Metamatic Forums John Foxx John Foxx A New Kind of Man

Auch I don't know about that.

Pretty much all the drum tracks are just straight off a Roland CR78. Plenty of other artists did gigs using CR78s at the time (e.g. listen to any Gary Numan live album from 1979-1981 - Bombers is a good example). No problem there.
The vocals could all be done easily (albeit, they're ofter 2-part 'harmonies' on the record - but still work fine as a solo vocal)
The bass guitar could easily be played live.
The synth (and clavinet) parts are all mostly just single-finger stuff and could easily have been played by one or two keyboard players live.

The only difficult things would have been the occasional wierd synth specical effects, and the bits that sound practically "sequenced" (e.g. bits of Touch and Go or No-one Driving) - but as we have learned, these were actually NOT sequenced, but all played manually by Philip Glass afficionado John Baker.

In reality, the most difficult thing of all would've been getting a good *sound* for everything through a PA in 1980, becuase all the sounds in the studio had been flanged, reverbed, EQ-ed and generally fiddled with like mad, and it would be tricky drive up at a venue in a van, bung the gear on stage and get everything sounding as sharp and snappy. But not impossible.

Of course, it would've required maybe John plus a 4 piece band to do it justice, but he says Virgin were keen for him to do it, so presumeably they'd have paid their wages.
I actually suspect it may well have sounded fantastic if he'd toured it in 1980, and a lot edgier and more exciting than the 2007 live version!

It's funny you should say that, as I was thinking just yesterday, that had John toured in 1980, I would be much more excited about hearing a recording of that, than a modern version.

Imagine a 1980 tour... tracks from SOR and Metamatic, with the odd older Ultravox track thrown in for good measure.... but I digress!!! Food for thought, there!!

I know very little about musical technology, and all that side of things, but I reckon you're right in saying it may be have been difficult to get the right sound through a PA, despite the set up being easy to play live.

yeah, it's usually the sound that suffers if listen to old live albums or bootlegs from that period in music history.
Although the actual parts may be easy to play,
most of the equipment didn't have memories, and was usually heavily tweaked with outboard gear in the studio to sculpt the sounds further,
so on stage, it'd often be a bit pearshaped - the filters would be all wrong or sthg.
Also, a lot of things that were sequenced or similar would be hard/impossible to synchronize on stage.

For a bad example, listen to Kraftwerk bootlegs from the 1981 tour - the synths sounds are often a mess
For a skillful example, listen to Gary Numan's 1979 - 1980! All credit to him, he usually had his boys get the sounds sizzling and searing wonderfully.
Replicas in 2008 was pants compared to 1979, to be blunt!

I liked the Replicas tour sound, but bore in mind that he was not trying to entirely re-create the original.

It's interesting to hear the differences between Gary's studio albums and the Living Ornaments albums. His vocals are less treated (if at all) and the overall sound seems much more minimal - but faithful to the album sound and very well played. But the sound is huge - or that may have something to do with the volume needed to fill Wembley!

Gary was lucky to have a great band behind him for those early tours, considering he himself had such little experience at playing live when he shot to fame.

I haven't heard any Kraftwerk bootlegs at all. One thing that fascinated me though seeing Jarre live last month was watching everyone on stage fiddling about with those huge old machines - and it wasn't without its problems.

I guess today there are instant computer solutions if an old bit of gear goes down on stage. Back in the day, I suppose it was game over if the Moog packed up!

yeah Numan did very well on his first big tours

I know in 2008 he was trying to "update" the Replicas sound, but in all honestly, I caught him playing the lovely synth lines of "We Have a Technical" on a bloody Roland D50 in 2008 instead of the original miniMoog - what was he thinking?! Nafftastic! :p

Listen to the Ultravox live recordings from 78/79, and you can hear Billy getting even BETTER sounds out of his Odyssey on stage than in the studio!

One approach people tried in those days, if they had the money, was have loads of spare synths in the van as backup and on stage, basically have synths there just set up for a particular sound, as it was too much of a faff to try and turn all the knobs for different sounds between songs -
I imagine, if you did Metamatic live in 1980, you'd have one hi synth plastered with reverb to do the lead lines, another set of white noise with a massive flange on it, another one for bit phat splurgey phased bass, etc etc

Agreed! Having listened to the disc now a couple of times, I concur with your assessment of its sounding sanitized, which may be appropriate considering the material but kind of defeats the point of making a live recording -- especially when it relies so much on pre-programming and sound duplication and has been heavily doctored in post-production. (Does that make it the live-recording equivalent of a Photoshopped snapshot of a graphic-generated digital image?!) I do think live bass would have helped.

Even though the whole "classic album tour" concept leaves me cold, I love "Metamatic" so much that I would still have liked to see the shows, so the documentation is nice, but in all honesty I probably won't listen to this CD again much in future. I hope NKOM is John Foxx's way of putting the past to bed. It's been almost 30 years since "Metamatic" -- I love it, but it's time to move on. In that regard, I don't begrudge the "moneyspinner" aspect if my purchase of it helps finance upcoming projects, but I would hope that future projects are NEW projects. No recycled riffs. No recycled lyrics. No reworkings of old material. No repurposing of old artwork. Maybe also, dare I say, a new collaborator.

I agree. In one thread I described ANKOM as a "book end" album to the whole Metamatic era, and what you just said is what I was implying.

I adore Metamatic, like most fans here. I probably wouldn't be still listening to John's music today, if I'd never bought that album. A milestone, an inspiration - and that's how it should stay.

He didn't tour at the time, so I guess it always felt somehow incomplete. So with a glorious 2-disc remaster, a full album tour and live album from that tour, I think it gives that sense of completion - but the grey suit walks on...

This all almost makes me lose the will to play it, and my copy didn't even arrived yet :p
Though I haven't heard it yet, I can say already...give me a t-shirt gig dvd and after that some new stuff!
Hope the post arrives soon!

greetings,
fons

The live disc is a must. It's a pretty good redention of the original. I never get tired of listening to this classic album, now in it's live form.

A New Kind Of Man is a well produced live album and it's a perfect companion to Metamatic and Metal Beat.

Now with John "armed with an ARP, a Moog and a CR-78" another chapter to Metamatic is possible. John is still as creative as before....He's one of a Kind...A New Kind of Man...

Chris

Don't be discouraged, Fons! Even though some of what I said about NKOM may sound negative, you should definitely give it a listen to decide for yourself. You may find that you, like Chris C and some of the other posters, really adore it and disagree with those of us who are a bit disappointed in the sound quality and so on. Even if to me it serves merely as a document of a tour I didn't see and as a reminder of how much I adore "Metamatic," I am still glad I have NKOM and it makes me even more eager for something new.