About the album

Gavin Friday’s solo debut Each Man Kills the Thing He Loves was originally released in 1989. Produced by Hal Willner, it was recorded in New York with a stellar cast of musicians including Bill Frisell, Marc Ribot, Fernando Saunders, and Michael Blair.

The NME wrote: “The cabaret waltzes and orchestrated vignettes pursue Friday’s grand tangle of themes with a singular vision.”

Each Man Kills The Thing He Loves was reissued on iTunes on October 24, 2011.

From 1989 press release:

The release of Each Man Kills the Thing He Loves, the debut LP by Gavin Friday and The Man Seezer, marks the welcome return of one of the pop-music world’s most intriguing figures. As a key member of Ireland’s Virgin Prunes, Gavin Friday presented an uncompromising musical vision that stands as one of the post-punk era’s strongest. Now, on orginials like “Tell Tale Heart” and “Apologia” – not to mention covers of Bob Dylan, Jacques Brel and Oscar Wilde – Gavin Friday and his new musical partner, The Man Seezer, present a compelling mix of lyrical introspection and cabaret-flavoured musical irony, produced by Hal Willner of Marianne Faithful/Kurt Weill/Walt Disney fame.

Gavin:

“Each Man Kills The Thing He Loves was recorded in the summer of 88, it came out in May 89. We had written it, just piano and voice in the Liberties in Dublin. I used to rent a place there and so did Maurice by coincidence. It was post the Blue Jaysus club (a late night club Gavin created and MC’ed in Dublin’s Waterfront Nightclub), ’87 -’88, and we wrote it in that period. I played some demo tapes to Chris Blackwell from Island Records and Seymour Stein from Sire. I played them accoustic versions of “Got What He Wanted”, “Apologia” and “Man of Misfortune”. Chris Blackwell offered me a deal there. I met him in a place called Essex House on Central Park and we had a good chat for about three or four hours and he says “I know the person you should meet.” And he suggested Hal Willner.”

“We decided we’d do it in New York and Hal suggested numerous musicians, some I knew like Marc Ribot and Michael Blair, Fernando Saunders. Bill Frisell I hadn’t really known of but I knew he’d played a lot with Hal. And Hank Roberts who was this sort of avant garde violin / electronics guy. And then there was Maurice. So we went to Hal’s apartment for three days, one o’clock till eight o’clock and rehearsed accoustically. We all sat around there, just accoustic guitars and Hal’s old broken piano, Michael banging sticks and we sort of had three days of going through songs, trying out ideas in a tiny room. And then we were booked into RPM for ten days, which was near 12th Street, not far from the Chelsea Hotel.”

“We’d do about two or three songs a day, run through them, rehearse them and then record them. Live vocals, everything was live. And then a few overdubs. Because he know I had a sort of a huge T-Rex thing, Hal brought in Flo & Eddie, who gave me my first real lesson in falsetto. It was hard graft, but it was really very spontaneous. Alan Ginsberg nearly played on “Death Is Not The End”. I had it in my mind to do “Next” as a cover version. And I wanted to do it in a real visceral way, I liked to imagine like The Virgin Prunes wrote it, or something. And Hal suggested another cover version. “Just seeing that you’re on this happy-theme, why don’t you this, it’s a really unusual Bob Dylan-tune.” And I loved it. We had this idea to make it almost like a New Orleans funeral march. And Ginsberg, who I got to know quite well through Hal, came in and Hal wanted him to play harmonium on it, but he started crying when we played him the rough mix. He said: “I can’t play on that.”

“It was a very organic session and it went quite painlessly and for a treat Chris Blackwell came in in one of the sesssions and loved what we were doing and went “Why don’t you mix it in the Bahamas, in Compass Point?” They owned Compass Point, so for the budget is was for nothing – so we went to the Bahamas for two weeks and it fucking drove us crazy. We hated it. It was that whole… lazy… you’d get into the studio at 11 in the morning and nothing would work till three and then they’d disappear and they’d be spliffing and just was… I mean, I’m not Mister-Chill-Out-On-The-Beach, “have a spliff, just chill…” I go: No, for fuck sake. And the albums is so not that. It just wasn’t the right environment. And then it started raining after three or four days so we felt more at home.”

“It was actually one of the biggest joys ever in making an album. It was not that stressful.”

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About the album

The follow up to Each Man Kills The Thing He Loves, Adam ‘n’ Eve, produced by Flood, Dave Bascombe and Hal Willner, sees Gavin Friday exploring the pop and glam obsessions of his youth, with guest performances by Maria McKee and backing vocals by U2’s The Edge and Bono.

Q magazine praised its “cache of vignettes, crammed with opulent details like Saint Divine’s soul shimmer and flamenco flourishes.”

Adam ‘n’ Eve was reissued on iTunes on October 24, 2011.

From the 1992 press release:

With his new album, Adam ‘N’ Eve. Friday sets out to recapture some of the glamour and vision that pop music has lost, a mission which took the singer back to some of his boyhood idols. Adam ‘N’ Eve is like a weird color Xerox of the last 15 years of what Gavin Friday’s been through, almost the regret for the paradise lost of pop. Adam ‘N’ Eve dredges up the battered remains of Gavin’s adolescent pop past, alongside of the “glam” rock trash aesthetic.

Adam ‘N’ Eve touches on various buried reference points, from Erik Satie to Burt Bacharach. The brooding introspection of the debut has been replaced by a panoramic vision where the extremes of sexual obsession and surrealist humor collide – often in the space of one song. “Pop music should be about something romantic, something huge, something tragic and brilliant, a planned accident.” The planned accidents on Adam ‘N’ Eve turned out to be as brilliant as anyone could have wished.

