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Tim Smith, who has died aged 59, made a bizarre kind of rock music that was so wrong it was right – and his boundless enthusiasm was so infectious it created an army of followers
If Tim Smith influenced you, he really influenced you. His legacy following his death aged 59 might be small in the wider realm of pop, but for many of us it feels disproportionately massive. If you ventured far enough into his chaotic world of sound – somewhere between pop, psych, punk and prog – it would inevitably become an all-encompassing love.
The music he created, primarily with his band Cardiacs, pushed the standard structures of rock music into bizarre patterns: resolutely British, with any hint of Americana cast aside in favour of hymns, marches and misshapen folk melodies. The idiosyncratic sequences of chords he assembled were, in any traditional sense, completely wrong, but through sheer buoyancy of spirit they became unwaveringly right. At gigs, his music inspired devotion of the like I’ve never seen before or since. Countless friendships blossomed as a direct result of his work; whole families of groups were formed, all radiating from Tim. Continue reading...