{"id":507,"date":"2011-05-05T05:00:40","date_gmt":"2011-05-05T10:00:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/?p=507"},"modified":"2011-05-05T05:00:40","modified_gmt":"2011-05-05T10:00:40","slug":"ivan-julian-makes-some-noise-part-one","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/2011\/05\/05\/ivan-julian-makes-some-noise-part-one\/","title":{"rendered":"Ivan Julian Makes Some Noise, Part One"},"content":{"rendered":"

When people think of the leading lights of the New York punk\/new wave scene of the 70s, Richard Hell and the Voidoids<\/strong> surely come to mind. And deservedly so: their pioneering approach wedded the aggressive sonic attack of punk with the more literate, sophisticated style of peers such as Patti Smith<\/strong>. The group didn\u2019t last long in its original incarnation, but its members went on to spread their influence in other ways. Guitarist Ivan Julian<\/strong> formed The Outsets<\/strong> and gained notoriety (among those in the know) for his production, session and sideman work with artists including The Clash<\/strong>, Shriekback<\/strong> and others. The one thing he didn\u2019t do until recently was release an album of music under his own name. Released in 2011, The Naked Flame<\/em> is a collection of a dozen compelling, abrasive and yet catchy songs.<\/p>\n

On some level, The Naked Flame<\/em> track “A Young Man’s Money” sounds like a modern rethinking of Mose Allison<\/strong>‘s “Young Man Blues.” The track has a blues sensibility while not really sticking to the blues form. Julian admits that he was thinking \u201cexactly that\u201d when he wrote the song. \u201cThe Who<\/strong> album Live at <\/em>Leeds<\/em> came out with that song, and I\u2019ve always thought, \u2018What if I wrote a modern version of that?\u2019 Because it\u2019s a great song\u2026it\u2019s a long jam. So I didn\u2019t want to write something that was current, but that said the same thing; that\u2019s not what I do.\u201d Julian says that he filters those ideas through his own.<\/p>\n

Julian recounts an amusing story tangentially related to the song. \u201cI actually went to Leeds Auditorium in England. And\u2026it\u2019s a cafeteria<\/em>! I was expecting this giant hall, but it\u2019s a room with nine-foot ceilings and a bunch of eating benches. Live at Leeds<\/em> sounds so big; partially because of the Hiwatt amps they were using, so when I saw this room I said, \u201cAre you kidding me?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

One hallmark of The Naked Flame <\/em>is lots of skronky guitar. Every song features interesting guitar textures and sounds. And every song is sonically unique, set apart form all the others. \u201cI love to make albums like that,\u201d Julian says. \u201cI\u2019m a huge fan of tone. I have a recording studio, so I could have made any kind of recorded I wanted. And I wanted this to be a rock\u2019n\u2019roll guitar record. There are a couple of records that come to mind as quintessential records in that sense,\u201d Julian observes, mentioning (among others) The Rolling Stones<\/strong>\u2019 Sticky Fingers<\/em>. \u201cIt keeps coming at you guitar-wise,\u201d he says. \u201cAnother one is This Year\u2019s Model<\/em> by Elvis Costello<\/strong>. \u201cIt\u2019s not thought of as a guitar record,\u201d Julian says, \u201cbut it\u2019s a record where all of the songs sound slightly different, but they\u2019re akin to each other.\u201d That\u2019s the sort of record he sought to make with The Naked Flame<\/em>.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Another factor that influenced the record\u2019s ambience was the recording schedule. \u201cMy studio was booked all the time,\u201d Julian laughs, \u201cSo I always had to record at night, from 9pm to 9am.\u201d Sometimes the quest for the right sound threatened to derail certain songs. \u201cOn one song, I couldn\u2019t get the guitar sound I wanted,\u201d Julian says. \u201cSo I \u2018flew in\u2019 the guitar part from the eight-track demo I had done for the song. And luckily it matched up.\u201d<\/p>\n

Julian reveals that there are different versions of The Naked Flame<\/em>. \u201cThe American version of the record has been slightly remastered,\u201d he says. \u201cI kept butting heads with the guy who was doing it. He\u2019d say, \u2018Well, there\u2019s static everywhere.\u2019 And I\u2019d say, \u201cWell, I know<\/em> that!\u201d Julian laughs. \u201c\u2018I want<\/em> that!\u2019\u201d Thus yet another (albeit unconscious) connection to Live at Leeds<\/em>, an album that famously included a note on the LP label reading, \u201cCrackling noises ok, do not correct.\u201d Julian speaks disdainfully of modern digital plug-ins that can make a modern recording sound \u201cas inoffensive as a three year old.\u201d He\u2019s clearly having none of that.<\/p>\n

The track “Hardwired” is most conventional, daresay commercial song on the album. It\u2019s almost \u2013 to use an arcane expression \u2013 radio-friendly. While that might be the result, Julian says it was not his intention. \u201cIt just turned out the way it turned out. I have no friggin\u2019 interest in being conventional, or in focusing on airplay; that\u2019s just never been my thing.\u201d He laughs and notes, \u201cbut I played with Matthew <\/strong>[Sweet<\/strong>], and he<\/em> got airplay.\u201d Julian says that he gathered together songs he had written recently and long ago, and asked himself, \u201cWhich of these deserves to be on this record?\u201d\u00a0 <\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0continued<\/a>…<\/em><\/p>\n

Follow \u201cthe_musoscribe\u201d on Twitter<\/a> and get notified
\nwhen new features, reviews and essays are published.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When people think of the leading lights of the New York punk\/new wave scene of the 70s, Richard Hell and the Voidoids surely come to mind. And deservedly so: their […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-507","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-interview","cat-41-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/507","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=507"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/507\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=507"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=507"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=507"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}