The Art Of Giving Up -- There are many wonderful things about Hybrid Kids, which I'm sure you can discern just from a listen to these two songs. But the most wonderful thing to me is that it's the brainchild of British keyboardist Morgan Fisher who at one point was in Mott The Hoople. I don't know how you go from being in a band championed by David Bowie to an act of total desecration of popular music, but as they say, I'll have what he's having. Hybrid Kids was actually the umbrella title for a "various-artists" compilation of cover songs by bands like "Jah Wurzel," "Malcolm Galaxy," "US Nerds," "The Incestors," "Punky & Porky" and more. Allegedly all the bands on the album were from "Peabody, an obscure little town in Kansas." If you haven't figured it out yet, in truth it was all Fisher, working on a concept he worked out with Iain McNay of the great Cherry Red label in England. So you'd get things like "MacArthur Park" done as a 2-Tone ska tune, "Save Your Kisses for Me" in the style of Devo, and the Beatles' "Get Back" done in the vein of Brian Eno & David Byrne's
My Life in the Bush of Ghosts. Start Googling.
Today's features are "British Standard Unit" doing Rod Stewart's execrable disco hit in bland, Flying Lizards-type drone, and "R.W. Atom" doing "You've Lost That Lovin' Feeling" in the style of Suicide, the late Alan Vega's band. This album is full of ideas you and I both wish we'd had to begin with.
