Gary Numan Digest Sun, 7 Feb 93 Volume 1 : Issue 19 Today's Topics: ADMINISTRIVIA Art Of Mix Current trends in rock music (was: WHY DO WE BOTHER?) Fading Output (was: WHY DO WE BOTHER?) Hello and comments from Rupert Goodwins live albums - comments NAGNFC Fanzine for Jan 1993 + comments on V1 #18 Various stuff from last week WHY DO WE BOTHER? - response from Al Crawford WHY DO WE BOTHER? - response from Dave Datta ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Sat, 6 Feb 93 21:41:16 PST From: dlangs%sunstroke@sdsu.edu (Derek Langsford) Subject: ADMINISTRIVIA To: numanews@cs.uwp.edu Hello again, Another long Digest this week with most traffic concerning the points raised by John Skrentny and myself last week. Please try and restrict your contributions to things involving Gary directly. There was a lot of info about music in general that I might not be so kind as to pass on unedited next time. Try and make your mind up soon about White Noise CDs. I'll be calling Beryl again soon to confirm she has them, then I'll be asking for cheques soon after. Berserker CDs are available too. I heard an uncorroborated rumour that WN will be in the stores soon. I think this was premature but will ask Beryl if general release is going to occur when I speak to her. After the pound took another dive against the dollar last week the prices may be slightly lower. I'll wait till the last minute to get a rate and then email you an 'invoice' if it is lower. Goodness knows what the international currency markets might do between now and then. This is the lowest the pound has been in several years!!!! Have a good week, Derek ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Derek H. Langsford Dept. of Biology dlangs@sunstroke.sdsu.edu San Diego State University ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 6 Feb 93 20:49:32 PST From: dlangs%sunstroke@sdsu.edu (Derek Langsford) Subject: Art Of Mix To: numanews@cs.uwp.edu From: davisonj@ecn.purdue.edu (John M Davison) Subject: Art of Mix Date: Sun, 31 Jan 93 13:51:13 EST Those who are interested in getting themselves a copy of that _Art_of_Mix_ series CD that has Gary Numan's "Are 'Friends' Electric? ('Shadows on the Wall' Mix by Steve Smith)" may want to get in touch with Chicago's Gramaphone Records, which is the only record store in which I have seen it. Ask them about the _Art_of_Mix_ CD that has Gary Numan and the Smart-E's on it. The Gary Numan song is the first track on the CD. Their address is Gramaphone Mail Order 2663 N. Clark Chicago, IL 60614 (312) 477-5354 Note that they are in the U.S., and that the telephone number is what one would dial in the U.S. Mail Orders are taken Monday through Friday 12:00 pm through 5:00 pm CST. Please note that I don't speak for Gramaphone; I merely copied some information off of their flyer. -- John Davison davisonj@ecn.purdue.edu [I have seen it at Lou's in Encinitas, north of San Diego, so it is around, you just have to look hard for it - Derek] ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 6 Feb 93 21:17:02 PST From: dlangs%sunstroke@sdsu.edu (Derek Langsford) Subject: Current trends in rock music (was: WHY DO WE BOTHER?) To: numanews@cs.uwp.edu [ I should have edited out most of the following as it doesn't quite fulfill the required Numan content, however, being a kindly fellow and noting the parallels with Gary's situation, I let it pass. Everyone, please try and keep your content within well defined bounds as set out in the 'charter'. Thanks, Derek ] >From mathew@mantis.co.uk Mon Feb 1 05:53:39 1993 Subject: Current trends in rock music From: mathew Date: Mon, 01 Feb 93 12:12:09 GMT I hope people won't mind if I pontificate about rock music in general for a bit before moving on to Gary Numan in particular... jds@isr.harvard.edu (John David Skrentny) writes: > dlangs@sunstroke.sdsu.edu (Derek H. Langsford) writes: > > The continuous hope for a return to the sounds of old is a phenomenon in > > most fans of long lived artists : Queen, Pink Floyd, Genesis, Rush. > > THIS IS an extremely interesting phenomenon. The transformation of > interesting musicians into bland dance-pop outfits seems to be quite > prevalent (New Order and OMD are obvious examples). Indeed. In New Order's case, it's instructive to listen to "Substance 1987", as it's a compilation of 12" releases in chronological order. It's noticable that the last two or three tracks suddenly shift style, and "True Faith" (the final track) is a complete departure from the preceding material. It was at that point that I lost interest in New