Produced by Hal Willner, Flood and Dave Bascombe, Adam ‘N’ Eve is a widely ambitious affair whose reference points encompass the glam savagery of “King of Trash” and the Euro melancholy of “I Want to Live.” Friday’s lyrical moods, meanwhile, swing all the way from the bawdy ‘Dublinese’ (“We give good mouth,” grins Friday) of “Fun & Experience” to “Falling Off the Edge of the World’s” fatalism. The latter track, a spectacular duet with American exile Maria McKee (Lone Justice), is dryly described by Friday as “‘I Got You Babe’ in Hell.” “I had it in my mind to do a duet with Maria since we worked together on an AIDS benefits. I liked the chalk and cheese element, I thought it would be a challenge.”

“We recorded ‘Falling Off…’ during the Gulf war; when you’re in the studio nothing else exists except yourself and your art, that type of crap. You’re cut off and obsessed, your only connection with reality is TV, so the lyrics are like a remote control on the world. At the time I couldn’t believe the ‘unrealness’ of how everything was being portrayed on CNN.”

Gavin’s working class aesthetic (he was raised in Dublin’s Northside, is sworn to fight the consensus of mediocrity that’s stifling music in the 90′s, particularly the era’s blatant anti song ethic.

“I’m a big traditionalist whether it comes from Cole Porter or Kurt Weill, a great bleedin’ lyric that says something, that can transcend a political stance.” Still Friday resolutely refuses to plan his next move. “I don’t know; I’m just following my own instincts. I’ve got a feeling [ the next album ] might be a little bit more aggressive, but who knows…”

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About the album

Shag Tobacco was produced by Bomb the Bass’s techno-wizard Tim Simenon who had worked with Gavin on the In The Name Of The Father soundtrack. Q Magazine called its 21st century neon cabaret “a remarkable piece of work ” and the song Angel prominently featured in Baz Luhrmann’s film Romeo + Juliet and on its hugely succesful soundtrack.

Shag Tobacco was reissued on iTunes on October 24, 2011.

From the 1995 press release:

Gavin Friday begins 1995 with one of the most startling and inspired albums you will hear all year, Shag Tobacco. Friday has created, with partner Maurice Seezer and producer Tim Simenon, a 21st century neon cabaret, where spirits of Leonard Cohen, Marc Bolan, Jacques Brel and Scott Walker collide in a vision of thirties Berlin decadence transposed to a Las Vegas of the future.

The unusual characters that inhabit this album are both real and imaginary: Mr. Pussy, the glamorous drag queen hostess, the living “Dolls” of New York’s nightlife, and glittering, androgynous “The Slider” (resurrected from the T-Rex back catalogue), meet the housewives from suburban hell and the star-crossed lovers of the title track.

“As we come to the end of the century, everything’s going ballistic,” notes Mr. Friday, “and a lot of stuff is being cleared out from under the carpet. When I went to work on this album, I had this thing of being obsessed with the Twenties, Thirties, and Forties, the fascinating, between-the-Wars era when decadence was tempered with darkness, and transporting that into the Nineties.

Mr Pussy who appears in person on the track written in his honor, is a major celebrity in Dublin A former friend of Judy Garland and Johnny Ray, Mr. Pussy was the hostess of Gavin’s own now-defunct cabaret cafe, the celebrated Mr. Pussy’s Cafe Deluxe a place where passing glitterati ate egg and chips and played bingo at three in the morning. “The cafe was very much a wedding banquet on acid vibe,” enthuses Friday, “It’s like a cross between a brothel and your granny’s bedroom. Really mad trannies went there, ones who looked like your da in drag; farmers in stilettos, mingling with your clubbers, your nighthawks and your down and out drunks.” But it’s not just the glamorous to whom Gavin turns his attentions on Shag Tobacco – real people also fill his music with their passions and their pain.

“Kitchen Sink Drama” documents the decline of a suburban housewife, who is “anaesthetized by mundanity, has given everything up for her husband and family and whose only companion is the ‘Angel’ Valium,” the author explains. “In the end she can’t cope, and the last line has her going out to “the sweet smell of butane.” And “The Last Song I’ll Ever Sing” is a tender but defiant paen to a friend who died of AIDS; “The biggest way you can get fucked over in love is to die of AIDS,” Friday points out. “The song is a tribute to the divas and crooners who have nothing to give except for the everything that they put into the last song they ever sing, and about the light that burns twice as brightly, burning half as long.” The album’s closing track, “Le Roi D’Amour,” meaning “The King Of Love,” is for Gavin, “like the grand finale, the curtain going up and the credits rolling.”

Not surprisingly, the singular Mr. Friday is dismissive of the moribund musical climate into which Shag Tobacco is being released. “Music is not a business,” he states, “it’s a way of life. The Virgin Prunes were me growing up in public, they were fueled by a lot of anger and frustration and I suppose I’m still an angry man – happily angry. Real music is when you don’t really know what you’re doing – it’s just your instincts at work. I love that. I love going in at the deep end and struggling and fighting and hopefully coming out… into the light.”

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Read the full press release and download a special message for you, from Gavin.

• ‘catholic’ – cover, tracklisting and press release
• a message from Gavin – PDF

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• catholic
• Download a ‘catholic’ surprise
• Watch the new video for Gavin Friday’s ‘Able’

Listen to the song ‘Able’ by Gavin Friday

‘catholic’ is the new album by the Irish singer and composer Gavin Friday.

