Metamatic Forums John Foxx John Foxx and Louis Gordon Australia Tour

I thought to keep this out of the 'announcements' thread (as it is now SO much more than that) we ought to have a new thread here.

Thanks for the myspace link to three interviews - they are all excellent.
You can read the Rip It Up interview by Scott McLennan - entitled 'Trash and Treasure' - here:

http://www.ripitup.com.au/interviews/7364

The courier mail one is the FULL TEXT of an edited interview hosted here: (previously flagged up by Member D
http://www.news.com.au/couriermail/story/0,23739,23623430-5003421,00.html

In my (limited) experience, we are lucky to get these unedited transcripts. fantastic insight - thanks to Steve and John for posting

I can't find the third one online anywhere else, and the myspace site doesn't give any credits or references. It could be an interview with John just for his own site and 'us'?.
Thanks to MemberD again for the heads up.

All very exciting stuff (even if some of the content is 'repurposed' between interviews ...)

Crikey, some line breaks wouldn't go amiss!

Not sure what you mean...

Post (and links) all look fine for me

I find the Rip It Up article and the full Courier-Mail interview on MySpace quite difficult to scan/read due to the formating - or lack of.

But despite that, this current set of interviews are proving to be very interesting indeed

I see. :rolleyes:

Yes indeed. Myspace leaves a lot to be desired...

Oh JOY!! Thanks for the heads-up about the interviews, Martin.

The 3rd interview is very funny. It should get more people interested in attending the Australian gigs. Not just because it is funny, but the way John uses words, which can only be described as 'Metapoetry'.

It's fired my mind up, that's for sure!

..only just spotted this thread, but Martin you did right to start a new one.
Tried to get more info on the 'uncredited' interview on myspace but can't post comments for some reason.
Very entertaining interview; he gets better and better.

Glad to read John's also listening to Ghost Box recordings and Burial...things some of us have been muttering on about in the Green Room for a year or so now - perhaps John reads the Forum! *gulp*!

Just did another search on the local Google.

Here's a review of the Brisbane show Xray Dubs

Here's some twit who doesn't have a clue! Four Thousand

Here's a promo in a local music mag with some comments music mag

And here's some Goths who seem to think John's one of them! Clueless Goths

"As the vocalist for '80s legends Ultravox!, John Foxx did a lot of dancing with tears in his eyes"

- What?!

"If you were/are a fan of Ultravox!, or just cheesy '80s synth-pop in general..."

- WHAAT?!

Just shows you how ignorant people can be.

I was reading some of the comments under the music mag blurb & tour dates. Someone called Dj Bollocks (I kid you not) typed this:

Evan Carr's interview with John Foxx will be on PBS Monday night at 10.00pm. It's an interesting interview, as someone who didn't know much about his career I found it quite informative.

Did anyone catch this? Atom Man? Is it on't net somewhere?

Unbelievable, really! :rolleyes:

I've always found it interesting that John is actually quite an attraction for Goths. The whole darkwave movement often cites him as one of the influences, especially SOR and The Garden. It was partly because of this I'm sure that Mr No got released a few years ago.

Here's another interview for Inpress, promoting the Melbourne shows. One that John did a few days before he flew out to Australia

http://goingdeafforaliving.blogspot.com/2008/05/interview-john-foxx.html

Some are thicker than others though!

I have no idea what he means by PBS. As far as I know, that's an American public TV network. Nothing in Australia like that. Certainly nothing on Australian TV featuring him. It would be on the ABC if anywhere (ABC is the local equiv to the BBC in the UK).

And nothing on the ABC's radio arms (Triple-J is their only modern music network). I just did a search and nothing was listed.

I'm not sure why they'd consider The Garden an influence. Night Suit perhaps. And This Jungle. Although that was on the B-side to Europe After The Rain.

To me, the album marks the start of his romantic period.

ARGH! Found it! PBS is a Melbourne radio station.

Google finds this link . But I can't see the interview there anywhere.

Interesting ... you can make music requests online.

I did some more googling and found these -

Some pre-tour comments .

3000 this time . I suspect this site is postcode based. So there must be a 2000 out there as well.

Melbourne goths this time.

"Vienna was huge and the rest is history we'd all prefer to forget..."