Order; their release of the atrocious England World Cup song shortly afterwards was the final nail in the coffin of their musical credibility. Whilst it didn't seem to ruin their career, it is worth noting that their record label, Factory, has now gone bust. I'm not surprised, as the only decent material they've released in years has been Vinni Reilly's Durutti Column work. True, groups like the Happy Mondays and New Order had a few hits, but I suspect that hits aren't the be-all and end-all of running a record company. Regular sales are. It's instructive that Factory's downfall was a result of inability to get hold of cash on a regular basis, rather than a result of huge debts or lack of hits. I used to buy every New Order single the moment it came out. Many of my friends did as well. Thus Factory could be fairly sure of a certain number of sales of every single and album. But like me, most of my friends lost interest in New Order shortly after "True Faith". OMD's change of direction is slightly more understandable. Believe it or not, they received hate mail from fans after the release of <>. They were quoted as saying: "People would rather hear about what Boy George had for breakfast than hear what OMD think about genetic engineering." They decided to move to a slightly more mainstream sound again, hence the rather confused style of "Junk Culture". However, OMD then had pressure put on them by Virgin Records. Virgin wanted hit singles, and it wanted them now. Hence "Crush", which had three or four obvious hit singles on it, sounding about as out of place as a key change on a Status Quo album. Virgin also pressured Mike Oldfield similarly; for a while, he released half an album of stuff he wanted to do, and half an album of stuff Virgin wanted him to do. (See "Crises", "Discovery" etc.) Eventually, he released a couple of contractual obligation albums of pop singles, persuaded them to let him release "Amarok" in return, and left when his contract expired. The story was much the same with Cabaret Voltaire and Tangerine Dream. Pressure for commercial success from Virgin, attempts at singles, downward spiral of mediocrity, change of record label. This brings me to another common element amongst these artists who (for whatever reason) attempt commercial success: sooner or later, they end up recycling their old material. In OMD's case, the single "Dreaming" contained some recycled out-takes from the "Architecture and Morality" album. Listening to them, it's easy to hear why they were out-takes, but at the same time easy to hear how much better they would have been if they'd been finished by the 1980s OMD. In New Order's case, there was the appalling remix of "Blue Monday", which seemed to consist of the same old single with a load of squelchy noises and other silly effects plastered over the top. Oldfield, of course, released "Tubular Bells II", which (to be fair) has its moments, but has none of the quirky charm of the original. I particularly dislike the "Ooh, what's that? What's going on?" stuff from the female vocalists during the Piltdown Man section. It's obvious (to me at least) that Oldfield's strategy here is to get some major bucks from his first Warner release, so they'll let him record what he wants for a while; although he does have something of an obsession about the failure of his singles, as far as I can gather from magazine interviews with him. There are many other examples. In fact, the whole rock music industry in the UK is intensely depressing, with one exception (which I'll come to in a moment). The really sad thing is that once an artist starts the downward spiral, nothing -- not even a change of label -- seems to be able to stop it. I can't think of a single counter-example. Bland pap is released, because the industry thinks it's what the public wants. Maybe they do, but on the other hand total sales of chart albums and singles have been gradually decreasing. These days sales of singles are so small the difference between a top ten hit and miss can be as little as a couple of thousand sales. The industry feeds off the independent labels, snapping up whichever indie band is currently popular and turning it into bland pap like all the other major label bands. The popular music press seems oblivious to this; for instance, last year The Shamen were voted "Best New Act of 1992" by Smash Hits magazine. No doubt this was something to do with the fact that shortly after the one with the talent died in a tragic accident, the rest of the group released "Ebeneezer Goode", a generic "rave" single. It's a long way from the first single of theirs I heard, "Shittin' on Britain". The British music press, bang up to date as ever, have also just discovered Ministry. A couple of months ago, the press was full of accolades for the latest Ministry album -- and all the others, which had suddenly and mysteriously found their way into the "new releases" section in the big chain stores. I haven't bought a new release from a major label in over a year. There's only one British record label I've bought anything new from, and that's Daniel Miller's Mute Records. Mute seem to be unique, in that just about everything they release is worth listening to, and about three quarters of it is worth buying. Yet it wasn't too long ago that there were other labels releasing stuff I'd buy on sight -- ZTT and Factory, for example. Most Virgin stuff used to be worth a listen, but since they were bought by EMI they've dropped over half their acts -- yes, you've guessed it, the ones they deemed least likely to produce a hit single. As for Numan, I suspect that the pressure on him to produce a hit single is partly financial (given the Numa label's financial difficulties in the past), and partly a matter of pride. I suspect that he's determined to get a hit single in spite of the treatment he gets from the UK music press and radio stations, just to show them he can do it without them. I don't think that, realistically speaking, he has a chance in hell of succeeding. Given that this is the case, I honestly think that his best bet is to turn out something interesting once in a while. And not just a couple of tracks on an album of otherwise worthless material, which is what he seems to be doing at the moment. He should record an album of singles, then record an album of no-compromise avant garde electronic stuff, and see which sells better *in the long run*. As the manager of my local record shop explained, by stocking the latest hit album by Stock, Aitken and Waterman he could expect perhaps a couple of hundred sales in total. By stocking the back-catalogue of Tangerine Dream albums, he could rely on ten sales a month for the next five years. mathew ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 6 Feb 93 21:24:48 PST From: dlangs%sunstroke@sdsu.edu (Derek Langsford) Subject: Fading Output (was: WHY DO WE BOTHER?) To: numanews@cs.uwp.edu >From claris!wet!ken%netcom.com@apple.com Sun Jan 31 22:51:24 1993 Date: Sun, 31 Jan 93 22:20 PST From: ken@netcom.com (kenneth stuart) Subject: Fading Output Hello, Well, I am sure that this subject will bring lots of responses... I think that the opinion that everything since Berserker is going downhill is fairly accurate (although there is some really good songs on The Fury and Strange Charm, which I can't say for anything thereafter [I guess that it took time to go all the way downhill :-) ]. I DO think that obtaining the obscure Numa releases here is a worthwhile endeavor! This phenomenon is indeed not restricted to Gary; however, his direction DOES seem to somewhat odd in the way stated by others previously. Regarding Genesis... dream on - of those who were in what most probably mean by Genesis in this context (ie early 70's), only Steve Hackett is at all interested in continuing that sort of music [and note that his latest album has zero new material...]. Of the other three groups mentioned, my intuition says only Pink Floyd really has a good idea of what their older work was like and how today is different - hence the lack of "Outland"-like releases while they make some attempt to live up to that legacy. The "tadream" mailing list shows very similar sentiments about the direction of Tangerine Dream lately, with people fondly referring to the early 80's... In fact, the only musician who seems to be have a good grasp on how to make new music which is different from the old, but also has some of the old' s progressive qualities is Robert Fripp [compare King Crimson's 1973 release Lark's Tongues in Aspic with the reformed group's 1981 release Discipline]. For most musicians, this task seems very difficult. Ken ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 6 Feb 93 20:56:14 PST From: dlangs%sunstroke@sdsu.edu (Derek Langsford) Subject: Hello and comments from Rupert Goodwins To: numanews@cs.uwp.edu Date: Tue, 2 Feb 93 01:02 GMT From: Rupert Goodwins Subject: Hello, list Hi there! I came across this list by word of mouth from a friend -- curious what things live on the Internet. He and I share an interest in Numan, but he's been far more painstaking in