“The night he fell in the Mouth of the Flowers… a dark medal of blood slowly forming near the general’s unmoving head. He was dressed in green. In his fading iris, the moon — and the future of the indefeasible Republic. The Angelus bell pealed and the sky flared as the British guns fired a salute in his honour.” Requiem for the Fallen, Pat McCabe

16 years since his last album Shag Tobacco, it’s time to salute anti-hero Gavin Friday, who returns fittingly, at a time of upheaval, of political chaos, and of spiritual, financial and moral bankruptcy. Ireland is a very different place to the country Shag Tobacco was recorded in, and the intervening decade and a half coincided with a prolific work period for the singer. From soundtracks for In America , The Boxer and Get Rich Die Tryin’ with Quincy Jones to collaborating on Nothing like the Sun with Gavin Bryars and the Royal Shakespeare Company, he moved away from the conventional parameters of the album. There was his acting debut (in Neil Jordan’s Breakfast on Pluto), Scott Walker collaborations and a Kurt Weill show at Dublin Theatre Festival. In personal terms, he endured illness, the end of his marriage and his father’s death. To some, the personal is political; but Gavin Friday is clear that this is “an emotional, not a political, album”. The singer likens catholic to “waking from a deep sleep, of letting go and coming to terms with loss”. And somewhere in the middle of all that, there are slivers of love, contentment and romance.

“Sometimes when you’re building songs, they tell you ‘look after me’ or ‘fuck off, and leave me alone’”

In opener Able, there is the kind of declaration that comes with age and experience, “I want you to love me… don’t want you to lie”. Friday turned 50 prior to recording catholic and the songs testify to a life lived, but one that’s far from over – physically or creatively. Lord I’m Coming might sound like an incantation to death, but is counter-acted by the titular positivity of It’s All Ahead of You. “Did you know that best is yet to come”, he asks rhetorically. The album oscillates musically and thematically between songs like Blame, dedicated to and about his father to Perfume, about our moments of promiscuity and lack of communication in The Only One.

Produced by Ken Thomas (Throbbing Gristle, Cocteau Twins, Sigur Ros), Thomas’ influence is most obvious on Cocteau-Twins shimmer of The Sun & The Moon and & The Stars. The album was birthed in a pool of 38 songs, which were whittled down. All songs were penned by Friday and his new musical partner Herbie Macken. Cocooned in Friday’s Killiney home, recording took just six weeks and involved musicians Gavin had worked with before: Multi instrumentalist Herbie Macken, Cellist Kate Ellis, Guitarist Jolyon Vaughan Thomas, Bassist Gareth Hughes, Guitarist Anto Drennan, Drummer André Antunes, and Moya Brennan [who guests on Lord I'm Coming ] and broadcaster John Kelly on harmonica. After spotting the Castleford Salvation Army outside a local shop, while mixing the album in Yorkshire Gavin invited them to contribute and Ken Thomas’ daughter Amy Odell also provides vocals on Land on the Moon. Everything builds toward Lord I’m Coming, an existential, orchestral psalm, an anti-pop composition of profundity.

In recent years, Gavin Friday’s output has been dominated by cinema, soundtrack and theatre, and its no surprise that their collective, lush shadow looms over catholic. Friday takes conventional song structures and scores them, adding Bowie-synths, sci-fi swirls, epic strings and Germanic rhythms.

Artist. Germanophile. Singer. Non-conformist. catholic. All are intrinsically Gavin Friday, but the latter is definitely spelt with a small ‘c’.

‘catholic’ is released on Rubyworks on Good Friday, 22nd April, 2011
Requiem for the Fallen by Patrick Mc Cabe, written and inspired by the words, music and world of ‘catholic’.

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do you love me? say you do, i’d like to see you undress
let the light shimmer down, I’ve ordinary addictions
whisper soft into my ear, secret words heaven sent ….
so you can read my mind
hush dear….the night is always young
there’s no day here, tomorrow never comes
let colours fly, we’re safe from harm
see orange glow, let our love flow

no romeo no juliet,
what we got is deeper than that
lets stay in bed, watch t.v. and shag tobacco
i want you, i want you….
you’re my amphetamine you’re my lover….
and there’s no other…. ….there’s no other…. there’s no other

caruso
no, i’m not myself today.
je suis salome…. i am romantic
je suis apollo…. i am gigantic
hey! stronzo,
i’m standing next to you in the supermarket
yeah! you are obvious. i am oblivious

salome, apollo, in technicolour
i walked on the moon to touch the stars,
a legend in my lifetime.
oh momma! my rosa! from an early age
i was used and abused, no more those bad reviews
take me back to ’72 my coo ca choo,
oh! ignorance was bliss,
spunk-a-flow, to the joy of my first kiss

i’m not me…. i’m not me…. i’m not me…. not me….
non sono io!

oh mi lord, i’m so bored, what’s on the t.v.?
do we really need these pissy pop stars
when there’s not enough of me!
oh dada, my dali, un chen de lou lou….
i am the art in your party,
not a twist cap sniffing bore.
it’s tough in the queue, it’s as unto a platform shoe,
oh! trampled underfoot,
i’m fred astaire, i face the music and dance.

i’m not me…. i’m not me…. i’m not me…. not me….
no i’m not myself….today

oh glorioso deliver us not into frustration

salome, apollo, in technicolour,
i walked on the moon to touch the stars.
hey stronzo…. ancora!

i’m not me…. i’m not me…. i’m not me…. not me….
non sono io!
heave ho…. heave ho….

leonardo! marlon brando! machiavelli!
and bertolt’s belly!
a millionaire with curly hair, i’m your burning empire.

greta garbo! andy warhol! and his jam-roll!
nero plays his violin, seezer his accordian

i’m sitting in the bathtub watching the dirty water
swirl down the plughole…. and on my stereo….
….is caruso.

