Vibing Up the Senile Man (Part One)

Vibing Up the Senile Man (Part One) is the second studio album by English rock band Alternative TV, released in March 1979 by record label Deptford Fun City. On this album, the band followed an even more experimental and avant-garde approach than on The Image Has Cracked (1978).

Vibing Up the Senile Man (Part One)
Studio album by
Alternative TV
Released2 March 1979 (1979-03-02)
RecordedOctober–November 1978
StudioPathway Sound Studios
Genre
LabelDeptford Fun City
Producer
Alternative TV chronology
The Image Has Cracked
(1978)		 Vibing Up the Senile Man (Part One)
(1979)		 Strange Kicks
(1981)

Recording

The album's tracks were all reportedly recorded in a single take.[1]

Musical style

Regarding its musical style, Alternative TV frontman Mark Perry recalled: "There are free jazz influences; I'd got into the Art Ensemble of Chicago, Sun Ra [...] I'd moved into this house with an amazing music room – pianos, clarinets, you name it – and we'd always be picking up stuff from junk shops."[1]

Reception
Professional ratings
Review scores
SourceRating
AllMusic[2]
Rolling Stone[3]

According to Simon Reynolds in Rip It Up and Start Again: Postpunk 1978-1984, the album received a "uniformly hostile" response from reviewers upon its release.[1] Trouser Press described the record as being "up the pseudo-avant creek without a paddle".[4]

in his retrospective review of the album, Dean McFarlane of AllMusic noted: "On the second album of Alternative TV, Mark Perry and friends did to punk exactly what the movement had intended for the establishment. About-facing punk and turning it on its ear would be a difficult task in 1980, and while Alternative TV's peers headed down new wave paths or into commercialism [...] who would have expected a follow-up as avant-garde abstraction that challenges P.I.L's Second Edition for absolute left-field swing? With Genesis P-Orridge in the ranks, Vibing Up the Senile Man became closer to free improvisation and avant-garde jazz without a punk anthem in sight, and a dub edge to some of the tracks of the double LP suggest that Alternative TV had similar modernist aspirations to John Lydon's post-Sex Pistols project. Captain Beefheart and Frank Zappa spring to mind as much as Pere Ubu and the Red Krayola, who were similarly exploring the avant-garde liberties of post-punk and disappointing the punks and record industry alike. What Vibing Up the Senile Man represents two decades later is a door opening on multi-faceted post-rock music – which draws on avant-garde, noise and jazz and arguably makes more sense in the context of year 2000 as a musical treasure much more than in 1980, when it seemed simply a spit in the eye to the industry that codified punk."[2]

Legacy

Paul Hegarty, in Noise Music: A History, described the album as "forming the bridge into industrial music".[5]

The record was placed at number 19 on Mojo's list of readers' choice of 50 "Weirdest Albums".[6]

Track listing
Side A
No.TitleWriter(s)Length
1."Release the Natives"Mark Perry4:02
2."Serpentine Gallery"Dennis Burns, Perry2:24
3."Poor Association"Perry1:49
4."The Radio Story"Burns, Perry7:48
5."Facing Up to the Facts"Perry4:08
Side B
No.TitleWriter(s)Length
1."The Good Missionary"Perry7:17
2."Graves of Deluxe Green"Perry2:58
3."Smile in the Day"Burns, Perry8:21

Personnel
Alternative TV
Additional personnel
  • Mick Linehan – guitar on "Release the Natives" and "The Good Missionary"
  • Steve Jameson – third voice on "Smile in the Day"
  • Genesis P. Orridge - percussion on "Release the Natives", "Serpentine Gallery" and "Graves of Deluxe Green"
Technical

References
  1. Reynolds, Simon (2009). Rip It Up and Start Again: Postpunk 1978–1984. Faber & Faber. ISBN 9780571252275. Retrieved 22 November 2014.
  2. McFarlane, Dean. "Vibing Up the Senile Man – Alternative TV | Songs, Reviews, Credits, Awards | AllMusic". AllMusic. Retrieved 16 February 2015.
  3. Marsh, Dave; Swenson, John (12 October 1983). The New Rolling Stone Record Guide. Rolling Stone Press. p. 10. ISBN 9780394721071. Retrieved 22 November 2014.
  4. Lamey, Charles P.; Green, Jim. "Alternative TV". trouserpress.com. Retrieved 22 November 2014.
  5. Hegarty, Paul (September 2007). Noise Music: A History. Bloomsbury Academic. p. 101. ISBN 9780826417275. Retrieved 22 November 2014.
  6. "Even Weirder: Mojo Readers' Weirdest Albums". Mojo. 15 May 2014. Retrieved 22 November 2014.
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