Lowe-Fi: The Production Genius of Nick Lowe

(Picture property of Getty Images)

"As a producer, my biggest break came during working on "Watching the Detectives" and I discovered where the echo button was on the tape machine."
Nick Lowe

Despite being a fabulous song-writer, a smart quipper and passably handsome, Nick Lowe never hit stardom. Part of the reason might be that Nick, a long-time bass player, never loved the spotlight quite enough. From Kippington Lodge to Brinsley Scwharz, to Rockpile to Noise-to-Go and Little Village (and those are just the more famous ones) Nick always seemed to want to be part of, not just a band, but a team of equals. He used to seem a bit like a McCartney in search of his Lennon.

Further proof of his knack for team-work is the number of classics for which he's sat in the producers chair. Despite a catalog stacked with witty pop songs, more people probably own a song that Nick Lowe (more here) produced than one he performed. In interviews he often expresses amazement about this, as he believes he's no whiz at the mixing board. And certainly he's no sonic architect like Phil Spector or (shudder) Mutt Lange. After all, he earned his nick-name, Basher, for his recording philosophy of "bash it out now - tart it up later". But that gut-level style fit the times so perfectly and even when times changed and things got electronic ("Any barnyard horse can kick a synth" he once said) Nick always kept the songs and the people who played them right up front.

1. Graham Parker Back to Schooldays
Nick's first gig at the controls was this album, where much of his former band, Brinsley Schwarz, were now backing up this fiery little British soul-punk under the name the Rumour.



2. The Damned New Rose
Nick also produced what is commonly called the first punk rock single (which contained a love song and a Beatles cover - hmmm).



3. Snuff Rock Gobbing on Life
C.P. Lee (of Albertos Y Lost Trios Paranoias who deserve a post of their own) strikes again with first punk piss-take, which mocks the Pistols, the Damned and the Clash in a few short minutes.



4. Wreckless Eric Whole Wide World
Lowe's only production for Eric was this single, but it's a monster that will never die.



5. Elvis Costello Watching the Detectives
Lowe and Costello's partnership is another example of his ability to draw out the best in others, I mean how else can you explain how Nick produced Elvis Costello doing what many consider the definitive version of Nick's own "(What's So Funny 'Bout) Peace, Love and Understanding"?



6. Dr. Feelgood She's a Wind-Up
The Feelgoods may be the very embodiment of pub-rock and they certainly cranked up the tempo and the volume of what began a a bit of a laid-back movement.



7. Carlene Carter Baby Ride Easy
Johnny Cash's step-daughter (and child of country legends, June Carter and Carl Smith) married Nick Lowe who produced some hit-an-miss albums for her. Strangely, her move to Nashville, thankfully accompanied by her husband (and Tom Petty sideman), the late Howie Epstein, began her prime period.

Video here.

8. Mickey Jupp Old Rock n' Roller
Jupp is another lesser pub rock vet (he did write "Switchboard Susan", which got covered by both Nick himself and the Searchers when they recorded at Dave Edmunds' Rockfield studios).



9. The Pretenders Stop Your Sobbing
I suppose there are more popular nominees for the absolute zenith of Chrissie Hynde's catalog but I'd say she's made a fine, storied career out of never quite topping this one.




10. Richard Hell Kid With the Replaceable Head
Nick produced Hell? Yup, again just the once. (The 'video' is for the Destiny Street version produced by Alan Betrock and Hell.)



11. John Hiatt Love That Harms
Nick's would have a strong hand in bringing Hiatt's taut song-writing to a broader audience but not just yet.



12. Johnny Cash Without Love
When Johnny Cash is your step-father-in-law you better write him a damn good song, you better play on it and produce it in your basement. Much later, Nick's "The Beast in Me" became the linchpin in both his and Johnny's mid-nineties comebacks.



13. Fabulous Thuderbirds Diddy
The fun-loving, crowd-pleasing retro-minded music the Brit's cheerfully call "pub rock", North Americans derisively refer to as "bar rock". This is probably because while the back-to-basics movement Nick and his contemporaries built was vital and alive, sometimes the North American equivalent sounded like paint-by-numbers boogie even when, in the Fabulous Thunderbirds case, they have Stevie Ray Vaughn's brother in the band and had some middling eighties hits.

