DR. ROBERT (BLOW MONKEYS) "THE COMING OF GRACE" 1997 MERCURY NM OOP PROMO CD

Description: NOTE: INTERNATIONAL SHIPPING IS STILL BEING AFFECTED BY THE VIRUS, PLEASE CHECK UNDER THE SHIPPING TAB TO MAKE SURE I SHIP TO YOUR COUNTRY BEFORE BIDDING/BUYING OR YOU HAVE A U.S. “DROP SHIP” ADDRESS... THIS CD COMES FROM MY TIME AT A NATIONAL RADIO NETWORK WHERE I WAS THE MUSIC AND PROMOTIONS DIRECTOR FOR NEARLY 20 YEARS. A RECENT FIND FROM A BOX IN MY STORAGE UNIT.THIS IS A PHOTO OF THE ACTUAL ITEM FOR SALE, SORRY IF THE PICTURE(S) ARE A BIT BLURRY. I HAVE OTHER ITEMS FOR SALE, CHECK OUT MY OTHER AUCTIONS, THANKS! AS I MENTIONED ABOVE FOR NEARLY 20 YEARS I WAS THE MUSIC & PROMOTIONS CORDINATOR FOR A MAJOR NATIONAL RADIO NETWORK.... ALL CD'S COME IN A JEWEL CASE UNLESS STATED OTHERWISE. NOTE: eBay HAS TAKEN IT UPON THEMSELVES TO REMOVE WHAT THEY CALL “OUTSIDE” LINKS, THESE ARE IN THE HTML DESCRIPTION, AND CAN'T EVEN BE SEEN IN MY ITEM DESCRIPTION, SO FROM NOW ON IF YOU WANT TO KNOW MORE ABOUT THE ITEM &/OR ARTIST LOOK 'EM UP, ON WIKI & DISCOGS, ETC. ARTIST: DR. ROBERT (BLOW MONKEYS) TRACK LISTING: “THE COMING OF GRACE” (3:45) LABEL: PURE/MERCURY RECORDS YEAR: 1997 CAT.#: MECP-237 CONDITION: THE CD IS IN NM/NM- CONDITION LOOKS TO HAVE NEVER BEEN PLAYED. COMES IN A CARDBOARD SLEEVE, IN MINT CONDITION, AND WILL MAIL OUT INSDIE PROTECTIVE PLASTIC OUTER SLEEVE. MORE INFO: THIS CD IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT. FROM THE MUSIC LIBRARY OF A NATIONAL RADIO NETWORK. THESE WERE NOT SOLD TO THE GENERAL PUBLIC. PRINTED ON THE CD ARTWORK & SLEEVES IS “FOR PROMOTIONAL USE ONLY-NOT FOR SALE”. FROM HIS “REALMS OF GOLD” ALBUM. ARTIST INFO: BLOW MONKEYS BIO BiographyWith hits like ‘Digging Your Scene’ and ‘It Doesn’t Have To Be This Way’, The Blow Monkeys epitomised the glamour of mid-80s pop at its most graceful and sophisticated. In the band’s frontman Robert Howard (aka Dr. Robert), they possessed a tall, charismatic singer who was both camera- friendly and clever, who appeared to be just as much at ease on the catwalk that is pop’s conveyer belt as he was penning witty, incisive songs. While quite clearly Robert’s band, though, the Blow Monkeys were also gifted three immensely talented musicians in bassist Mick Anker (he of the trademark bowler hat), saxophonist Neville Henry and drummer Tony Kiley.Behind the band’s stylish veneer lay something else, which became increasingly apparent from Robert’s lyrics. While some of the Smash Hits generation avoided politics with a capital P, The Blow Monkeys openly criticised the policies of the Conservative government, railing against social injustices and adopting an openly left-of-centre stance on issues of the day. From openly endorsing the gay community “Digging Your Scene” to an outright attack on Margaret Thatcher ‘Celebrate (The Day After You)’ – a duet with the late, great Curtis Mayfield, The Blow Monkeys were always the thinking person’s pop group. As the 1980s progressed, so too did the band’s musical style, from a sound once dubbed “jazz punk” by Robert to a more soulful, jazzy style and an ever-increasing adoption of dance music. The Blow Monkeys of their rare, indie debut single ‘Live Today Love Tomorrow’ (recorded on a shoestring in 1981) would be barely recognisable to those who bought the Balearic remix of ‘La Passionara’ from 1990. And yet a soulful, spiritually uplifting strain has continued to run through their music – and, indeed, that of Robert’s solo recordings – to this day. If the Blow Monkeys initially seemed at odds with the music scene, that might be because their frontman/songwriter had lived halfway across the world. “Before moving to Sydney, I had been a T Rex fanatic and a soul fan living in Kings Lynn – “My first hero was Marc Bolan” explains Robert. “The idea of staying in Sydney and trying to make something from there wasn’t an option. I decided it was a toss-up between going to London or New York. Landed just in time for first riots in Brixton in ’81.” Having “Answered an ad in Melody Maker”, the Blow Monkeys were born and Robert Howard transmogrified into Dr. Robert (from the Beatles song). “It started off as a joke on the sleeve of our first single,” laughs Robert. “But it stuck!” The band’s eccentric early performances stirred up enough interest to secure a