Music Arcades: Julian Cope: Ye Skellington Chronicles

The one time I went to the Cambridge Folk Festival, Julian Cope was playing there. He seemed to feel the need to explain his presence, along the lines of, "Everything I write is informed by the earth I walk upon, and if that doesn't make it folk music, I don't know what does." I think you could call the two Skellington albums — which I got in this anthologised version direct from Head Heritage around winter solstice seven years ago — folk music. Scud missiles, Madonna, protest and debauchery — all filtered through the prismatic spectacles of mythology. Yeah, that's folk music.

And all 'laid down' in quick and dirty recordings, too. As mentioned previously, 2001 was my Cope Year, flowing directly from my reading of Head On/Repossessed. I'm not going to be boring and look it up, but there was a story there about how JC came to record the first Skellington, getting wind of a studio that was free for 48 hours, and piling some equipment and cohorts into a taxi from his Tulse Hill home. He got his creative mojo back by recording (and writing?) twelve new songs in that time. That was in 1989, and he repeated the exercise four years later.

So lots of stripped down arrangements and tunes that may be simple, but, as JC would say, are "catchy as hell". Can't help wondering what might have been made of them if more time had been spent on the song development and production. Thanks to the advertising-supported streaming, I can easily research some clues on this point. We7 has Peggy Suicide and Last.fm has Jehovahkill, two albums that were recorded between the two Skellingtons, I believe (again, I could check, but more fun to fly without the Wikipedia safety net). It seems to have been a very fertile period for Cope. In a parallel universe, it could have been him instead of U2 playing stadiums in the early '90s. That's on the strength of the songs and the imagemongering of the frontman, as Cope is easily the equal of Bongo on that front, if less calculated.

Just for good measure, I listened to a bit of his Fried album on Spotify, as well. Funny how each of the services have slightly different parts of the catalogue on offer. These albums can't all be on different labels with different licensing deals, can they? I've been working on the comfy assumption that, in time, all the services would have almost all the catalogues. But then it struck me, with this downturn and everything, that we might be living in a golden age for free, legal music. If advertising spend shrivels up, will We7, Spotify and Last.fm all be throttled before they reach puberty?

Final story, going back to the Cambridge Folk Festival, where I met Paul D for the first time. He accosted me to ask about the Rust List t-shirt I was wearing, and, after we'd established some common ground on the basis of pleasantries, he waved his mini-disc recorder conspiratorially, "I've got the Julian Cope set, if you want a copy…". I took my mini-disc recorder from my pocket, "No, it's all right, thanks; I've got my own." We've been friends ever since.

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