14. Paul Carrack Don't Give My Heart a Break
It's Lowe's song-writing and production (alongside Carrack's warm vocals) that keeps this from descending into tinky eighties pop.

15. Moonlighters I Feel Like a Motor
Austin De Lone, from Eggs Over Easy, was the Yankee in pub rock's court and even in his next band, the Moonlighters, he kept a vigil for the sounds of '75.

16. The Redskins Keep on Keepin' On
Their goal was,"To sing like the Supremes and walk like the Clash" and Nick's job was to keep them from sounding like a Trotskyist version of the Commitments.



17. His Latest Flame Somebody's Gonna Get Hurt
A pretty, if lushly melodramatic, pop song that bears little evidence of Nick's tricks.

The Men They Couldn't Hang Greenback Dollar
Sure TMTCH were Pouges-ian but what a ripping version of this Hoyt Axton-via-the Kingston Trio song.

18. Katydids Lights Out (Read My Lips)
An Anglo-American folk-pop band, to whom Nick gave a bright sound, to no commercial avail.

19. Rain A Taste of Rain
Liverpudlian jangle, probably owned a lot of the same records as the guys in R.E.M.

20. Mavericks Blue Moon
The Mavericks, not a name you'd want to be pallin' around with in these post-Sarah Palin times, played country with a keen sense of history, which made them a perfect choice to do one song (again) with Nick.




Nick hasn't produced much in recent years. Since the nineties, he's focused on his ideal micro-niche as a writer and performer of tightly focused soul-country-pop songs over a four album Brentford Trilogy.


Lowe-Fi: The Production Genius of Nick Lowe

"It's either this or the biscuit factory, really."
Nick Lowe on his career

Michael Roe: Face the Rising Sun

"Holy fuck!"

I swear to God, I spoke those words, aloud, multiple times during my initial listen to Michael Roe’s history of Southern gospel music, We All Gonna Face the Rising Sun. Perhaps it speaks to the paucity of my vocabulary or the degradation of my spirit that, when awed, I am reduced to cursing. Or maybe it’s evidence that this album demands a strong reaction. After all, some listeners may recoil at Roe’s appropriation of material so particular to another time, another place and another culture. Others may balk at Roe’s absolute sincerity, of which he said, “These songs make me tremble in my boots, I cannot sing these and not feel it every time I sing them. I picked songs I need to hear.”



Even most die-hard music obsessive will be unaware of Californian singer/guitarist Mike Roe’s almost thirty-year carer. Roe only bobbed above the surface of the mainstream when his eighties roots-rock band (sort of a heavier R.E.M.) the 77’s released a brilliant album on Island Records, the same week as U2’s The Joshua Tree, utterly consumed that label’s resources. Since then, Roe's soldiered on with the 77’s as well as adding his voice to alt-country collective the Lost Dogs.



For this album, Roe is on his own. He sang all the vocals, played almost every instrument (including the banjo which he’d never played on record before) and produced it all in his own home. What he has produced here is a virtuoso one-man show. While Roe is a very fine musician, it is his voice - a supple instrument, alternately sweet and stinging - that dominates these proceedings. Listening to him jump from a high lonesome country twang on "You Can't Go Halfway" to a deep bluesy growl on "Satan Your Kingdom Must Come Down" (covered years ago by Uncle Tupelo) is damn exhilarating.



The eleven songs Roe sings on Face the Rising Sun could well act as an introduction to Goodbye Babylon, a six CD box-set of (mostly) pre-war Southern gospel, despite only a two song overlap. That prodigious collection was so revelatory that Bob Dylan was moved to buy a copy for a grateful Neil Young, who called it, "The original wealth of our recorded music." Like the Oh Brother Where Art Thou soundtrack (whose newly-recorded material included "Man of Constant Sorrow", a song Dylan had recorded on his debut album), Goodbye Babylon juxtaposed songs from all different Southern cultural traditions, illustrating just how deeply they had intermingled.



With the period songs he tracked down, Roe weaves together multiple musical idioms, ones once labeled "race records" or "hillbilly", just as Bob Dylan did on his first album back in 1962. However, on this album, Roe wears even more masks than the young Dylan, who never multi-tracked himself into a full-blown gospel quartet as Roe does on the title track!



