Various: Red Hot + Blue

I'd forgotten I had this. It was released in 1990, but I didn't get it until ten years later, when it was a fiver from Fopp — so I guess very little money from my purchase reached the AIDS charity that was originally behind the album, sorry.

Given that my records show I bought it on 24 Aug 2000, it's a safe bet that the reason I got it — as with the Berlin, Gershwin and Porter anthology — was that Stephin Merritt gets compared to Cole Porter. Leaving aside the fact that he's not very keen on that comparison, I bet he's not that keen on this album.

In fact I'd pay money to hear Merritt's comments on U2's version of Night and Day, which they invest with their trademark portentousness, so that when Bongo sings the line "When the jungle shadows fall" at the start, you could be forgiven for thinking it's something out of Apocalypse Now instead of the light love song of other interpretations.

We forget so quickly how bad things were in the not-so-distant past: in 1990 we were still in the grip of sexual anxiety, Thatcher and The Thompson Twins. People say we're heading for bad times, but it was worse then.

MusicBrainz entry for this album Wikipedia entry for this album Rate Your Music entry for this album Listen to this album in full at Last.fm

Comments

[mym]

I'll take sexual anxiety over what's coming anyday...

http://cluborlov.blogspot.com/2008/09/adieu-stage-1-collapse.html