Excellent!!

The "Australian Rules" article is very good though - nice to see such a thorough article.

...but Tiny Moving Pictures?! That's unforgivable!

If you scroll down the page, it shows a playlist for the program broadcast on May 5th.
The interview with John is 'track 7' and a few of his songs were played afterwards. The interview wasn't broadcast live but (apparenty) recorded on 25th April.

PBS = Progressive Broadcasting Service

Nobody's perfect! You could try contacting him about it though.

Yep. I searched their site for more on Evan Carr after I found it, but no luck. He did write an article on synths though. Perhaps it will show up eventually.

Oh I missed this one - good interview there - complete with high res pictures!

A little bit of Aussie footage has appeared on YouTube: -

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=KOR9VpjeLYs

Yeah. And when has John ever worked with Aphex Twin?

A different bit of youTube.

Underpass in Sydney can be experienced here

These are not great (sorry Tim...) but there are some photos of John performing in Adelaide here

Whoa fantastic!

Thanks for that link!

The sound on that is actually quite good! All mine have that horrible thumping sound that the one from the Corner Hotel has. I'm trying to get them cleaned up before I upload them. But be warned, Camera is 228MB in size!

In the mean time, I've uploaded 2 of John's post-TCM Q&A. One where he discusses how films and videos influence our lives and hes mentions how everything was gray in Lancashire when he was growing up. The other one has him replying to a question about his former fellow Ultravox band members.

These are both on Google Videos awaiting approval. I'll post the links when they're ready. Google also appears to resize them. Mine were all 640x480 @ 15 fps. I only noticed after uploading them that they said they resize everything to 320xsomething.

Anyone know of a site that doesn't alter them?

Fabulous.
Thanks Atom Man - look forward to that!

OK, they're up now. So the turnaround seems to about 20 hours.

Here's part 1 and part 2 .

You can rate the vids and add comments too.

Note the beer in John's hand!

Excellent!

Thanks for the links.

OK, I've now uploaded the live version of Camera from the Metro, Sydney, concert (took most of the night to upload but it was worth it).

At 6:30 mins. its nearly all if it (I missed a bit of the start). As far as I know, its the only live version of Camera online.

You can find it here .

This is the only one that I took at the concert that doesn't have that horrible thumping sound (I was looking at other uploads yesterday and a few of them have it too).

I'm still looking for a way to fix the sound of the others before uploading them.

A few notes for future reference. I used a low end consumer still camera (a Nikon L10) to record the videos (it was easier to use than my other camera).

Unfortunately, it doesn't let you zoom once you're recording video. Also, holding steady for more than a moment is next to impossible so a monopod or something to rest the camera on is de rigeur.

You really need something that lets you control the recording volume too. I think a proper digital video camera would work far better (these usually have image stabilisation). Has anyone recorded with one of those? If so, can you comment on the quality?

I've just uploaded my recording of Hiroshima Mon Amour from the Sydney concert. Its not visible quite yet but it should be soon.

The sound on this is passable.

The interview that John did with Triple-R radio in Melbourne with Steve Wide is now online to listen to as a podcast.

http://www.rrr.org.au/archive.php?archive=audio

(three or four lines down - 9th May)

Thanks to Mick James, program manager for bringing it to my attention - and of course for promoting the tour in this way too.

Enjoy...

Excellent! Any luck with PBS yet?

I also did another search for more reviews and found these two - Rave Magazine and this . The later isn't a review, however. The first one might have been reported already.

Brilliant - this is a really good interview

Just thought I would comment on my experience of Goths interest in John.
About a decade ago, I co-ran a one off night club event, the name of which referenced one of the great mans songs. It was Retro in theme, the idea was to play primarily British, 80's music which was a bit more alternative. The stuff you would have heard in underground clubs in the 80's rather than on Countdown. We did some general promo and some specifically aimed at the Goths including a radio spot where we played some Foxx, awful I know, but I can't remember which track. We played Underpass on the night and the song was picked up and played at some of the Goth clubs, where it was pretty well received.
It doesn't surprise me at all that Goths are interested in The Garden, all that beauty and decay and Dancing Like a Gun is great to dance the Gothic Two-step to, but rather why they haven't embraced tracks like The Man Who Dies Everyday and The Wild, the Beautiful and the Damned. Would have thought those two would make great gothic anthems.
Yours in PVC and lace,
Katja.

