On January 21st, 1993 American Industrial/Metal band Ministry released its third single Just One Fix, taken from the album Psalm 69: The Way to Succeed and the Way to Suck Eggs (1992)
The song features samples from the movies Sid and Nancy, "Never trust a junkie" and The Man with the Golden Arm with Frank Sinatra reciting the words "Just One Fix” and “Gimme the thorazine. You don't need the thorazine” from the movie The Trip staring Peter Fonda and Bruce Dern.
The accompanying video was directed by Peter Christopherson (Coil) and features video footage and audio samples of author William S. Burroughs saying “Bring it all down”. Burroughs, who is known to be one of Al Jourgensen’s inspirations, also provided the single's cover art.
It was released as 3-track jewel case CD-Single, Digipack and 12” vinyl by Sire/Warner Bros. Records
Just One Fix (12" tracklist)
A1. Just One Fix (12 Inch edit) 8'13"
B1. Just One Fix (Video edit) 4'24"
B2. Quick Fix 4'11"
Just One Fix (Lyrics)
Never trust a junkie
Blood keeps drifting your way
Certain of its destination
Driving through New Orleans at night
Gotta find a destination
Just one fix
Just one fix
Just one fix
Just one fix
Life keeps slipping away
Fighting in a war with damnation
Poised, keep cutting away
I'm looking in through to salvation
Just one fix
Just one fix
Just one fix
Just one fix
Just one fix
Just one fix
Just one fix
Just one fix
Just one fix
Just one fix
Just one fix
Just one fix
Like if I boarded a train
Trying to take in another station
Join us and the choice will be made
Unless we kill the lie as a nation
Just one fix (just one fix)
Just one fix (just one fix)
Just one fix (just one fix)
Just one fix (just one fix)
Just one fix (one fix, one fix)
Just one fix (one fix, one fix)
Just one fix (one fix, one fix)
Just one fix (one fix, one fix)
Just one fix (one fix, one fix)
Just one fix (one fix, one fix)
Just one fix (one fix, one fix)
Songwriters: Barker Paul / Jourgenson Allen / Michael Bruce Balch / Rieflin William
'Giving Ground”…and Gaining It: The First Sisterhood Single, 37 ago, 20 January 1986
The first single by The Sisterhood, “Giving Ground,” was released on 20 January 1986, on Andrew Eldritch’s Merciful Release label, which was distributed by WEA. The details of this release are dramatic in the extreme, producing enough lasting angst and antagonism to fuel every goth club on the continent for a decade.
The success of the first album, First and Last and Always, released 11 March 1985, had catapulted The Sisters of Mercy out of Leeds to stardom. Success demanded its pound of flesh, however, resulting in increased strain on the band. Over the summer, founding guitarist Gary Marx left mid-tour, citing “personal reasons.” The band finished the tour and took a short break, then reconvened to write and rehearse for the next album that fall. Bassist Craig Adams walked out, ostensibly over the bassline for “Torch.” Guitarist Wayne Hussey left the next day. Accounts differ regarding the details and reasons for these departures, but Hussey and Adams quickly formed a band, with Red Lorry Yellow Lorry drummer Mick Brown, that would eventually become The Mission. WEA dangled a £25,000 advance, originally promised to the Sisters, to whichever group made an album first.
The Sisters had been disintegrating for some time before these departures, and the new uncertainty about the contractual advance raised the stakes yet again with regard to the future of both bands. Before the final London show of the original lineup, later released as Wake, Eldritch had given interviews about plans to form a supergroup with Patricia Morrison, ex-Gun Club, and Allen Vega from Suicide. In their frustration with Eldritch, Hussey and Adams decided to call their new group The Sisterhood, which was not coincidentally the name of the Sisters’ fan club. They booked a London debut for 20 January 1986. Eldritch threatened legal action over the name, but these threats came to nothing. He decided to beat his former bandmates to the punch. A single, “Giving Ground,” was released by a different Sisterhood on the same day that the Adams-Hussey band had scheduled their first gig.
This Sisterhood was eventually composed of Eldritch, Morrison, Vega, James Ray, and Lucas Fox. Fox, who played drums for the original Motörhead lineup (when the band was named Bastards), helped with production, and Morrison played bass, as she later would on the Sisters’ Floodland (1987). Vega did vocal tracks on the later Sisterhood Gift album. But for the initial single, recorded primarily to block former bandmates from using the name, time was of the essence. Due to contractual obligations, Eldritch could not sing on the new single, so he enlisted James Ray to do the vocals. The single was recorded in five days. It included two mixes of “Giving Ground,” the “RSV” on Side A and the “AV” on Side AA. The cryptic mix names alluded to translations of the Bible in English, the Revised Standard Version and Eldritch’s beloved Authorized (or King James) Version. The RSV was a twentieth century “update” of the 1611 AV translation for readers ill-equipped to comprehend its Elizabethan English. Given Eldritch’s professed admiration of the older version, it may not be a stretch to speculate that he considered the instrumental track the “original” and any version with vocals added a necessary evil.
Musically, the single seemed hastily put together, which in fact it was. Lyrically, however, the song articulates a refusal to compromise with others, and an anticipation of moving onward that, given the circumstances of its composition is difficult not to read as autobiographical. The AV track was instrumental, notable for featuring the drum machine Doktor Avalanche. The insentience of the machine allowed “him” to circumvent the contract with WEA that prevented Eldritch from appearing by name on his own track. The RSV version, which featured Ray’s vocals, shot quickly up the charts on strength of association with the Sisters, but sank quickly as well.
