“How
long can the body and the brain tolerate this doom-struck craziness? This
grinding of teeth, this pouring of sweat, this pounding of blood in temples
… small blue veins gone amok in front of the ears, sixty and seventy
hours with no sleep …”
- from Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Dr. Hunter S. Thompson
1986 was an antiquated age, an era of the Merger and Acquisition, 640KB
technology, Reaganomics, and fear of communism. Everyone in 1986 was riding
the wake of an economic boom not experienced since the 1950s. Well everyone,
except for the poor, but they felt okay because Trickle Down Economics
meant something like getting shares of General Electric in their tin cups.
There were the requisite party poopers, we’ll call them Democrats,
who were whining about the rich getting richer and the poorer getting
poorer. No one was listening, so they went back to what they did best,
increasing government spending.
There were things that we don’t have today, like computers. At least
a computer that we, the Every-Work-A-Day American, would use, except Apple
Computer, Inc. (which was poised to dominate the personal computing market).
But to use one, you had to be in school, and who wanted to be there? Cell
phones existed but they were unreliable and the size of shoeboxes. MTV
played videos, nearly all the time. Now, Monetary Policy is all the rage,
a spirit of technological overkill saturates our lives, the Red Scare
has given way to the al-Qaida, and MTV plays videos when they feel like
it.
We had music, and, surprise, music was at a crossroads. A new sound was
bubbling beneath the mainstream. A sound that would pave the way for the
so-called Alternative Nation of the late 80s/early 90s. College Radio
was spinning new and sensational sounds from bands such as R.E.M., U2,
The Replacements, and Sonic Youth. The UK scene was also experiencing
a Renaissance of pure energy from bands such as The Smiths, New Order,
Depeche Mode, and The Cure. These edgy sounds were entering the mainstream
of American Popular Culture, and it didn’t take long for record
company executives to see a new lucrative market mushrooming before them.
U2 lead the charge with groundbreaking records such as 1983’s War
and 1984’s The Unforgettable Fire. This sent A&R reps on both
sides of the Atlantic scrambling for the Next Big Thing, the next U2.
This is where Mike Scott and his Waterboys come into the story.
The Waterboys began making music in 1983, and quickly garnered accolades
from the British press, none an easy task, with layered soundscapes of
mystical rock. The band released their “breakthrough” record,
A Pagan Place, in 1984 and promptly toured the UK. The shows were electrifying
and word quickly spread about the band. They were chosen to support U2
on their UK and North American tours impressing audiences. This Is The
Sea, The Waterboys’ third and pivotal record was released to much
acclaim. Propelled by the single, “The Whole of the Moon”,
the record and the band were in high demand, culminating with a gig as
the opening band for the Simple Minds late ’85 European Tour. Naturally,
things were looking good for the band, and the press soon branded them
as the Next Big Thing.
At the beginning of 1986, Scott travels to Dublin to spend time with Waterboy
Steve Wickham. He ends up staying five and a half years. Despite the momentum
that has propelled him and his “big music” to be the Next
Big Thing, Scott decides that his layered epic rock songs are not for
him, and he begins to dabble in Irish and English folk music while maintaining
his experimental nature. Naturally, this baffled critics, but fans were
undaunted and The Waterboys enjoyed their greatest success with 1988’s
Fisherman’s Blues. American audiences packed concert halls and the
record sold very well.
The years following found Mike Scott and his band in flux. The Waterboys
lineup has always been a fluid entity with Scott being the foundation,
the center, and the creative force. To make a long story short, Scott
dissolved the band in 1993 and began recording under his own name, releasing
two records, Bring ‘Em All In (1995) and Still Burning (1997). In
between the release of the last Waterboys record in 1993 and his solo
records, Scott embarked on a spiritual journey that took him to the North
of Scotland and the Findhorn Foundation, a spiritual and ecological community.
“It’s not mainly musicians or artists really,” Scott
pauses, “It’s all very dedicated people, dedicated to finding
their path, and to working with spirituality in their daily lives.”
