Tuesday, June 17, 2008

Eno

Nope, this isn't about wine, though there are plenty of wine bars out there that have borrowed on the double entendre. I was perusing a Hollywood pop culture mag in the reading room this AM when I came across a reference to Brian Eno as U2's producer. Well, that he is. But to refer to Eno -- a founding member of Roxy Music and a founding father of art rock, art punk and ambient sound -- solely as a background contributor to Bono's stardom was flat out offensive to my sensibilities. What can I say? He deserves better.

I was hoping to find video from the early Eno solo days but couldn't come up with anything. So here's a montage set to a tune from Eno's mid-phase collaboration with David Byrne.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Jonah Weiner's piece in Slate today gives Mr. Eno his propers:

"But who needs Timbaland when you can afford Brian Eno, another paradigm-flipping producer whose services are in far shorter supply these days? Eno is responsible for introducing David Bowie to noise, Talking Heads to polyrhythms, and U2 to cosmic sweep. (Given this third achievement, you could say that X&Y was an unintentional parody of an Eno album, place-holding until the real thing came along.) He likes to evict bands from their comfort zones. The hypnotized jam session was his idea, as was frequent instrument swapping, all to shake the band free of ingrained habits."

Debra Morgan said...

love Eno, haven't heard "baby's on Fire, better through him in the water" in a bit

David McDuff said...

Good to see you back, JLo. And thanks for the link and quote. The line that inspired my post was also found in the context of a Coldplay review (as Eno is also their current producer).

I do as well, G. And it had been a while since I'd heard it too, until I went poring through the YouTube Eno archives.

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