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from Portishead. And then it just stuck. And then was 71 McLean 2008. 72 Harrison undated. " 47 " DUMMY just this really weird ironic kind of I hated Portishead and we just called ourselves after the town. It was ridiculous. But we couldn t come up with a better name. And we used Portishead as a name, and people said I really like that name; what s that from? Because they didn t know it was the town. And that has been it, ever since.73 73 B.B.C. 2010. " 48 " Shock A cacophony of metaphors Grunge breakbeats Strangers The air under assault Public Enemy Hard-bop jazz More tea A 79 Chevy Caprice Classic The Roland TR-808 The resonant qualities of the human lung Student housing Floors and ceilings Church bells and curfew Highest tide Numb was released in June 1994, the first single from Dummy. It was distributed to D.J.s first as a white label. The sleeve featured a still from To Kill a Dead Man, as would Dummy itself and the singles for Sour Times, and Glory Box. On the cover of Numb the image is almost abstract a detail of a forearm, a hand, a piece of medical tubing. A hand raised, presumably to the head, in an apparent gesture of despair, helplessness. The image is grayed-out against a deep and foreboding blue stain; the single s sleeve a flat unreadable cream. No intimation as to the song s nature or to its musical workings. An art object, distanced from its contents. The title track was accompanied on the A-side by two remixes, entitled Numbed in Moscow, and Revenge of " 49 " DUMMY the Number. We tended to have fun renaming them in quite obscure ways, remembers Tim Saul. The remixes on the B-side, Earth Linger, and A Tribute to Monk & Canatella, are opaque references to two little- known Bristol bands, including Saul s own Earthling. * * * What to make of this music. The immediate critical response to Dummy was one of confusion brandished to a hard point of aesthetic shock. It seemed to cross so many genres, to suggest so many moods. A cacophony of metaphors: '' the torched soul of prime-era Peggy Lee dressed in spy movie, spaghetti Western and 90s urban cool. 74 '' A chain-smoking Joni Mitchell hanging out with Cypress Hill. 75 '' A near-ambient pastiche of dub, techno, R&B, and soul. 76 '' The John Philip Sousa of the Prozac Nation? 77 '' Black-hearted soul stirs up a whole new genre: disque noir. 78 Early enthusiasts included legendary broadcaster Bob Harris, who gave Strangers heavy airplay in London. 74 Darling 1995. 75 Quoted in Darling 1995. 76 Entertainment Weekly 1995. 77 Entertainment Weekly 1995. 78 Bernstein 1995. " 50 " R. J . WHEATON Like others, he struggled to arrive at a description that was not a hybrid of genre references: It s such an innovative album. The description present day urban blues fits it very well. Soul comes in so many forms you don t have to be Otis Redding to have soul and the album s part of an amazing surge of really good music coming out of the U.K. right now, at last.79 * * * In the U.S. Dummy s arrival had, perhaps, been to more fertile ground than is commonly thought. The use of hip-hop-influenced breakbeats had been part of the alter- native American rock scene; Greg Milner has suggested that an awareness of hip-hop is arguably the single most recognizable aspect of alt-rock in the nineties. Break beats were everywhere just listen to Dave Grohl s drumming on the chorus of Teen Spirit. 80 There was a kind of cultural caesura at the death of Kurt Cobain an event mentioned to me by numerous North American listeners in connection with their experience of Dummy, a moment that seemed to suggest the exhaustion of alter- native rock, to allow, as Vancouver writer Sean Cranbury notes, a move away from that organic guitar-drums-bass verse-chorus-verse mentality. MTV gave Sour Times heavy play as part of their Buzz Bin.81 By February 1995 the single had reached #55 in Billboard s pop chart on the 79 Sexton 1994. 80 Milner 2010, p. 179. 81 Taraska 1997. " 51 " DUMMY back of extensive exposure on alternative radio.82 In the [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ] |