But the release of the single had nevertheless done the business. Hussey and Adams were forced to come up with a new name, and in March 1986 they became The Mission. Eldritch meanwhile recorded the remainder of the Sisterhood album, Gift, which appeared later that year with yet another version of “Giving Ground.” The later full album became noteworthy for its influence on later electronic music. At the time of the single, however, its crucial achievement was ironically enough gaining ground. That £25,000 check won The Sisters of Mercy time to regroup, time to experiment in the studio with early versions of “This Corrosion,” and ultimately time to begin recording their next album, Floodland, a breakthrough in songwriting, production, and global ambition for the band.
Giving Ground 7"(SIS 010)
| A | Giving Ground (RSV) | 4:49 |
| AA | Giving Ground (AV) | 5:41 |
Giving Ground (Lyrics)
In the place to which we wander
Reason turned around
And every fool
Will see his madness crowned
And every truth is swallowed up
By gently giving ground
What you have lost can never be found
Words are just dust in deserts of sound
Everything is lost and your trust lies broken
And the truth is drowned
I watch
Surrender
Because I know
...
Now I know you will not see
The madness we have seen
And now I know you cannot be
All that your (fright/flight) has been
What you have lost can never be found
Words are just dust in deserts of sound
Everything is lost and your trust lies broken
And the truth is drowned
Words are just dust
I stood but you just could not wait
Behind
Because I know you cannot be
All that your (fright/flight) has been
What you have lost can never be found
Words are just dust in deserts of sound
Everything is lost and the truth is drowned
Everything is lost in the giving ground
Everything is lost
Everything is lost in the giving ground
Turned around
Reason turned around
In the giving ground
In the giving ground
Everything is lost
In the giving ground
[Christopher Vilmar]
On this day, 32 years ago (19 January 1991), The Cure performed at The Great British Music Awards!
On this day, 32 years ago (19 January 1991), The Cure performed at The Great British Music Awards in London Wembley arena (UK) with a.o. Ride, The La's, Jesus Jones, New Model Army and The Wedding Present.
For this special occasion The Cure played a very rare selection of songs and lots of fans agree some of the performed versions are considered to be pre-eminent.
The entire show was broadcast by British tv & radio
Setlist
Pictures Of You, Fascination Street, Just Like Heaven, Lullaby, The Walk, Let's Go To Bed, Why Can't I Be You?, In Between Days, A Forest, Never Enough
Encores:
Three Imaginary Boys, Boys Don't Cry, Disintegration
Line-up
Robert Smith, Simon Gallup, Porl Thompson, Boris Williams, Perry Bamonte
VVMPYRE begins 2023 having just released their new full-length LP, Neon Night Fright after a series of well-received singles. This long-awaited debut album brings together VVMPYRE’s love for horror with gothic guitars and dance beats.
VVMPYRE’s artistic journey has always been heavily influenced by horror. Many of the tracks like “He Will Always Be”, “Neon Night Fright”, “Surrender”, and “Freedom of Death'' focus on themes of the vampyrism that appears in classic horror films that inspire VVMPYRE; The Vampire Lovers and Horror of Dracula for example.
The call of the vampire waiting to take another victim’s blood while shrouded in love and lust is the common underlying theme to many of these tracks and even makes more subtle tracks like “Alone in the Woods” much darker.
However, tracks like “Offering” and the opener, “Black Cube” tap into the "cult horror" of this same era calling to films like The Omen, The Mephisto Waltz, and Suspiria in their lyrics as well as in the heavy strings and organs that aspire to the scores of composer Jerry Goldsmith. The combination of these influences make for a bloodthirsty collection of tracks with a haunting atmosphere throughout.
However, VVMPYRE is not afraid to diversify these sounds while keeping the core intact. The band takes a more EBM influence in “Black Cube”, “Atrocity” and “Surrender” bringing in heavy guitars with massive solos; a contrast to “He Will Always Be” which brings in more ethereal synths and guitars.
Neon Night Fright is available on all major digital platforms including Bandcamp.
On this day, 43 ago, John Foxx released his first solo project album Metamatic!
On this day, 43 ago, John Foxx released his first solo project album Metamatic (Virgin, 18 January 1980), after leaving Ultravox the previous year. Opposite to Utravox' mix of rock and synth-pop, Metamatic became a pure electronic album. Although John Foxx performed ’Touch & Go’ and ’He’s a Liquid’ already with his former band Ultravox, the band was not credited on the Metametic album. Not surprisingly the remaining and continueing members of Ultravox didn’t credit Foxx when they adapted parts of ‘Touch and Go’ for their song ‘Mr.X’ (What’s in a name?) on their next album Vienna.
Foxx used a.o. a Minimoog, an ARP Odyssey synth, an Elka Rhapsody 610 “string machine” and a Roland CR-78 drum machine to produce the album. It was recorded on 8-track and engineered by Gareth Jones.
The album features one of John Foxx' greatest hits ‘Underpass’, which was previously released as the album’s announcing single.
'Metamatic' was named after a mechanical artwork (a painting machine) by Swiss sculptor and artist Jean Tinguely and became a must have album for (electronic) music lovers.
It spent seven weeks in the UK charts, peaking at #18. The album was generally well received by critics and is still cited as his most influential solo release.
The album was re-released on CD several times, amongst them some with bonus tracks (+ 6 in 1993 & + 7 in 2001) and even with a complete bonus CD featuring 15 extra tracks (2007).
In 2014 the original album finally got a vinyl re-released on Record Store Day with a gatefold sleeve featuring some new and rare artwork.
Metamatic (1980 - Original 12" tracklist)
- Plaza 3:52
- He's a Liquid 2:59
- Underpass 3:53
- Metal Beat 2:59
- No-One Driving 3:45
- A New Kind of Man 3:38
- Blurred Girl 4:16
- 030 3:15
- Tidal Wave 4:14
- Touch and Go 5:33