Every guise is not equally successful. However, while the album may have befitted from the guiding hand of a strong producer like T-Bone Burnett (an old Dylan sideman who produced Oh Brother as well as Raising Sand by Alison Krauss and Robert Plant) or even Rick Rubin (who kept Johnny Cash taking chances till the end, which even the Gaslight Anthem noticed) Roe's achievement remains stunning.



On the 77’s 1982 debut album Roe sang Washington Phillips’ (via Ry Cooder) “Denomination Blues” and here he interprets Phillips’, “Paul and Silas in Jail”. Back in ’82 he nailed “Denomination Blues” but in a most literal way, as a young seminarian might rigidly interpret a single bible verse. In “Paul and Silas in Jail”, as on the whole album, you can hear Roe wrestling with the poverty, suffering and degradation intrinsic to these indomitable songs. But this album is no glum recreation, in fact the most awe-inducing thing is how Roe took a rock n' roll cliche (the "back to my roots" album, of which the blues-based album in the most trite) and instead of making a self-indulgent vanity project or a studied exercise in history, he's made a joyful fucking noise.



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(This an updated version of a review published in the Manitoban, the University of Manitoba's student paper.)

V.A. Hootenanny Special (1965)

In memory of Liam Clancy's passing, I'd like to offer a piece of my childhood. While we never owned this Zenith Collector's Item, the songs of Pete Seeger and the Clancys filled my early days. We didn't really need it anyways, in my house we sang the songs ourselves, the hacked-up records were just for rainy days.



This set, which the liner notes call a "doozer", really contains all of the contradictions of the early sixties folk boom. In fact, by '65 this collection must've already been a bit of a curio. The set puts together thirties survivor Pete Seeger, New York actors (and Irish emigrants) the Clancy Brothers, collegiate folkies the Brothers Four, easy-listening act New Christy Minstrels and the Village Stompers who aspired to be the Herb Albert and the Tijuana Brass of folk. Then Bob Dylan, with two old songs, ends both the album and the quaint era of the Hooteanny.


Hootenanny Special

Dylan, Clarke and Bragg

John Cooper Clarke's moment of fame came in the thick of the punk era, though at the time he said, "My relationship with rock is like Lenny Bruce's with modern jazz - I like the clothes and attitude." While Clarke owed a massive sartorial debt to Bob Dylan (and some attitude debt to Bruce) his oeuvre is pure, amphetamine beat poetry with accompaniment ("I try to talk in tune" he once said), eschewing the vintage folk, blues and gospel which power Dylan's work.



In contrast, Billy Bragg gained little fame during his tenure as leader of '77 punk band Riff Raff but when he returned from driving tanks for the British army to take up arms against Spandau Ballet in the mid eighties he grabbed his nation by the throat. Bragg, to commit an over-simplification, mixed up musical and lyrical elements of the Clash and Bob Dylan till you couldn't tell which was which. Now here, in the midst of his 2009 Canadian tour, he tries that mash-up trick with John Cooper Clarke and Bob Dylan, trying to do Clarke's "Evidently Chickentown" (with the original lyrics) in a Bob Dylan (circa "Desolation Row") style. There's almost four minutes of chit-chatting to begin with but the end result is fascinating.



Fittingly, Bragg praises Clarke as a poet and as Dylan has said, "Everyone admires the poet, no matter if he's a lumberjack, a football player or a car thief. If he's a poet, he'll be admired and respected." Of course this was also the man who said, "I don't call myself a poet because I don't like the word. I'm a trapeze artist." For proof of that statement, here's Dylan working without a net.



P.S Those intrigued by Clarke shouldn't miss his beat-punk cum hip-hop, "Health Fanatic" from Urgh: A Music War.


A big thank you to regular reader/commenter Biopunk without whom this post would never have happened (though he is not to be held responsible for the rambling herein).

