Friday, February 1, 2019

The 1984 Listening Post - The Blue Aeroplanes - Bop Art

The Blue Aeroplanes - Bop Art


#97
April 1984
The Blue Airplanes
Bop Art
3.75 out of 5

Highlights:
Bagpipe Music

Opening your debut record with a seven minute paisley, psychedelic repetitive track is ballsy. If you were wondering what Beat music would sound like if it was recorded in 1984 by players who were too young to have read the first edition Kerouac, you’ve come to the right place. Fire up “Pinkies Hit the Union” and you’ll be transported to an anachronistic poetry bar. Trouble is, I can imagine this works just fine in that setting but on vinyl? It’s more of a document than a valuable collection. 

Of course, there’s “Owls”, a piece I imagine David Lynch might enjoy but not many others. 

If you stick with it long enough, all of sudden this beat poetry concert becomes a folk show with the acoustic “Chelsea Wallpaper”. I mean, it’s still a pub only a different act has taken the stage while the band takes a bathroom break. The band joins in at the end, however and then the weirdness is back, hard on my favorite track “”Bagpipe Music”. Post-rock-pop-art-bagpipes??? I’m in!

The “concert” ends with, what I can only explain as what must be their version of an audience participation coda. Looked at that way, it totally works. 


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