many. There's so many ones to. To choose from. The two albums are easy for me, which is Here Come the the War jets and Taking Tiger out. And they've been good friends for half a century now and. And I just adore, adore them. Individual tracks was much, much more difficult. The. The. I was told by a kind of beneficent Jeff, actually making my problem worse, that I could include tracks from out of the 1970s.
- [192:18]
Andrew Stuttiford
Please do.
- [192:18]
Guest Speaker
Yes, yes. So what I will just know I'm going to do my five and then I'll mention one other. But frankly, there are 40 I could put on this list. These are not in order. Well, there is. There's one. Above all is the big Ship. Above all, if I had to take one, if, you know, someone sends me up in Elon Musk's spaceship. And if you're listening, Elon, ready. I'm ready.
- [192:43]
Andrew Stuttiford
That's the one to use.
- [192:44]
Guest Speaker
That's the one. That's the one I'll take. So the big ship and then the rest. True Wheel just wore that track out. Still. Listen to it with enormous pleasure. I was torn between Here Come the Warm jets, the actual title track, and Taking Tiger Mountain by Substitute, the title track. They're both very similar. And I came down in the end with Here Come the Warm jets. And then the two remaining ones on the five are Spider and I that I talked about. I just. The hymnal, you know, I just love that so much. And then I will pick one which is from an album called Cluster at Eno called Ho Renomo. And I'm completely, I'm sure mispronouncing that.
- [193:35]
Andrew Stuttiford
But that's how I say it, I can tell you that.
- [193:37]
Guest Speaker
Thank God. Thank God. And there are a couple of other.
- [193:39]
Andrew Stuttiford
We're both wrong. If we're wrong. Oh, undoubtedly there's an umlaut in there somewhere. But I don't.
- [193:45]
Guest Speaker
There's always. And it's not heavy metal either. And, and the. He basically, you know, he. He did. He's. He's. We haven't had time to talk about it so much to talk about, you know, you know, about what he was doing with the Germans in the 70s. But that is a tire can kraut.
- [194:02]
Andrew Stuttiford
Rock cluster thing we could have gone into here. That's.
- [194:05]
Guest Speaker
So that's one. And then I will do one out of the period. And, and, and Jeff said 5. There's room for, you know, another one. And that's going to be spinning away. Do you know that one?
- [194:19]
Andrew Stuttiford
No. Yes, very well.
- [194:20]
Guest Speaker
Yeah. Which is with. With John Kale.
- [194:24]
Andrew Stuttiford
John Kale, it's from Wrong way Up, his 1990 collaboration with Kale, which is surprisingly the poppiest thing he's ever done by far.
- [194:33]
Guest Speaker
And. And it is. The relationship between. Between Eno and Kale is fascinating. Two great figures. And you know, the, The. The frenemies, I. I read they were sometimes described best. But spinning Away is just happiness, sheer happiness. It's just an absolutely marvelous, marvelous.
- [195:15]
Scott Bertram
It's my fav. As the World Goes down, it's the star.
- [195:41]
Jeff Blair
All right. My two albums that I recommend are before and After Science and Another Green World. Those are the two albums that I put forward. And as for the songs. And as for the songs, remember, I'm the new guy here, so take everything with a grain of salt. I ended up just picking one from each of the four vocals and then. And then an extra one. So from here come the warm jets on some faraway beach. From Tiger, I think Motherwhale, Eyeless. From Tiger. From Another Green World in Dark Trees, Julie Withe, which Andrew spoke so lovingly about earlier. And then we talked about Bush of Ghosts. And I think Regiment is such an interesting track and one people should hear too. So those are my five. Five tracks. Jeff.
- [196:34]
Andrew Stuttiford
It's really, really funny because you, despite not knowing nothing about Brian Eno, have stomped on me completely. Another Green World. Yes. Before and After Science. Yes. And the reason I choose those two albums is because I could delve into the depths of them and say five songs from each and I don't want to do that. Hear the records. As for the rest, boy, again you stomped on me. Third uncle or Mother Whale Island. This was my split choice.
