Tim Smith is an English singer-songwriter, composer, poet, multi-instrumentalist, record producer and music video director. He is best known as the leader of the unique and highly influential band Cardiacs (for which he is the principal songwriter and lyricist as well as singing lead vocals and playing guitar and keyboards). His other projects (as musician and songwriter) are The Sea Nymphs, OceanLandWorld, Spratleys Japs and Panixphere.

PropertyValue
dbpedia-owl:Artist/genre
dbpedia-owl:MusicalArtist/associatedBand
dbpedia-owl:MusicalArtist/associatedMusicalArtist
dbpedia-owl:MusicalArtist/background
  • solo_singer
dbpedia-owl:Person/activeYearsEndDate
  • 1975-01-01 00:00:00 (xsd:date)
dbpedia-owl:Person/activeYearsStartDate
  • 1975-01-01 00:00:00 (xsd:date)
dbpedia-owl:Person/birthDate
  • 1961-07-03 (xsd:date)
dbpedia-owl:activeYearsEndDate
  • 1975-01-01 00:00:00 (xsd:date)
dbpedia-owl:activeYearsStartDate
  • 1975-01-01 00:00:00 (xsd:date)
dbpedia-owl:associatedBand
dbpedia-owl:associatedMusicalArtist
dbpedia-owl:background
  • solo_singer
dbpedia-owl:birthDate
  • 1961-07-03 (xsd:date)
dbpedia-owl:genre
dbpedia-owl:thumbnail
dbpprop:abstract
  • Tim Smith is an English singer-songwriter, composer, poet, multi-instrumentalist, record producer and music video director. He is best known as the leader of the unique and highly influential band Cardiacs (for which he is the principal songwriter and lyricist as well as singing lead vocals and playing guitar and keyboards). His other projects (as musician and songwriter) are The Sea Nymphs, OceanLandWorld, Spratleys Japs and Panixphere. Smith is renowned for his unique singing and songwriting styles, as well as his poetically cryptic, philosophical and abstract lyrics, and for his profound influence on over three decades of musicians. He has been described by the music press as "the Mozart or Beethoven of rock and pop music" for his complex and innovative compositional skills.
dbpprop:associatedActs
dbpprop:background
  • solo_singer
dbpprop:born
dbpprop:genre
dbpprop:img
  • Tim-filthy-B&W-1-.jpg
dbpprop:imgCapt
  • An Early Portrait of Tim Smith
dbpprop:instrument
  • Vocals Guitar Organ Piano Synthesizer Mellotron Flute Recorder Percussion
dbpprop:label
  • Alphabet Business Concern All My Eye And Betty Martin Music
dbpprop:name
  • Tim Smith
dbpprop:notableInstruments
  • Voice, Guitar, Bass, Keyboards
dbpprop:npov
  • January 2009
dbpprop:occupation
  • Singer-Songwriter
    Composer Poet Music Producer Vocalist Lyricist Lead Guitarist Music Video Director Record Label Owner Recording Studio Owner Keyboardist Organist Bassist
dbpprop:quotationProperty
  • "A lot of people find our act disturbing because it brings out something in you that a lot of people won't admit to. It's the weirdness in everyone whether you like it or not. Some people think it's dead funny, wonderful, beautiful, genius, and others hate it. It's strange when people hate us - they really do hate us, it brings out something odd in people."
  • "Anything that reminds me of the sea, however abstract (usually very abstract) is fine by me and when I say ‘the sea’ I’m not talking about the sea as we usually know and love, I’m talking of the feeling of the murky depths, all green…all spirits."
  • "Blind be spirit, lost again, dust in eyed Heavy heads get buried deeper Sand in, scratching, naked eyes Lost again in a lie all dreadful - Oh Yeah! When truth looks like a lie in a different way and Kept alive and bound by bad chains In a beautiful cage, Inside is fear and stable minds Always forever questioning stubborn you Befriending your tears and in a different way The need to take some beauty sleep Deep in the ocean, is obsolete - [Blind be spirit-core with its lies]."
