The days when I would take a chance on buying an album simply on the basis of hearing a song or two on the radio seem long gone. Nowadays pretty much everything gets screened by seeing someone perform live or checking out their recordings online before I part with cash. So it's a surprise to see how recently I was still buying CDs more or less on spec.
The United States of America were featured on the Freakzone (just about the only radio programme I never miss, now that Mixing It is no longer on Radio 3) two and a half years ago, and I got the album shortly after that from COW. (Oh, the COW site has undergone a major change since I last visited, and now seems to be just redirecting lots of searches to Amazon — I blame myself for not using it enough recently.)
Justin Spear from the Freakzone was saying how Broadcast often cited United States of America as an influence, and it's that kind of information that makes it very hard to hear the music other than through the lens of those that followed. For Broadcast's borrowings from the US of A are pretty clear on many tracks, though they wisely steered clear of I Won't Leave My Wooden Wife for You, Sugar.
As for the band photo on the back of the album, well, you might say "you couldn't make it up", but that the fact is that loads of TV 'satirists' these days seem to do nothing but make up stuff like this. I finally saw A Mighty Wind a few weeks ago, and I thought the joke was wearing a bit thin. I felt more sympathy for the characters than the writers.
My first iPod was still thriving in 2004 and I copied this album onto it back then, so I know it quite well, except for the bonus tracks, which I didn't copy and have hardly ever heard.
 MusicBrainz entry for this album
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