keeping up with what's been happening lately than I have. I bought practically everything Numan produced up to The Fury, but then got less and less concerned. At the time, I thought it was just me... I got into Numan in 1980, just as he became less than fashionable with the in-crowd (Tubeway Army and Replicas were terribly hip, The Pleasure Principle less so and after We Are Glass was released it was social death to admit to a fondness for the Webb oeuvre. Complex (12") was just about the first record I ever bought (I was 14), and at the time it was still possible to pick up stuff like That's Too Bad. So I did. It was. I've never been a member of the fan club (just not that sorta guy, I guess), so it was fascinating to read all the archives of the list and this quite rekindled my interest. I 'phoned the Nu-Music line (it costs around 50 cents a minute, and I doubt it's accessible from the US; you might be able to do it via the operator and lots of money), and got a very pleasant surprise -- the track which was playing was reminiscent of the period between Dance and Warriors, and not dissimilar in some ways to The Image Is but with a more powerful, contempory drum sound. Yo! 'Nuff respec. (ahem) I know the arguments against nostalgia and rehashing old stuff, but for my money that period saw some of the most idiosyncratic, stylish and tantalising music yer man has ever produced. I can remember thinking at the time that the long-awaited killer album must be just around the corner, and listening again to the records tonight (some for the first time in years -- see what you've gone and done!) I really feel for what might have been. It may yet, I guess. Apart from that period, my personal favourites are probably on the first two albums -- The Dream Police (*must* play that tonight), Down In The Park, Me! I Disconnect From You -- although for sheer stumbling, awesome power, Films played *loud* takes some beating. On another tack: Cars has appeared on more compilation CDs than those mentioned in the list to date. In front of me, I have 'Eighties Access', a mid-price comp that's got ABC (The Look Of Love), Haircut 100 (Love Plus One), Teardrop Explodes (Reward -- Julian Cope is currently the critic's darling at the moment), Tears For Fears (Life's What You Make It), Dexy's Midnight Runners (Deno), Thompson Twins (Hold Me Now), Spandau Ballet (True), Yazoo (Only You), Depeche Mode (See You), Visage (Fade To Grey), The Stranglers (Golden Brown), Bronksi Beat (Small Town Boy), Cars and Ultravox (Vienna). It's DIN CD 4, from Dino Entertainments Ltd. Somewhere, I've got another which I don't think was mentioned, but I can't remember the name and can't find the disc. Less than useful, I know. 500 words is more than enough from someone you don't know, I guess. In next month's thrilling installment, I'll reveal how Numan and Smash Hits turned me on to Philip K. Dick and how my life's never been even slightly the same since... Rupert Goodwins, rupertg@cix.compulink.co.uk ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 6 Feb 93 21:45:26 PST From: dlangs%sunstroke@sdsu.edu (Derek Langsford) Subject: live albums - comments To: numanews@cs.uwp.edu >From tinytina@wam.umd.edu Tue Feb 2 18:24:13 1993 Date: Tue, 2 Feb 1993 21:23:07 -0500 From: Tina Marie LeMarier It's funny that White Noise is some peoples favourite live album, It' my least favourite. I thought that the sound quality was awful! The performances were fine but I just can't handle the sound. I liked "Ghost" except for the drumming, which I thought was dreadful. However I thought that the bass player was the best on any live album so far. I personally liked "Skin Mechanic", and thought that it was the best since "Living Ornaments". I still need to get Asylum 3. "Living Ornaments" was the album that taught me how to play keyboards. My Numan-devoted friend GAVE me a copy of the boxed set! He also traded me a copy of the UK release of "Telekon", compleat with order form for fan stuff! What a great guy! It also seems odd to me that so many of you don't like "The Fury". I love this album! I think that it's just as good as "Berserker". Regarding what people were saying about why do we still bother. I don't think that his new stuff is awful. Just a little inconsistent. He still puts a couple of really good cuts on each album. I really loved "Hunger" and am glad that it's on "Skin Mechanic". Plus the live version of "Young Heart" is good, he isn't doing that Micheal Jackson thing. "My Breathing" from Strange Charm is great also. I heard a good re-mix of "I