----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Michael Bennett" <mrhonorama@ameritech.net>
> I'm guessing that there are a few list members (and my
> main guess would be Stewart) who know a lot more about
> them than me.  They are a trio, who became all the
> rage in Britain with a series of dance-pop singles,
> including a cover of Neil Young's "Only Love Can Break
> Your Heart".  I keep meaning to delve into their
> earlier stuff, and haven't yet.

Although I agree that GOOD HUMOR is the most Audities-friendly of 
their discs (it was extremely popular round these parts upon its 
release, as I recall, partially because it was produced by Swedish pop 
god Tore Johannsen of Cardigans/Wannadies/Eggstone/etc. fame), SE's 
first album, FOXBASE: ALPHA remains my personal favorite. Not least 
because it's a great album, but also because I have fond memories of 
it from the time.  I spent most of the summer it came out visiting my 
parents in their new condo in Richmond, Texas, and the daylight hours 
of my average day were primarily spent out by the pool reading all of 
Anne Tyler's novels in chronological order, followed by Jill 
McCorkle's, ditto.  All of my music was stowed with the rest of my 
belongings in my girlfriend's garage in Clovis, New Mexico, waiting 
for me when the fall semester started, but I found my old Walkman in 
my folks' house, so I bought a big box of batteries at Wal-Mart and 
wandered around the cassette racks at Sound Warehouse to see if I 
could find anything interesting.  The cover of St. Etienne's FOXBASE: 
ALPHA looked extremely promising for some reason -- it's still one of 
my favorite album covers ever ( http://tinyurl.com/dvaas ) -- and 
since I could only afford to buy one cassette after buying the 
batteries, that's the one I got.

That was sometime around the first day of summer.  I flew back to New 
Mexico after my dad's birthday, the last week of August.  FOXBASE: 
ALPHA was quite literally the only album I listened to for that whole 
two-month stretch.  And you should bear in mind that my other big 
albums of this period were the Posies' DEAR 23 (which I'm fairly 
certain *still* holds the title of Album I've Listened To The Most 
Times In My Entire Life, despite my almost OCD-like devotion to 
FOXBASE: ALPHA during my time in the suburbs of Houston), Game 
Theory's TWO STEPS FROM THE MIDDLE AGES and My Bloody Valentine's 
LOVELESS: dance music was absolutely not on my radar screen in 1992, 
and I have in fact probably never danced to any of these songs.  So 
don't let the "dance music" tag scare you off.  Bob Stanley and Pete 
Wiggs have always approached dance music from the position of British 
indie kids whose main obsessions are with tunes, not beats: besides 
the Neil Young cover, the other cover on the album is of "Kiss and 
Make Up," then a fairly recent single by the ultra-twee UK 
indiepoppers the Field Mice.

S