Re: I need suggestions for new music!

[Al Crawford <awrc@dcs.ed.ac.uk>]

In article <7441@cernvax.cern.ch> lishka@cernvax.cern.ch (christopher lishka) writes:
>
> Well, one of my favorites is Peter Murphy.  An ex-Bauhaus member, he
> uses a lot of synthesizers.  His music ranges between up-beat stuff
> with a beat to dark tunes, but not as depressing as some of the
> Bauhaus stuff I've heard.  Great lyrics, and good song construction.
> He has three albums out: _If The World Should Fail To Fall Apart_,
> _Love Hysteria_, and _Deep_.  He also has a song on the _Pump Up The
> Volume_ soundtrack.

Recommendation seconded, great stuff. I'd personally suggest picking up
_Love Hysteria_ first - it's the best of the three (plus the CD has a
couple of bonus tracks!) and has a good selection of strong songs covering
the whole range described above although the other two are pretty good as
well. This leads me to a question which I'd been meaning to ask in r.m.misc
but I'll try gaffa first - some of the songs on _Love Hysteria_ are
co-written (and co-performed) by one Howard Hughes. This is also true of
the Associates album _Perhaps_ where Billy Mackenzie and Hughes share a lot
of the writing credits. The question is...just who is Howard Hughes?
(answers of "a deceased reclusive American multi-millionaire" are not
acceptable :-) Has he been in any other groups as a full-time member or is
he just a session musician?

Now for a recommendation of my own - I'd been planning to recommend this to
you folks anyway but when someone came along and *asked* for
recommendations for new music, well I could hardly keep quiet could I? It's
a re-issue of an album that first appeared in 1981 and it's out on the UK
Great Expectations label. It's by The Passions and the title is _Thirty
Thousand Feet Over China_. S'wonderful. Female vocals (hence my thoughts
that gaffa might prove a more receptive audience :-), guitars, more
guitars, drums - there may be some keyboards in there somewhere but I
suspect it's just heavily frobbed guitars. In many ways it's typical early
eighties indie guitar pop but, even though it's ten years old, it's still
very fresh and classy. Nice vocals (if a little flat on one or two of the
higher notes) and the whole album (even the up-tempo tracks) exudes a
certain wistfulness and melancholy that I just have to love. Just talking
about it makes me wish I'd brought it in to listen to on my Discman today.
As far as I know it's the only album they ever released and it's great to
see it out on CD.

--
			Al Crawford - awrc@dcs.ed.ac.uk
	 "Such a digital lifetime, it's been by numbers all the while"