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AoW 27: Measure for Measure - Icehouse.
now with extra cheese!
This one goes back a
ways. A long time back. In fact it's the first equal
CD I ever bought. Y'see I'd just bought a CD
player...
No Jules, it doesn't play records...
...so had to buy something decent to play on it. I
chose Love Over Gold/Dire Straits and Measure for
Measure by Icehouse, this weeks pick.
Measure for Measure was
released in 1986, the first year I spent as a
super-introverted, self-absorbed brat teenager
after getting dragged kicking and screaming over to
Australia right after my final year of high school,
but that's another story. Anyway, I first heard the
single No Promises on Adelaide's SAFM and had to call the station to
see who it was because they hadn't back-announced
it. It sounded just like Iva Davies and the
Icehouse guitar solos around the time were very
distinctive thanks to the masterful Bob
Kretschmer. Measure for Measure is almost another
reinvention of the Icehouse sound. The guitars are
still there and still great but the synths are
leaned on a little more making the sound very
atmospheric (I know, I keep using that word in
AotWs, bite me.)
Around the time this album was made, Iva was also
working with Bob, Masaki Tanazawa, Graeme Murphy and
the Sydney Dance Company to produce a very striking
modern ballet, Boxes. No Promises and another M4M
track, Regular Boys make appearances and quite
amazing reprises all throughout the work. The
soundtrack was later released on CD some years later,
but that's also another story.
Incidentally, here's the CD player I bought back
then. One of the very few portable CDs at the time,
ran on 4 (or was it six?) C size batteries which gave
you about two CDs play time. Now after my iPod has
finished laughing at that, I'll mention again that
this was nearly a quarter of a century ago.
Sure looks... eighties...
Clockwise from top, battery pack, player, IR
remote, IR receiver, AC power supply.
It hooked in to a radio cassette player I had at the time which looked very much like it. A National RX-C34, in fact. No, I didn't have to remember that because it's sitting just a few feet away from me, still goes as well as the day it was made, and serves as the speakers for our little merry band's iTunes box, Badger. But that's another story...