1. Julian CopeJehovahkill
I’ve been a Cope fan since I was 15. He was a guy that nobody else was into, at least in my town – I’m from Temple, Texas. When you’re that age and there’s something you know about that you love obsessively and no one else is into it, it becomes a personal thing. I had all the records. It seemed like every time I would go down to Austin and went down to Sound Exchange there would always be a new Julian Cope record. Something older that I had never heard before or something new he was putting out that was not a main release but sort of a side release or he was releasing it itself. It sort of fed the obsession a bit. And then he was really into The 13 Floor Elevators and The 13 Floor Elevators were from Austin and then he put out a record called Droolian which had an Austin PO Box on the back and I didn’t understand why that was. He wasn’t here but somehow it had an Austin PO Box. I had a weird personal connections to those records.
Out of all of his records, why pick Jehovahkill?
I picked that one because that to me is the peak of his experimentation. It’s also really great songwriting. It’s a very, very kraut-influenced record. it’s an expansive record. It was three sides. Not a full double album but it was three sides and on the fourth side you had an etching. He was always doing things like that. He was putting thought into it. He was the first artist I ever listened to that ran music in the run out grooves of the record. He wrote little inscriptions in the run out grooves of the record and there was all these hints and mysteries and all that stuff adds up to something. I’m not sure what right now but at the time I was just obsessed. I used to cover ‘Upwards at 45 degrees’ at solo shows, it’s a great one.
