Oblique Saturdays

A series for Saturdays in 2026 inspired by Brian Eno and Peter Schmidt's set of cards, Oblique Strategies (Over One Hundred Worthwhile Dilemmas). Eno and Schmidt created them to be used to unblock creative impasses and approach problems from unexpected angles. Each week I'll turn over an Oblique Strategy card and post a song or songs inspired by the suggestion. 

Last week's Oblique Strategy suggestion was Revaluation (A Warm Feeling)

My responses was Saint Etienne's revaluation of late 90s/ early 00s pop into their 2021 album I've Been Trying To Tell You (with Jane Weaver on board on remix duties) and Taking Heads way back in 1978 with New Feeling. 

The Bagging Area community came up with these: Walter with The Beastie Boys and Paul's Boutique; Ernie with Van Morrison's Warm Feeling; Rol and The Smith's Paint A Vulgar Picture; Al G and The Avalanches; Chris with Killing Joke; and Ardliz with a twenty minute Julian Cope extravaganza, Planetary Sit In, that you should know if you don't already...

This weeks' card says this- Make a blank valuable by putting it in an exquisite frame

This is the first time I've turned an Oblique Strategy card over and felt that maybe Mr Eno and Herr Schmidt are taking the piss a little. 

Maybe it's time for this...

Eno Collaboration (Remix)

Half Man Half Biscuit back in 1997 on their voyage to the bottom of their road.

'Brian's not at home, he's at the North Pole but if you'd like to leave a weird noise'

Going back to the card and the suggestion that I make a blank valuable by putting it in an exquisite frame made me think about sleeves and artwork, pop music presented as high art- the Pet Shop Boys have been doing that since the mid- 80s but I wouldn't call their music blank, defitnely not the imperial phase they went through from '87 to '92. 

Che Guevara and Debussy to a disco beat...

Left To My Own Devices 

I wondered about bad music in good sleeves and, I suppose, the idea that Eno and Schmidt are hinting at; re- framing nothingness as a masterpiece. 

Talking Heads (them again) final album Naked came in a sleeve that played with this idea, a painting of a chimpanzee holding a flower with a heavy gilt frame around it, as if taken off the wall of a gallery. I don't think making Naked was a particularly happy experience for the band, they all knew they were splitting up. Guest stars abound- Mory Kante, Wally Badarou, Kirsty McColl and Johnny Marr among a cast of dozens. On (Nothing But) Flowers Marr plays genuinely brilliant, inventive African hi- life guitar, freed from straitjacket of The Smiths to do whatever he wanted. Meanwhile David Byrne sings about nature reclaiming the cities, a Pizza Hut all covered in daisies...

(Nothing But) Flowers

In 1971 Bob Dylan presented his masterpiece, a song that first appeared on an album by The Band, Cahoots, and then on the second volume of his Greatest Hits (a very odd selection of songs sequenced strangely too in a will this do? sleeve). 

When I Paint My Masterpiece

It's a typically laid back early 70s Dylan song, something quite ordinary in a way- ordinary for him I mean, it's not what I'd describe as blank but equally it's not the match of the songs from his 1964- 1966 purple patch and it's not a Blood On The Tracks song either. Having said that it's vivid and fully realised and streets ahead of some of the stuff he put out on Self Portrait. 

It was a song that Dylan discarded and then went back to, reappearing in his Never Ending tour setlists. When asked about it in an interview in 2020 Dylan said this-

'It's grown on me... I think this song has something to do with the classical world, something that's out of reach. Someplace you'd like to be beyond your experience. Something that is so supreme and first-rate that you could never come back down from the mountain. That you've achieved the unthinkable. That's what the song tries to say, and you'd have to put it in that context. In saying that, though, even if you do paint your masterpiece, what will you do then? Well, obviously you have to paint another masterpiece'. 

Feel free to put your own responses to Make a blank valuable by putting it in an exquisite frame in the comment box.