RE: Tim Keegan

["Doxtator, Edward" <edoxtator@sp...com>]

-----Original Message-----
From: Taco Pipp [mailto:tacopipp@ya...com]
Sent: Friday, March 16, 2001 11:50 AM
To: blueplanes@st...net
Subject: [blueplanes] Tim Keegan


>> The connection is this:  Around 1991 or 92 (I don't remember exactly),
>> Robyn Hitchcock & The Egyptians went their seperate ways.
>> Andy Metcalfe joined a small band called Homer.  Homer had Tim Keegan
on
>> guitar.  Tim was also a guitarist with the Aeros on the Life Model
tour.

>Is this a coincidence?  Tim Keegan is playing at the
>SXSW, about 2 hours after the soft boys.  It wouldnt
>have caught my eye until it was mentioned here.  Sure
>would like to see another Bristol band play here some
>day as well.

It's not coincidence.  There's a fair number of swaps going around in a
few
of these bands... I'm also on the Jazz Butcher list.  Yesterday, Pat Fish
(The Butcher), posted the following review of the last Departure Lounge
rekkid.  Read on, you'll see what I mean...

********************************

        RARE AND PRECIOUS EXCEPTIONALLY FINE ALBUM ALERT
        TIM KEEGAN & DEPARTURE LOUNGE : OUT OF HERE
        Meek Giant Records MEEK003CD

        Honestly, I'd just about given up on waiting around for any new
         guitar group to come and do something that would get to me. While
         it's fair to say that the Flaming Lips are out there somewhere
         on behalf of all us chickens, we might remember that this is
         a band that has been going for as long as the JBC.

        Not all the over-forties are so lucky, so talented or persistently

        unconcerned with the trappings of success. One or two of my
acquaintance
         are adapting to some kind of 21st Century white boy
chicken-in-the-basket
         cabaret lifestyle, gathering for Saga holiday fun at the expense
         of trotting out some tunes that used to be a matter of life or
         death to them in their misguided youth. Others huddle, bearded,
         in basements, making heinous deep techno records, by way of which
         they wreak their revenge on the thankless youth who ignored their
         semi-acoustic ramblings. They crank the beat up for ages, then
         whip it away, leaving the hapless teens, frazzled with ecstasies
         and bloated with mineral water at a pound a pop, to hear the
         unmistakable voice of an American cop declaring:

        She's your daughter, Mister Wilson
        She died of an overdose!
        Sorted!

        I have actually heard this record. It's tops, as it goes I never
         said there was anything wrong with any of this.

        Of the new groups, the Brits seem chiefly concerned with making
         the grandest, most vapid emotional declarations over an
over-polished
         and undernourished MOR strum-along, while in the USA there seems
         to be a sinister tendency towards the deliberately, nay
provocatively,
         incompetent, as though sonic ineptitude and lack of ambition
         might reveal a more genuine and deeply lovable individual Behind
         The Music.  Bollocks to the lot of them, honestly.

        Of course, our favourite big old satellites are still circling
         out there somewhere: Copey and Mister Hitchcock, Mister Cave
         and especially - we are double blessed Mister Robert Wyatt. I
         don't know about you, but much as I love these pop stars from
         an alternative universe, I honestly don't get around to buying
         every record they put out.

        Every now and again, of course, one of them puts out a whopper,
         and we're all there, Johnny On The Spot. But it's pretty clear
         that part of the price you pay for being into the music thing
         for the long term these days is that if you insist on only making
         good records, you'll soon cease to be newsworthy. I don't think
         it's something that bothers those gentlemen in the slightest,
         of course. You make your choice and God can call you a c*** when
         you're dead.

        Peter Astor bucked all the trends, of course. He went sideways
         and laid the golden egg.

        But I've found this record. It's not particularly new or modern
         or relevant, though in its own warm and intimate way it is all
         of those things. All that modern shit is in there, beats and
         loops and bleeps and that, but what makes this record remarkable
         is that it is a guitar pop record by a gang of white British
         guys that does exactly what those kind of records are supposed
         to do to you.

