Mud - Mud's Greatest Hits (RAK, 1975)

Tuesday, June 20, 2023

As a concept, I can’t think of any other band except Roxy Music, who has flirted with the idea of the future by returning to the past. The British band Mud sounded like an Elvis impersonator but done in the space-age future. Which is the work by two producers and songwriters who became a team: Mike Chapman and Nicky Chinn, known as Chin and Chapman. Under their supervision, The Sweet, Suzi Quatro, Mud, and others ruled the British music charts in the early 1970s. Pretty much all had the sound of catchy but powerful drums, handclaps, Queen-like harmonies, and rock guitar stylings but filtered through an intelligence that seems dumb but is really smart. The Sweet and Suzi Quatro seems to get some respect these days, but I feel one shouldn’t overlook the charms of Mud.

Part of their allure is that they are totally artless, and as the early 70s became the early era of the world of songwriters from the Laurel Canyon aesthetic, such as James Taylor, Joni Mitchell, and David Crosby, and then came Glam Rock for whom that shitted on their emotionally open folk-tinged records. If Punk thought of itself as starting from ground zero, I feel Glam Rock (Chinn-Chapman) had already destroyed the music a few years before Sex Pistols hit the scene. The Chinn-Chapman world was equivalent to the bubblegum sounds compared to the more serious artists such as Bowie, Roxy Music, Mott the Hoople, and that category. They may be even less artistry than Gary Glitter, who made brilliant records with veteran producer Mike Leander, who was the architect of the Glam/Glitter sound.

Mud is very much the positive print of The Sweet’s negative output. I believe one couldn’t exist without the other, and both are products of Chinn-Chapman. There is something beautifully aesthetic-like about their Dyna-Mite, Hypnosis, Crazy, and perfection as practiced, Tiger Feet. This is music not meant to last forever but to burn sharply on our consciousness. Without it, we wouldn’t get the artfulness of Suede, The Smiths, and I would even argue The glam/glitter beat has seduced The Fall. Eccentrically enough, Go-Cart Mozart, Lawrence’s music project, relates to this era of Glam. On the other hand, Roxy Music took the music/sound to another level, but even they needed the existence of junk-related Glam music such as the underrated Mud.

Chinn-Chapman