deal. “Eventually, we managed to get the Moonlight Club in West Hampstead to give us a residency,” recalls Robert. Jack Steven signed us for RCA and then promptly left. Luckily, a new junior in the office called Korda Marshall took us under his wing. He ended up as head of Warners.” The Blow Monkeys’ debut album, 1984’s ‘Limping For A Generation’, was an edgy mix of sinister post- punk, sensual glam rock and dramatic late 60s pop, melding Robert’s teenage obsession with Marc Bolan and T Rex with a love of Australian band the Laughing Clowns, a legacy of his teenage years spent ‘down under’. Critically acclaimed, the album secured the band a cult following and spawned several singles. The ambitious ‘Atomic Lullaby’ took a leaf from Love’s Forever Changes album in its delicate mix of strings and arpeggio guitar and its dramatic build to a (literally) explosive climax. Equally potent was ‘Wildflower’, a brash and sexy ode to an ex-lover which just oozed class. “It was written about a girl I knew,” admits Robert. “It’s all in the lyric and it’s a true story.” Despite only modest sales of their debut LP, RCA clearly saw huge potential in the band – and it paid off. Their sole release of 1985, ‘Forbidden Fruit’, introduced a more confident, well-rounded sound. “We knew we were getting better,” admits Robert. “A key song for us. The first song critics really ‘liked’ and the first we ever put out in the USA. Picked up a good college following. The video was a change, though. Dancing with a pretty girl. Slippery slope!” Their next album, ‘Animal Magic’ (1986), proved to be their breakthrough courtesy of the hit single ‘Digging Your Scene’. Actually, the song was something of an afterthought on Robert’s part but RCA recognised its appeal and, in a bid to modernise their sound, overlaid new drums in New York using a (then pioneering) Linn machine. A beguiling blend of R&B, pop and jazz, ‘Digging Your Scene’ proved to be popular across the globe – and might remain their calling card to this day. “That was the last song [on the album] I wrote and I just did a four-track home demo for the band to hear,” explains Robert. “It was the first time we started using backing singers. The soul side of my writing was coming to the fore, listening to lots of Marvin. I’d read an article where Donna Summer said AIDS was God’s revenge on homosexuals and I disagreed! The song itself was a homage to those gay clubs like Taboo that I used to go to – even though I’m not gay – because the music and the vibe was so good. You would see everyone from Leigh Bowery to Mark E. Smith there.” A smoother assemblage than before, ‘Animal Magic’ was free from the rough edges and the vague sense of threat of its predecessor. Robert openly admitted he’d been listening to a lot of 70s soul and funk, the likes of Curtis Mayfield and Marvin Gaye, which he’d initially loved as a youngster. “When I came back to England, I got back into what I used to be into as a teenager – which was soul music,” explains Robert. “I shared this flat above Red Records in Brixton with a guy called Hector, who had a DJ’ing residency at the Wag club in Soho. I was exposed to so much music, especially early hip hop and house, lots of African stuff and reggae. I was like a sponge, soaking up everything musically and culturally that I was exposed to in Brixton. It politicised me more too.” ‘Digging Your Scene’ also broke the USA for the Blow Monkeys though Robert claims to have been unfazed by this success. “I took it all in my stride. I don’t think I realised what a big deal it was but obviously I enjoyed it! A lot of our contemporaries didn’t crack America so we were lucky. I could never really understand why. Everything was a bit of a surprise to me but I loved it because 90% of the music that I’m into comes from America so it was fantastic to get over there and see it. When you’ve got a major record company backing you, for a while there you feel like royalty – but I wanted to be my own person.” Subsequent singles such as ‘Wicked Ways’ betrayed their debt to black America, albeit given The Blow Monkeys’ own unique treatment; on ‘Sweet Murder’, Robert duetted with Jamaican toaster Eek-A- Mouse, a union inspired by nights out in Brixton’s reggae clubs. Representing that era here is the B- side of ‘Wicked Ways’, ‘Walking The Bluebeat’ which, according to Robert, was “about moving into Brixton on the day of the riots in ’84 – most people were trying to get out!”