Pure & Et dieu cre la femme

 

I recently read Alan McGee’s autobiography. A book that is easy to read.

Of course, the question arises as to how many of the many stories and anecdotes that McGee tells actually happened. After all, alcohol and many, many drugs were always involved. Of course I would have liked to read a lot more about Ed Ball, who was an important man for McGee and Creation records. And also more about the creation of the albums themselves. Fact is, Creation was an important label for me at least from 1989 to, say, 1995. Everything that came out there was super interesting and had to be checked first. A lot of it wasn't really my cup of tea, but there was a lot to discover and celebrate besides Ed Ball (My Bloody Valentine,Hypnotone, Primal Scream, Momus, Pete Astor, Pie Finger, Sheer Taft, Lilac Time, Dreadzone). I already wrote that Ed Ball was hyperactive and creative during this time. In addition to his house and yard project the Times, he had many other projects going on (Sand, Teenage Film Stars). Love Corporation was certainly his most famous side project.

Between The Times albums “Et dieu cre la Femme” and “Pure” there were 21 catalog numbers,

In between there were other Ed Ball records. “Pure” was my introduction to the Ed Ball cosmos. I discovered the previous two albums retrospectively, so to speak.

I already wrote about “E for Edward”. Not all of the songs on the 3 albums take me away, but here too there are wonderful Ed Ball gems, from the fantastic Blue Monday cover “Lundi Bleu”, the great “Ours is a Wonderlove World”, the almost kitschy “Pour Kylie” ( the second Kylie anthem after KLF's "Kylie said it Jason"). Other pretty good tracks include “A Girl called Mersey”, “Confiance” and the very electronic “Aurore Boreale”.

Together with his side projects, there's enough material for a pretty varied 90 minute tape and summer car rides.

„Given that the dust has really settled on Creation now, what are your favourite releases on the label now?

Of my own? Probably ‘Pure’ The Times 1991 for being so anarchic and disrespectful. Recorded on a £600 budget, it sounds like a mental breakdown waiting to happen. Not surprising given the amounts of LSD I was ingesting . . . far beyond ReCreational doses. (Alan maintains that in hindsight, I’d suffered a minor breakdown around this time). Also ‘Star’ Teenage Filmstars 1992 which appeared only months after “Loveless” for achieving that intangible vagueness. As for everybody else who made records on the label, I’ve adopted Joe’s view that they were all brilliant.

I’m not sure that’s true though, about the dust settling. Creation was the brainchild of a man who had 20 ideas a day, some of which changed thousands upon thousands of people’s lives. Some are timebombs still waiting to go off. The mid-period of the label is currently in vogue and there’s alot of fascinating music and madness to discover therein. The last quarter of Creations music history is largely overshadowed by Oasis’s staggering success and the change in the company’s working mechanism, but it was still mostly Alan’s idiosyncratic vision. That period wasn’t always about trying to occupy all 40 positions in the charts every week . . .“

Interview Passages from Creation Records.