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The Germ Organization
John Moore 'Knickerbocker Glory' CD
£11.99
The Germ Organization
John Moore 'Knickerbocker Glory' CD
£11.99
John Moore is pleased to announce the release of Knickerbocker Glory. It is a fully orchestrated collection of classic rock songs. Unashamedly a love album, it is filled with warm guitars, soaring harmonies, keyboards, strings, brass, with a hard-hitting rhythm section.
He recorded it mostly at home, although drums and bass were recorded in LA by Brian Young, his JAMC band mate, and old friend Morgan Visconti in New York. Boz Boorer played saxophone and clarinet, and lent Moore a 12-String Burns guitar, which by wonderful coincidence, Moore had owned twenty years previously, and had been missing.
Cecilia Fage, of Cobalt Chapel, sang main backing vocals. His daughter Ava sings the intro to first single Philosophical Man. Luke Haines applied the Les Paul treatment to Philosophical Man', while virtuoso pianist, Rod Melvin, of Kilburn and The Highroads, played keyboards.
Knickerbocker Glory was mixed by Steven Boyce-Buckley at Gracieland Studios in Rochdale, lent to him, with incredible generosity, by his friend, the absolutely rockin'pop legend Lisa Stansfield.
Aged 20, John Moore joined The Jesus and Mary Chain, playing drums, then rhythm guitar. At 23 he signed to Polydor Records, releasing his debut solo LP Expressway Rising'. He moved to New York, for three years, and released the album Distortion'. He returned to London and began to write quieter, more poetic songs, and formed the minimalist trio, Revolution 9, releasing one album You Might As Well Live'.
During this time, he became interested in Absinthe, and became its first importer since 1914. In 1997 he formed Black Box Recorder with Luke Haines and singer Sarah Nixey. They scored a hit single The Facts Of Life', and released three albums, England Made Me', The Facts Of Life', and Passionoia'.
In 2005 he released the album Half Awake'on his own label The Germ Organization. Struck by the quality of his writing, The Guardian newspaper invited him to write for them. Happily, his first love, Rock and Roll, reclaimed him, and in 2007 he formed The John Moore Rock and Roll Trio, releasing one album Roll Your Activator', and playing many memorable gigs.
In 2011 he rejoined The Jesus and Mary Chain. In 2014, he released two critically acclaimed albums Lo-Fi Lullabies'and Floral Tributes'on The Germ Organization label.
Tracklisting:
1. Rabbit Hole
2. Philosophical Man
3. Controlled Explosions
4. Anne of a Thousand Days
5. Near Me
6. Something About You Girl
7. How Do You Turn a Friend into a Lover?
8. Girl From Reno
9. South of Heaven
He recorded it mostly at home, although drums and bass were recorded in LA by Brian Young, his JAMC band mate, and old friend Morgan Visconti in New York. Boz Boorer played saxophone and clarinet, and lent Moore a 12-String Burns guitar, which by wonderful coincidence, Moore had owned twenty years previously, and had been missing.
Cecilia Fage, of Cobalt Chapel, sang main backing vocals. His daughter Ava sings the intro to first single Philosophical Man. Luke Haines applied the Les Paul treatment to Philosophical Man', while virtuoso pianist, Rod Melvin, of Kilburn and The Highroads, played keyboards.
Knickerbocker Glory was mixed by Steven Boyce-Buckley at Gracieland Studios in Rochdale, lent to him, with incredible generosity, by his friend, the absolutely rockin'pop legend Lisa Stansfield.
Aged 20, John Moore joined The Jesus and Mary Chain, playing drums, then rhythm guitar. At 23 he signed to Polydor Records, releasing his debut solo LP Expressway Rising'. He moved to New York, for three years, and released the album Distortion'. He returned to London and began to write quieter, more poetic songs, and formed the minimalist trio, Revolution 9, releasing one album You Might As Well Live'.
During this time, he became interested in Absinthe, and became its first importer since 1914. In 1997 he formed Black Box Recorder with Luke Haines and singer Sarah Nixey. They scored a hit single The Facts Of Life', and released three albums, England Made Me', The Facts Of Life', and Passionoia'.
In 2005 he released the album Half Awake'on his own label The Germ Organization. Struck by the quality of his writing, The Guardian newspaper invited him to write for them. Happily, his first love, Rock and Roll, reclaimed him, and in 2007 he formed The John Moore Rock and Roll Trio, releasing one album Roll Your Activator', and playing many memorable gigs.
In 2011 he rejoined The Jesus and Mary Chain. In 2014, he released two critically acclaimed albums Lo-Fi Lullabies'and Floral Tributes'on The Germ Organization label.
Tracklisting:
1. Rabbit Hole
2. Philosophical Man
3. Controlled Explosions
4. Anne of a Thousand Days
5. Near Me
6. Something About You Girl
7. How Do You Turn a Friend into a Lover?
8. Girl From Reno
9. South of Heaven
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300 only red vinyl LPVisit product page →
A bruised eremitic, Withnalian Rattlesnake on downers. Makes Lou Reed sound like a bricklayer. Andrew Male, Mojo.
While compiling Lo-Fi Lullabies, John Moore realized he had a second album stashed away in his song drawer. Begun in New York, and completed twenty years later in London, Floral Tributes hangs together remarkably well. It begins in the mid-nineties, prior to Black Box Recorder, with his songs, fleshed out by, of all things, a jazz quartet. Frey Smith - double bass, Laurence Jones - piano, and Ben Clark ' drums, all wonderful players, but the band was not to be. A disastrous gig, upstairs at The Garage, in front of legendary A and R man and rock legend Muff Winwood, with Jones struggling with a mutinying electric piano, and Moore with a broken finger and ribs, from an incident earlier in the day, put paid to any hopes of a deal.
