SINGLE “CHINESE CADILLAC”

I always admired songs that had only one chord and this appreciation is what must have made Chinese Cadillac arrive in 1988. For some reason, The Weather Prophets were particularly good at putting out what turned out to be our best songs on B-sides or as bonus tracks. This song appeared as one of three tracks on the other side of the Hollow Heart 12” single and told the story of the perennial showbiz hopeful, who, as Howard Devoto memorably said on the first Buzzcocks’ single, Boredom, ‘came from nowhere’ and went straight back there. Along with pretty much every scene in Spinal Tap, this wise nugget was something that always stayed with me and, no doubt, many other musicians.

The song came around during the year when the Weather Prophets were signed to Warner Brothers. It was an interesting time. Signing with a big major label was something we did with our young eyes open – we were ambitious and knew that this was our roll of the dice and that the stakes were high. You get a shed load of money spent on you and there needs to be some kind of payback and this was our moment. Well... it didn’t happen for us being part of Warners but for a while there was this weird and exciting energy around what we were doing. I remember hearing that a BBC program wanted me to play the part of Keats in a Romantic poets drama they were planning. After we had all finished laughing I of course said no – I remembered doing some acting at school for about 5 minutes and it was excruciating for everyone I’m sure and me in particular but soon that kind of thing faded away and we were back on Creation where, with hindsight, we would have been better off staying all along. 

A big recollection of that time was also of a deep discomfort with all the attention. Clearly, it didn’t sit that well with someone who didn’t view themselves as worthy of that amount of mainstream interest.  So…. a song. I’d wanted to write a one-chord, ballad-type thing for ages, kind of in the style of Chuck Berry’s Downbound Train. And so, I wrote Chinese Cadillac. It was a third person narrative, and the main character was someone who wanted fame thinking it would make everything in his life right, and ends up talking shit in a pub in Camden Town (The Hawley Arms, actually, if you must know!). And of course, the fact that I never said ‘I’ once, meant that the song was in no way about me… – Pete Astor

DISCO TALL STORIES & NEW RELIGIONS

As the fiftieth birthday approaches, you get the sense that your life is thinning out and will continue to thin out, until it thins out into nothing. And you sometimes say to yourself: that went a bit quick. In certain moods, you may want to put it rather more forcefully. As in: OY!! THAT went a BIT FUCKING QUICK!!!… then fifty comes and goes, and fifty-one, and fifty-two. And life thickens out again. Because there is now an enormous and unsuspected presence within your being, like an undiscovered continent. This is the past. – Martin Amis

2024 marca 40 anos de Pete Astor a fazer discos, o aniversário adequado para fazer um balanço e voltar atrás nas músicas que apareceram pela primeira vez em discos de combos liderados por Astor, como os pioneiros da Creation Records The Loft e The Weather Prophets e os artistas da Matador The Wisdom of Harry, bem como seleções de álbuns a solo que apareceram em editoras como Danceteria e Static Caravan.

A motivação de Astor para Tall Stories & New Religions é múltipla. Algumas músicas são efetivamente reexaminadas da mesma forma que alguém se pode debruçar sobre uma imagem ressonante de uma caixa de fotografias antigas – conectando-se com a essência de um eu mais jovem. Outras canções foram recentemente reformuladas em tons mais sábios e reflexivos, enquanto outras simplesmente exigiram a exumação de uma não produção deliberadamente opaca e lo fi. As músicas escolhidas não são as óbvias - não há "Up the Hill and Down the Slope" ou "Almost Prayed" aqui - mas foram selecionadas por razões mais interessantes, muitas vezes esotéricas.

Astor é acompanhado por um grupo estimável de co-conspiradores, fruto de muitas horas passadas a tocar juntos em discos e concertos na última década. Eles são o baterista Ian Button (Death in Vegas, Papernut Cambridge, Go Kart Mozart), o baixista Andy Lewis (Paul Weller, Soho Radio e Blow Up DJ), o guitarrista Wilson Neil Scott (Summerhill, Felt, Everything But the Girl) e o teclista/ multi-instrumentista/ produtor Sean Read (Dexys, Mark Lanegan, Dave Gahan, Iggy Pop, Manic Street Preachers, Beth Orton, Chrissie Hynde…).

Juntos, revisitaram essas joias perdidas de músicas de uma maneira que permitiu a Astor equilibrar a forma como elas ainda fazem sentido para ele agora, olhando tanto para o futuro quanto para aquele grande e interessante novo país, o passado.

Tall Stories & New Religions é editado dia 15 de março pela Tapete Records.

+ Info 
http://peteastor.com/
https://www.facebook.com/pete.astor
https://www.instagram.com/peteastor/
https://peteastor1.bandcamp.com/
https://open.spotify.com/intl-pt/artist/3hOyXm00iqGbv7BvoPyGbn