V.A. A Bunch of Stiffs (1977)

Speaking of Stiff Records, their second L.P. release, after Damned, Damned, Damned, A Bunch of Stiffs emphasizes the lark-ish side of the label. The hits here are Wreckless Eric's "Whole Wide World", Elvis Costello's "Less Than Zero", "Back to Schooldays" by Graham Parker and Motorhead's "White Line Fever" (officially released on Chiswick). Then the going gets weird. Nick Lowe's "I Love My Label" works as a laugh and a song, Dave Edmunds' cover of Jo Jo Gunne fulfills the rock n' roll quotient and, predating Dewey Cox by thirty years, we have "Food" by the Takeaways with a Mystery Guest you're all supposed to hope is Bob Dylan. As if, deep into his mystic-poet guise (not his best but far from his worst) between Desire and Street Legal, Dylan did boozy self-parody.

(Badges courtesy of Buy the Hour)

I Love My Label - Nick Lowe
Go The Whole Wide World - Wreckless Eric
White Line Fever - Motörhead
Less Than Zero - Elvis Costello
Little By Little - Magic Michael
Back To Schooldays - Graham Parker (uncredited)

Jump For Joy - Stones Masonry
Maybe - Jill Read
Jo Jo Gunne - Dave Edmunds
The Young Lords - Tyla Gang
Food - The Takeaways


This post owes some inspiration to Bert Muirhead's Stiff: the Story of a Record Label. After a little more digging I found this on some other blogs (including one of the first, and still one of the best, music blogs, Power-Pop Criminals). I was in too deep to stop, so to add some value (the book sells for almost a hundred bucks on eBay), here's its gossipy entry on this album:

A 'cash-in' record all the acts here were old friends of (Stiff founders) Jake (Robinson) or Dave (Rivera). The album worked well considering the ragbag of demos and finished articles from which it was compiled. The blend of heavy metal, rock and roll and new pop combined to make a potent album. Certainly, when the work punk was on everyone's lips and there was little of it in the shops, it helped fill the void.

Only the Costello and Wreckless tracks had been issues as singles and Motorhead's would have been if they had not signed to Bronze. Of the rest, "I Love My Label" was a typical Nick Lowe ditty (co-written with Jake). MAgic Micheal was well-knon on the benfit concert scene and was on the first Greasy Truckers album. GP's track was uncredited as he'd just signed wiht Phonogrambut was still managed by Dave Robinson. Stones Masony featured Martin Stone and postdated his spells with Might Baby and Chilli Willli (famous Jake connection). Jill Read was in fact Dave Edmunds. (Sean) Tyla was also part of the pre-Stiff crowd. The Takeaways were a studio band comprised of Lowe, Edmunds, and Larry Wallis. The nasal intonations are probably* Tyla imitating Dylan. Recording costs were minimal and the profits were probably high as the album sold like hot cakes.

* According to roberto (and backed up by the authoritative 45 Revolutions) the faux-Dylan was in fact C.P. Lee, head of faux-punk band Albertos Y Lost Trios Paranoias and author of the definitive Stiff slogan, "If it Ain't Stiff, it Ain't Worth a Fuck".

* C.P. Lee dropped by to give some excellent detail, "It was me - It was the second take - the first take was done in the 'style' of Brian Ferry - Jake and Nick asked if I could do Dylan - I did and got £25, a free copy of the album and a night out at The Marquee - Vive Le Rock!!" Bless you, C.P.

(Image courtesy of fredpopdom)

A Bunch of Stiffs L.P.

V.A. Chiswick Charbusters Volume Two (1977)

Chiswick Records was the original pub-to-punk label, releasing the Count Bishops first single the year before Stiff Records (more here) began. Chiswick's reputation has often marked it as Stiff Jr., due to it's being longer on enthusiasm than on marketing savvy. And while Chiswick did release the best Damned album (Machine Gun Etiquette tops Damned, Damned, Damned on almost any metric you can design) it never signed huge artist like Stiff's Elvis Costello, Ian Dury, or Madness. Many Chiswick artist got bigger after they left the label. Chiswick released the 101'ers single just before Joe Strummer joined the Clash, they released the Riff Raff single many years before Billy Bragg talked the world's ear off, they released Motorhead's first single before Bronze Records brought their grizzled mugs to the world, they released singles by the Nips (Shane McGowan) and the Radiators (Philip Chevron) long before Stiff signed the Pogues and they even released the early Skrewdriver work before Ian Stuart, in their words, "joined an obscure religious cult".



