How Do You Cope?
"Ba - baba - ba - ba. Ba - baba - ba - ba."
In a moment of weakness, I fall again to the charms of Julian Cope and "The Greatness And Perfection of Love". Such a perfect sound, a slice of the eighties severed from time and place. The snap happy high toms and snares are a staple of that era of British pop, from XTC to U2 to even INXS (though Aussies) and even UB40 (okay, I couldn't think of another British Band with a silly onomatopoeia-like name. Is there a word for that, using letters to mean words?). At any rate, those bands had a very snap-like drum tone, with a slight echo, and Julian Cope uses a similar sound for "Greatness and Perfection of Love" (hitherto known as the acronym GAPOL. At least I know the term for that!). The guitar figure is, unsurprisingly, very Edge-like in it's staccato stutter - an underlying drive and forward thrust in a song where Julian's singing is floating above it all, very dreamy and almost plush in character. I picture a camera rotating around Julian during the verses, bad dry ice fog and a bad hand-colored animation cavorting around him. Having never seen the video (if he made one - it was a single), I can only imagine its leather-panted goodness in my mind.
The most impressive thing about this is it's great as a Representative Sound. At first hearing, you know you've heard it before, from a thousand bands, a veritable who's who of those lost to the ether, an archetype of all neo-psychedelia before and after. It could be a lost Syd Barrett masterpiece (overproduced for some retrospective), or maybe Echo & the Bunnymen or the Lightning Seeds, or even a side project for Damon Albarn or Robert Schneider. Yet, it's not - it's Saint Julian, inhabiting his own little world, where missives in the form of pop songs are his only way to communicate.
In a moment of weakness, I fall again to the charms of Julian Cope and "The Greatness And Perfection of Love". Such a perfect sound, a slice of the eighties severed from time and place. The snap happy high toms and snares are a staple of that era of British pop, from XTC to U2 to even INXS (though Aussies) and even UB40 (okay, I couldn't think of another British Band with a silly onomatopoeia-like name. Is there a word for that, using letters to mean words?). At any rate, those bands had a very snap-like drum tone, with a slight echo, and Julian Cope uses a similar sound for "Greatness and Perfection of Love" (hitherto known as the acronym GAPOL. At least I know the term for that!). The guitar figure is, unsurprisingly, very Edge-like in it's staccato stutter - an underlying drive and forward thrust in a song where Julian's singing is floating above it all, very dreamy and almost plush in character. I picture a camera rotating around Julian during the verses, bad dry ice fog and a bad hand-colored animation cavorting around him. Having never seen the video (if he made one - it was a single), I can only imagine its leather-panted goodness in my mind.
The most impressive thing about this is it's great as a Representative Sound. At first hearing, you know you've heard it before, from a thousand bands, a veritable who's who of those lost to the ether, an archetype of all neo-psychedelia before and after. It could be a lost Syd Barrett masterpiece (overproduced for some retrospective), or maybe Echo & the Bunnymen or the Lightning Seeds, or even a side project for Damon Albarn or Robert Schneider. Yet, it's not - it's Saint Julian, inhabiting his own little world, where missives in the form of pop songs are his only way to communicate.
And who are you
To give my life so much meaning
I can’t stand so much meaning
- Julian Cope, GAPOL
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