Re: Haircut One Hundred/Nick Heyward

I always seem to get some sort of grief when inform people that these guys were pretty damn good pop artists, with a small amount of substance at a time when it wasn't in great demand (Kajagoogoo, Flock of Seagulls etc). I still enjoy Pelican West and North of A Miracle now, even though they are severely dated.

Your thoughts?

I liked Haircut 100. Heyward had the ability to pull more great pop tunes out his ass without even trying than most people could with years of effort.

Stick with it. In four or five years the gatekeepers of cool will rediscover the Haircuts and they'll be showered with the same adulation now directed at people like the Free Design, and you'll look like a prophet. (Unless, of course, Haircut 100 actually sold too many records in their day, which would put them off limits to cultish rediscovery. After all, that's why the Free Design are lauded now while someone like the Fifth Dimension are still regarded as bad post-hippie kitsch. No one actually heard of the damn Free Design when they were originally around, but the Fifth Dimension had nasty old hit songs.)

So if you can track down a band of Haircut 100 acolytes who never had a hit back in 82, you'll really be set. Maybe Roman Holliday - they had a hit single, but no one on earth actually bought their album. But I digress.

At any rate - there's no shame in enjoying stuff like "Love Plus One," "Favourite Shirts," "Lemon Firebrigade" and "Kite" - that's good stuff. And in the future when it's regarded as cool to like them again, the people giving you shit now will have mysterious memory lapses when it comes to the topic.

I didn't much like these guys at the time. A few years ago I heard "Favourite Shirts" on local radio, and I was surprised that I liked it. It was teriffic in an wanting-to-be-the-English-Beat kinda way (which I don't mean as faint praise). I bought Pelican West and while I wouldn't herald it as a lost gem, it definitely has enough merits to warrant continued attention.

How does one get to be a gatekeeper of cool anyhow? I always thought of Trouser Press in that light...

ANDROMEDA HEIGHTS is indeed the Sprout album I recently discovered. I agree with the other assessments. Nice enough stuff, but nowhere near as memorable as McAloon's best work.

should i dye my pubes as well?

I love Pelican West and listed it as one of my guilty pleasures on a previous thread. On second thought though, I don't feel guilty about it at all (as opposed to "The Lexicon of Love", which I listened to again last week and enjoyed way more than I'd care to admit). Pelican West is a joyous album and you need feel no shame about liking it.

The Heyward solo stuff was less interesting to me, but was all plenty pleasant too.

I've been on an Aztec Camera & Prefab Sprout kick lately - they always had a bit more meat on their bones than the Haircuts, but they aren't completely unrelated.

I just picked up a Prefab Sprout album that I didn't even know existed - can't recall the name of it right at the moment, but it was post-JORDAN: THE COMEBACK. Never got released in the US as far as I know. It's a continuation of the jazz-pop sound McAloon had perfected with JORDAN, and is nice enough stuff.

That Sprouts album is possibly Andromeda Heights (a bit too weak a cup of tea for me, despite some nice moments) or The Gunman and Other Stories, which I haven't heard in full. The single, Cowboy Dreams, from the latter was nice, if not essential work.

Paddy McAloon also has a solo release of orchestral music (2004 or so). He used to have the whole thing streaming from his now-defunct web site. I have a feeling it's about on a par with Joe Jackson's Willpower, but I'd have to hear it a bit more to be sure. It integrated readings (I think) of things talk radio callers said. I believe Paddy had a detached retina or some similar eye problem, and he apparently listened to talk radio a lot while recovering. Or so the story goes.

I think they were dismissed at the time because of their wimpy preppie image. It was assumed their music must be similiarly lightweight. But I also heard them again recently and, after having listened to a lot of Latin music in the interim, I instantly picked up on the heavy Cuban flavor of some of their hits. They had more complex rhythms then most of the contemporaries, but the vanilla singing/sorta-rapping gave it all an unfortunate StockAitkenWaterman vibe.

I've already gone on record as saying I like the Mamas and the Papas, the Beach Boys, Free Design, etc. so let it be known that, yes, I also like the Fifth Dimension, who, despite, their skin color, fit right into that near-extinct vanilla harmony sound. And the Association, too - so shoot me!

No, that's cool. Anyone who likes the Free Design SHOULD like the Fifth Dimension and the Association. I like them just fine myself. It's the people who like the Free Design because they were obscure while dismissing the Association & Fifth Dimension as somehow inferior because they dared to be popular that I can't stomach.

Andromeda Heights is an okay album, but misses the variety and energy of Steve McQueen or Jordan: The Comeback.

Haircut 100 is all right by me. Same with Heyward's solo stuff. In fact, my wife and I just picked up a really nice 5-CD changer (we shop for stereo equipment the same way we shop for CDs: check the secondhand bins first, and see if you can find any surprise treasures), and the first CDs she loaded into it were Pelican West and North of a Miracle. Both are kinda dated, sure, but there's no faulting the songs.

I still listen to "Knife", but my fave was always "High Land, Hard Rain".
Have they done anything since "Frestonia"?
I haven't kept up with Roddy, but i heard he has a new solo Cd out. Recomendations?

I'm pretty sure Frestonia was the last under the Aztec Camera name. Roddy has released three solo albums. I have the first, The North Star. It's pretty bland stuff. Not actively bad by any means, but not especially gripping.

I was a big Aztec Camera fan for a long time, but Roddy has never seemed to live up to his promise. Everything he does is at least pretty good. You can still hear all the talent, but it just seems like he could have made more of it. Anyhow, hear some of his stuff on his MySpace page: [www.myspace.com]

That page features a very nice, very straightforward streaming version of "In My Life".

You can also get a couple MP3 bonus tracks from his second solo, Surf (hope this link works), at: [www.killermontstreet.com]

Finally, he has two live CDs out. Very tempting for me. I didn't check the track listings today, but I don't think there's much, if any overlap. Might be a great way to catch up with his output.



Post Edited (08-15-07 20:02)

i'll fight any (tiny) (wo)man over the greatness of the association and fifth dimension

i will not fight for haircut 100;

speaking of which i need a haircut myself and thinking about dying my hair blond

shd i do my eyebrows?
will i have more fun?

The eyebrows are always a giveaway....

I saw the Association in 2002, on a bill with Alex Chilton and the Box Tops, Felix Cavaliere's Rascals and Lesley Gore. The Association (all dressed like Colonel Sanders) and the Rascals were awesome.

Please tell me that "all dressed like Colonel Sanders" included little white goatees...

Funny, "all dressed like Colonel Sanders" is how my wife described The Hives, when we saw them on their last tour.

extra crispy or regular?

who wants to be the gatekeeper of cool for chrissakes?
i wanna be the parking lot attendant

oh, and the eyebrows come in at haircut 99



Post Edited (08-18-07 01:50)

I wanna be the guy who sneaks into the parking lot of cool without paying for a ticket, and parks his lime-green '76 AMC Gremlin there all weekend.

Delvin wrote:

> I wanna be the guy who sneaks into the parking lot of cool
> without paying for a ticket, and parks his lime-green '76 AMC
> Gremlin there all weekend.


dye yr hair first