Utopia - Deface the Music
#358
September 24 1980
Utopia
Deface the Music
Genre: Power Pop Beatles Deconstruction
4 out of 5
Highlights:
I Just Want to Touch You
Crystal Ball
Where Does the World Go to Hide
That’s Not Right
We’ve heard a ton of Power Pop this year. And what it all has meant to me is that I apparently love Buddy Holly and the Crickets a LOT more than I previously thought because that’s what all those bands wanted to emulate. Every one of them from Elvis Costello to The Jags to Squeeze to The Late Show and on and on. Their roots are in Buddy. As is the early sounds of The Beatles. There was no Elvis in any of these bands. And that’s a good thing, since Elvis, while great, wasn’t a tunesmith the way Buddy was.
And that’s what Todd Rundgren has tapped into with Utopia’s Deface the Music. By interpolating Beatles songs he beats the tar out of John and Paul and shows them for what they were: fantastic interpreters of Buddy Holly and the Crickets’s sound with a great producer to guide them but I have to wonder what might have happened if the Music didn’t die on that flight. What would Buddy have become? Would he have continued his genius? Would he have gone psychedelic? Would he have traveled to the East and created his own Pet Sounds/Sgt. Pepper? What would his music have sounded like in the 70s and 80s, for there is no doubt he would have joined a Traveling Wilburys menagerie and had a career resurgence.
Or perhaps he would have been a popsmith for others, reaping the royalty rewards.
There is a very good chance that scads of bands would have existed in very different forms.
And I’m not sure The Beatles are THE BEATLES cuz, for sure, Buddy would have been the top of the pile.
Is Deface the Music as great a Power Pop Beatles record as much as it is a remarkable deconstruction of the form and a reconstruction? I want to believe it's just an exercise by a cynical pop tunesmith to show everyone that the Emperors clothes belonged to the king of the crickets. But, we all know that each song is an interpretation of Lennon/McCartney tunes following through their career. I mean, “Hoi Poloi” is a warped “Penny Lane” and “Life Goes On” is "Eleanor Rigby"and what it ultimately is is an exercise of “I’m doing this because I can do this.” It gets a little annoying at the end when it gets into that Magical Mystery time, sure, but it’s not long.
And I love it.
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