Portishead – Dummy …20 year anniversary.

😀

Amazing album, & one that stands the test of time – much in the way that Massive Attack’s Brizzle Blue Lines does.

I remember the music press running all kinds of stories about how Portishead [the place], which gave rise to Portishead [the band], was something like Twin Peaks – strange, uncanny, clocks running backwards, etc. As a native sou’wester, I’d usually treat such talk as typically-patronising metropolitan hype… but I spent some of 1994 doing A-Level Geology fieldwork along the (decidedly-eerie on a foggy day) Bristol Channel coastline (especially Sand Bay, for those familiar with it)… and Dummy somehow combined in my imagination with the lonely stretches of raised beaches and solifluction terraces.

Roads still demolishes me. And live, they – and most especially Beth – are still as spellbinding as ever. I once read a review which described Portishead as being like sharing a late-night taxi ride with a hip-hop Janis Joplin – and that, IMO, sums ’em up perfectly.

Another noteworthy anniversary taking place this weekend is 25 years of the DiY free party collective

Top crew. 😀

Roads does the same to me – goose bumps every time! I was an indie grunge kid when this came out and most of my mates where heavy metal fans, but we all owned and loved this album.

Geoff Barrow (portishead) is on 6music now on a take over of Stuart Maconies Freak Zone show, he’s playing some of his preferred left field recordings and music.

Rather good……

Yeah, but then I would have to turn off this. Will have to listen again later in the week.

*sets reminder*

Just speaking with my dad about this. He reckons that the amount of people ‘actually’ at the Portishead gig and Glasto vs the people that say they were there grows every year!!

I’m lucky enough to have had my copies of Dummy, Portishead, and the NYC concert video signed by Geoff and Beth. She apparently* grumbled about them going onto eBay the next day, bless her, but signed them anyway.
I still have them, no way would I part with them!
*A bloke I used to work with had a studio in Bristol next to theirs, in fact their old studio, they swapped over, because his was bigger.

Classic album.

Still one of the ones I turn to when I need something on repeat in my headphones when I’m pulling an all-nighter for work.

See also Tricky – Maxinquaye from the same era.

See also Tricky – Maxinquaye from the same era.

Check the credits, Alison Goldfrapp did vocals on that, just before forming her own band with Will.
And yes, great album.
Loved watching Tricky on the Kate Bush special programme, still got his really broad Bristol accent. 😀

 He reckons that the amount of people ‘actually’ at the Portishead gig and Glasto vs the people that say they were there grows every year!!

Well you can tell him I tried to and couldnt get close, my friends and I had a compelling urge for “space” and the most we could find was in front of the Shamen that night!

Just speaking with my dad about this. He reckons that the amount of people ‘actually’ at the Portishead gig and Glasto vs the people that say they were there grows every year!!

I didn’t realise it had become the “Sex Pistols at Manchester Free Trade Hall” gig of our generation! I have some photos from the gig somewhere at my Dad’s, maybe I should dig them out.

It was crazy. My brother was a steward on the acoustic stage that night. They were seriously worried that the gig would have to be pulled(could have been almost an entire festival trying to get in a big top)thankfully the crew who ran that stage always sailed a bit close to the edge. They could have owned the main stage, why they were not bumped up I don’t know. In years following Beth always hung out at the acoustic, fellow west countryers! I reckon I had the best spot in the tent!

That year Glastonbury had about twice as many people as tickets sold too!

Finally got around to playing it when the wife popped to Tesco this morning.
The kids were not impressed.

Placebo’s “Without you I’m nothing” failed to rouse their intrest either.

Also reminded me that prior to portishead Evan Dando was late and tried to play his acoustic set. He was being a bit of a dick, and had to be removed due to the wrath of the crowd!

I remembered to dig out my photos of the Glastonbury ’95 gig from my Dad’s this weekend…

…and bonus content, the aforementioned (by tang above and me on the previous page), shamolically off his tits Evan Dando…

Sadly I only got Portishead 15 years ago.

Playing it now, headphones on,

Amazing album.

Bumpage for the Monday morning crowd in case anyone in interested in the photos

timmys, I was there. Cant remember much though 🙄

I remember seeing Portishead at the now defunct Ashton Court festival – awesome. I have no idea when that was – late ’90s possibly?

Wow…ok that is worrying. I have a copy of that in my car and it still gets played regularly. Wonderful album.

I was an indie grunge kid when this came out and most of my mates where heavy metal fans, but we all owned and loved this album.

Likewise. Got it early on (on tape!). I have an abiding memory* of being off my face on Koh Phangan beach at a full moon party in early 96 and retreating from the mayhem, watching from afar and listening to this on my walkman.

Played Roseland and Portishead almost to death at university in the mid-late 90s.

Geniuses the lot of ’em.

*more feeling, rather than specific detail!

I did an EP in a long gone band engineered by their sometime bass player, in a studio basement somewhere in Brizzle.

I’d like to say it was as good as Mysterons but it’d make me a big fat liar 😀

One of those rare albums that still sounds ‘new’ every time I listen to it.