Linn Records | UK | 12″ | 1984 | LKS 2-12
The Blue Nile – Tinseltown In The Rain UK 12″ [1984]
- Tinseltown In The Rain
- Regret
- Heatwave [instrumental]
I was in college taking art classes back in 1983 and I happened to ask a friend of mine what he’d heard lately that sounded good. Jim Ivy was another art student with excellent taste, so he was someone whose judgement I would definitely pay attention to. He replied that I should check out The Blue Nile, and at that point it became a waiting game for me. What I didn’t know at the time, was that the Scot trio were flying so far under cultural radar, that their records were pressed by a Scottish hi-fi company! Linn Records signed the group so that they could release their album as a test disc for their audiophile turntables!
It wasn’t until the next year that I chanced across my first Blue Nile record in the import bins at College Park’s legendary Murmur Records. I snapped the record up and was utterly floored by the sounds coming out of my cheap stereo. By this time in the eighties, I was used to so much music that I loved having taken their cues from mostly Roxy Music and Bryan Ferry. They were the primary influence on the musicians of my generation, [apart from David Bowie] and I’m fine with that! They offered a body of work that encompassed so many divergent environments and moods, there’s almost something for everybody in their canon; no matter which era of it that you may prefer.
So yes, there seemed to be a lot of Roxy-influenced music out there. Japan [the group] were among the first to finally leapfrog the boundaries defined by Roxy after slavishly adhering to them as closely as one could up to and including their monumental “Gentlemen Take Polaroids” album of 1980. Their last album, Tin Drum” staked out sonic claims that finally left the mother band Roxy in their wake. Such as it was when the needle hit “Tinseltown In The Rain” for the first time. This record proffered a sound that seemed like it defined an ideal that Bryan Ferry himself would be wise to emulate!
It begins with an immaculate rhythm underscored by rhythm guitar and piano locked in an elegant groove. The bass contributes yearning licks that subtly ramp up the tension. Then singer Paul Buchanan enters the song, sounding like nothing more than the idea of Frank Sinatra recast into a Glaswegian born 40 years later. He sings with a subdued passion at first, offering more vulnerability than one usually got from Frank Sinatra. But as the song unfolds, with a string section entering the mix, he begins to unfurl his voice like a bold flag against a bright blue sky.
By the middle eight the song has transformed into a otherworldly blend of George Gershwin and disco at its most dignified before the rhythms defer to the melodic outro where Buchanan belts out the closing verses with all of the bravado he can muster; pushing the line “…do I love you/yes I love you… will we always be happy-go-lucky” with more verve that he will ever muster again in his career. The resulting record is simply stunning. And frankly, it manages to make the polished, sophisticated sound of Roxy Music sound a tad hollow. “Avalon” seemed to be pointing toward this direction but in a more bloodless fashion.
The 12″ has an exclusive non-LP B-side,”Regret.” It’s an impossibly intimate piano ballad where Buchanan lets the listener into his personal space to devastating effect. The last track on the 12″ version, was also the B-side on the 7″ version of the single. “Heatwave [instrumental]” is another gorgeous track from the band’s debut album, “A Walk Across The Rooftops.” The song’s luxurious harp runs ripple like sunlight dappling on a lake and the effect, even without the vocals of Buchanan, is one of sweet placidity with just an underlying hint of the band’s traditional melancholy.
This record made huge impact on me at the time and time has not dimmed its strength one bit. Truth be told, the likelihood of a new record having this sort of seismic impact skirts nil. At the time of this record’s release, Frank Sinatra was quoted as saying that no one was writing songs for him to sing any more. How I always wondered what he might have done with this effort. Alas, it never came to be. Now that The Blue Nile seem to have been permanently retired, we would do well to remember a time when gods walked the earth and released records like these… every six or seven years.
– 30 –
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Post-Punk Monk 
A great debut single indeed. I didn’t find TBN until much, much later in their career and the only good thing to say about that was that I didn’t have to wait years and years for lp’s 2 & 3.
