THE SINGULAR ADVENTURES OF EDWYN COLLINS (Part 9)

Nothing was made available between February 96 and July 97 but it was a period when Edwyn Collins was busy producing loads of other acts.

The single that climbed into the charts, reaching #32, was already well known to loads of folk thanks to it appearing over the closing credits of the movie Austin Powers, International Man Of Mystery which had been released earlier in the year.

Infectiously catchy if a wee bit annoying after too many back-to-back listens:-

mp3 : Edwyn Collins - The Magic Piper

It was made available on 12" single as well as 2 x CDs.  The 12" had The Macrame Mix of A Girl Like You (as first made available on the Expressly EP back in October 94) along with this new songs:-

mp3 : Edwyn Collins - Welwyn Garden City

CD1 had three other new songs:-

mp3 : Edwyn Collins - More Than You Bargained For
mp3 : Edwyn Collins - Red Menace
mp3 : Edwyn Collins - It Takes A Little Time

CD2 also had Welwyn Garden City as well as two versions of another new song:-

mp3 : Edwyn Collins - Who Is It?
mp3 : Edwyn Collins - Who Is It? (halterbacked by the Victorian Spaceman)

Regular readers may recall that the Victorian Spaceman (aka Sebastian Lewsley) had previously worked on one of the many remixes of A Girl Like You that had been made available at some point or other.

Welwyn Garden City is a four-minute instrumental with vocoder that is more irritating than inspirational.

And while it was good to get all the new songs to listen to at the time, the sad thing was that More Than You Bargained For and Red Menace are tracks that are quite easily forgotten.....in other words bog-standard fillers.  It Takes A Little Time is a track that can be listened to a few times and is the four minutes that redeems an otherwise disappointing CD1.

I can't get over how similar in some ways the opening to Who Is It? sounds like Wrapped Around Your Finger by The Police....which has always put me off the track.  And yet it has a really good lyric  - one that has Edwyn seemingly questioning the futility of a career in pop music, and so it does have a place on the i-pod shuffle, albeit one that I sometimes skip when I'm not in the mood.  The remix is just strange.......

A very good promo video was made:-