Monday 30 March 2015

JULIAN COPE – TRIP ADVIZER: THE VERY BEST OF JULIAN COPE 1999-2014 (Lord Yatesbury CD)

Author, antiquarian, musicologist, cultural commentator and champion of the underground music scene, you just gotta love Julian Cope. Thee Psychedelicatessen are massive fans ……we have been digging Copey since the acid madness of the Teardrops and his early records, through his more commercial St Julian and his “two car garage band” phase in the mid-eighties, onto his artistic peak with the peerless Peggy Suicide and Jahovahkill albums and since breaking free from the shackles of music industry just before the turn of the millennium, his more idiosyncratic solo work and collaborations…………..and what a long, strange trip it has been. Over the years JC has kinda evolved into a folk singer of sorts (admittedly a very, very weird one that dresses like a stormtrooper), a psychedelic troubadour and agitator singing songs of reverence and revolution, exploring the themes that first emerged on the Jahovahkill album……..the Neolithic Revolution and Pagan beliefs, a shaman/seer railing against organised religion and society’s “greedheads” while advocating a psychedelic revolution.
We love Julian Cope dearly but we think that he has not made a truly great record for quite a while. Although he is fizzing with ideas and enthusiasm his records can be a little bit hit and miss, we have often thought that if you could cherry pick the best moments from 1999 – 2014 what a brilliant album that would be………well guess what kidz, that’s only what’s gone and happened. Trip Advizer brings together the best 16 tracks from Julian Cope’s recent solo recordings released on his own Head Heritage label, taking in tracks from his 2005 album Citizen Cain’d through to Revolutionary Suicide from 2013 (plus a couple of none album/previously unreleased tracks)….there is none of his more experimental/ krautrock or “Pagan Stooges” hard rock outings included here. This is a collection of the more melodic side of the Archdrude and fair few of the songs here (‘I'm Living In The Room They Found Saddam In’, ‘They Were On Hard Drugs’, ‘Psychedelic Revolution’ and ‘Cromwell In Ireland’) have been regular concert favourites. The album includes the previously unreleased track, ‘Julian In The Underworld’, which is an account the psychic fallout from Copey taking a massive dose of the hallucinogen Salvia for getting his head in the right space for writing his One Three One novel, which he claims reduced him to a “salad with attitude” for several months. This really is an impressive set of tunes…..all killer, no filler…..which JC has selected for this compilation and although there is really nothing much here for the hardcore fan, if you have been wondering what the man has been up to since the Interceptor album this is a fantastic way of catching up.
Available on CD from the Head Heritage Merch Store and very groovy record shops, Trip Advizer is a must buy not only for any lapsed JC fans who have not been closely following his recent activities below the radar…….it’s time to reconnect People…….but this is a great introduction for anyone who has maybe read his books but not listened to his music or is simply unaware of this nation's finest psychedelic polymath (then get yerself down to your local record store/Amazon/whatever and get hold of a copy of the Archdrude’s magnum opus Jahovahkill………you won’t be disappointed).


THEE PSYCHEDELICATESSEN

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