hm ... let's jus' say that john was somehow "distracted" by certain other , much more interesting ( & also personal ;-) things than making music of whatever kind between the mid-80s & the mid-90s ! ;-)

i leave the rest up to your own imagination , fellows ! :-)

My view of Electrofear has it as an album of demo tracks, of which some are not-very-Foxxy as the rest of the collaborators presumably took more control over them.

Listen to the Drummer and Electrofear are Drum and Bass efforts that sound completely out of place, while Into the Wonderful and the more passable eponym seem heavily influenced in that direction too.

The remixes at the end don't really do it for me.

I quite like the rest though, which is most of it.

I have judiciously transported the best bits to a compilation cd of my own so as not to waste time with some of the lesser tracks - that was my solution.

Worth "remembering" that Concrete, Bulletproof, Invisible and Remember have their titles transposed on the sleeve, and the second last track is actually Remember!

...if you can remember that.

Yeah - I think the main thing to remember with the Nation 12 album is that it is, as others above have said, just a load of old salvaged demos -
i.e. even the people making it didn't think it was "finished" and "good enough to release" as it stood...

Really, it's just cos of the curiosity of people like ourselves that it was dredged up and released.
So it would be churlish to complain on hearing the thing that it was half-baked.... that should be taken as a given before you press play!

It's not rubbish though, and I think most of us would agree that they were promising demos, and could've been worked up into pretty good tracks. And there's some great melodies (like the one which became "Through My Sleeping")

Totally agree with feline, there's some good, albeit raw, stuff on there, and it's nice to here other sides to John's music. So what is your own opinion Member D?
Cheers

I'm happy with the results. Excellent version of Through My Sleeping. She Was is another gem. A must in John´s back-catalogue.

I hope John releases the Blitz recordings. I believe there´s another version of Through My Sleeping.

http://www.ultravox.org.uk/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=17;t=000014

Actually there is!

Chris C

i can only second that , as they are maybe even more interesting & of better ( sound ) quality than the nation 12 recordings , as i suppose from what paul simon has written over @ the ev forum about a year ago ! ;-)

cheers ! :-)

Thanks for bringing me back into this Craig, but to tell you all the truth I still haven't had the time to get me ears round it. Promise to do so soon! meantime it's good to hear all your various opinions.

good points. i love "and she was." i also like the nation 12 version of "cities of light," which sounds like a whole style unto itself.

also, finding those first 12-inch singles was a nice surprise. something drew me to a particular dance-only music store one day sometime before 1994 and there they were on the wall. i couldn't believe my eyes since it'd seemed like lifetimes in the past when 'in mysterious ways' came out. i instantly loved the packaging and was surprised, later, in a good way, with the music. i'd had the name "nation 12" in mind for a year or so before that because a friend had told me that he'd read in "q" that foxx was involved in something w/that name.

What I find interesting is hearing Cities of Light 1, Invisible Women, Leaving and Your Kisses Burn – all of which eventually turned up, often radically re-worked and re-titled on Shifting City, TPOE and From Trash.

It's interesting to note that "Leaving" became "Through My Sleeping" during the Blitz sessions. I love that song, and I guess John was always fond of it, to persist with it, eventually finishing it with Louis for Shifting City.

Same with "Sailing On Sunshine", now on Sideways. I only read about this yesterday, and had no idea that it came out of the Blitz sessions.