Anthony Moore Flying Doesn't HeVinyl LP LP 2022
1. Judy Get Down
2. Ready Ready
3. Useless Moments
4. Lucia
5. Caught Being In Love
6. Timeless Strange
7. Girl It’s Your Time War
8. Just Us
9. Twilight (Uxbridge Rd.)
40-plus years since its original release, the pop-punk-new wave inventions of AnthonyMoore’s ‘Flying Doesn’t Help’ are freshly remastered, blasting the sparkling, angularsounds into today with perfect vitality.
After spending the early years of the 1970s making experimental music first as a soloartist, then with Slapp Happy and Henry Cow, 1976’s ‘OUT’ sessions had reinvigoratedAnthony’s youthful love of the naive pop melodies of pop radio, the undeniable excitementof songs. While ‘OUT’ ultimately went unreleased at the time, the iconoclasm clouding thelate ’70s air was addictive and transformative for Anthony. England seemed to be roiledas violently as it had been in counter-cultural days a decade earlier; the UK pop chartsbreathlessly reflected the changing spectrum with equal parts aging hippie and progdelicacies alongside new ascendant sounds: rough-hewn pub and punk rock, plus dubreggae and disco and ska and Stiff and Krautrock. This proved to be an ideal environmentfor Anthony to make records by exploring, as he puts it, the“deep connection betweenminimalism, repetition, working with tape and celluloid and forming the modules of athree-minute pop song.”
Caught up in a no-holds-barred era, Anthony was more than happy to play the out-of-hishead madman, raving through outrageous exchanges with the press, while ‘Judy GetDown’ received Single Of The Week honours from the NME (with review penned by BrianEno). Represented by Blackhill Enterprises, Anthony did production work throughout1978-1979, on Kevin Ayers’ ‘Rainbow Takeaway’, Manfred Mann’s Earth Band’s ‘AngelStation’ and the first This Heat album, meanwhile cutting his own songs on a dead timedeal at Workhouse Studio with engineer / producer Laurie Latham. Through the weehours of countless nights, the two pieced together ‘Flying Doesn’t Help’, with a little helpfrom friends (an inspired bunch, including Bob Shilling, Charles Hayward, Chris Slade,Robert Vogel, Festus, Matt Irving, Sam Harley, Bernie Clark, Edwin Cross and MartineMoore on the telephone).