Can't Stop" that I thought was worlds better than the album version. Anyway, Have fun! Shane King ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 3 Feb 93 10:09:58 PST From: dlangs%sunstroke@sdsu.edu (Derek Langsford) Subject: NAGNFC Fanzine for Jan 1993 + comments on V1 #18 To: numanews@cs.uwp.edu >From bhammond@zephyr.cair.du.edu Sun Jan 31 18:37:15 1993 From: "BRIAN D. HAMMOND" Subject: NAGNFC Fanzine for January 1993 Just a few new items here: -Fanzine reports the presence of a movie called _Riding High_ which supposedly has a remixed version of "Remember I Was Vapour." [Anyone know anything about this movie?] -An upcoming issue of the Fanzine expects to have an interview with Lester Conway who was one of Mean Street's or The Laser's early musicians and now lives in the states. [This could be interesting but also subject to horrible distortions considering how the early members were unceremoniously dumped] -In the Gary on CD Compilations department, a CD called _Two's Company_ is now out with the strange choice of "Change Your Mind" and "No More Lies." On the CD called _Electricity_ the song "We Take Mystery [To Bed]" appears. On the CD _The One And Only" Gary makes an appearance with the immaginitive and original choice of "Cars." On another note, I found last week's Newsletter here to be perhaps the best yet with all posted items of extreme interest. In regards to _Telekon_, I guess, as usual, it's all subjective (although those who don't like the album are quite simply wrong......[that was a joke]). I don't have the time to contribute all my thoughts on the matter of Numan's lastest material so I will just mention a few of the main ideas and leave it at that. I too have wondered what Numan is thinking since he continues to veer into directions I don't like that much. For me the beginning of the end was not _Berserker_ but rather _Strange Charm_ as it was that album that featured the first song by Numan that I thought *stunk* (i.e. The Need). I continue to purchase the newer material in part becasue I do hope that he will come up with something truly wonderful again. In this I don't mean a retrun to old sounds but something unique and new. He did this quite regularly in his earlier career with punk to new wave to funk and jazz. I also continue to buy the newer material becasue I still find a few songs here and there that I truly do like. Perhaps after we have gotten the entire Numa Records back catalogue, we can collectively in some manner, send a message to Gary expressing our concerns. Like Derek, I am concerned (espcially in light of what I would consider Numan's uncertain temperment) that to express disatisfaction now might jeopardize the relationship Derek now has with Beryl. Oh well. Me! I Disconnect From You ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 6 Feb 93 21:06:27 PST From: dlangs%sunstroke@sdsu.edu (Derek Langsford) Subject: Various stuff from last week To: numanews@cs.uwp.edu >From d.j.walker-morgan@micromuse.co.uk Tue Feb 2 15:05:22 1993 From: dj Date: Tue, 2 Feb 93 17:39:28 GMT Subject: Re: Gary Numan Digest V1 #18 Re, the 0891 number, yes it is chargable... ------------------- But when one needs a new Numan fix...... B) Re, AFE and DitP remix/reworkings.... --------------------------------- Where? Where! Gimme now now please.... [Both are were in progress but might be ready now. AFE was done mainly by Kipper with a new vocalist, DiTP is Gary with Yen. The latter may see release by IRS, Yen's label] And what is the current fan club address in the UK? [FYI GARY NUMAN FAN CLUB P.O. BOX 14 STAINES MIDDLESEX TW19 5AU Please note, fans outside the UK or Eire, the Club does not deal with fans living elsewhere. That is why we have to go the indirect route to get the NUMA CDs- Derek] Re, the debate on where Gary is now... -------------- As a Numan fan of old and new, I do wonder where he is going.... What's missing now is the base of the old classics "Tubeway Army" and "Replicas" (and less so "Pleasure Principle" (Gary's worst IMHO) and "Telekon"), that Numan universe, composite of Dick and Burroughs. We are left today with constant songs with 'fame' references, and maybe what Gary really really needs to do is to discover this or another base and work from there, even work with a scriptwriter and handle it as a soundtrack for a virtual movie. What hurts him now more than anything commercially is the voice, as it has become more of a pastiche of the original cold steel vocal. On top of that, he's been hurting himself by overproducing tracks so they are chock