However, the band's few recordings ' which were on DAT tape, were good, and once again, went into the drawer marked ' Rainy Day. Black Box Recorder happened not long after this ignominious on-stage implosion, and lasted several years. In 2005, Moore released another solo album, Half Awake, which was well received, but he lacked the resources to promote it properly.
When its distributor went bankrupt, and all its stock was seized, it was almost a relief. Moore did other things. He wrote a novel, finally to be published, he wrote for The Guardian newspaper, but generally, he did very little.
Side 1:
1. Almost Optimistic
2. Then Comes Summertime
3. My Old Dancing Shoes
4. Life Carves Its Lines on Your Soul
5. Sweet Nothing
Side 2:
1. Through The Eyes Of A Drunk
2. Memories And Morphine
3. Smoking On The Cancer Ward
4. Sweet Oblivion
5. Kisses And Scars -
300 only blue vinyl LP.Visit product page →
A bruised eremitic, Withnalian Rattlesnake on downers. Makes Lou Reed sound like a bricklayer. Andrew Male, Mojo.
Following his rock and roll debauches in The Jesus and Mary Chain, and the insanity of the last days of nineteen-eighties New York, the early nineteen-nineties found John Moore back in London, on the scrap heap, penniless, divorced, broken-hearted, and keeping some very dubious company. Things had never been better. Old enough to have acquired some scars, yet young enough to keep upright, now at last, with something interesting to write about¦to him, at least.
Armed with a few guitars, a Tascam 4-track cassette recorder, a cheap condenser Mic, a lot of red wine, Absinthe, rolling tobacco, and a beautiful view of The Westway, he wrote and recorded Lo-Fi Lullabies, for the next phase of his stalled career. Songs, which, with the great studios, producers, and record companies he was expecting to come knocking at any moment, would be every bit as good as the classics that had inspired him, and propel him back to the path of glory ' Some chance. Strangely, he did build a following in The Czech Republic and Spain, and recorded one album 'You Might As Well Live' with his band revolution 9, which was well received in the UK, but completely out of step with the flag-wavers of Britpop.
The venture ended, as it had begun, in noble failure. He continued writing and performing, and put together a more raucous quartet whose recordings can be heard on the companion album tp Lo-Fi Lullabies - Floral Tributes. The band had potential, but was broke, and once again, heroically unsuited to the times. Then, almost as a joke, he and drinking buddy Luke Haines recruited a pretty young singer with a fine voice, and formed Black Box Recorder, ostensibly as an art project, which accidentally became popular, and took up much of the next decade. As if this wasn't enough, his enthusiasm for the Green Fairy - Absinthe, which he had discovered on a tour of the Czech Republic, led him to become its first importer since 1914, right in time for the Millennium. A period of notoriety and relative wealth followed, and the Lo-Fi Lullabies were put in a drawer for a rainy day, still with the idea of 'doing them properly one day', as if they were some kind of musical pension ' but, of course, they were promptly forgotten about. Time passed, life happened, and suddenly it was 2014.
To this day, Moore still owns a green double-decker bus, but has no idea where it is parked. It took twenty years to realize that these strange, claustrophobic songs of love, wisdom, and bitter experience that he'd smoked and croaked his way through, in the tiny top-floor room overlooking the Westway, while consuming Absinthe and red wine like a true-doomed soul, in his narcotic afternoon reverie, were in fact, the definitive arrangements, and that no amount of Neumann U87 microphones or expensive string arrangements could recreate their strange atmosphere. Finally, it dawned on him, that the record companies ' what was left of them, weren't coming, the big pay-days had been and gone, and the producers had retired. Even the dreaded Britpop was stuffing odour eaters into its orthopaedic adidas and limping out on the heritage trail. Twenty years on, rather than waiting for a posthumous release, obliteration ' or to be discovered in a land-full, ten thousand years from now, he decided to release them ' the rainy day us now. The Lo-Fi Lullabies are spirit messages from a past life - wax cylinder recordings from a time before even the lowliest musicians had enough recording power on their phones to produce a soft-rock apocalypse, with extra plug-ins for soulfulness and authenticity.
Here, the hiss is real, the string buzzes genuine, and the playing mistakes, a testimony to youthful intoxication, and all the better for it. Without being Luddite, no record companies, major studios, or interested parties of any kind were involved in the making of this record. It was recorded onto four-track cassette ' the best available at the time, then many years later, transferred to computer and given a wash and brush up, then finally, mastered and pressed onto Blue Vinyl ' just as Moore's very first release was. Now, along with its companion LP, Floral Tributes, on red vinyl, free digital-download cards for vinyl purchasers, and available to purchase on-line, these Lo-Fi Lullabies are finally blinking into the light. So far, nobody has invented a plug-in to recreate their sound, but an algorithm can't be far away. In the meantime, please sit back, watch the sunset, smoke an e-cigarette, drink wine, let the Paddington-slip from your mind, and let the Lo-Fi Lullabies wash over you, and cast their spell.
Side 1:
1. What Do You Want To Talk About?
2. Clouds Roll By
3. True Intentions
4. Path of Least Resistance
5. Work It Out Somehow.
Side 2:
1. When I'm Dead
2. Watching The Lady Dress
3. Giving Up The Ghost
4. Now That Your Lover Has Gone
5. Kisses and Scars
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