. The title of the Blow Monkeys’ next album, ‘She Was Only a Grocer's Daughter’, might have been a sideways swipe at Margaret Thatcher but that didn’t hurt its commercial appeal any. ‘It Doesn't Have To Be This Way’ gave them their biggest-ever UK hit (it also graced the soundtrack of Police Academy 4: Citizens on Patrol), but operational problems Stateside stymied its success there. “The only song I've ever written that I absolutely knew was a hit from the off,” is how Robert describes the song, “criminally never released in the USA because of internal politics at RCA.” ‘Out With Her’ (“my George Michael moment – rubbish”!), ‘Some Kind Of Wonderful’ and the rousing collaboration with Curtis Mayfield, ‘Celebrate (The Day After You)’, were all converted from LP tracks into Top 75 singles. Sadly, the last of these was banned by the Beeb because it coincided with a general election. For Robert, it was naturally a thrill to work with one of his musical heroes. “What can you say: massive honour. Spent some time with the great man in Montreux doing TV shows. He was very gentle but with a backbone of steel. He wasn't surprised when the BBC banned this record. He'd been through that stuff before.” That same year, 1987, the Blow Monkeys participated in Red Wedge, a well-meaning aggregation of left-wing pop stars and politicians who embarked on a tour of Britain in a bid to help educate young people about the issues of the day. For the band, it felt like a logical extension of singing from the conscience.” By contrast, the band were asked to contribute to the soundtrack for the film ‘Dirty Dancing’. Given the shortest of sessions, the band chose to cover Leslie Gore’s ‘You Don't Own Me’ and thought nothing of it – until the movie became the biggest-grossing film of its time and the soundtrack stayed at No. 1 on the US charts for a staggering 18 weeks! “Recorded one morning in a hurry,” says Robert of the project. “Went on to sell over 40 million as the soundtrack inexplicably – to me, anyway – went ballistic. I have never seen the film. The guy who wrote it actually hated our version. Think he liked the royalties, though!” After a couple of minor hits in 1988 (‘This Is Your Life’, ‘It Pays To Belong’), the Blow Monkeys returned to the Top 10 with ‘Wait’. Or rather, they didn’t – because ‘Wait’ was credited to ‘Dr. Robert from the Blow Monkeys & Kym Mazelle’. The track was a blatant tribute to American house music – indeed, it was mixed by two pioneers of Detroit techno, Juan Atkins and Kevin Saunderson – while Mazelle was a star of the Chicago house scene – and yet worked on its own terms. Robert explains that they “originally recorded a version with Sam Brown but her record company rejected it. Some say it was one of the first UK garage records but I couldn't comment. I knew about Kym from those early Marshall Jefferson records.”‘Wait’ was the third single from the band’s early 1989 album ‘Whoops! There Goes the Neighbourhood’. Although the album fell shy sales wise, RCA reinvigorated the band’s sales potential later that year ‘Choices – The Singles Collection’, which reached the Top 5 in the UK. Meanwhile, ‘This Is Your Life’ – suitably remixed by Ten City – and two singles with reggae singer Sylvia Tella, ‘Choice?’ and ‘Slaves No More’ (“stand-alone single that went unnoticed, a personal fave”), helped remould the Blow Monkeys firmly as a dance act. “I was on a roll at this point,” explains Robert, “producing and writing everything on piano – which is unusual for me. Even Billy Bragg liked ‘Choice?’