angel
angel…. hold on to me, love is all around me
angel…. hold on to me
oh come…. closer to me…. don’t go, don’t leave me
angel…. hold on to me, love is all around me
so silent your love, like the stars above
so silent your love…. hold on…. hold on…. to me
angel…. hold on to me, i call, call out to you
its paradise, you take me to
’cause my love for you love will always be

little black dress
here she comes like a child with a gun
she makes you feel like you’re the only one
she smiles and it’s dangerous…. in a little black dress
superman and the filthy rich
get in the queue to scratch her itch
sticky fingers pulling at the hem
of her little black dress

baby don’t mind
she can leave it behind.
she don’t want anything
baby’s a star, she’s got to keep on shining

she moves like an animal
the women sigh “it’s political”
you could get arrested around here
for that little black dress
not so simple, it’s complicated….
all this being loved and hated
i wanna know what else she’s hiding
in that little black dress

baby don’t mind
she can leave it behind.
she don’t want anything
baby’s a star, she’s got to keep on shining

don’t pay no mind, you’re gonna leave me behind
i don’t want anything, baby you’re a star
i wanna hear you sing

the slider
i could never understand
the wind at all
was like a ball of love

i could never never see
the cosmic sea
was like a bumble bee

and when i’m sad…
i slide

i have never kissed
a car before
it’s like a door

i have always always
grown my own before
all schools are strange

and when i’m sad…
i slide

i have never never
nailed a nose before
that’s how the garden grows

i could never understand
the wind at all
was like a ball of love

and when i’m sad…
i slide

watch now
i’m gonna slide
i slide….

have you ever seen a woman coming out of
new york city with a frog in her hand?

dolls
on the darkest of streets, at around eleven
the lights shine brightest, on avenue seven
from ‘noho’ to ‘soho’ they congregate
gladrags and handbags we anticipate
boom! boom! cha-cha! and cock becomes vagina

no guys here – dolls! no guys here – just dolls!

mother fisting friends, say romance is cheap
so it’s time for eve to put adam to sleep
lovely, lovely, love me
with dreams with drugs, with lipstick and la rouge

no guys here – dolls! no guys here – just dolls!

with feather boa, like lotte lenya,
high heels and a vicious tongue,
jesus, ‘fantasia’ tu est tres fantastique
so kinky gerlinky, so much fun

no guys here – dolls! no guys here – just dolls!

cock incognito! vag incognita!

knock, knock, who’s there?
oh! here they come, the belligerent scum,
as your immorality would say “all men are queer”
how civilised that you’re despised
knock, knock, who’s there?
dorothy that’s who, she’ll make a man of you!
a man of you! a man of you!

ich bin eine puppe, eine puppe mit scheide!
ich bin ein mann, ein mann mit schwanz
geweg! geweg! lab mich allein! lab mich allein!
das kleine ja! ja! das grobe nein! nein! das kleine ja! ja!
sie macht einen mann aus dir,
eine puppe mit schwanz!, ein mann mit mose!

mr. pussy
in ’67, his debut year, a pussy cat did appear
in soho bars rather shady,
a most discerning, misleading lady

he knew marlene, judy was a friend
hey! johnny ray, all those that bend

a legend born, on a london stage
when ginger beers, were outrage!

mr. pussy. mr. pussy.

nante! no nante! nante parlare
vada omi! you silly cow!

come see a star shine,
come see him laughing through a mask of tears
he should have been in the movies….
you know those movies that make you cry

“oh! immortalise me! oh! immortalise me!
write a song, write a sad song,
make it 25 years a long…. oh!”
….says mr. pussy…. mmmh…. mr. pussy.

you, me and world war three
throw your arms around me,
there’s no time to be blue,
it’s the end of the world,
let’s talk deep and meaningful things,
it’s up to you and down to me…. what’s going on?
it’s you, me and world war three.

you and me, me and you,
we hurt each other ’cause we gotta get through

we’re ‘a to b’ and back again,
a sort of funky electrocution,
trigger happy and shoot to kill,
what a honeymoon in hell!
our world is spinning helplessly…. what’s going on?
it’s you, me and world war three

you and me, me and you,
we hurt each other ’cause we gotta get through
we hurt each other…. we gotta get through
we’re out there orbiting the planet blue….

i shout you scream, it’s all so illogical
you bite my tongue…. i blow up in your face
in hateful times…. it’s time for loving
let’s start to dance…. it’s ‘true romance’

you me and world war three
you me and world war three

put on that dress you know your
throwing yourself out the window dress,
i’ll wear my suit, my wedding ring
and together we will sing, “la la la la la la….”

you and me, me and you,
we hurt each other ’cause we gotta get through,
you and me, me and you,
we’re out there orbiting the planet blue….
….orbiting the planet blue

kitchen sink drama
good morning america, you’re my favorite t. v. show
slow down now, i’ve a headache,
sometimes it’s hard to think,
the phone rings how are you? oh! i’m not up to much
you don’t say, oh really! it’ll end…. end in tears

here i go again,
all i have is what i might have been
where’s my long lost friends?
somewhere over the rainbow

when the dark clouds come,
the angel valium will call
to take me far away,
to a place where i don’t have to feel

i’m happy as i hoover, it’s one o’clock, time for lunch
marshmallows with coffee,
can’t forget my slimfast drink,
the garden’s depressing, i think i need a hair-do
a gin and a tonic, ah! that should do the trick

here i go again,
all i have is what i might have been
where’s my long lost friends?
somewhere over the rainbow

when the dark clouds come,
the angel valium will call
to take me far away,
to a place where i don’t have to feel

it’s monday afternoon, the kids are off at school
sunset boulevard, the channel four matinee
sit down, relax with a nice cup of tea….
…. oh! the sweet smell of butane…. and humdrum.
…. gloria swanson…. from here to eternity….

