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Landmark Kinks album inspires Chris Tullar\u2019s <\/strong><\/em>Not Arthur<\/strong><\/p>\n An acclaimed late sixties concept album provided the inspiration for a local songwriter to conceive, record and stage a concept album all his own. Counter-intuitively, Chris Tullar\u2019s Not Arthur<\/i> bears almost no similarity whatsoever to The Kinks\u2019 1969 Arthur<\/i> LP. But that hasn\u2019t stopped him from staging a live premiere of Not Arthur<\/i>, preceded by a start-to-finish performance of Arthur<\/i>. The special one-night-only concert took place July 6 at the Grey Eagle in Asheville.<\/p>\n Why The Kinks?<\/b> Yet despite the acclaim that The Kinks have earned, they\u2019ve always been more popular in the UK than in the States. Part of that might be explained by primary songwriter Ray Davies\u2019 distinctly English perspective. His lyrics often reflect concerns unique to the British Isles, and the band\u2019s music \u2013 while always rocking \u2013 owes a significant debt to music hall, a peculiarly English style of music. Sometimes, even British fans didn\u2019t quite get what Davies was on about.<\/p>\n In practical terms, that means that while the group\u2019s seventh studio album, 1969\u2019s Arthur (Or the Decline and Fall of the British Empire)<\/i> is today held in high esteem among critics, at the time of its release it fared poorly among the record-buying public. In fact, Arthur<\/i> was the first Kinks album not to chart at all in the UK; in the U.S. it stalled at #105 on the Billboard<\/i> 200 chart.<\/p>\n As originally conceived, Arthur<\/i> was planned as the soundtrack for a Granada TV special set to air in late 1969. Beset by scheduling and financing challenges, the TV special was never completed nor aired. But The Kinks did their part: Ray Davies wrote more than a dozen songs, and the band recorded in sessions throughout the summer. The conceptually-oriented Arthur<\/i> LP arrived in shops in October 1969. A single from the record, \u201cVictoria\u201d made it to #30 on the UK chart, but wasn\u2019t even released Stateside.<\/p>\n All of which makes Arthur<\/i> quite a left-field choice for inspiration for Chris Tullar, leader of progressive pop group Carpal Tullar. He says that the kernel of the idea came two years ago when drummer Courtney Cahill (formerly of Modern Strangers) suggested they work together on a creative project. \u201cI\u2019d never really collaborated before,\u201d he admits.<\/p>\n Timeline of a Concept<\/b> \u201cIn an age when people can\u2019t even get through a song without skipping to the next one in their playlist, it\u2019s grounding to have something that\u2019s designed to be listened to start-to-finish,\u201d Tullar says. And for him, that aesthetic carries over to live performance as well. \u201cI\u2019m not all that interested in going to see bands just play a loose collection of songs; I want it to be more of an experience. I want spectacle.\u201d Those principles would guide the creation of Not Arthur<\/i>.<\/p>\n The two enlisted Troy Crossley, guitarist and Cahill\u2019s former band mate in Modern Strangers. Crossley brought with him experience staging live shows; he\u2019s a prime mover in the Asheville-based revival of The Rocky Horror Show<\/i>.<\/p>\n But almost as soon as writing began, Cahill bowed out of the project. \u201cHe got to a point where he realized, \u2018These guys are going to gel,\u2019 and then he quit,\u201d Tullar says with a laugh. So he and Crossley largely developed the project as a duo. \u201cThere are still some skeletons of Courtney\u2019s work in it,\u201d Tullar admits.<\/p>\n Working with Crossley and drummer Evan Scott, Tullar completed the writing phase of Not Arthur<\/i> in August 2022. Recording began in 2023, and by early June of this year, the sessions were done\u2026 almost. \u201cJust this morning I added charango [an Andean stringed instrument] and accordion,\u201d Tullar says with a nervous chuckle. \u201cThe album is going to be mastered in a couple of weeks, and we\u2019re still adding, still coming up with ideas.\u201d<\/p>\n Not <\/b>Arthur<\/b><\/i>, not at all<\/b> Using only twelve existing song titles (example: \u201cShe\u2019s Bought a Hat Like Princess Marina\u201d) as the basis for an original work is an idiosyncratic approach, but it worked in the case of Not Arthur<\/i>. Tullar and his writing partners crafted a narrative that\u2019s in the rock opera tradition of fantastical and convoluted, yet entertaining. As with any conceptual work, distilling the story down to a paragraph is nearly impossible, but Tullar gives it his best shot.