BOC:Popoff's text and miscellany.

[Jon Jarrett]

On Thu, 21 Oct 2004, Jason wrote:

        <snip>

> 2. Allen,when he's asked something, gave onger answers than I though he'd give.
> I wonder what he says when asked "Why are there so few Allen Lanier
> compositions in BOC?"

        I've sometimes wondered a similar thing, which is why did the
change to home demo recording that went on around _Agents of Fortune_ hit
Allen so badly? If you look at the tracks with Lanier credits on the SFG
album and the first three BOC albums: `What is Quicksand', `Gil Blanco
County', and now we have the remasters `Mes Dames Sarat' are all his
entirely bar the words, and even those seem to be his on the last, and
he's also got credits in `She's as Beautiful as a Foot', `Workshop of the
Telescopes' & `Redeemed' though they'e low in the list. But that's nothing
at all that made the cut to either _Tyranny and Mutation_ or _Secret
Treaties_. I think what we can take from that is Allen's natural song
ideas style is better suited to the light end of BOC's sound, and that the
fierceness of those two albums meant that whatever he was coming up with
didn't fit. I bet he was coming up with stuff, because as soon as the
change over to home 4-tracks happens here come the credits again, `True
Confessions', `Tenderloin', and I'm afraid `Dance the Night Away', but
then also `Searchin' for Celine' and `In Thee' and `Lonely
Teardrops'. None of them exactly my favourites but fairly coherent in
style.

        So I wonder if it's that the shift away from jamming to compose
gave Allen more room to get his softer style into the tracklisting, and
then that a slow metallisation after _Mirrors_ (which favoured his style
quite strongly) began to leave it out again (seems only thing after
_Mirrors_ beyond `Marshall Plan', which if I recall correctly was a
deliberate attempot at a `group number', that gives him a credit is
`Don't Turn Your Back', which has however got his name first in the
list). He was clearly coming up with stuff in jams in the early days too,
the SFG bag is quite respectable there, but I think it just must have not
fitted as well as what everyone else was doing with the "heavy pomp" thing
(whose phrase was that again? Ah well, it's a useful one).

        That doesn't really go to explain why he firstly didn't go solo
when he left (maybe he couldn't get anyone interested?), and why when he
was playing out so much more than he had been around the time of CotHM
that album bears almost no trace of him even in the apparently-`group'
numbers. I guess for some people the songs stop coming.

        I mean, this all relies on the album credots not only being
correctly printed and everything but also their being in some way
reflective of reality, and Deep Purple and Hawkwind horror stories tell us
that this need not be true, but if they are that's one way to read it all
perhaps. Just a guess, in any case, yours,
                                           Jon

ObCD: Gorilla - _Gorilla_ (this is the goods, as long as what you ordered
was someone trying to combine all Blue Cheer's and Sabbath's least subtle
and sensitive moments... I'm happy with it anyway :-)
--
                Jonathan Jarrett, Birkbeck College, London
    jjarrett at chiark.greenend.org.uk/ejarr01 at students.bbk.ac.uk
  "As much as the vision of the blind man improves with the rising sun,
       So too does the intelligence of the fool after good advice."
       (Bishop Theodulf of Orleans, late-eight/early-ninth century)