my twentieth century
i woke up this morning,
dreading the thoughts of another, dull and boring day
hey! woe is me.
i go out on the streets, northside of the city
i see the steel, the fading rust
and the fields i used to play in….
my friends are famous and all my foes live happy
loved by lycra, fooled by velcro
and fucked by what they need….

but who am i to criticise? my pointing finger backfires
i hang my head down low.

i once believed in jesus,
now i can’t believe in rock ‘n’ roll
from baptism to alcohol, in a land suffocatingly green
hey! the myth is magic, do you know what i mean?
the politics of sin and of sex
suffer the fools, pawn our jewels, will it ever change?

but who am i to criticise? i’ve made my bed, i lie on it
and hold my head up high

my disbelief. my fake redemption.
my twentieth century.
my holy war. my self indulgence.
my twentieth century.
my human flesh. my sad dependence.
my twentieth century.
my apathy. my big decision.
my twentieth century.

the last song i’ll ever sing
i’m inviting you to my vaudeville
“oui encore” you say, “and on with the show”
ladies, gentlemen, before i sing to you
the light that shines twice as bright,
burns half as long.

come let me entertain you all
leave all your troubles big and small
life’s a ball, life’s a ball.
hitch a ride on my crooked merry-go-round
hear the clinking-clanking sound
of the song that i bring

take my song, take my hand, never let me down,
like love let me down, like love pushed me around

so long, goodbye, i lost, did try
this is the last song i’ll ever sing
the last song i’ll sing

i played in the cabaret of love
i wore heart, fist and glove.
push and shove, push and shove….
and all for love

take my song, take my hand, never let me down,
like love let me down, like love pushed me around

so long, goodbye, i lost, did try
this is the last song i’ll ever sing
the last song i’ll sing
this is the last song i’ll ever sing
the last song i’ll sing

here, with words that can’t be said
we take songs to our bed
sing – a – long, sing – a – long…. to my last song.

All titles written & arranged by Gavin Friday & Maurice Seezer except The Slider which was written by Marc Bolan. All songs published by Blue Mountain Music except for The Slider which is published by Wizard (Bahamas) Ltd.

• Each Man Kills the Thing He Loves lyrics
• Adam ‘n’ Eve lyrics

Related news

• Shag Tobacco – Lyrics
• Album: Shag Tobacco
• Album – Shag Tobacco – reviews

Melody Maker (September 2, 1995)
…he effortlessly straddles the line between barfly poet and 21st century Las Vegas headliner….SHAG TOBACCO is a night out on the tiles that takes in pre-war Berlin, Lou Reed’s dazzling transvestite New York, Marc Bolan’s epochal `The Slider’ and Dublin’s late night transients…

Q (January 11, 1996)
3 Stars (out of 5) – …a remarkable piece of work. At least three or four tracks–the sublime, drifting dreamscape of `Angel,’ for instance–could have made Friday a household name….perhaps his over-reliance on…theatrical flourishes…has prevented him being taken to the contemporary breast…

Musician (January 4, 1996)
…still as dramatic and angst-ridden as ever, but this time the songs…are awash in samples and beats, primed for the dancefloor…

The Independent, Andy Gill (August 11, 1995)
On Shag Tobacco, Gavin Friday charts a demi-monde whose physical locale may be Dublin, but whose imagination takes in a wider, more European aspect. James Joyce would understand, I’m sure.

Couched in musical terms of cabaret and late-night cafe, the album traces both strict hetero sensibilities (the lusty “Little Black Dress”) and more polymorphously perverse attitudes, as in the transsexual chanson “Dolls”, wherein “it’s time for Eve to put Adam to sleep”. Friday’s long- time colleague Maurice Seezer adds a little dockside decadence to the latter with a gentle wheeze of accordion, while Bono and Edge buff up the harmonies of the former; elsewhere, a clarinet brings a touch of mannered sleaze to the queenly “Mr Pussy”.

The range of music is certainly impressive, but it’s Friday’s lyrical apprehension of himself that comes across most strongly. In “Caruso”, he uses a scattershot series of cultural references to illustrate the song’s contention that “I’m not myself today”: this is a life lived through vicarious images, populated by fictions and infatuations which, he subsequently realises (in “My 20th Century”), have betrayed him, most notably the great myths of rock’n'roll. Despite this realisation, he opts to continue on his chosen route: clearly, destiny cannot be denied.

AllMusic – Ned Raggett
Friday’s third solo effort, as always with Seezer as his main collaborator, provided another development in his musical approach with the choice of Bomb the Bass mainman Tim Simenon as producer. Further continuing the initial experiments the two did on Adam ‘n’ Eve, Simenon helped create a dance-influenced album that ranges from industrial slams to clean, elegant breaks, in many ways serving as the model for his following work with Depeche Mode on Ultra. There’s more than a few hints of where Massive Attack would end up on Mezzanine as well, as the low pulses and sudden guitar/drum hits on the title track show — and the fact that the lead single from Shag Tobacco was named “Angel.” Friday himself is still the sharp-tongued ruined romantic of the previous albums, as apt to swoon as wittily shred and breathlessly gasp, while Seezer again provides the music and core work on keyboards and accordion (check out “Dolls”) to back him perfectly. The obvious glam inspirations the two have always had get full confirmation via a great cover of T. Rex’s “The Slider,” but rather than trying to recreate that song’s exact atmosphere, Simenon helps whip up a clattering, stop-start performance that still keeps all the sex. As for the rest of Shag Tobacco, it’s one lush, playful plunge after another into just enough decadence. “Angel” sounds rather like an extension of the striking Adam ‘n’ Eve closer “Eden,” similarly mixing wonderful falsetto from Friday with steady yet soaring music, including great fuzz bass from Erik Sanko. With its outrageous title, “Mr. Pussy” gets credit for being named after a legendary transvestite from Dublin, who provides the brief spoken word conclusion and shows he has as much style as Friday himself. Best song title of the bunch: “You, Me and World War Three.”