Long Shots, Dead Certs and Odds on Favourites covers the great Chiswick-ians (Motorhead, the Radiators from Space) the good ones (the Rings, Radio Stars) the okay ones (the Rings, the Count Bishops) and Johnny Moped (Johnny's okay but he seems like a real "you-had-to-be-there" kinda figure).


Long Shots, Dead Certs and Odds-On Favourites L.P.


Support someone, buy Chiswick Chartbusters Volume One here!

V.A. Hope & Anchor Front Row Festival (1978)

Hats off to whoever did the bookings for the Hope & Anchor, a pub in Islington that championed first pub rock in the mid-seventies, then later punk rock as the decade wore on. Judging from the line-up for the pub's Front Line Festival that took place in late 1977, that booker had a deep sense of music's past and its future. Early sixties survivors like The Pirates and Steve Gibbons (and facsimiles of the same like the Pleasers) sit beside their pub rock disciples like Wilko Johnson, Tyla Gang and the Dire Straits, alongside older vets gone punk like the Stranglers, The Only Ones and 999 all of whom jostle with young punk upstarts like XTC, the Saints, X-Ray Spex (and don't forget reggae greats Steel Pulse!)



01 Wilko Johnson Band - Dr Feelgood
02 The Stranglers - Straighten Out
03 Tyla Gang - Styrofoam
04 The Pirates - Don't Munchen It
05 Steve Gibbons Band - Speed Kills
06 XTC - I'm Bugged
07 Suburban Studs - I Hate School
08 The Pleasers - Billy
09 XTC - Science Friction
10 Dire Straits - Eastbound Train
11 X Ray Spex - Let's Submerge
12 999 - Crazy
13 The Saints - Demolition Girl
14 999 - Quite Disappointing
15 The Only Ones - Creatures Of Doom
16 The Pirates - Gibson Martin Fender
17 Steel Pulse - Sound Check
18 Roogalator - Zero Hero
19 Philip Rambow - Underground Romance
20 The Pleasers - Rock & Roll Radio
21 Tyla Gang - On The Street
22 Steve Gibbons Band - Johnny Cool
23 Wilko Johnson Band - Twenty Yards Behind
24 The Stranglers - Hanging Around



Hope & Anchor Front Row Festival double L.P.

V.A. Sudden Surge of Sound (1980)

Since out last series of posts got derailed by a take-down of sorts, let's start a series on a favourite MRML muse, the compilation album. A Sudden Surge of Sound was put out by VU Records in 1980 and feature a lot of the trends of that divergent year. Rye and the Quarter Boys play in a Dexys'ish mod style, the Hawks offer a frothy power-pop, the Two-Tone Pinks a dish out a more punkifed power pop, the Silent Ones hold down the art-punk slot, Kenny Read The Old Wave of British Heavy Metal one, while Essential Logic do the sax-driven new wave thing and grizzled faves the UK Subs contribute their pounding "Left For Dead".



So another fascinating, if imperfect relic of the original punk explosion. More to come...

(Image courtesy of Detour Records who have put out a fine Two Tone Pinks re-issue.)

A Sudden Surge of Sound L.P.

The Beatnik Termites vs. The Parasites

These two ripping American power-pop-punk bands, the Parasites (more here) and the Beatnik Termites (more here) need no further introduction here - so just enjoy this split single release on Just Add Water from 1995 (smack in the middle of the nineties Great Vinyl Glut).



Beatnik Termites/Parasites split 7"

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G.P.S. - Panique Sur la Plage

France's Garage Psychiatrique Suburbain (more here) never topped this slightly twinkie but still utterly rollicking barrage of melodic hooks and underwatery keyboards.

G.P.S. - Panique Sur La Plage (1985)

Respect must be paid to the heroic ModPunkArchives for championing the by now unfortunately-initialed G.P.S. on their pages.
By the way, singer Thiery Hazard later gained pop celebrity in France for an intermitenly pleasant eighties take on late-sixties psych-pop, as heard (and seen) in songs like the toe-tapping Poupee Psychedelic and the Robert Palmer-esque Le Jerk. Hey, it could be Mitsou!