full of sounds..... Go back to the classic Numan and wonder at how little sound there actually is producing that impact.... If I was Gary, I'd get a drummer, a guitarist or two, a few keyboards and *someone else* to twiddle the knobs; and then get some guest voices in to do the tracks. Let go of control slightly and see what happens. For the videos, make them long after the tracks are down, and make it in filmic form.... Black and white even, and emphasis off Numan as "star" and back onto the sound and the atmosphere it creates. Gary seems to have become isolated from external musical influences (or so it appears on the albums to data) and maybe it's also time to ram raid the sounds of today (Techno, Dance, Grunge even) and grab some line from then.... One can live in hope that Gary gets to read this..... and if he is... GARY I'LL WRITE YOU THE SCRIPT TO WORK OFF... well, actually, I have this story in mind which would work so well as a pure sound track.... ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 6 Feb 93 21:29:44 PST From: dlangs%sunstroke@sdsu.edu (Derek Langsford) Subject: WHY DO WE BOTHER? - response from Al Crawford To: numanews@cs.uwp.edu >From awrc@dcs.ed.ac.uk Mon Feb 1 04:30:37 1993 Date: Mon, 1 Feb 93 12:29:23 GMT From: Al Crawford Subject: Re: Gary Numan Digest V1 #18 Apologies for horrible cut and past of Derek and John's conversatiom, but I want to address points raised in various pieces of e-mail... > 1. All evidence suggests that only Numan's old fans are buying his > latest releases. > > 2. All evidence (that I have seen from this list) suggests that none of > these fans like this stuff. I'd agree with this on the first point, but alas I'd say this *isn't* true in the latter case. Most of the readers of this list seem to hold that opinion, but while most of us here consider ourselves fairly serious Numan fans, there seems to be a hard core of berserker Numanoids who like *anything* he does, because he does it, rather than because of what the music is like. Their numbers have reduced of late (the _Isolate_ tour saw smaller crowds than in the past) but there are still sizeable numbers of people who attend *every* show on the tour, buy *everything* he releases and think *all* of it is wonderful. Which may only go to prove that there's one born every minute, but it does in some ways sound the death-knell for Gary's creativity - no matter *what* he puts out, this hard-core of fans are still going to be there. We can bemoan the fact he hasn't put out anything worthy of mention since _Berserker_ but when you've got fans who consider his cover of "1999" to be better than the original, any sounds of dissent will be drowned out by this hard-core. I suspect there might also be some truth in my suspicions that the "inner circle" of Gary's friends who he has come to know via touring etc are of this persuasion. Perhaps he doesn't even *know* that many of us have grown so bored with his recent output that we only buy the old re-releases? > It seems to me that Numan's primary interest is in expanding his fan base. > He seems to be confronted with two different paradigms. In one, he accepts > his marginal status, and plays a sort of progressive Eno-type character, > making interesting records with limited mass market appeal, but which > solidify his current fan base. He experiments, he hits, he misses, but > tries to break new ground. Like he used to. Am I correct in assuming that > this is what most people on this list want? That's certainly the way I'd like to see things going. The one positive sign I've seen recently was the news (in v1 #18) that Gary was considering *selling* his plane to concentrate on music. This seems to be a complete about-turn from the situation of a couple of years back, where he seemed positively bored with recording and more interested in flying. Certainly, the last few albums have *sounded* like he'd rather be somewhere else :-) Maybe this new-found enthusiasm will start showing in the music soon. > The other paradigm is to go for the big time. To try to see what is > selling, to try to copy that, to try to sell millions of records by tapping > that mainstream musical zeitgeist. This, of course, is what he is doing, > and which, of course, is failing utterly. It is? Numan's recent output has been locked in a time-warp, trying to produce a variety of synthesised white soul (with wailing female backing vocals) that went out of fashion in the mid-eighties. I can't see Gary Numan starting to produce hardcore techno or similar though, it wouldn't be his