Metamatic Forums John Foxx John Foxx My Face

I've been wondering about this song since John started playing it live.

Its style and place in the Metamatic set suggests it was recorded during the same period as the rest of the album, and yet it wasn't 'released' until what, October 1980?
Just a couple of weeks before the Miles Away single?

So was it another of those songs (like Burning Car etc) recorded as a pool of extra material that the B sides came from - perhaps as much as a year earlier - or was it recorded especially for the Smash Hits promotion?

Personally I doubt this, because its a good song, seems fully realised and could therefore have been a single in its own right if Miles Away was put out to 'fill the gap' between albums?
It also 'sounds' like Metamatic stuff of course.

Anyone have any background/theories on this?

Was the Smash Hits freebie a regular feature?
Would John Foxx/Virgin been 'invited' to submit a song?

etc etc

That's an interesting quesion.

"My Face" is a bit of an odd track I find. It sits stylistically in between Metamatic and Miles Away.

It's too "poppy" for Metamatic thanks to that fun synth solo. Otherwise it's made up of a similar sound pallette. It's perhaps too fast for Metamatic.

But lyrically it's in there with Blurred Girl and 030 etc....

So, I would say it was written at the same time as the majority of songs on the album, but perhaps recorded a bit later - or recorded at the time and 'saved' for later. A bit like "Young Love" perhaps.

Actually "Young Love" doesn't quite fit. How did it appear? Was it a b-side? Sorry to go off topic!

I like My Face :-)
Quite haunting.

My Face has a wee kinda mini epic orchestrated synth break bit in the middle... John and Louis made a bit of dogs' dinner of that bit at the ICA, to be honest!

Samsh hits went through a period of having a flexi disc every few months,others to note are the clear flexi of Soft Cell "Metro mrx" and the Blue one featuring OMD "Pretending to see the future(live)" and Nash The Slash "Swing shift"

As Will also points out there were a few others but it wasn't a regular feature.

Smash Hits were using their pulling power to see off competition from the recently launched 'Flexi-Pop' magazine which gave away a free flexi-disc with each issue, the most notable one being a parody of 'YMCA'by Adam & The Ants callled 'A.N.T.S'

We've mentioned it several times on other threads, but 'My Face' to me, always had a demo-feel to it; a pre-cursor to 'You Were There' from 'The Garden'.

Thanks for your input guys.

I tend to agree with you, which is what made me question its place as part of the Metamatic stuff, almost all of which was recorded during 1979 and the earliest part of 1980.

Not that I'm complaining. I love the track and its very welcome!!

With you 100% there Garry,It always seemed like a demo of "You were there" to me too

I'm considering launching a magazine called 'FlexiCD' on the front you'll get a CD made of flimsey plastic and if you superglue a 2p piece onto it and insert into your CD pla..... sorry, I've just seen a little flaw in my plan that needs sorting, back soon,
Cheers

One of the main things with "My Face" is that, on most of the Metamatic tracks, John slid the "Balance" slider on the CR78 down all the way to "Bass", so you don't hear any rickity-tickety hi-hat sounds -
but on MySpace, he's left them in there so they're all bustled around gaily, bless. This contributes to it sounding a bit ahine.

Hmm, yeah. Never noticed that, but you're right!

I always thought "Blue Light" from SOR sounded similar (musically) to "Night Suit".