Wow.

UnknownI’ve said “wow” with vigor a couple of times now, during the past couple of weeks, both times traceable to Karl, with whom I hope to someday host a regular podcast titled “The Ks Talk Tunes.” The first time was when, after he’d hinted that there might be a Brian–Eno–related gift coming my way, I realized upon opening the package that he’d actually gifted me the entire 70s Eno solo catalogue. Wow.

I have no connection to Eno’s music at all prior to about a week ago; I have known him only from an encyclopedic–history sense as a quirky yet towering media figure (weird ambient music guy, responsible for Microsoft noise, hangs out with Robert Fripp and David Bowie, oh yeah even used to be in Roxy Music, once said a funny thing about why he didn’t join XTC, very important guy, blah blah blah). That’s it.

So, true to my nature as an encyclopedic–history type, I identified Here Come the Warm Jets as the earliest one in the stack, in terms of release date, and popped it in several days ago. I was on my drive home, mentally fatigued, and just let the music wash over me, catching only the occasional lyrical or musical detail, merely getting a feel for the sound and sensibility. Definitely worth checking out some more, I thought. One compelling notion occurred to me that first time that helped me root my response to the record in a meaningful place in my particular musical consciousness: I thought, this record (which predates the formation of XTC–forerunner Star Park by at least a year) sounds a LOT like early XTC, from angular, choppy guitar rhythms to seal–bark vocals. No wonder there was a moment when Eno might have joined them. The funny thing Eno said, by the way, comes from the liner notes to the XTC retrospective box Coat of Many Cupboards (worth all 30 bucks, I swear it, just for the live version of “Snowman” therein contained, Paula); I can’t recall who wrote the notes, but the writer reports that Eno said he declined to join XTC because “they already have enough ideas on their own,” which said writer promptly used as a fulcrum to add some major snark: “sheds new light on Eno’s later work with U2, doesn’t it?”

This morning, freshly acute in the brain, I put it back in for my drive to school.

Wow.

As someone who, also with much help from Karl, has recently deeply immersed myself in prog rock and who has a long–standing grasp of prog–influenced acts in genres like New Wave (the aforementioned XTC) and 80s metal (Rush, of course, and also Iron Maiden, which is a prog band with a metal mask, as Jnan and I know), I have a solid grasp of the lineage, musically, that links Beatles and late–60s–psychedelic rock to prog rock and then to the music on which I grew up in the 80s. But what’s absolutely overwhelming me, this morning, and thereby driving me to create the present blog entry, is this possibility:

That solely by itself, Here Come the Warm Jets can stand as a Rosetta Stone that articulates a distinct, non–prog lineage I had heretofore never been able to place, the link connecting Beatles and late–60s–psychedelic rock to XTC, certainly, but also to post–Ziggy Bowie (perhaps no surprise, given Eno’s role there), Talking Heads (again, maybe the thread sewing Eno to Fripp and thus Belew should have clued me in, but that’s a thin and anachronistic thread), R.E.M., and, most astonishingly, to Nick Cave—both Birthday Party style and Bad Seeds style. All this, in a record from 1974!!! I say again, wow.

The title of this entry is my effort to pun on album title, on Karl’s generosity, and on my anticipation of the delights that await me in the other albums in Eno’s 70s oeuvre.