{"id":743,"date":"2015-01-24T00:22:48","date_gmt":"2015-01-24T05:22:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/s265039441.onlinehome.us\/philpaine\/?p=743"},"modified":"2018-08-24T15:19:09","modified_gmt":"2018-08-24T19:19:09","slug":"the-icicle-works","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/?p=743","title":{"rendered":"The Icicle Works"},"content":{"rendered":"

This band was named after a short sto\u00adry by Fred\u00aderik Pohl (\u201cThe Day the Ici\u00adcle Works Closed\u201d, Galaxy, Feb\u00adru\u00adary 1960). I read the sto\u00adry when I was a kid, in Pohl\u2019s won\u00adder\u00adful col\u00adlec\u00adtion The Man Who Ate the World<\/em>. There was a revival of \u201cpsy\u00adche\u00addelic\u201d rock in liv\u00ader\u00adpool in the ear\u00adly 1980\u2019s, and this band was part of that move\u00adment. <\/span>The front\u00adman was Ian McN\u00adabb, who remains today a vet\u00aderan crafts\u00adman in British rock, but isn\u2019t well known in North Amer\u00adica. Drum\u00admer Chris Shar\u00adrock and bassist Chris Lay\u00adhe formed the oth\u00ader two legs of the tri\u00adpod. The band stuck around for quite awhile, but it nev\u00ader made it big, per\u00adhaps because the \u201cneo-psy\u00adche\u00addel\u00adic\u201d for\u00admula real\u00adly didn\u2019t suit them. Despite a few trap\u00adpings of that genre, it sounds to me like they real\u00adly want\u00aded to do good sol\u00adid rock with clean, crisp arrange\u00adments. The only album I pos\u00adsess is the epony\u00admous first (1984), which con\u00adtains their biggest hit \u201cLove is a Won\u00adder\u00adful Colour\u201d. But I pre\u00adfer \u201cWhis\u00adper To a Scream (Birds Fly)\u201d, which was a big\u00adger hit here in Cana\u00adda, and I remem\u00adber it get\u00adting con\u00adsid\u00ader\u00adable air\u00adplay on Toron\u00adto sta\u00adtions. Sharrock\u2019s drum\u00adwork is fine in this one, lift\u00ading them out of the poten\u00adtial wimpi\u00adness of the psy\u00adche\u00addelic for\u00admula (the cut pre\u00adced\u00ading it, \u201cIn the Caul\u00addron of Love\u201d sounds too much like recy\u00adcled Moody Blues).<\/span><\/p>\n

Adden\u00addum: A friend informs me that the Cana\u00addian release was quite dif\u00adfer\u00adent from the U.S. release, and reached much high\u00ader in the Cana\u00addian charts than in either the U.K. or U.S. ones, con\u00adfirm\u00ading my impres\u00adsion. Unfor\u00adtu\u00adnately, I don\u2019t have the vari\u00ada\u00adtions to com\u00adpare. Mine is the Canadian.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This band was named after a short sto\u00adry by Fred\u00aderik Pohl (\u201cThe Day the Ici\u00adcle Works Closed\u201d, Galaxy, Feb\u00adru\u00adary 1960). I read the sto\u00adry when I was a kid, in Pohl\u2019s won\u00adder\u00adful col\u00adlec\u00adtion The Man Who Ate the World. There \u2026<\/p>\n

Read more \u00bb<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"wp_typography_post_enhancements_disabled":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[947,22],"tags":[1360,1359,1355,1354,1358,1353,1361,1356,1357,1362],"class_list":["post-743","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-c-listening","category-cs-listening-2008","tag-chris-layhe","tag-chris-sharrock","tag-day-the-icicle-works-closed","tag-frederik-pohl","tag-ian-mcnabb","tag-icicle-works","tag-love-is-a-wonderful-colour","tag-man-who-ate-the-world","tag-psychedelic-rock","tag-whisper-to-a-scream"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/743","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=743"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/743\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8745,"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/743\/revisions\/8745"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=743"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=743"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=743"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}