DEFER YOUR ENTHUSIASM (7)
By:
April 24, 2025
One in a series of enthusiastic posts, contributed by 25 HILOBROW friends and regulars, analyzing and celebrating our favorite… late-breaking obsessions, avoided discoveries, and devotions delayed! Series edited by Adam McGovern.
At some point in the late 1980s, my housemate Parker (R.I.P.) played a Be-Bop Deluxe album. I vaguely recall saying “wow, that was some hot guitar” and promptly forgot all about it.
Two decades later, I was listening to a radio show hosted by a former Sex Pistol, and was struck by what sounded like a lab experiment measuring how much awesomeness could be crammed into two and a half minutes. After I collected all my melted face in a porcelain bowl, I emailed the show for further details. Steve Jones sent back six magic words: “be bop deluxe maid in heaven”.
That turned out to be the most fruitful email exchange I’ve ever had with a former Sex Pistol, because Futurama (1975) has given me countless hours of joy ever since. It’s a romantic young man’s fanciful valentine to the universe, tales of fully pouring oneself out on stage and then receiving oral pleasure from a wingéd seraph afterwards. Whatever passion isn’t conveyed by singer/guitarist Bill Nelson’s voice is amply channeled through his hollow-body Gibson. One of the album’s first lines is “This guitar does not lie!” Charming, and completely accurate!
Be-Bop Deluxe were essentially Bill Nelson and whoever was around when he wanted to hit the studio. So if he wanted to overdub multiple coruscating sheets of pentatonic exaltation and print them hot in the mix, no one was going to object. I envision Nelson floating in mid-air in lotus pose, telling producer Roy Thomas Baker “We should definitely start the album with two frantic dueling solos apropos of absolutely nothing.” Baker hands his cup of Earl Grey to a dwarf rolled in cocaine and replies, “Let’s be HAVIN’ YA, then!”*
* Possibly not what happened.
Every track features at least one brazen display of fretboard prowess. The vaguely Arabic coda of the otherwise Pepper-y “Music in Dreamland”; the unexpected knife stabs during “Sound Track”; shit, ALL of “Between the Worlds.” Even the balmy Zoloft tango of “Jean Cocteau” features a delicate minor interlude that slowly backs down the hallway away from you and then floats off.
Futurama stands tall next to Sheer Heart Attack, Kimono My House and Country Life as a glorious specimen of the florid, overripe glam rock which briefly flourished like a dying gardenia during the Ford administration. Surrender fully to its pleasures and be rewarded!
DEFER YOUR ENTHUSIASM: INTRODUCTION by Adam McGovern | Mandy Keifetz on FAITH | Heather Quinlan on THE GRATEFUL DEAD | Carlo Rotella on SMOOTHER GROOVES | Art Wallace on MICHIGAN | Kelly Jean Fitzsimmons on TAYLOR SWIFT | Josh Glenn on ART | James Scott Maloy on BE-BOP DELUXE | Jake Zucker on LIGHT SLEEPER | Gabriela Pedranti on THE BIG BANG THEORY | Adam McGovern on DOGS | Tana Sirois on COLLABORATIVE EVOLUTION | Rani Som on LED ZEP | Holly Interlandi on HOT SAUCE | Jeff Lewonczyk on TWIN PEAKS | Nikhil Singh on PRE-TEEN DAVID LYNCH PROBLEMS | Christopher Rashee Stevenson on O’NEILL & THE SEA | Fran Pado on SHARKS | Juan Recondo on BEN GRIMM’S INNER LIFE | Miranda Mellis on KARL OVE KNAUSGAARD | Mimi Lipson on SOBRIETY | William Nericcio on ELYSIUM | Crockett Doob on SLEATER-KINNEY | Marlon Stern Lopez on PAT THE BUNNY | …and more!
JACK KIRBY PANELS | CAPTAIN KIRK SCENES | OLD-SCHOOL HIP HOP | TYPEFACES | NEW WAVE | SQUADS | PUNK | NEO-NOIR MOVIES | COMICS | SCI-FI MOVIES | SIDEKICKS | CARTOONS | TV DEATHS | COUNTRY | PROTO-PUNK | METAL | & more enthusiasms!