Thursday, October 1, 2020

The 1980 Listening Post - Kevin Coyne - Sanity Stomp

 Kevin Coyne - Sanity Stomp


#486

Kevin Coyne 

Sanity Stomp

Genre: Rock

4 out of 5 


Highlights:

Fat Man

How Strange



We are only privy to the first disc of this double set by Coyne but it’s a pretty good example of what I expect the rest of it would be: A solid collection of songs by a guy who is extremely competent, a pretty good ditty writer and also someone who is going, by his own definition, insane. 

Here’s Coyne:

“I was quite ill when I made that record, as a matter of fact; I was quite mad, basically. That's why it's called Sanity Stomp. I had a nervous breakdown and, ironically, I don't want to say ironically...amazingly...I was able to carry on making records. That's a record I made when I was clinically ninety-five per cent nuts, and the themes are rather odd, but somehow it comes out as sounding all right. I'm amazed.”


He’s not wrong. The songs are, at times, blazing joints backed by members of The Ruts. To me the suggest that, live,  in a pub, on a Saturday night, well, we could do worse than the mayhem of “How Strange”.  And when he sings “Somewhere in my mind I’m feeling fine” and you know he isn’t, it’s all the more desperate and resonant. I have to believe that Warren Zevon was a Kevin Coyne fan.


I’ve read that the second album is much more bizarre and challenging and I can buy that. I’m not hunting it down cuz, to be honest, I’m sort of ready to say goodbye to 1980. But I’m glad Mr. Coyne made a stop in my life. 



It’ll only be here for a short time: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1HXfZOCDEIi3VuEvH3OqpmtQ0LOsppHes?fbclid=IwAR22BwSES_OPAbmMBC9TrImHULmuatnqGJZuqC-ipsSwox69xt-QUcJenrU



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