- [197:04]
Jeff Blair
That was my split choice too. Those are the two I had written down. Did you choose Mother Whale at the last moment?
- [197:10]
Guest Speaker
That's a great song.
- [197:11]
Andrew Stuttiford
Well, then I'll go with Third Uncle. Right. I have to pick at least one from Take rather from before. Here Come the Warm jets. And I'll go with Some of Them Are Old, which has always appealed to me is like this sudden. After this long tunele song, it just hard cuts into a sweet lullaby. Some of them are old, some of them are new, some of them come in when you've least expect them to. But it. It's a Brian Eno associating nonsense syllables together in a beautiful noise that will basically come to characterize what it is he's doing with his music. Since I already mentioned Another Green World, I have to go with discrete music. This is the biggest cheat of them all. It's a 30 minute long trip track. Yeah, 30. 30 minutes discreet music. You could even mistake it for the album if you're not careful. It's Beautiful. You will write beautiful words if you try to. The Bell Dog actually, it's funny that Andrew mentioned after the Heat and mentioned some of the collaborations that Eno did. I think the Bell Dog is the one that means the most to me. It's the penultimate song on that record, which actually, I honestly don't even think it's in print. You can't even find it anym. I think you can find it on YouTube if you Google.
- [198:32]
Guest Speaker
I think you can get an itunes. I think you can get on itunes.
- [198:35]
Andrew Stuttiford
Can you get it? I don't even use it. But it is. Not only is it a beautiful song in itself, it is one of those songs that when you hear Eno collaborating with the Cluster guys, you say, this is the sound of the future. I mean, I think I pointed out to you, Andrew, this is Super Symmetry by Arcade Fire in all but name. They totally took the vibe, the sound, the flick, the synth layering from this record. But if not just them, it's. It's a lot of people who hear this vibe, this groove, this peaceful groove. This is what he was developing in that time and were inspired by it. And I guess the final one I'll mention is a random track from My Life in the Bush of Ghost. It's got to be Help Me Somebody, which to me is the one actually on that record that sounds the most like a Talking Head song, probably because melodically I'm thinking David Byrne had the most to do with it. This is the way the guitar line is played. It sounds like a David Byrne idea, but when you get these people screaming, screaming at you, preaching over you, these sampled loops, they all. Most of the songs on that album feature samples from like Radio Preachers going on at 1am in the morning. And that's the vibe this album gives me. It's got that furiously crazy, esoteric 1am in the morning, obscure vibe that I think you know. When you're a kid and you're looking for something special for your own self, it means the world, world to you. But even now, boy, that old weird America America is waiting for you if you hear this album.
- [200:10]
Jeff Blair
All right, there it is. The political beats. Look at the music and career of Brian Eno. We thank our guest, former finance guy, now editor at National Reviews, Capital Matters. He is Andrew Stuttiford. You can find him too, @AndrewStudiford.com Andrew, thanks so much much for helping Jeff make this one come true. Our Brian Eno episode.
- [200:32]
Guest Speaker
My pleasure. What fun. What fun to listen to some of these tracks again.
- [200:37]
Jeff Blair
Yes. And probably introducing a lot of people to them for the first time, which is part of why the show exists. All right, Jeff, you can scratch another one off your list.
- [200:47]
Andrew Stuttiford
Fine. Bucket list. Finished.
- [200:49]
Jeff Blair
Jeff's on x at Esoteric CD. I'm there, too. Ottottbertram don't forget to join us at Patreon patreon.com Politicalbeats support us and the show. Help it stay ad free. Entry level, mid level, upper level. All the Benefits there at patreon.com politicalbeats subscribe to the feed for new episodes, find us on Facebook and over at Twitter X. Politicalbeats this has been a presentation of National Review. This is Political Beats.