style. Even were he to try it, it would flop, since it has to be said that Numan is still seen as something of a laughing stock in the UK, at least by the (admittedly hugely biased) UK music press. Zipping forward to the next piece of mail... > THIS IS an extremely interesting phenomenon. The transformation of > interesting musicians into bland dance-pop outfits seems to be quite > prevalent (New Order and OMD are obvious examples). What makes the Numan > situation unique is that this move has not resulted in stardom, NOR has it > resulted in ruin (which seems to be the OMD situation). It has resulted in > nearly a decade (since Berserker) of malaise. Erm, I know Derek has picked up on this already, but OMD are *far* from ruined. They had two *big* hit singles in 1991 in the UK, "Sailing On The Seven Seas" equalling their biggest hit ever, and _Sugar Tax_ may well have been their best selling album of all time. True, with the departure of Paul Humphries they've lost a lot of the fragility and "artiness" that characterised them, and _Sugar Tax_ is largely vacuous (if good) dance-pop but they're by no means a spent force. McCluskey acquitted himself fairly well, I think, _Sugar Tax_ was a *lot* better than I'd have credited him being able to produce on his own. Expect a new OMD album this year, BTW. I won't comment on New Order, for some reason they've never appealed to me, but if you want to see very sad examples of what can happen to a group who've devolved from being interesting into bland dance-pop, look at the last Human League album, or await the new releases from Heaven 17 and Ultravox with a sense of dread and loathing :-) And further forward still... > I thought that Sugar Tax was a flop. All the OMD fans that I know who > bothered to buy it didn't like it, and it showed up in the bargain/cutout > bins here in Boston. I read negative reviews also. If it WAS a success, > my mistake. With Humphrey's leaving the band, and what I considered a > flopo in Sugar Tax, I assumed OMD was ruined. I think it depends on *what* era of OMD they were into. Someone who abandoned the group as hopelessly commercialised after _Junk Culture_ would *not* be likely to drool over _Sugar Tax_. However, the fact remains that _Sugar Tax_ was possibly their biggest ever UK album, and sufficiently popular for Virgin to have since released it on both DCC and Minidisc (OMD did quite well here, in fact - from Virgin's initial catalogue of 40 Minidiscs and 20 DCCs both formats featured *two* OMD releases). > Sugar Tax was a big success in the UK yielding several top 10 singles > and a good album performance in the chart. I wonder if this was because of > fans new to OMD rather than the older fans being faithful. A bit of both, I think. I didn't attend their Edinburgh show but the crowd was apparently a mix of the slightly older (remembering the glory days of the early 80s) and young teens. > I'd like to see sales figures for all of Gary's albums so we could see the > trends. That should be public info or obtainable from NUMA unless the > recent figures are acutely embarrassing. Dunno about sales, but in terms of chart entries it's been a continuous slide since the early 80s. I can try and dig up exact chart placings (up to 1988 anyway) if necessary. Al -- Al Crawford - awrc@dcs.ed.ac.uk Department Of Computer Science, The University of Edinburgh Rm 1410, JCMB, Kings Buildings, Mayfield Rd, EDINBURGH, EH9 3JZ, Scotland Tel: +44 (0) 31 650 5165 Fax: +44 (0) 31 667 7209 [ Al, if it's not too much trouble it would be interesting to see the figures on Gary's album chart performance. Derek] ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 6 Feb 93 21:20:51 PST From: dlangs%sunstroke@sdsu.edu (Derek Langsford) Subject: WHY DO WE BOTHER? - response from Dave Datta To: numanews@cs.uwp.edu >From datta@cs.uwp.edu Sun Jan 31 10:00:28 1993 From: datta@cs.uwp.edu (David Datta) Date: Sun, 31 Jan 1993 12:00:08 -0600 Subject: WHY DO WE BOTHER I personally like almost all of the new stuff as well as the old stuff. I just don't write about it much. There are currently 54 members on the list. I think maybe 5 of them are active posters. This is not an uncommon occurance. I think that there are quite a few of the other list members who do like the newer stuff they may just not be vocal about it. (Of course I could be wrong too....) -- -Dave datta@cs.uwp.edu "Such abuse would be illegal and is therefore unlikely." - FBI Director William Sessions ------------------------------ End of Gary Numan Digest ******************************