Tuesday, September 14, 2004

RUDI - "Crimson"

[Ed.- When I research a post I try if possible to get permission from the artist to post their music. This obviously can be very difficult since many of the artists I post recorded their music over 20 years ago. If I'm lucky enough to make contact with the artist, I ask if they would like to contribute to the post. Brian Young, guitarist, vocalist, and songwriter for the Northern Ireland punk Band RUDI was kind enough to tell me stories about the band and their music. RUDI is one of the most overlooked bands that rose out of Belfast punk scene in 1977. My next two posts will feature the music of the band and the words of Brian. Here's what Brian had to say about the song "Crimson."]

"Ronnie, Grimmy and I wrote it when we were still a 3 piece and the riff and intro were originally part of a song called 'Murder on The Second Floor' which never quite came off.. A few months later as if by magic we'd kicked it into shape and Crimson was born..! Unlike most bands we did write our songs together..words and music..it just worked better that way.. We used to get slagged for writing 'obscure' lyrics - well they weren't obscure to us - but we hated the dumb sloganeering that was so prevalent at the time (and we'd done some ourselves when we were starting out..!)..so we let people figger it our for themselves..Crimson, like a lot of our later songs was political - but with a small 'p'...not silly party political crap but I s'pose what people would call personal politics..though we never sat down and figgered that out!

Idiot English journalists used to criticise us and the Undertones for not writing about the situation here - we always did but we avoided all the dumb cliches so I guess they missed the point..as if we cared! Anyways the way we put it was that we couldn't have written the songs we did living anywhere else but Belfast... Crimson was our quirky way of saying that if you wanna do something with your life, or change your life or whatever, that it was up to you to do it..and that no one else would do it for ya..but that there was always hope..even when it looked impossible...we wuz kinda optimistic back then!"

[Ed.- To be continued next post. Thanks again to Brain Young for allowing me to post his music and for telling me his stories.]

Brain continues to make music with the SABREJETS.

Read more about RUDI here and here.

Get "Big Time" - The Best of Rudi here

Go to the download page to get RUDI - "Crimson" mp3 here

4 Comments:

Blogger Spoilt Victorian Child said...

God this takes me back some, I've got the 7" somewhere, might have to go and dig it out as if I remember rightly the b-side (14 steps I think) was a corker too.
Thanks for this trip down into my murky past.

Simon
x

6:24 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I've heard this song before.
A different version however, on the 3rd Rodney on The Rock comp.

Great track!

7:19 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Eric

I was hoping to write to you direct but can't find a link on your page. So, as it happens, I put 'Crimson' out on Jamming! Records. I'm also copyright holder but I'm a web host myself and a big fan of the use of the INternet to share our love of music. I respect that you keep these files up for a short space of time and make clear that you're not trying to rip off copyrights. I've put a link up to this page at my own site - www.ijamming.net - and assume you'll take this file down in a few days as you have done with the others.

I always thought Crimson deserved to be a hit. In retrospect, the production was not up to snuff. Don't know if Brian's memory about producers is 100% correct but it was one of those cases where what sounded great in the studio didn't sound so good on the radio. As a 17-year old label boss, I didn't really know what I was doing... We had some fun though and Rudi got a few more years out of it all. Stilla great song.

Tony

10:50 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Eric

I meant to add, you can find me at my own site
www.ijamming.net

It would be good if you could get in touch.

Tony

11:08 PM  

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