The Raw & the Cooked is the second and final studio album by British rock band Fine Young Cannibals, released in 1989. The title of the album was lifted from the book of the same name ( in French) by French anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss. Four songs from the album first appeared in film soundtracks in the mid-1980s, three of which were soul tracks from the Tin Men film. The band had already recorded over half of the album by the time David Z came to produce the remainder. His work with the band, which resulted in dance-rock material, included studio experimentation.
The album is considered to be an eclectic, varied album, taking influences from numerous genres including Motown soul, rock, funk, British beat and pop. Released in 1989 by London Records and I.R.S. Records, The Raw & the Cooked was a major commercial success, selling over three million copies. Numerous singles were released from the album, including the two US number-one singles "She Drives Me Crazy" and "Good Thing". The album was critically acclaimed. Jo-Ann Greene of AllMusic called the album a masterpiece and one of the 1980s' most exciting albums. The Raw & the Remix, a remix album composed primarily of songs from The Raw & the Cooked, was released in 1990.
Background and recording
Multiple songs from The Raw & the Cooked debuted long before their release on the album; the band's cover of Buzzcocks' "Ever Fallen in Love (With Someone You Shouldn't've)" originally appeared on the soundtrack for the 1986 Jonathan Demme film Something Wild. Three other songs from the album—"Good Thing", "Tell Me What" and "As Hard as It Is"—first appeared in the 1987 film Tin Men, where the Fine Young Cannibals portrayed a band in a nightclub.IMDB: Tin Men (1987) Soundtrack These three songs have a retro-soul style consistent with the film's 1963 Baltimore setting. At this point, the band were beginning to move away from their "Sixties soul sound", but Tin Men director Barry Levinson persuaded the band to retain the sound on the songs. With these songs, the band had already written and recorded enough songs for one half of the album between their contributions to the two films.
While the band were slowly recording the album, they had spent the period so far focusing on side-projects as a result of an unofficial semi-hiatus following their 1985 debut album Fine Young Cannibals. Vocalist Roland Gift took to his acting career, filmed highlighted dramatic roles in such films as Sammy and Rosie Get Laid (1987) and Scandal (filmed in 1988, released 1989). The rest of the band, David Steele and Andy Cox, however, formed the side-project duo Two Men, a Drum Machine and a Trumpet, an acid house-inspired project which was described as "high-tech" and "danceable." In December 1987, they released the single "Tired of Getting Pushed Around" on Fine Young Cannibals' label I.R.S. Records, and it reached number 18 in the United Kingdom. Nonetheless, Fine Young Cannibals reconvened soon afterwards to focus their attention on writing and recording the remainder of The Raw & the Cooked.
Although the band had self-produced the album so far, the band's label MCA Records asked the band to find another producer for the second phase of recording. The band initially considered Latin Rascals and Gil Evans but eventually asked MCA to approach Prince to produce tracks to complete the album. As Prince was unavailable, the label countered with producer David Z, who had worked with Prince and is the older brother of Bobby Z. of The Revolution. The band and David Z recorded three tracks together at Paisley Park Studios, Prince's studio in Minnesota, United States, to complete the album, including the hits "She Drives Me Crazy" and "I'm Not Satisfied".Mix Online: Fine Young Cannibals' "She Drives Me Crazy" David Z recalled that "they wanted to work with Prince for their next record. They were told that Prince doesn't work with anybody that way, as a producer-for-hire. But they were also told there was someone who works with Prince who does. That was me, and they were willing to try it out."
MCA suggested that the band record the tracks they wished to create with David Z at Paisley Park Studios so that they "would have no choice but to work and get the record done", after the label told David Z in a meeting that the band, "then living in London, had been taking an unusually long time between their first and second records." Though the band were polarized by their stay in Minneapolis, with the locals' "big and blonde" looks contrasting with their own "shaved heads" and "punk attitudes," the band's pre-production process, which "consisted of sending songs back and forth for consideration", was very efficient. David Z had prompted the band to rewrite the original version of "She Drives Me Crazy", which was then called "She's My Baby", into the final version.
