The Creation
Listen – The Creation – Making Time – MP3
Greetings all.
The tune I bring you today is both a long time favorite and a major want-list item (that I doubted I’d ever score a copy of).
But first, a story.
Some weeks ago I was on an unexpected vinyl digging expedition (i.e. having arrived in a music store that I had no idea stocked vinyl), flipping through piles of old LPs (mostly crap) when what should come popping out of the store’s speakers, but ‘Making Time’ by the Creation.
My first instinct was surprise, along with just a touch of delight.
This was soon tempered by the realization – when ‘Concrete and Clay’ by Unit 4+2 came on – that this was not a shop of the hip, but rather of the hipster (or hipsteur as my Soulstrut brethren are wont to say). The gist being that some brave soul hadn’t put on a Creation CD, but rather the soundtrack to ‘Rushmore’.
Now don’t get me wrong…’Rushmore’ is one of my favorite films of recent years, and the soundtrack is excellent…
However…
This particular soundtrack has become shorthand of a sort, with the bits and pieces presented therein – out of context – coming to represent not the music itself but the visual images from the film that have become represented by the music (have I lost you yet???).
I suppose that ideally this is what you want the soundtrack to do, so that the viewers/listeners are drawn into the movie, not outside of it by their memories of/ideas about the music.
I only belabor the point because now when I hear the opening chords of ‘Making Time’ I think not of Eddie Phillips but of Max Fischer.
This is quite the conundrum, because back in the day, when me any my pals were getting all drunk on the sweet wine of the Mod 60’s the music of the Creation loomed large indeed.
There was an Edsel comp (the title of which escapes me, but it was something like ‘Red with Purple Flashes’) that became pretty much required listening for the Mod revivalists.
Good thing too because for every band that someone has convinced you ought to have been much bigger than they were, the Creation were really that band.
Their time as the Creation was brief (just over two years) but during that period they created some truly amazing music, much of which fits the textbook definition of Freakbeat, i.e. still rooted in the earlier Beat era (however vaguely) but bearing the marks of what would become psychedelia both sonically (via fuzz guitar, echo etc) and lyrically.
They were – like the Who – the consummate ‘pop art’ band and managed to combine energetic performance with excellent songwriting (‘Biff Bang Pow!’, ‘Painterman’, ‘Life Is Just Beginning’ among others).
‘Making Time’ was their very first 45 for Shel Talmy’s Planet Records. Talmy, who was born in Chicago came to the UK in 1962 and changed the face of British rock with his innovative productions for the Kinks, Who and Creation among others, and issuing a number of great 45s on Planet by bands like the Creation, Thoughts (more on them soon) , the Untamed and the Wild Uncertainty.
Along with Talmy the Creation laid down some very heavy records, experimenting with rough guitar sounds and feedback, ‘Making Time’ being one of the finest examples.
That all said, if you’re not already hip to the Creation’s wider discography, go out there and get yourself some.
Peace
Larry
PS Make sure to stop by Funky16Corners for some funky soul by Syl Johnson!
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Ah yes, the LP with the band in military colour shirts? I think it was called ”How does it feel to feel?”.
Steveb
That sounds about right.
L
Great band — actually Rushmore introduced me to these guys a couple of years back! Would of been a long time finding them otherwise. Wes Anderson always has classic soundtracks for his films; Royal Tenenbaums was another good one. Easily one of Gene Hackman’s finest roles! [Ousted from the topspot only by Popeye Doyle from French Connection]
GG
I concur on Anderson’s soundtrack choices (he used Love in Bottle Rocket). I also agree on Hackman who should have gotten an Oscar for ‘Royal Tenenbaums’.
“Pagoda…where’s my Javelina??”
L
Gad, this takes me back to when I lived in Richmond, Virginia in 1979. Richmond somehow still possessed the impossible: an AM progressive radio station (daytime only at that!) that had managed to survive for 11 or 12 years before my arrival. WGOE had a massive library, and there utterly was no teling what they would yank out of it to play to entertain and amaze their small-but-incredibly-loyal audience.
One day I took off from the record store where I worked in the mid-afternoon, cranked up my 1972 Dodge Dart, and went thrifting. Of course I immediately turned on WGOE. About two blocks into town, they began playing “Making Time” by The Creation, followed by “Painter Man,” followed by one B-side and then the other, followed by BOTH U. S. Decca singles… all 8 sides in a row! (They also played such not-your-usual-AM-fare like Teenage Jesus & The Jerks, The West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band, Phil Ochs, Judee Sill, and a bunch more that I could toss out.)
In retrospect, I only wish a radio station like that could exist now, but with control of most of the broadcast spectrum gone over to conglomerates, it’s hard to imagine a real resurgence of such formatting.
So I sit here in Athens, Georgia listening to my local college FM (or whatever entertaining skywave skips I can manage on AM at night, like WCRK in Morristown, Tennessee) and think back fondly on the days when I heard a REAL selection of music on AM radio.
Hmmm… I’ve found this killer AM frequency for Athens, and it’ll just fit….
Albeit Longwindedly, Ort. Carlton in Athens, Georgia.
Ort.
That’s a great story!
When I was a kid my Dad played piano on the weekend nights, and he used to love to see what kind of crazy stuff he could pick up on the AM dial, stations bouncing in from the midwest, Canada and the deep south. I did a little of that kind of listening, but sadly those days are long gone.
Larry
[...] unaware was a cover) by a group called the Wild Uncertainty (on Planet records, home also to the Creation and Thoughts). I thought the tune was groovy, and when I inquired about it I was informed that it [...]