  • "Everything we play is written, right down to the last drumbeat. It's chaos, but it's ordered chaos - everything is really. Look out of the window."
  • "I think there's more soul to what I do than any so-called soul music"
  • "Images of them coming up to me And I hear them say But what they say don’t matter anyway. Easy come, easy go I know it well That is so, pressure's building Bound to give, although I might be off. You came up here in the rain And back again for a while Smile at me and one day we'll see. What is seeing is believing Though what I am seeing I don't believe But you know I might be wrong."
  • "It's just facts of life, I mean everybody's reactions to the songs are coloured by personal experience, I don't focus on anything as being unhappy, the words just state what is happening - you choose to see it as unhappy."
  • "Junior all pale again So panic red and barmy eyed and Broken as a bird in air with strangers Beating a scene and pleased beneath me Kicking at air better to eat with Ah! Lightly carving away And be wed all she wares. And if the 'skeeters don't get him Then the 'gators all will And junior is a jitterbug Chesty and blue, a still born mouthful Slid away and hid himself in the earths face."
  • "Lights in darker places Darker than lights in places Than lights in places down far Cold as like's recalling winter Recalling winter Recalling, wind says too far. Tasting her with those sensitive suckers Sea birds destroyed her Sea birds destroyed her nest I don't feel like one, I don't live like one They put me on a wheel and I said yes."
  • "No there's just a lot of tunes crammed in there, coming at you at once. There's lots of pictures and ideas in there with the act and the music. A lot of people need something to hold onto, but you should really let it all flow over you."
  • "No, not at all, they're just words that you must interpret. Everybody is a complete and utter individual. How can you interpret anything, except by your own experiences?"
  • "Oh my saviour create me to die alone I'm what you flush I'm your children Nursing a desire with poison Mothering stray waifs with germs All trying to kill them. Then sleep better and easy Awaken all the guilties. Now come down here for all of us And throw this off axis Without trying too hard Starry shake and awaken all the guilties Protect the innocent lambs Make we sleep better and easy All his loss all not was And where is his eyes?"
  • "One hand in mouth she dug into the sandy soil All gently down she goes And you were all fine dry worlds All the wells are useless And the thirsty omens don't smile on your kind Distress is a pest Gratified with the smallest things it make and find."
  • "Passive action leaves no traces Dead soldiers with silly faces Mr 'S' holds all the aces Playing games and winning races My soldier I kill you Though I loved you more than all the world The thought of dying makes me ill I'm scared because I want to kill So Blame him to save blaming me And hurting someone pointlessly is As easy as ABC So carve me out an effigy."
  • "See it to arranging the day Prepared in its own special way With added loving care Though its not been there since yesterday. Looking so hard for a cause And it don't care what it is And never really ever seeing eye to eye Though it doesn't really mind Perhaps that's why It never really saw Never really saw Saw."
  • "Seeming to believe when seeing wakes me Near morning and gives me right of way, All all all my friends are leaving Always are kept to the day or thrown away. I'm saving up for the lighter hours And the safety of war, Named you 'fly' as a joke and it stuck fast Like mad sticks fast And hung up on the wall, its all and everything I need to do its all and everything I do is Showing through my ageing lines and living on."
  • "Telling familiar stories Invited us to our home for some soup Bothered by steam We clipped our wing, so we can't fly. Better than better than what? Some dying off A rocket ship Looks as if a day is gone Looks as if a day is missing Everyone's trying to leave Lorries driving to the sea Who is that who slammed the door? Looks as if a day has gone away."
  • "The songs that I come up with are thought up first in my head. I used to score it all out on reams and reams of paper like a twat, but nowadays I limit myself to one bit of paper just as reminders ."
  • "There's nothing wrong with any kind of band in the world. Whatever they play. Musical prejudice is the worst thing in the world."
  • "Time is of the essence, shall I put up some resistance? / Cursed with the awareness of my own existence / It's only a matter of... / Time tends to pass by quicker than the nail / That boxes me together forever it forms the seal / Is the knowledge of my own existence real?"
