Metamatic Forums John Foxx John Foxx Metal Beat

... I seem to remember it was at some point but then pulled out in favour of something else . .it's mentioned here somewhere

but the CDs are only 60-odd minutes long, so there was room for it....

see Rob's exhaustive list of motivations for the tracklistings here:

http://www.metamatic.com/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=11;t=000126

F1 - keep reviewing pal, your reviews are getting better and better!! Never thought I'd here the word 'parsimony' on a website I visit! And I think John and Louis must name an album/song 'SpookyDroney' (That is now my word of the day!) - Although there is a petition to have a song title beginning with 'Z' to complete the A-Z (Louis did suggest 'Xanadu' but the slight flaw in his idea was pointed out!)
Cheers

I have just finished listening to both CDs of Metal Beat. Coincidentally, "Metal beat" doesn't appear anywhere on the CD! Well, not in its musical form anyway, but references to it, along with most of the tracks from the Metamatic era.

The time went by so quickly... was that really two hours?! And is it me, or is John's wonderful Lancashire accent more prominent on this recording?

It is, as always, a pleasure to hear John talking openly and in a down-to-earth way about his influlences and inspirations at the time. The insights into writing and film etc is always fascinating to hear, and is really inspiring.

In recent years "Metamatic" seems to have become as relevant today - if not more relevant than it was in 1980, and John isn't afraid to embrace that - hence the current tour. But it is interesting to hear him explain his frame of mind in 1979 and how his outlook and music evolved over the years that followed.

I did find myself fiddling with the volume far too much though, mainly to be able to hear Steve malin's almost whispered questions! Talk louder, Steve!! But speaking of questions, he does ask many of the what you might call 'burning' questions that have arised on the forums over the years, and John gives insightful answers, among which include putting to rest the rumour that he didn't play the "Underpass" riff.

Anyway - huge thanks to Steve Malins for, once again, putting together a fantastic interview CD. I could listen to John talk for hours without getting bored.

To be honest, I'm a little disappointed with John's behaviour re: John Barker and the Underpants riff.

He phrases it in a rather weasling way: "There's a story going about that..."
Clearly this refers to John Wesley Barker saying so himself on the official Ultravox web forum! (and he said it in perfectly gentlemanly and patient way, just politely responding to babbling queries from fanboys).
Foxxy basically implies that Barker is fibbing.

Reading both sides of the tale, my take on it would be "pretentious young art student Dennis Leigh, having been unable to fit his ego into the same band as Warren Cann, is intent on making is own super-electro-opus in a cupboard in Islington. Unfortunately, it turns out he can't play keyboards to save his life, and the recordings are sounding a bit of a mess, so his collaborator Gareth Jones delicately suggests they get his mate John Barker in the play the synth parts in a tighter and more ship-shape fashion."

I would imagine that the Underpants riff was one of the many parts John Barker had a go at playing for John (hence him remembering having played it) - but as it turned out, the particular take that ended up on the record was one played by John. Hardly any big deal, and it's not like Barker ever claimed to have written the parts (in fact he is at pains to explain that Foxx wrote them).


Another subject Steve Malins avoid probing John on is the contributions made by the rest of Ultravox to "Touch and Go" and "He's a Liquid" - Warren Cann's on the record raising a wry eyebrow at the lack of songwriting credits there... Malins does make explicit reference to those songs having been played with Ultravox, even quoting John's stage intros to them from bootlegs.


But I fear I'm just a bit bored today and amusing myself by being a total beatch. :p

Perhaps. John did seem eager to get his version of the 'story' made public! I was also a little surprised at his comment, after reading Barker's. However I admit I found Barker's take on the pants riff surprising in the first place... but of course I could have been wrong.

But at the end of the day, does it really matter?

Nope!

Underpants is about the whole song not just the riff. Even if John didn't play the riff, he still wrote it. It's the same as John not playing bass on 030 or Plaza. Or that terriffic solo in Walk Away.

It's just one of the elemts that makes up the whole song. And what a song. :p

I wonder who the Japanese engineer at Roland was who wrote the CR78 snare drum auto-fill that John used in Underpass? :p

Actually, that's not a facaeticious question, I'd love to know who came up with most of those rhythms.
A lot of the CR78 ones are just further developments from the TR33/TR55/TR77 machines of 1972, too!

You know, all this renewed metamatication almost has me minded to sit down tonight and go through each track on the album and write down which CR78 presets John used on each one!

I have a few written down at home that I worked out, maybe we could collaborate

Dave.

As far as I recall, the Underpants one (with that triplet bass drum thing) is a cunning one where you have to press two preset bakelite buttons at once (sthg like "Rock2" and "Disco1" or sthg), and the patterns overlap like that to give the three bass drum hits.

I always wondered though - was the CR78 that John & Gareth Thomas used on Metamatic modded with individual outputs for the various voices? Cos there's songs where there's, say, immense reverb or flange on only some of the drum sounds (e.g. the snare in Underpass, or the MetalBeat cymbal on Burning Car)

- yeah, that's another thing actually - y'all realise that "Metal Beat" is the name of one of the drum sounds on the CR78?