Sock Free Hideaway

SONGS THEY NEVER PLAY ON THE RADIO

24. My Bloody Valentine : Dare, somewhere 

PART 1

I WAS going to big up an over researched book, Andrew Perer's Turn My Head into Sound: A History of Kevin Shields and My Bloody Valentine. However, reading it reminded me how big a part they've played in my life and how little studios interest me.

Encapsulated by what would've been a far more engrossing chapter about Colm O'Ciosoig's misfortunes during the Loveless sessions being reduced to a short paragraph. It omits the human to make a point about Shields being superhuman and is obsessed with his studio gadgetry and not the fact he answered the door with a hammer when Belinda got threatened by an ex. The folk who lent an ear to his project weren't the main players, but were studio staff. 

MBV seemed adult compared to all my other fixations. Adult, as in sex. It's why their pre-Bilinda incarnation didn't work for me. Shields may well be the genius, but the overall image the band cultivated after 1987 was captivating. Coupled with music unique in its sensuousness, it simulating my idea of sex even. Something truly felt.

An idea for over a decade until finally cocooned under the covers in my mate's cold back bedroom with a lovely, full-lipped woman whose supple voluptuous curves I had never encountered before. Experiencing one of my best Sundays, period. Cliche'd for sure, but Isn't Anything enraptured us, I guess. She gave me her number, but I was flying over to Rome to meet what I assumed to be my girlfriend, Joss, so tossed it away. When I got to Rome, Joss met me, two days later than planned, informing me she'd met someone new. I was as sad about tossing away that number as I was about receiving the news. Imagining how enraptured by Loveless we could've been. 

Sometime earlier in the same room I was spinning (Please) Lose Yourself In Me, the hypnotic closer on their Ecstacy LP to get it aired at an upcoming Doves gig, but Jeff inexplicably called it dated. Absolute bollocks! Only Spector and the Reid brothers have created a comparable wall of sound with nowhere near as much unsettling fizzy warmth. Their last Lazy masterpiece, the Strawberry Wine EP, contains three tracks, all different but all brilliant. It almost eclipses early Mary Chain with its immediacy. It's that good. I first played these retrospectively in 1988 after they signed to Creation. When they became everyone's favourite band.

I only ever recall hearing You Made Me Realize out in the Hangout that year. The interplay between the ethereal and the concrete is much subtler on Isn't Anything. Voices and instrumentation mesh, de-tune, and crystallize, creating something transcendental and unheard before. The bulk of this bedroom bound pre-shoe-gaze brilliance shone with an aforementioned sensuousness bordering on the abstract and all done on budget. Sleep deprivation was key to achieving these distinctive sounds, or what Shields calls a hypnagogic state. I could only achieve walking into walls and crying to strangers on buses in the same state. Hats off!

PART 2

FUMBLING HIS his way in tranced out states to test out the studio like a low budget Brian Wilson is how Shields sold his experimentation to Mike McGonigal, but Perer attests to him being much braver than that. Irreversibly erasing what Dave Anderson describes in Perer's book as "all the guitars, the dry elements- to leave only the processed reverse signal." A process that was unique at the time. To pick a favourite from this period is nigh on impossible as the records all play like dreams. Yes, occasionaly even wet ones. 

Uni gig 

After catching them at the dimly lit Uni and being surprised by their power and volume and by my intolerance to micro-dots, it devastated me missing them at the Reading Festival when my head was more together. They were on Friday afternoon and my coach was late.

Loveless, the fruits of Shield's labour and a test of everyone else's patience were one of those rare triumphs in life when the game changes. Ed Simmons was in awe of it, as were other less renowned clubland faces. It's so groundbreaking a book has been written about it. Albeit, a pocketbook. 

My good mate Jeff nipped out at lunch to declare upon his return he'd claimed my ordered copy from Musicworld, leading to a Basil moment in the work canteen. Course he hadn't. These excessive, embarrassing outbursts punctuate my life. Exerting no great effort and resembling a sleepy bear Shields pissed far more people off, creating his magnum opus than I've managed in a lifetime. 

Still under the illusion of the band dynamic in my head I felt gutted to later discover it was all Shields. He undertook all duties; his infamous glide guitar technique (google it), reverse reverb, fuzz and distortion, sampling and layering that rendered everyone other than the most trusted studio staff superfluous. These groundbreaking effects, sounding much more textural and organic and woozy than anyone else's records, put them at the very top of the tree. 

Obviously, I was over expectant at the Ritz in 91, expecting Loveless's elements to be at the fore with a fancy Dan light show, but what I got was another sensory assault minus the microdot. Unbeknownst, the band had only learned how to play the songs after their completion. I had probably gone to wave about and shuffle in a constricted, baggy manner but found the burning intensity, volume and energy unsettling. Had I left the house expecting something akin to the Uni gig, I would probably have loved it, but with all Shields talk of hip-hop and samplers I was expecting a club feeling, so I merely enjoyed it. 

They made more sense to me at Spike Island when Weatherall's remix sounded subversive as it wafted through the air in distorted anticipation of the Roses. Or in clubs surrendering to Soon with a trainee nurse from Crumpsall, who I was smitten with for traversing the line between goth and indie brilliantly. Then later, in mid-nineties shindigs, when the remix was perfect accompaniment for spilling drinks to in revelry. 

This piece was supposed to conclude with a trip to Glasgow to marvel at their live show, but sadly, that trip got cancelled. Instead, I have played super cheap analog represses of masterpieces, dusted down some original twelves and fallen in love with m b v, an album that was a tad disappointing when it first surfaced after a gargantuan wait. Again I was over expectant. The missus just doesn't dig my guitar based superheroes so curled up in a foetal position is how I like to listen to these now. They mesh well with my mirtazapine medicine and remind me why music is my life support and not sex.  

Despite Perer trying to convince me otherwise, I still see MBV as a four-piece. And still see them at the very top of the tree.