Tulip Frenzy

So the synchronous publishing of Rick Moody’s nearly endless but well-worth-the-effort essay on Brian Eno’s long career just as an ice storm hit D.C. provided us head-nodding entertainment and a wonderful distraction from the bilious news that Newt had taken South Carolina.  We admire obsessives, and a 9000 word essay on Eno certainly qualifies.  What we liked the most was we agreed with almost every word!  Okay, Moody forgets to praise sufficiently Taking Tiger Mountain By Strategy. (That’s the Eno album that launched 1000 imitators from, strangely enough, Joy Division to Garbage to the New Pornographers.) And he perhaps fails to give sufficient props for what Eno did  for the Talking Heads on More Songs About Buildings And Food, not to mention his seeming to have missed that great Eno/Cale collaboration that produced “Been There, Done That.”  We’d be willing to forgive his failing to mention the great Robert Wyatt collaboration with Eno that produced the brilliant “Heads of Sheep” if only he’d tell us where we could download “Seven Deadly Finns,” which although it has long disappeared, is still the only Eno song ever to crack the upper reaches of the British charts. But he views Eno’s four 1970s pop albums as a cultural high point for Western Civ, understands that those Lou Reed albums with Bob Quine were the ones that mattered, slags Coldplay, worships Radiohead, gives John Cale his props, etc.  And he turns us on to an Eno-sponsored iTunes app (Bloom) that is more fun than our laminated Oblique Strategies cards. We herewith go on the hunt for all Rick Moody first editions.  And Tulip Frenzy offers to adopt him as kindred spirit.