Finally! Great unwieldy Southern music restored to the catal
Sound/Word Enthusiast | Rhode Island, USA | 05/18/2010
(5 out of 5 stars)
"...it's hard to believe this music has languished unavailable for so long. Kevin Dunn really was an unsung hero of southern underground music -- importing influences from across the pond (Eno, Roxy, Fripp, Sparks*, etc.) in an era when such music was genuinely subversive and hard to come by, Dunn (both on his own and as a co-founder of The Fans) injected some serious inspiration into the scene, making it possible for bands like R.E.M., Pylon, and the B-52s (the latter two Dunn actually worked with in the studio) to exist, let alone flourish. Without him, the much celebrated Athens/Atlanta indie-jangle renaissance never would have been as rich and rewarding as it was.
But enough about his influence: what about the music? Brilliant stuff. Concrete lyrical devices; guitars set to shimmer, undulate, and twang; ingeniously inverted melodies (surprising yet hooky); instinctively amazing use of early analog synths...
This disk packs a surprisingly good chunk of his recorded output into one easy-to-handle platter: all of the amazing debut "The Judgement of Paris," most of the follow-up "C'est Toujours La Meme Guitarre." EP, nice selections from the "Tanzfeld" album, both sides of his classic 1979 "Nadine" 45, and a track from a now-scarce Fans single. Plus a thick booklet of photos and liner notes by the man himself, which are as hilarious as they are illuminating...
Stop reading this and just buy it!
Sucks that there are no sound samples (whazzup Amazon???), but go to the mp3 sales page and you can hear them...
*(Oh, and hey, Comic Book Guy, I know that Sparks were American, but they couldn't get arrested in the States, so they moved to the UK and became pop stars on that scene...so I think they qualify for inclusion in that list.)"