Production
Unlike the band's self-titled debut album, Fine Young Cannibals' recording approach on The Raw & the Cooked was more experimental. They worked with breakbeat drum loops on occasion, including sampling James Brown's "Funky Drummer" on "I'm Not the Man I Used to Be". Furthermore, the unique snare drum "pop" sound on "She Drives Me Crazy" was created by David Z recording the snare drum portion separately. A speaker was then placed on top of the snare drum, and a microphone below. The original recording of the snare drum part was played back through the speaker and re-recorded. Reflecting on creating the snare sound with Mix in 2001, David Z said: "I took the head off a snare drum and started whacking it with a wooden ruler, recording it through a Shure 57 microphone. As I did that, I started twisting the hell out of the [API 550] EQ around 1 kHz on it, to the point where it was starting to sound more like a crash. I blended that with a snare I found in the Linn itself, which was a 12-bit machine, so it sounded pretty edgy to start with." Dan Daley of the website added:
Also given complex treatment on the track were the "staccato single-note lines" of the guitars, which "were actually layered six deep, with a few chords thrown in here and there. Some of the lines and chords were actually recorded only once, then manually triggered from a sampler during playback and mixing. One of the lines was also played back through an underwater pool-type speaker Z had laying around, then re-recorded to tape, giving it a muted, mysterious quality that no onboard or outboard EQ could mimic;" David Z stated that "what really made the guitars stand out, though, was that as Andy [Cox] was playing to chord parts, I was slowly twisting the EQ from one extreme to the other, giving it this wah effect, so every part on the record has a very individual and unique sound. But there aren't many parts at all, so the space between them becomes part of the sound." David Z and the band denied the label's bother that the vocals were mixed too low, with David Z recalling "we just said go and listen to a Rolling Stones record, and let us know how far the vocals are up front on that."
Lyrics and vocals
A departure from the political lyrics of Fine Young Cannibals' first album, the songs on The Raw & the Cooked concern romantic and longing themes such as love, regret and loss. These have been described as "traditional soul themes" by Los Angeles Times critic Steve Hochman, in keeping in with the album's soul tributes, and also as pop music by Robert Christgau of The Village Voice, who stated that "the content of these songs seem to concern romantic love. That makes them pop. I can also tell you that I don't much care if I know what they're about or not. That makes them good pop." In Colin Larkin's The Encyclopedia of Popular Music, the album is described as "featuring cultivated soul ballads to complement further material of a politically direct nature." Spin journalist Peter Johnson said that it contains "almost vacant lyrics" which "still sound compelling." With the exception of the cover of Buzzcocks' "Ever Fallen in Love", Roland Gift and David Steele wrote all the songs on the album, with Andy Cox also credited as co-writing "It's OK (It's Alright)".Liner notes. Gift's "catchy" and soulful falsetto voice has been compared to Mick Jagger's voice on the Rolling Stones albums Black and Blue (1976) and Tattoo You (1981), as well as the voices of soul singers such as Sam Cooke, Al Green and Otis Redding. Gift's voice was noted for being particularly emotive on "I'm Not Satisfied".
"She Drives Me Crazy" was originally written as "She's My Baby" until David Z encouraged the band to rewrite the song; David Z stated that "'She's My Baby' is kind of a nebulous sentiment—it's something you say, but it doesn't hit home. 'She Drives Me Crazy'—now there's something that every guy in the world has said at least once in his life with conviction." Johnson said that, unusually for a love song, it is "neither specific nor evocative, and finds Gift chiming 'cuckoo, cuckoo' in counterpoint with himself." "Good Thing" describes a departing lover, whilst "I'm Not the Man I Used to Be" is a torch song that has been described as "torrid." "I'm Not Satisfied" depicts a man who criticizes the weekends for being too short, his girlfriend for being too possessive, and the city for being too depressing. Gift sings in a lower register on "As Hard as It Is" than on other songs.
Music The Raw & the Cooked combines a variety of styles and genres in keeping in with the band's vision of "tying past and present musical styles into artful new pop packages." Cox himself lightheartedly referred to the album as "thirty years' worth of pop music in thirty minutes." Jo-Ann Greene of AllMusic stated the album presents very diverse rhythms, most of which are constructed synthetically, and "a shopping list of genres" where "mod, funk, Motown, British beat, R&B, punk, rock, and even disco are embedded within the songs". In Metro Weekly, Chris Gerard noted of its diverse directions: "the funky pop that David Z helped contribute is a far cry from the old-school R&B of the Tin Men tracks." Whilst known for its eclectic array of styles, the album is also generally seen as a tribute to various different styles of American soul music in particular. Robert Christgau deemed it a pop album in that it features "mostly admittedly quite hooky" beats and "vocal ID", in addition to multiple hooks and melodies. Trouser Press said that the album is a "crafty" combination of Motown soul and dance-rock, while Martin C. Strong described it as "potpourri of pop styles and genres, with either Northern soul or Motown at the helm."
The album is split into two-halves which match together disparate styles; the "Raw" side, which features "references to Sam Cooke, the Supremes and doo-wop", and the more polished "Cooked" side, which references "Prince and up-to-the-second dance beats", according to Rob Tannenbaum of Rolling Stone. The "Raw" half is said to be more reminiscent of the band's debut album than the "Cooked" side. Despite the album being categorized as new wave in American record shops, the album's eclectic scope is said to reflect "the clashes of tastes" within the band, who all had varied taste in music. Concerning dance music and their incorporation of the genre, Cox said that "the dance-music thing is like the punk of the Eighties, rock & roll in the Fifties. It seems to be the thing that is the most vibrant part of modern music."
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