HW: Damned by the curse of Damned

[Nick Medford]

In message <022801c1a1f2$deb2c560$0100a8c0 at kermitz>, Si Halley
<sihalley at CABLEINET.CO.UK> writes
>> >and for the gold star with the diamond inlay:
>> >
>> >Whitney Houston!
>>
>> I'll have to get back to you on this one ... ;^)
>
>Here`s another, shorter route. Houston was on Bill Laswell/Material`s 1983
>album `One Down`(Her first recording apparently).

That's the one I was after!

Before-she-was-famous stuff as you say.

>Laswell produced
>Motorhead`s `Orgasmatron`.

Well, even more direct, as Jon was prepared to allow producers, but I'm
not :-)... Ginger Baker has played with Laswell both as a member of
Material and as a solo artist. Fans of percussion frenzy are advised to
check out the track "Obsessed" on Material's Live in Japan album.

Also Laswell played with Daevid Allen as part of New York Gong (the
original Material band evolved from this).

It's always a source of amazement to me that I possess an album on
which Whitney Houston appears, but what's even more remarkable is
that the song she's singing is actually an old Soft Machine track called
"Memories"- a version of this song also appears on Daevid Allen's
"Bananamoon" album, where it's sung by Robert Wyatt.  The song was
written by Hugh Hopper although it's mis-credited on the Material disc.

"One Down" is in any case a funk/soul/disco album (gulp) although it's
fair to say that it's better than nearly anything else I've heard in that
genre.

Of course, once you bring Laswell into the picture, you open up a whole
new galaxy of possible connections.

--
Nick Medford