  • "Waters voice and wind as one Quake their call to Moon and Sun Sovereign stars and throws of light Pale before her queenly mighty ankles. Life in her ankles lives in my hands Says even less than what even can Stands in bold in my eyes Finally accepting deterioration Strange men and women Allowing themselves to be shot at the same time."
  • "We are not a progressive rock band, progressive rock bands usually tend to have a particular style to them, however individual the bands sound is, there is usually a flavour there which is the prog flavour. We are a pop group...We are as punky as nothing. God forbid if anyone thought that we were a crazy ‘fusion’ of punk and prog. If a word is needed then I would use “psychedelic” if anything."
  • "We wouldn’t deliberately not do anything. The chords and tunes we use sound pretty to us, certain key changes make your tummy go funny, the ones we use make our tummies go funny."
  • "We’ve no idea who is running it, last time we dropped in to where we thought the place was, all we found were a load of tiny ants. (and a muddy puddle)."
  • "Yeah, it's just how the soldier sees it or how I'd see it in his shoes - the complete and utter weirdness of it all. I mean it was just so mental, the first world war wasn't it. It's like he sees it from the childish point of view and it's summed up in a childish view to him. I like seeing clips from old news reel of that time. I think what fascinates me is the total patriotism of it all. The jolly men leaving for war and wanting to join up and then they came back and told how terrible it was. It shook a lot of sense into people about the horrors of war. That war was a watershed, it made people start thinking that war was a bad thing."
  • "Yes, I mean we're part of it all, we're all in it, but it's strange that you have a house and it's all you ever wanted, you've worked all your life for it and you're keeping it in order for the eyes of others who probably couldn't give a toss anyway - or people who want to compete, to care, which is even weirder."
  • "You look at a road on an aerial photograph and you think, bloody hell, it's suburbia, all those little houses, all in a row, but all those houses have people in them – say there's four people in a house, that is four whole worlds."
  • AS COLD AS CAN BE IN AN ENGLISH SEA, from Toy World.
  • Baby Heart Dirt, from On Land and in the Sea.
  • Harmonie Magazine 2000.
  • Hope Day, from The Seaside.
  • Ideal, from Day Is Gone (single).
  • Jitterbug, from Guns.
  • Manhoo, from Sing to God Pt. 1.
  • Odd Even, from Sing to God Pt. 2.
  • Signs, from Guns.
  • Tarred And Feathered, from Songs for Ships and Irons.
  • Tim Smith
  • discussing his lyrics, interviewed for Time out of Mind 1984.
  • discussing his music and concerts, interviewed for Time out of Mind 1984.
  • discussing his music, interviewed for Time out of Mind 1984.
  • discussing suburbia, interviewed for Time out of Mind 1984.
  • discussing war, interviewed for Time out of Mind 1984.
  • interviewed by Mat Smith in ''Melody Maker''.
  • interviewed by Melody Maker 1992.
  • interviewed in Harmonie Magazine 2000.
  • interviewed in Organ No.1 (a fanzine) 1986.
  • talking about the Alphabet Business Concern, interviewed in Margen Magazine April 2001.
  • dbpedia:A_Little_Man_and_a_House_and_the_Whole_World_Window
  • dbpedia:Heaven_Born_and_Ever_Bright
dbpprop:reference
dbpprop:refimprove
  • January 2009
dbpprop:url
dbpprop:wikiPageUsesTemplate
dbpprop:wordnet_type
dbpprop:yearsActive
  • 1975 - Present
rdf:type
rdfs:comment
  • Tim Smith is an English singer-songwriter, composer, poet, multi-instrumentalist, record producer and music video director. He is best known as the leader of the unique and highly influential band Cardiacs (for which he is the principal songwriter and lyricist as well as singing lead vocals and playing guitar and keyboards). His other projects (as musician and songwriter) are The Sea Nymphs, OceanLandWorld, Spratleys Japs and Panixphere.
rdfs:label
  • Tim Smith (musician)
owl:sameAs
skos:subject
foaf:depiction
foaf:homepage
foaf:name
  • Tim Smith
foaf:page
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