A quick look on Amazon reveals you can find a great many Chicory Tip compilation CDs invariably called 'Best Of' or even 'Very Best Of', suggesting that some careful separation of the wheat from the chaff has been going on in putting them together. But come on - there's only one Chicory Tip song that anybody knows, and it's this one. The one that's usually song one on those compilations and the one that even people who've never heard of Chicory Tip can hum along to.
What's perhaps less known is that 'Son Of My Father' is a cover version of an earlier Giorgio Moroder single. Everybody knows that strident, pre-techno synth riff that drives it, but this was lifted lock, stock and barrel from Moroder's version. In fact. Moroder's song is if anything more 'techno' again; the vocal gains a metallic, Teutonic shimmer and there's some crude phasing effects on the chorus that bloat it out of commercial contention. Chicory Tip trim the worst excesses and tame the beast by corralling it into a more traditional rock mould that emphasises the thumpy back beat over those darn new fangled synthesiser things.*
Lyrically, I've always regarded 'Son Of My Father' as a pop art re-write of Larkin's 'This Be The Verse' - can anybody else hear:
"They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you."
in
"Son of my father, moulded I was folded I was preform-packed.
Son of my father, commanded I was branded in a plastic vac"
Maybe, maybe not, but regardless of any 'child is father to the man' hypothesising, 'Son Of My Father' is blessed with a shouty, arms aloft chorus that is once heard, never forgotten. Chicory Tip may well be operating outside the Glam Rock framework, but it's a Glam headslam in all but name - Gary without the Glitter if you will. Had this been an original recording then I'd be hailing Chicory Tip as unsung founding fathers of electronica and its offshoots, but it's not. Their main contribution is to add a smart commercial edge, a go-faster stripe on someone else's car that proved so effective it buried the band under it the weight of its success. I mean - can you name another Chicory Tip song? I rest my case.
*Interestingly, the Moroder version sounds like a song pulling itself in two. One way was heading down the cheesy Europop route that Aqua, Baccara, Ace Of Base, etc would travel while the other heads toward pioneering an electronic dance sound that would explode in the eighties. There are plenty who would damn Moroder to hell for both of these developments.
What's perhaps less known is that 'Son Of My Father' is a cover version of an earlier Giorgio Moroder single. Everybody knows that strident, pre-techno synth riff that drives it, but this was lifted lock, stock and barrel from Moroder's version. In fact. Moroder's song is if anything more 'techno' again; the vocal gains a metallic, Teutonic shimmer and there's some crude phasing effects on the chorus that bloat it out of commercial contention. Chicory Tip trim the worst excesses and tame the beast by corralling it into a more traditional rock mould that emphasises the thumpy back beat over those darn new fangled synthesiser things.*
Lyrically, I've always regarded 'Son Of My Father' as a pop art re-write of Larkin's 'This Be The Verse' - can anybody else hear:
"They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you."
in
"Son of my father, moulded I was folded I was preform-packed.
Son of my father, commanded I was branded in a plastic vac"
Maybe, maybe not, but regardless of any 'child is father to the man' hypothesising, 'Son Of My Father' is blessed with a shouty, arms aloft chorus that is once heard, never forgotten. Chicory Tip may well be operating outside the Glam Rock framework, but it's a Glam headslam in all but name - Gary without the Glitter if you will. Had this been an original recording then I'd be hailing Chicory Tip as unsung founding fathers of electronica and its offshoots, but it's not. Their main contribution is to add a smart commercial edge, a go-faster stripe on someone else's car that proved so effective it buried the band under it the weight of its success. I mean - can you name another Chicory Tip song? I rest my case.
*Interestingly, the Moroder version sounds like a song pulling itself in two. One way was heading down the cheesy Europop route that Aqua, Baccara, Ace Of Base, etc would travel while the other heads toward pioneering an electronic dance sound that would explode in the eighties. There are plenty who would damn Moroder to hell for both of these developments.
as a peer of yours (like myself, i am guessing you were born in the early 60's going by what i've read thus far), i can name another chicory tip song: "good grief christina"! i was just about old enough to be aware of "son of my father" as a big hit, but by the time this one was released i'm pretty sure to my recollection that i was busy recording it onto my parents' reel-to-reel tape recorder via the radio 2 sunday evening chart countdown broadcast. i actually preferred it to "son" at the time as it was much more upbeat, and was rather disappointed when it ended up barely scraping into the top 20!
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