Fair warning, there could be several posts in this series, as being a fan of all things Gary Numan since 1979, I have a LOT of these little things. So, here are just a few to get started with, but a nice little selection of vintage cold wave, icy synthesizer cool lapel adornment they are too, I’m sure you’ll agree…
Continue reading “Button Badge Goodness: Gary Numan (Part 1)”
A little helping of button badge goodness in the shape of ‘Red Mecca’ era Cabaret Voltaire, a particularly fine vintage. Well, at least two of them are of that era – the pale blue one dates from a bit later, 1982 or 1983, can’t quite recall exactly when it was I bought it, but it would have been one of those years.
Nothing especially exotic when it comes to the musical content of this 45, fine as it is nevertheless – very much Ultravox mark II at the high water mark of their splendidly noir pomp. The A and B sides match the UK release, the former being an edited version of the LP cut, the latter one of Ultravox’s mark II’s best ever B sides, IMHO, with Warren Cann on lead vocals. No, the chief attraction of this 45 is the cover, which broke with the tradition of most territories equivalent releases by ditching the (admittedly very good) Peter Saville (or Estudio Saville, as his nom de plume would have it on this outing) design – instead, the cover features one of photographer Brian Griffin‘s sumptuous shots from the ‘Rage In Era’ period, Ultravox in a timeless retro style in front of a vanishing point horizon. It did at least keep a similar in vein ‘brush script’ style typeface for the titles, the A side of which is also translated as ‘La Voz’ for this release. There does also seem to be another Spanish 7″ edition that features the regular picture sleeve design, it may be a promo only affair though? This is the one for me though.
A stray single that put a full stop on the initial period of Colin Newman’s solo releases, ‘We Means We Starts’ followed shortly after his third album, ‘Not To’ in early 1982, but was not included on the album. Though sonically it shared a lot of the same DNA as the long player, it seems to have been put together by a different grouping. ‘Not To’ had included a good number of songs that Wire had first performed live but never recorded or released, so it inevitably had a great deal of comparisons to Wire from the off. In particular, the more overtly ‘pop’ side was always bandied about as if this were the sole preserve of Colin Newman – despite his previous solo album, ‘Provisionally Entitled The Singing Fish’ straying into the kind of outer fringes sonic areas that erstwhile colleagues Gilbert and Lewis had been mapping as their own. Having said that, there’s no doubt that this ‘poppier’ side was in the sights with this album’s sound.
Continue reading “Colin Newman ‘We Means We Starts’ UK 7 inch single (4AD, AD209, 1982)”
Never been entirely sure where this fits into the grand Wire scheme of things, whether it is official, semi-official, unofficial – does it count as one of those ‘objects’ that numbered up to 47 at one point? I’m unsure, since it clearly has input from the band somehow or other, whether that be via the separate interviews or the exclusive live recordings – this is no mere cut and paste history in cuttings type affair. But neither is it an ‘Everybody Loves a History’ nor a ‘Read and Burn’. It shares a series with similar tomes on many other alternative favourites, more likely appearing due to quirks in Italian copyright law than official sanction, I’d wager.