<\/p>\n \u201cOur main character, Arthur, is a disgruntled prog-rock deejay who\u2019s been fired,\u201d Tullar explains, noting that the character is \u201cvery loosely based\u201d on Asheville deejay Brian Blades. \u201cThis obsessed deejay gets inducted into a Cult of the Sacred Sequence. He gets totally brainwashed by an audio tape with this perfect sequence of notes. Arthur eventually gets flown to Australia, where he\u2019s been given a mission to play it at festival of people and brainwash everybody.\u201d Arthur has an arch-nemesis, Mandolina, who herself is a musician. \u201cHis way to destroy her is to make everyone disinterested in her,\u201d Tullar explains.<\/p>\n \u201cOkay, so it is<\/i> convoluted,\u201d he concludes. \u201cIt should<\/i> be.\u201d<\/p>\n The performing lineup for the Not Arthur<\/i> premiere included members of Carpal Tullar plus Ian Reardon and Chris Carter from Alarm Clock Conspiracy, Andrew Thelston and the Ska City horn section. As Tullar and his musical associates began preparing the stage show, they decided that for its debut, the performance would be music-only. No libretto, no narration, no actors. \u201cBut I would really like Not Arthur<\/i> to eventually get to a point where it becomes a real stage show,\u201d Tullar says.<\/p>\n The official release of Not Arthur<\/i> was the night of the Grey Eagle concert; the album will initially be available digital-only. \u201cIt\u2019d be nice to have a physical format, too,\u201d Tullar muses, pausing to think on it. \u201cI could<\/i> put it on a flash drive,\u201d he announces. \u201cSomebody give me $5.\u201d<\/p>\n As the show date loomed, Tullar knew he had to come up with a name for the group that would perform Arthur<\/i> and Not Arthur<\/i>. \u201cI thought about calling us The Dismantlists, because we\u2019re dismantling something that exists,\u201d Tullar explains. \u201cBut then I thought, \u2018Re<\/i>mantlists,\u2019 because we\u2019re making something else.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Landmark Kinks album inspires Chris Tullar\u2019s Not Arthur An acclaimed late sixties concept album provided the inspiration for a local songwriter to conceive, record and stage a concept album all […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":27716,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[41,44,49,62],"tags":[3090,3091,1255,5447],"class_list":["post-27715","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-interview","category-live-shows","category-new-release","category-rawk","tag-carpal-tullar","tag-chris-tullar","tag-kinks","tag-remantlists","cat-41-id","cat-44-id","cat-49-id","cat-62-id","has_thumb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27715","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27715"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27715\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27828,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27715\/revisions\/27828"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/27716"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27715"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27715"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27715"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nLegendary British rock band The Kinks are revered for their early classics: proto-garage rockers like \u201cAll Day and all of the Night\u201d and \u201cYou Really Got Me.\u201d Their hits continued into the \u201870s (\u201cLola\u201d) and even the 1980s (\u201cCome Dancing\u201d), and the group was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1990. The band broke up in \u201896, but persistent rumors tease a possible reunion between brothers Ray and Dave Davies.<\/p>\n
\nBut Tullar agreed, and when Cahill asked him to come up with an idea, he randomly decided to use a 55 year old album as a kind of writing prompt. He recalls thinking, \u201cLet\u2019s take a concept album and just use the song titles to make a new album.\u201d Tullar says that Cahill found a list of the greatest concept albums \u2013 Liz Phair\u2019s Exile in Guyville<\/i>, The Who\u2019s Tommy<\/i> and Quadrophenia<\/i>, Pink Floyd\u2019s The Wall<\/i> and select others \u2013 and then simply picked one he hadn\u2019t heard.<\/p>\n
\nChris Tullar confesses to only a passing familiarity with the album upon which his original concept is built. \u201cIf you asked me to sing [The Kinks\u2019] \u2018Brainwashed,\u2019 I probably wouldn\u2019t have been able to do it,\u201d he admits. Moreover, he insisted that his collaborators avoid listening to Arthur<\/i> during the creation phase. \u201cThese guys had never even heard \u2018Victoria\u2019 on the radio,\u201d Tullar says.<\/p>\n