I was also late(-ish) to the game with Virginia Astley. I bought the cd of the album that David Sylvian and Ryuichi Sakamoto were on, because, well, they were on it. The album didn’t do much for me and sat on a shelf for years. It was around the time that I started listening to TBN that I ”grokked” hers. The instrumental of ”Heatwave” sounds like it could be an alternate track from one of Ms. Astley’s albums – maybe “From Gardens Where We Feel Secure.” I find it funny that the music I listened to passionately in the 80’s sits mostly untouched in my collection these days and the 80’s music that I found or rediscovered years after the decade ended is what I listen to the most.
By the way, it doesn’t take much effort to fuse the instrumental of ”Heatwave” with the vocal version from the album and make your own ”night mix” of it (I call mine the ”Indian Summer Mix”).
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Tim – I came early to the music of Virginia Astley. I read an interview with John Foxx in 1983 where he recommended Gardening By Moonlight and Virginia Astley, so I got those as soon as I could to much adoration. I have to admit, that I still hit my 80s favorites pretty hard; none so much as Simple Minds finest hours. Theirs is possibly my favorite body of work apart from The Giants. [Roxy, Bowie]. That doesn’t mean that finally hearing The Associates in 1990 didn’t hit with meteoric force! That incident, more than even the awful music of the 90s is what turned me into the Post-Punk Monk. Ferreting out the music I ignored, only read about, or didn’t even know about back in the day when I was busy grabbing all of the Ultravox/Heaven 17/Simple Minds/OMD et. al.
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I agree about the dreadful 90’s music, around that time I found myself exploring the family trees of 80’s acts that I liked and working sideways with six degrees of separation with the people they worked with and backwards with the people who influenced them.
Not many folks are familiar with this, but Valerie Carter (“Oh, Child”) has an ep from the 90’s by the name of “Find A River;” it has two of the best TBN covers I’ve yet to find (“Tomorrow Morning” and “Happiness”). Out of print now and an arm & a leg if one is able to find it.
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Tim – Never heard of Valerie Carter. I also can’t say I’m anything but disdainful of “Peace At Last!” The only TBN cover I’ve had the displeasure of hearing was Annie Lennox’s poor take on “THe Downtown Lights.” Of course, “Medusa” was rife with poor takes on a raft of artists I liked! I got my copy for free [Max Points® – remember those?] and traded it in anyway! It may be that PAL material might shine in a cover version since I dislike the originals so strongly.
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Let’s not forget Dave Stewart and Barbara Gaskin’s glorious cover of “Heatwave” from “The Big Idea”.
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Brian Ware – Woah!! Hats off to Mr. Ware! Damn my eyes for forgetting that most exquisite of Blue Nile cover versions. Anyone reading these words and unfamiliar with it should go here now and buy it:
http://www.burningshed.com/store/davebarb/multiproduct/326/2702/
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That may be the best record review you have given us Monk! I was about half way through and had to put on this single just to experience what you have written!!! This is one of my favorite tracks of the 1980’s.
I have been an early supporter of TBN. I found the A Walk Across The Rooftops in the new releases section of Freebeing Records on Second Ave & St. Mark’s Street the month it came out. What drew me to it was that it was released on Linn Records. I immediately associated Linn and Linn Drums and was sold just on that. When I got the record home that evening I was enraptured with what I heard. The opening drum and bass of the title track opener had me three measures in! When I listened to Tinsletown In The Rain I pulled the needle up at the end and played it again and had memorized the track by the end of that second play. There is a great yearning energy that you can’t help but getting caught up in. I really feels like a song about love between two people caught up in the big city – realistic, tender and somehow just a bit brutal.
There is a brace of records by bands I knew nothing about that I have purchased on the basis of album art or reading the credits printed on the back. I have been very lucky that these have been strongly good purchases. In some cases, as here, they have been albums I rank among my all time favorites.
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Thanks, Brian, for the tip on the on the Stewart/Gaskin effort. I found a copy on Amazon used and it arrived yesterday.
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I remember this song very well, thinking it was something special at the time. PPM’s description is extremely vivid but right on target. I think somehow that I first heard the song via a video on MTV, but I do remember seeking out the album. Sadly I haven’t listened to my BN collection in years as its in storage, but a number of their songs are simply magical.
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chas_m – MTV’s “London Calling” played the video… once. You must have seen it there, or perhaps over at my place watching my copy of the vid.
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