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When I look into your sad blue eyes, they whisper,
love’s been and gone…
it’s the end of the line, we’re wasting our time
I kiss you goodbye, now I can’t believe I ever said that
I would die for you, your eyes do more than kill…
I want to live.

All’s forgiven, so all’s forgotten, I’m empty inside,
What I’m trying to say since you went away, I live a lie.
I drink all day I’m never sober just to ease the pain,
These lies do more than kill…
I want to live… I want to live…

Like a ghost in my head you keep haunting me
Every promise we made, every word you said
I can’t live without you!
Baby baby, when lovin’ we were hiding
when lying we were brave.
Baby baby, I can’t live without you
all I need is you.
I want to live.

Falling Off The Edge Of The World
(With Maria McKee)

Happiness is a place in the sun
Says Dickie Boy with a warm gun
Charlie Darwin I believe you now
Put the monkeys in a uniform
Stormin’ Norman up on the hill
Twenty rounds with Georgie B.
Let ‘em choke on coke ‘n’ oil
Sweet revenge just one calorie
“I’m falling off the edge of the world
AAH! Floating out to who knows where?
I’m falling off the edge of the world
I’m calling out… there must be something more?”
Babe, I’ll catch your fall.
I hear the Queen has a cowboy hat
Tea, crumpets, ‘Voodoo Chile’
Rock ‘n’ roll is a pussycat
Dead and buried in the U.S.A.
Cheap thrills, Cupid heartaches
Hooked on smack and daffodils
Candy Man, Candy Man can…
Shoo be doo wop.. his kiss can kill
“I’m falling off the edge of the world
AAH! Floating out to who knows where?
I’m falling off the edge of the world
I’m calling out… there must be something more?”
Babe, I’ll catch your fall.
See a vision of a world gone green.
Pop a pill with my Ovaltine
Call a priest, grab a crucifix
I’m not religious, I’m insomniac.
I close my eyes
It won’t go away
I dry my eyes
Big boys don’t cry
When the world is rock ‘n’ shake
I fall and break…
When the world is spinning ’round
I tumble down…
Hold me steady, hold me close
“I’m falling off the edge of the world
AAH! Floating out to who knows where?
I’m falling off the edge of the world
I’m calling out… there must be something more?”
“I’m falling off the edge of the world…
Ah! Floating out…”
“I’m out of here”…

King of Trash

Hey! Sugar Sugar, my sweet honey pie
Baby let me tell ya about the teenage lie
Your lips will be kissed, stories will be told
Just remember ‘sick sick’ all that glitters is gold.

He’s calling now, he’s calling…
and the song that he sang, meant everything
“King of Trash”

Me. I’m not young. Me, I’m not old
The revolution failed, so I’ve been told take me to the moon,
Me, I’d like that. I’m no prune.

He’s calling now, he’s calling…
and the song that he sang, meant everything
“King of Trash”

So pretty children it’s time for bed
Keep-a-dreamin’ dreamy dreams
What dies aint dead

“The King is dead his coffin a shiny black
six Angels they hang-out at his back,
two to sing, two to pray, two to carry his soul away…

He’s calling now, he’s calling…
and the song that he sang, meant everything
and the song that you sing, don’t mean anything
and the song, the song that I sing,
means everything
“King of Trash”
“The King of Trash”

Why Say Goodbye

OK! My shiny one, I’ve something to tell ya…
No secrets told, to a heart cruel and cold
I know it’s hard, let’s give it another try
You mean so much to me-like the stars in the sky
So why say goodbye? Why say no more?

Who’s right? Who’s wrong? I shout, you scream
What pleases the eye, plagues the heart.
It’s strange but true, we do as we’re done by
I’m sorry for what I said, let’s go to bed!
…The time has come to talk of things
Of shoes ‘n’ bells ‘n’ wedding rings
So why say goodbye? Why say no more?

Why say goodbye? Why say no more?
for I think it is love, for I feel it is love]
for I’m almost sure it’s love
So what do you know now?
It’s down to you and me, heart to heart
Why say goodbye? Why say no more?

Saint Divine

I’ll tell you now the story of a friend of mine
A small town boy named ‘Saint Divine’
At his red flamed hair they would laugh and stare
As he searched in vain for friends to find
His mother, father and brother too…
They told him “…we don’t see the world like you…”
So he blew a kiss, he waved bye bye
For love… it don’t live here

“All the tears he holds inside… he gotta go away
…are the tears he must hide…”
Looking for love…

So he goes to a big and bright city
Where friends ecstatic are never cruel
Forgets the clouds grabs the silver lining
The lipstick boy can boogaloo
and life is just one crazy ball
’cause down at King Tut Tuts he knows them all
but the queen is still a queer
and love… it don’t live here.

“All the tears he holds inside… he gotta go away
…are the tears he must hide…Looking for.
Looking for love…
All the love he fails to find…he gotta go away
…will his dreams run out of time?…Looking for,
Looking for love…”

Saint Saint Divine How you wear the woman

What one calls a sinner another will a Saint
Who is to say what is right from wrong
It’s Friday night! It’s time to party
The sacred cow can ‘bang-a-gong’
Sing you sinners, dance you Saints
Anyway your body ‘n’ souls inclined.
Laugh you lovers at those who hate
in each an Adam and Eve entwined…

Melancholy Baby

Come a change of weather, comes a chang of heart
Who will know when the rains will start?
My baby broke her promise, should I be upset?
Daylight says remember…moonlight forget.

