[ March 1, 1995 ]
Audities: LFW Founder Sansbury on TBS and HM
Audities
Beautiful South and The Housemartins
March 1995
by Jen Sansbury
On the western side of the great pond separating North America and the UK, which is the Beautiful South's homeland, things have been rather disappointing. Elektra, the band's American label, dropped them during the 0898 era. A new album, called Miaow was released in the UK. Our northern neighbors in Canada were also treated to the album, courtesy of Polygram. For Americans, it is available on import only.
Many fans consider Miaow a bit of a departure from the earlier material. One of the most obvious reasons for it is the absence of Briana Corrigan, the red-headed female presence in the band. She apparently felt uncomfortable with her "victimized woman" role in many BS songs, particularly Miaow's "Mini-correct. Briana was replaced by Jacqueline Abbott, who has a beautiful, but much different, voice. As with any band member replacement, fans are divided in their opinions about her. Singles from the album were: "Good as Gold (Stupid as Mud)", "Everybody's Talking" (yes, it's a cover song), and "Prettiest Eyes". Each single was released in two parts with two extra songs each.
Miaow stirred up a bit of copyright controversy. The original cover showed a number of dogs, which closely resembled the one in RCA's long-standing 'His Master's Voice' logo, sitting in theater seats listening to a gramophone that is on the stage in front of them. RCA claimed it represented trademark infringement and the album was reissued with a new cover, which shows four German shepherds in a rowboat on a choppy sea.
In October, the band put out Carry On Up the Charts-The Best of the Beautiful South. It is a 14-song singles collection that includes several shortened single versions of album songs as well as one new song, "One Last Love Song". A limited edition version (with a run of 200,000) included a bonus CD full of 14 b-sides spanning the Beautiful South's career. "One Last Love Song" was also released as a two-part single, one of which has two of the most Housemartins-y songs in years. Carry On Up the Charts reached #1 on the UK album charts. It was scheduled for Canadian release, possibly with additional songs, on Jan. 25. Any US issues of these 1994 releases would likely be on an indie label.
List-for-whoever has proven to be a valuable way for American fans to keep in touch with what's going on with the band. Go! Discs, the Beautiful South's English label, has an Internet presence primarily through the World Wide Web http://www.godiscs.co.uk /godiscs. The Beautiful South page features images of the band and album sleeves. Fans were also treated to a 40-second audio clip of "One Last Love Song" several weeks before it was released. In addition, UK fans often post concert reviews and newspaper and magazine articles they come across.
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The Beautiful South/Housemartins Internet mailing list, called "list-for-whoever" (a take on the title of a song from Welcome to the Beautiful South), is run by Jen Sansbury. She and Erik Brady (both Americans, by the way) began developing the list in the latter part of 1993, but it really took off when it became automated in November 1994. To learn how to join the mailing list point your browser at: http://www.healey.com.au/~eva/hm/lfw.html
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