Panique Sur la Plage 7"



Here's a MySpace page but I believe their sole CD is out-of-print.

G.P.S. - Quand Revient L'ete

Garage Psychiatrique Suburbain killed some, if not all, prejudices about French rock n' roll. For an early-eighties pop-savvy band, recall this was the era of Simple Minds, they rocked just fine. You can hear the guitars, the keyboards sound like a pub-rock holdover and the song is irresistibly catchy no matter what your mother tongue. It was ancienne and moderne all at once sorta like if the Go-Go's had been French (and guys). Of course, as befits the the French, there was touch of ironic distance, as if this was the musical equivalent of Euro Disneyland.


(What French lesbians and caged tigers have to do with this I can't say.)

This single from 1982, was a bit behind the times, with its surf-punk/new wave sound that fit somehwere between Plastic Bertrand's "Ca Plane Pour Moi" and The Barracudas "Summer Fun". So while the video is hilarious (sometime intentionally so) the band here, and on the more straight-up punk "Samedi Soir", acquit themselves of all charges of being cheese-eating surrender monkeys.


Quand Revient L'ete 7"

Here's a MySpace page but I believe their sole CD is out-of-print.

Things To Hate: Yes

Nick Lowe once said, "Yes and Genesis are about as exciting as used Kleenex" and you can be sure that back when he said it, slamming so-called progressive rock bands was de rigeur. But isn't it now kinda childish to cling to that old, old story about how punk chased disco and prog from the rock n' roll temple? Shouldn't these die-hard naysayers just lighten up? Isn't it time for a Yes revival?

No, no and fuck no

To whit:



When I tried re-listening to "Roundabout" now (my endurance caved at about 3:43 of the eight-and-half minutes they somehow felt this composition warranted), I did find elements to appreciate; the poppy hooks, the mild-rocking and the medieval folk but that bass line, deeply beloved by many, is still stomach-churning. More importantly, the endless busyness of the piece encapsulates all which is most loathsome about prog-rock and its cherished fallacy that more is more.

And just to keep things muddy, here's this year animal-based indie-folk sensation Grizzly Bear, making Yes' eighties hit "Owner of a Lonely Heart" sound like a Gregorian chant.


Before I drop this subject I gotta tell you a story, it's true but the names of everyone involved have been changed to lull the guilty into a false sense of security.

I once worked at a record store with a Hard Rock guy, one of those hard rock guys who was also a Yes fan. Tight pants. Flowing hair. Aspiring musician. Part-time Drug-dealer. If you moved in musical circles long enough, you've met one of his ilk. Let's call him Bon Jovi.

From the moment the store received a play copy of the eight-headed abomination that was Yes on their Union album, all Bon Jovi could think of was playing that fucker. Now we had a strict, "No stock - no play" rule so as long as we had no copies of the album to sell we could refuse to play the album in the store.

However, as we knew it must, the day came when six copies of Union arrived to taint our shelves. Me and my co-worker, a man of distinguished musical taste, let's call him Ryan Adams, looked at each other in horror. Then Ryan Adams opened up the CD case and let Union drop on the floor with a tiny clang.

"Oops," said Ryan Adams.

I took my Docs to it, grinding it across the length of the stone floor. "Oops," said I.

Ryan Adam picked up the disfigured CD and dusted it off. "Yoo-hoo, Bon Jovi, we have stock of that Yes album."

Well Bon Jovi burned a path over to us, all lit up like a kid on Christmas morning. "Oh wow, you guys'll see how great this album is really, it's like a rainbow of sound...

"0^$0fyt^1%A10^hg1F^%0$vY1$y!!!!!" said the CD player.

"Oh" said Bon Jovi, looking as if our well-lit Christmas kid had just found jagged lumps of coal beneath the shiny wrapping paper."I guess it's broken." He took it our of the CD player and returned it to the jewel case, without even noticing the damage.

Then, all slumped of shoulder and slow of step, he wandered back to the nothing he'd been so heavily engaged in before the promise of Yes.

"I guess we're assholes,Ryan Adams," I said.

"Yes we are Rob Gordon, yes we are."