Search - Brian Eno, John Cale :: Wrong Way Up (Reissue)

Continuing Revelations

Tomas del Sol | Palm Springs, CA | 10/31/2008

(5 out of 5 stars)

"I have nothing esoteric about this music to reveal to anyone.



My observation is, the older I become, the more personnal these songs are to me. These songs relate to life and the world that is ("Spinning Away" being the most obvious example)! It's the stars!!!

"

Seemed like a good idea at the time

Mr. Scott T. Allen | Naperville, IL | 07/18/2009

(1 out of 5 stars)

"Collaborations are really funny things. Do artists do them for easy sales or because they really want to? Well, unlike the other 1 star reviewers here on Amazon, I don't find this CD to be atrocious. It's just inoffensive background music (Music For Airports redux?). I bought this CD for the one exception: "Been There, Done That." It has some spirit and a chorus that makes it appear that 2 accomplished gents actually collaborated on this. Otherwise I get the feeling that they separately grabbed some half-baked songs, let the other guy get a brief chop, then pressed the vinyl to get it done. "Crime in the Desert" supports that thesis because it starts with some spirit and fun, then just dies. "The River" is a nice mood-setter, if 'languid' is your mood. So, why collaborate? Because it seemed like a good idea at the time...got old quickly."

These Beats Are Twenty Years Old....

wm | ...onward....thru the fog! | 12/02/2008

(5 out of 5 stars)

"
....or 18 years old, anyway.



I bought this CD when it first came out back in 1990. At the time, it quickly became one of my favorites. Up to that point, I'd delved pretty heavily into Roxy Music (Eno was a co-founder and played on their early and mid period releases) and Eno's post Roxy solo material.



Simultaneously, I had collected just about everything by The Velvet Underground (Cale being a co-founder of VU), so after buying this, it quickly became a favorite CD for a long time.



As the years passed, as with many others, the CD was relegated to the shelf with the rest of the endlessly growing stack, and it sadly didn't make it to my CD players or my ipod for whatever reason.



Then, this past August, David Byrne and Brian Eno released "Everything that happens..." digitally. Some new records have always been an event for me, and this was no exception. The event includes acquiring it (back in the day, that meant going to the record store; in this instance, downloading it), then listening to it intently in various settings, moods, and frames of mind. As I went through this process with "Everything", a line from the song "Strange overtones" struck me: "These beats are twenty years old". They probably were, but what beats, and where had I heard them? Was it on an Eno produced U2 record from twenty years ago? Similar, but not exactly. Then, a couple of weeks after getting familiar with "Everything", it dawned on me: This record sounds a lot like "Wrong Way Up". At that point, I quickly located "Wrong Way Up", in the CD stack put it in the CD player, and my hunch was confirmed. It was like getting reacquainted with an old friend.



"Wrong Way Up" and "Everything", in spite of being 18 years apart in time, complement each other beautifully. "Wrong Way" has more than stood the test of time, and I'd be willing to bet "Everything" will sound just as fresh in 18 years.



Great record."