Time for another pause and update in this occasional series and rewind and absorb new information either from valuable reader comments or subsequent info coming to light elsewhere.
Suzanne Vega is an artist who I happened upon courtesy of the UK BBC television channel’s long running music series ‘Whistle Test’ in October 1985. It wasn’t the kind of style I’d have thought I would normally like, but there was something intriguing and ‘Marlene On The Wall’ proved to be catchy and a minor hit. Intriguing enough that I bought the debut album in early 1986 and became a firm fan from then on. There was a certain cool elegance and mysteriousness to the music on the whole and not the straight ahead folk I was expecting (other than perhaps ‘The Queen and the Soldier’, which I’ve never cared for).
A return to a VersionCrazy favourite, the ever wonderful Bill Nelson. It’s good to see news recently about a deluxe box set edition of Bill’s 1981 album ‘Quit Dreaming And Get On The Beam’ due for release in late November. The path for the album to gain a release was far from straightforward – Bill Nelson had been signed to EMI imprint Harvest, but with the EMI/Thorn merger that took place, a cull of acts deemed surplus to requirements/the balance sheet saw an exit from EMI and plans for the album shelved. I look forward to what new insights the accompanying text in the super deluxe box set may bring to this backstory, along with the chance to hear a whole new mix of the album, courtesy of Stephen W Tayler.
This obscure little gem was a single peeled from Colin Newman’s 1986 solo album, ‘Commercial Suicide’ (which I feel likely will be covered here at a later date) and acted as wonderful summary of the pastoral synthesized pop that I’d likely describe the album as. Well, to be fair, Colin Newman himself used the word pastoral to describe the music on the album, in the accompanying ‘Interview’ 12″ that also appeared in the promotional orbit of this album. But there can be no denying that the sweetly toned synths, absence of familiar drums and percussion does lend this single – and most if not all of the parent album – a particular sound that is quite unlike anything else that Newman had done up to that time (though would revisit to some degree on the following ‘It Seems’ album, arguably).
Once again, time to focus on the ever wonderful and enduring work of Danielle Dax. A relatively straightforward playing-catch-up release, ‘Up Amongst The Golden Spires’ is a Japan-only compilation album that pooled together all of the tracks originally released on the ‘Pop-Eyes’ album (1983) and the ‘Jesus Egg That Wept’ mini-album (1984), released on vinyl format late 1986 and on CD format in February 1987 on the Japanese VAP label. 1987 would be a pivotal year for Dax, with the release of the ‘Inky Bloaters’ album and ever increased media profile. The VAP label would go on to release the exclusive album ‘The Chemical Wedding’, covered in detail in an earlier post, in November 1987 which as well as mingling some previously released material also included versions unreleased elsewhere to this day, as well as the initial release of material that would surface in other territories until later.