Beauty disguises what it’s holding back
Some days when her eyes shine, her thoughts are black
Like a little child she can do no wrong
and I’ll pick her up each time she falls down

“Meanwhile Baby!… Oh! Sweet Baby!”

Night’s scent is her presence, night’s secret her face.
I speak when she’s sleeping, silent when she wakes.
Clouds gather and darken, our future foretell
Rains comin’ often and loves a brief spell
Like the saddest word, she awaits her song
and I’ll pick her up each time she falls down

“Meanwhile Baby!… Oh! Sweet Baby!
We’ve got a lot to learn about love in this life…
My Melancholy Baby”

In the palm of my hand, I’ll hold a little you
I’ll put you in my pocket when you’re feelin’ blue
Zing zing a zang go the strings of my heart
Cling cling a clang I’ll never let you part
Oh! Sweet Baby!

Fun and Experience

“…Here’s one for ya!…
…Woe! Woe! Hold your horses…”
The Boy Wonder

Everything’s in the belly or between the legs
A savage in a tin of fruit, your only man.
What’s the story? Jackinory? No, lead in the pencil?
Mr Shepard’s Pie- did you meet me middle eye?
I’m here to go, who’s the lucky one?
Get-a-load of this, it’s Innocence Bliss

An angel at the table- A devil at the door
He’d talk if he was able but his jaw just hit the floor…

“I could change the world for you. Romance the moon
make the sun shine… come on baby, please be mine…”

Fun and Experience
Love can be anything you want it to be
Fun and Experience
If you aint in- you’ll never win.

He hopped the twig, he legged the bed
Hey! Stop the lights…
Innocence left him devastated. She sucked him in.
She blew him out in baby bubbles, ’cause what goes
up gotta, gotta come down.

Her wee man in the boat was keepin’ the score
His wiggie in the middle couldn’t take much more

“I could change the world for you. Romance the moon
make the sun shine… come on baby, please be mine…”

Fun and Experience
Love can be anything you want it to be
Fun and Experience
If you aint in- you’ll never win.

The Boy Wonder’s… if she’s the cheese
or the cow on the box

“I could change the world for you. Romance the moon
make the sun shine… come on baby, please be mine…”

Fun and Experience
Love can be anything you want it to be
Fun and experience
If you aint in- you won’t win!

An angel at the table- A devil at the door
He’d talk if he was able, but his jaw just hit the floor
Yeah! Her wee man in the boat was keepin’ the score
His wiggie in the middle could take no more

Fun and Experience
Love can be anything you want it to be!

The moral of the song you can’t go wrong
If you don’t shoot your shot… she’ll love you not
So let her wee man in the boat keep a countin’ the score
But wiggie in the middle gotta give much more!

The Big No! No!

What is the truth of all that we know?
To hear the crap that comes out of the mouth.
The silent can say more… waiting and watching to see…
(I see)… what will be?
A hate… that goes by the name of concern
feel touched… stand and just watch the thing die
so mercy is money, I saw it on T.V. … come see it
on T.V. … it’s money not mercy
“Not for you! No! I won’t bend or change, the way I see
the world according to me.”
The Prigs… who think they are whiter than white
are sick… to judge by the filth of their minds
whatever your pleasure, a kiss or a blow, then go
or just say No!
In my face… “melthead” served up on a plate
What’s next? The best things in life are for sale.
We got it! (Yeah!) You want it? (No!) The singer can
sing (Wow!) The singer can sell! The singer can sell!
“Not for you! No! I won’t bend or change, the way I see
the world according to me.”
No! No! No! It’s the little “yes yes” or the big “No! No!”
(Day by day, day by day) “We love you so!”
(Day by day, day by day) “Oh! What a drag.”
(Day by day, day by day) “I don’t believe”
(Day by day, day by day) “So who are you?”
… Life goes on …
The little “yes yes” The big “No! No!” … sit right down
it’s the start of the show …
(Day by day, day by day) “Wow! You don’t say!”
(Day by day, day by day) “Oh! By the way!”
(Day by day, day by day) “Excuse me please, I have to go”
Day by day, day by day, Life goes on.

Where In The World?

The soul is up for hire, we sold out the heart. The truth lies deep under our skin, Bite the hand that gives, kiss the hand that takes. Where in the world can I turn and look to? Things never change they fade away. The Church of Love … it’s law and disorder. We’re meant to give more than we take. Calling Gods on high, it’s in your name millions die, Silenced those who scream, no golden cold image can redeem, The tongue tells lies, minds deceive. I turn around and see a finger pointing at me. Where in the world can I turn and look to? Things never change they fad away. The Church of Love … it’s law and disorder Where cheating hearts can kneel and pray. Put your feet on the water, play Jesus for the day… They say the times are a changin’, we’ve woken to our ignorance, truly I believe but I find it hard to see. Where in the world can I turn and look to? Things never change they fade away. The Church of Love… it’s law and disorder We’re meant to give more than we take. Where in the world can I turn and look to? Things never change they fade away. The Church of Love … it’s law and disorder Where cheating hearts can kneel and pray.