        I do know the man who wrote most of the songs on the record.
          I've known Tim Keegan since he was a wee lad. He used to put
         on my band and bring his band to support us. He's been making
         music ever since the eighties, and I've kept up with a lot of
         it.

        This is, perhaps, Not a Good Thing. It makes it far too easy
         for me to think of Tim as Talented Youth With Melodic Guitar
         Band, Heart O'Gold. But Tim must be around thirty now, and, boy,
         is he ever hitting his stride. Even so, I had to listen to this
         release three or four times before the sheer magnificence of
         the whole enterprise hit me.

        But, reader, you will have guessed it by now.  It has hit me.

        Initially a few tunes really jumped out and seized my attention.
         Oddly enough, they seemed to be the tunes from the end of the
         LP, not the start. They struck me as so fine that I had to
investigate
         further.

        Stay On The Line was the tune that first did it. I was smoking
         and playing backgammon and it completely stole my mind away.
         I still think of it as the stand-out track on the record. It's
         utterly gorgeous and intimate and real. The sound is phat and
         lush and all made of real instruments: stand-up bass, guitars,
         all that shit. Perfectly in tune in every way. What follows is
         a beautiful love song that turns into a mental sing-along rumpus
         that many bands would kill to have written.  It's called I've
         got Everything (We Need)

        It may or may not feature Mister Hitchcock or Mister Peter Buck,
         but that's certainly Ringo on drums. Of course, I'm intrigued
         by now so I lose at backgammon. There follows a mad instrumental
         that sounds like Calexico gone electronic. I can tell you that
         it went really well with the Leeds-Lazio game on TV tonight.

        So I've started reviewing the record at the end. Bah! I don't
         do this very often. I should have started by  saying that the
         opening tune is faintly funky, arch and ambitious. Tim's lush,
         healing vocal tells you 'l need a torch if you're following me
         before leading us into a sweet Boxtops style fake soul chorus
         of enormous merit.

        The New You , which follows is deeply lovely and probably deeply
         ironic, but Tim sings it so sweetly that you almost believe him.
         Therein lies the agony of it, and therein the beauty.

        Disconnected comes next, reminding your correspondent of the
         late lamented Perfect Disaster at their most poignant. It takes
         you from the weird atavistic memory of some long-forgotten and
         probably deeply uncool hit from when you were about eleven to
         a heart shattering Velvets Third moment in seconds. You are not
         ready and you are left gasping.

        And so it goes. As you listen to this record you will hear echoes
         of the Beatles, the Kinks, Scott Walker, Peter Astor, 
Spiritualised
         and the Friends of Dean Martinez.

        Gulp!-  as Syd Barrett turns into the Smiths before your very
         ears! On one track you can clearly hear David J and Nick Lowe
         down the pub when Shane McGowan and Nick Cave slope in. Lap steel
         and tremolo arm wrestle it out in the smoky room before a Massive
         Stupid Flute Thing Chorus turns up and it all kicks off. You'll
         be thinking of The Prisoner and you'll be thinking whatever
happened
         to that lovely young Lou Reed boy and you'll be thinking about
         John Lennon and maybe you'll be thinking about Deirdre O'Donoghue.

        But this is an evocative album, not a derivative one.

        His voice rings loud and clear throughout, even though he is
         unquestionably a man given to different vocal stylings. He sounds
         confident and happy and he should do. He has produced the best
         record of his life so far.

        The instrumentation and the production are tough, sensitive and
         inventive throughout.

        It is my suspicion that the record would sound quite American
         to British ears, and identifiably British to American ones. That
         would only be fair reflection of the fact that Tim and the band
         do, in fact, spend a great deal of time playing in the USA and
         hanging with American musicians. This is a record from a certain
         tradition of songwriting, but it is by no means anachronistic.
         It's tempting to refer to David Gray White Ladder, but the sound
         here is simultaneously more real and also more effectively
produced.

        As a casual listening experience it demands nothing and offers
         a great deal. Give it time on a nice phat pair of speakers and
         it will actually do your head in.

        So there it is. Cynical old shit with a trolley full of Lee Perry
         albums gives rave review to English songwriter mate with white
         pop album. There must be something in it.

        http://www.meekgiant.com/departurelounge

        Pat

********************************

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