I go - or should I say I used to go, when I had more time - to a synthpop night in Sheffield. They usually play Underpass or Europe (though on one occasion I did get the DJ to play A Million Cars), but the majority of stuff played is more along the lines of Numan, Kraftwerk, Depeche Mode, Mesh, Simple Minds, OMD, Soft Cell, Duran Duran, Visage, Ultravox, Flock of Seagulls, New Order, etc - all that kind of stuff. Great night actually.

I would say a large part of the crowd is always made up of goths. And they usually happen to be the nicer folk too! Now I wouldn't have thought of it as a goth night, since stuff like Sisters of Mercy for example don't usually get a look in. But they go, and they dance to Underpass and do the clicking thing.

So it doesn't surprise me at all that there are goth fans.

I told the friend I dragged along that there were supposed to be goths at the Sydney concert based on the remarks in their forums. I didn't really notice any but he kept saying "Oh, he's a goth" or "She's a goth too". Not sure if he was pulling my leg or not but they didn't look overly obvious to me.

There were I would say 6 legitimate Goths at the Sydney show. One was the one who did the review for the Goth site, she is also a well known DJ on the scene. They were pretty underdressed so perhaps not easily spotted. I was a bit surprised there weren't more.
Anyway, Goths seem to love a Retro night out. Without starting an arguement, I have always considered Goths as the love children of Punks and New Wavers/New Romantics.

So my friend was right? He counted about 4 or 5. There was one with short, bright red hair and tats all over her back and a guy with long straight hair. That's about all I can remember.

Do you have the link for that review or has it already been posted here?
That's probably spot on.

I was rarely on the site the last weeks 'cause of work, but I want to say a big thank you to all the members who gave so nice reports, links for interviews and photos from the Australian tour. I enjoyed it reading a lot and it seems you all had a great time ( sure thing - it's John!!!).

And I want to say thanks to John and Louis for traveling to Australia and Japan - it's great!


Andreas

LOL Atom - YOU posted the link!

"And here's some Goths who seem to think John's one of them! Clueless Goths web page "

Montags hair isn't red and black anymore it's black and kind of bluey/green, hard to tell in artificial light.

Katja

PS Excuse the clumsy post, am technologically challenged.

Talking of the Goth-Foxx link, I happened across this compilation album earlier today: -

http://www.tesco.com/entertainment/product.aspx?R=651795&bci=7|CD

Cool. One of the rare examples of No-One Driving on a compilation.

The 'Goth' genre tend to pick up Underpass or Mr No, or the more obvious Systems/Garden material

I thought I'd do one final sweep with Google to see if there were any more reviews, interviews or comments.

These are the only new things I could find -

Newspaper review posted by a reader.
Not sure if this was posted before. Brisbane concert review and comment.
Tour announcement with some reader comments.

Thanks for these.

The last one refers a to to that Evan Carr interview (and live session???) which I can't find reference to anywhere else.

Do you know if this was broadcast/is available on podcast or anything?

I can't find it either. Perhaps they only broadcast it live.

There are two email addresses these pages that might help you.

Cheers. I have tried these.
The 4play list identifies the tracks played on one show, but the archive doesn't even list Foxx, so its not desperately helpful.

I have emailed the station and heard nothing back, but I'll let you know of any developments.

Thanks for your help

Thanks. If they don't put it up, perhaps we can ask for a copy and host it elsewhere.

Yes, John did an interview with Evan at 3PBS here in Melbourne, and then John and Louis did 4 songs live to air (we'll it was pre recorded and played later that afternoon) the songs were, Shadow Man, Hiroshima Mon Amour, Underpass, and Uptown/Downtown. John also did a station ID for them that was quite funny.

Wow! I really have to hear this!

I would love to hear it too!

It's got to be somewhere... surely!!

Would be great to hear this.

There is an interview with John here:

http://www.jasonnahrung.com/may08.html

and a review of the Brisbane show. This is the full text of the short interview from which the Courier Mail feature was put together.

Did anyone record the PBS version of Underpass when it was on myspace?

I meant to, but forgot. (e-mail)