Wind And Rain

Wind & Rain. Ice and Snow
Winter kills we stay together
Wind & Rain. Ice and Snow
Someone speaks we wake up crying

Push aside those who whisper
never
for our love will last forever

The trees are bare. No birds sing
I want to tell you everything
The ice is cold. The winter rain
Seasons change- we remain

Push aside those who whisper
never
for our love will last forever

Hold me closer- kill the distance
Tell me everything
Hold me closer- kill the distance
I want to tell you everything

Push aside those who whisper
never
for our love will last forever

Hold me closer- kill the distance
Tell me everything
Hold me closer- kill the distance
Tell me everything

I know
I know our love will last forever

Eden

Blue sky the waters clear
Our love’s garden to tend and to rule
No fear mischief in the shadows waits
We have each other and time to kill
Eden.
We meet by the darkness the truth of our kiss,
One touch of skin commits us a new
Your moist inside, my ease so rich I tremble
the sweetest strain it tears me asunder
Eden.
A spell has broken outcast and in gloom
A waste so dry where is my love?
I wander lost a time that feels like hours
until I see a place that is green.
Eden

All titles written & arranged by Gavin Friday and Maurice Seezer. All songs published by Blue Mountain Music.

• Each Man Kills the Thing He Loves lyrics
• Shag Tobacco lyrics

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Allmusic – Ned Raggett
“Adam ‘n’ Eve moves from one miniature masterpiece to another, Friday and Seezer the perfect pairing for witty lyrics, melodramatic romance, and much more. The great character portrait “Saint Divine” has an ear for late Roxy Music drama without simply cloning it, while “Fun and Experience” is literally that, a fun, glammy number with everything from backing yelps to lush orchestral bursts. “Falling Off the Edge of the World,” meanwhile, has Friday offering up his own wry takes on things like the Gulf War over nightclub jazz jams while McKee engages him in a fantastic full duet.”

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Musician (February 1990)
Each Man is a rich tapestry of imaginative musical flourishes that allude to wide range of influences, Friday salutes the street songs of ‘30’s Germany and well as the magnificent orchestral punk of Howard Devoto’s Magazine.

OOR – Bert van de Kamp (March 11, 1989)
Especially impressive is Love Is Just a Word. Gavin’s tortured, expressive voice sounds at his best, the music is varied and richly orchestrated. ‘You Take Away the Sun’ is another painful love song, beautifully supported by the sounds of a cello. Next is a Jacques Brel cover, Death Is Not the End one of the more extreme statements of Bob Dylan. Our Man Friday gives them a completely new identity. Somewhere between Marc Almond and Tom Waits there must be a place for Gavin Friday’s damned music. Bittersweet and dangerous as nightshade.

NME – Sean O’Hagan (May 27th, 1989)
In the words of Myles Na Gopaleen, yer man Friday is, even by Ireland’s standards, an ‘inscrutable pancake’. Thus this album comes as a surprise. Reeling in his more outré exhibitionist tendencies, Gavin Friday [ offers up ] 13 choice variations on the contemporary existential malaise – love, sex, loneliness, death and all shades of the human condition in between. The result is a sustained and often startling reinvention of the Brecht-Weill song tradition that merges Friday’s own songs with sympathetic treatments of pervious angst overtures. [...] Throughout, the words and music congeal into a world-weary worldview that owes little, God bless him, to the endless babble of contemporary pap, and loads to the wry, realist wisdom of Wilde, Brecht and the rest. ‘ Each Man Kills the Thing He Loves’ is the sound of a man walking out of step, a contemporary dandy with an unfashionable heedful of ideas concerning truth and beauty and their proximity to the gutter. Friday’s particular heart of darkness never drags us downwards, the gleefulness of his delivery speaking volumes about hope, optimism and, above all, mischief.

Melody Maker – Ian Gittins (1989)
His own songs are skilled essays into the human state, tales of love or dreams dropped onto the spike. How much autobiography is here is debatable, but I’d guess not too much. It doesn’t matter either way. The Man Seezer, for his part, is cleverly self-effacing, tracing hooks deep into the songs yet standing back for Friday to puzzle out his way. Find his feet. ‘Man of Misfortune’ is a superb account of his wrestling attempts to keep some kind of personal faith. [...] Camp comes into it, somewhere. Yet so does understatement. And both combine, somehow, with an odd, addled purity. Which comes down maybe, to the luck of the Irish. A promising debut. So more, please.

Allmusic – Ned Raggett
Making his solo debut with a nod to an earlier Irish aesthete, Friday’s album isn’t merely titled after a legendary line from Oscar Wilde’s Ballad of Reading Gaol, but kicks off with the title track, where all lyrics in fact come from said poem. Each Man Kills shows a slightly calmer Friday at play, making the same transition to Scott Walker-inspired dark, spiked cabaret that kindred spirits Nick Cave and Marc Almond also did in their own solo careers to one extent or another. Friday’s own take on that spirit actually fits exactly between Cave and Almond’s work — the slow pace and country twang of “Tell-Tale Heart” could come right from Your Funeral My Trial. The fact that Friday covers two songs here that Cave and Almond would each separately do later (Bob Dylan’s “Death Is Not the End” and Jacques Brel’s “Next”) further shows the similar inspirations shared. In keeping with the overall transformation, Friday eschews the over the top wails and shrieks of his younger days — his register is still high, but the delivery is much more controlled, showing a greater range while losing none of his desperate passion. Seezer contributes fine lead keyboard work throughout, but Friday’s other key partner is producer Hal Willner, who had clearly demonstrated his own credentials for this kind of music with his Kurt Weill tribute album a few years previously. With a range of talented New York types to work with, including Bill Frisell and Fernando Saunders, Willner gets sympathetic performances from all to back Friday and Seezer’s explorations into wrecked romance, tortured souls and 2 a.m. moods. It isn’t mere recreation of 1930′s Berlin, but a palette of styles, from the dank, slow crawl of “Dazzle and Delight” to the soaring “You Take Away the Sun” and the kicking glam rock-inspired “Man of Misfortune.”

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