.”This transformation was completed in 1990 with ‘Springtime For The World’. At the start of the new decade, dance music felt like the future and The Blow Monkeys offered their own, quite unique twist on it. An ambitious exercise, the LP was not only their longest but also their least successful – despite the clubland success of ‘La Passionara’ (Robert: “I have always been drawn towards things Iberian”), and the huge potential of the uplifting, anthemic title track, which was released as a single but somehow missed out. “Should have been a hit,” reflects Robert. “When it wasn't, I knew it was time to move on. Baggy Madchester was on the horizon and it was time for a change.” Another of the LP’s highlights was ‘Be Not Afraid’, sung in Arabic by Algeria's popular ‘primo raï’ performer, Cheb Khaled. “He came in with a cigar in one hand and a shot of whiskey in the other and proceeded to sing this in one take,” remembers Robert. “Astonishing guy. Proper rock and roll rebel, an outsider – he couldn't go home to Algeria because he had made too many enemies.” Soon afterwards, the Blow Monkeys split up, having enjoyed the previous seven years or so touring the world, creating five remarkable albums and littering the walls of many a teenage girl courtesy of their many hits and Robert’s striking good looks. For nearly two decades, the band was put on ice... By this time, Robert had befriended Paul Weller, whose own musical path with The Style Council all but mirrored that of The Blow Monkeys. Robert appeared at a Style Council show in 1989; and both collaborated with Paul’s wife and fellow Style Councillor Dee C. Lee on her Slam Slam project. “We moved out to the English countryside (Oxfordshire) with our young family,” explains Robert, “just along from the Manor studios where Weller was recording so I ended up playing lots of stuff on his first three solo albums.”Seemingly enjoying the freedom to explore new musical avenues, Robert also concocted two solo singles for the Regal Zonophone label as well as creating a new partnership. “I formed an acoustic/electro duo with Benny Staples (ex-Woodentops drummer) called Starjuice,” remembers Robert. “We put out the ‘Catch A Wave’ EP and got a deal to do an album with Japanese label Pony Canyon. Benny left to go back to his native New Zealand just as we were about to start recording so I called up some old friends (Weller, Talbot, Marco from Young Disciples, Alan White) and went to Leamington Spa to make the Realms Of Gold album.” Post-dance music, Robert and Weller shared a voyage of discovery back to acoustic/roots music of the late 60s and early 70s, from singer-songwriters like Neil Young to the later work of Stevie Winwood’s Traffic. “I had put down the computer and picked up the acoustic guitar. Inspired by Tim Hardin, Fred Neil, Nick Drake, Dylan, early Bolan, etc. Open tunings and biographical songs. I did some serious listening and exploring. I needed to educate myself. Musical archaeology. Did lots of solo acoustic gigs. Just put the guitar in the boot and off we went. Loved it.” This more organic, solo, guitar-based vibe characterised Dr. Robert’s solo recordings across the 1990s. The title of 1995’s poignant and atmospheric ‘Circular Quay’ harked back to Robert’s youth back in Sydney (“Weller played lovely piano”, adds Robert). ‘The Coming Of Grace’ was a fully-blown band effort, a joyous and spiritually uplifting anthem so could so easily have engaged with the Britpop generation (though it was a “proper radio hit”). Both were taken from Robert’s solo debut ‘Realms Of Gold’, issued in Japan in 1994. Collaborators included ex-Special AKA singer Rhoda Dakar and Young Disciple bassist Marco Nelson. ‘Realms Of Gold’ remains a remarkable accomplishment. ‘Ode To Bacchus’ was “a drinking song: I was never an alcoholic but in the end it nearly killed me and this song seems to predict that”; ‘Don’t Let It Slip’ was “a self-help mantra, actually taken from a radio session in Tokyo”; and on the extravaganza ‘Have No Roots’, “Weller added lots of bv's, played bass and 12-string guitar”. According to its creator, the title track itself was “my Keats-inspired manifesto, recorded at Abbey Road with a proper big orchestra”. NOTE: INTERNATIONAL MAIL IS LIMITED DUE TO THE VIRUS, PLEASE CHECK BEFORE BIDDING OR BUYING THAT I DELIVER TO YOUR COUNTRY, SEE SHIPPING TAB. SINCE U.S. POSTAL RATES RECENTLY WENT UP I AM NOW OFFERING THE OPTION OF 1st CLASS OR MEDIA MAIL FOR THE U.S. & IT'S TERRITORIES, MEDIA MAIL GOES GROUND TRANSPORT SO WILL TAKE A LITTLE LONGER, BUT IT IS CHEAPER, ALSO IF YOU WANT PRIORITY, THAT IS AN OPTION TOO. INTERNATIONAL BIDDERS TAKE NOTE !!! INTERNATIONAL SHIPPING IS BASED ON THE WEIGHT OF THE ITEM AND COUNTRY SHIPPED TO. 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Price: 2.99 USD

Location: Los Angeles, California

End Time: 2025-01-13T10:18:26.000Z

Shipping Cost: 4.63 USD