The time he spent at Findhorn had a direct and significant impact on who
he is, as a person and an artist. “I suppose spirituality has been
a part of my life since 1992. I had what I would call a big awakening
in the early 80s. About 1983 when I first got turned on to spiritual literature
and I found out about the whole world of spiritual wisdom and different
spiritual systems from around the world that I hadn’t known about
before,” he says reflecting on his spiritual journey. “I read
a lot of books but I didn’t … but it didn’t become the
central focus in my life until about 1992. And I think that’s reflected
in the music.”
The Waterboys have returned with the glory of the mid-80s amped-up on
21st Century space rock music muscle. This record, A Rock in the Weary
Land, is at the Epic-center of Scott’s past and Rock n Roll’s
present. It is a shedding of his fisherman’s blues, a new burning-still
at the depth of his soul, his grandiose vision of what and where rock
is and should be (actually he doesn’t care where rock is and should
be), this is Scott dreaming harder past the sea of expectations. This
is an experiment that is anything but obscure; this is a journey. Scott
calls it “sonic rock.” We, you-the discerning music listener-
and I-the curmudgeon journalist, will simply call it Epic. And it is good.
It is equally saturated with terror and beauty, heaven and hell. Our ears
covered with headphones, ache with each layer of distortion, and are soothed
by melancholy piano and sensual string arrangements. Yes, we are happy.
It has been four years since he last put his songs to record, and eight
years since the last record bearing the Waterboys moniker, this begs the
question: “Why the Waterboys in 2001?” Scott is quick to explain
the logic: “I learned that people don’t recognize when I record
under the name Mike Scott. They don’t realize, apart from the hardcore
fans, they don’t know that it is from the same storehouse, which
began as The Waterboys. I felt like I was punchin’ beneath my weight.
And I made the new record, A Rock in the Weary Land, I believe in the
record and I wanted people to hear it, the maximum amount of people to
hear it, so I decided to use the name The Waterboys.”
Makes sense. The record is also a return, of sorts, to the “big
music” sound of 1984 when he was playing arenas with U2. The songs
on A Rock in the Weary Land are venerable textures of sound and melody.
The record sounds as if Scott picked up where he left off prior to moving
to Dublin. He finds himself stretching out to the outer limits of his
musical vision. He admits that with Still Burning he turned away from
his muse. “There is no experimentation on that record. And after
I made that record, I decided that I didn’t want to do that ever
again. I never wanted to make a straighter record. It was less Mike Scott,
and less Waterboys feel on that Still Burning record than on any of the
other records I have ever made. And I didn’t want to repeat that.”
For the new record, he enlisted a keyboard wizard named thighpaulsandra
(Julian Cope, Spiritualized) to help catapult his songs into a new sonic
landscape of beauty and experimentalism. “He worked pretty closely
with me, really. I give a lot of direction to what the two of us did.
But he brought a wide palette of sounds, all these fabulous sounds that
he has, and he knows exactly how to use them, he’s a real master.
He was able to give me somethin’ that I couldn’t have brought
to the record,” he says with satisfaction.
A Rock in the Weary Land isn’t just about stretching the boundaries
of rock music, but it also is a commentary on society. Scott explains,
“I wanted to catch of what I perceive as a grotesqueness of late
20th Century British culture and life, the boorishness of so much of it.
And I wanted to get that in the sound of the record, not just in the context
of the songs, but in the sound. Hence, the distortion and the darkness.”
The track “Dumbing Down the World” (inspired by the soft porn
of Maxim magazine and the UK’s Laddish Culture) utilizes backwards
drums and distorted vocals sung by Screwtape of C.S. Lewis’ The
Screwtape Letters (Scott is quite a fan of the writings of Lewis).
While our society has changed considerably since 1986, and music is, once
again, at a crossroads with the critic and the discerning music listener
hunting high and low for the Next Big Thing. Mike Scott has returned to
capture the vision, the sound of his early recording career. A Rock in
the Weary Land is not a nostalgia piece. It is the rhythm capturing a
point in time. It is the melody sharing a story with you. Like an archetype
for tradition and progress, Scott brings his timeless ear for layered
bliss with a modernity of crunch and attitude, fuses it together with
his spirituality to create a record to last the test of time. A Rock in
the Weary Land reflects everything about Mike Scott the impulses of Apollo
and Dionysus, the tension and the release, the darkness and the light
of living in a paradoxical world.
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