Jesus Loves You - Popularity Breeds Contempt (1992)

After Culture Club broke up in 1986, Boy George started a solo career, releasing his debut album 'Sold' in 1987, and issuing a number of singles from it. For his next two albums, 'Tense Nervous Headache' in 1988 and 'Boyfriend' in 1989, he wanted to break out in a new direction by dabbling in electronic dance music, but the singles taken from these albums did not gain much commercial success, even though they were often played at clubs. In order to pursue this new direction, he founded the band Jesus Loves You, as a collective project with other musicians, and they were signed to his own label More Protein, which aimed to be an underground label and was not meant to release music for the charts. He adopted the pseudonym "Angela Dust", and the first single by the new band was 'After The Love', which was about the separation from his ex-bandmate Jon Moss, drummer of Culture Club. Two more singles followed, but 'Generations Of Love' and 'One On One' had only modest success in the UK Singles Chart. On a journey across India, George became interested in the Hare Krishna movement, being particularly impressed with their philosophy, and as a result he wrote the song 'Bow Down Mister'. This was a crucial turning point for the band, because it was their first religious song, and when it was released as a single in 1991 it became a hit in the UK, peaking at number 27 in the singles chart. Because of this success, the band's debut album, 'The Martyr Mantras', was rush-released the same year, and in 1991 remixes of 'Generations Of Love' and 'After The Love' were issued as singles. In July 1992, the band played a Hare Krishna festival in Moscow, in front of an audience of 35,000, and December was to see the release of their second album, 'Popularity Breeds Contempt'. The single 'Sweet Toxic Love' was pre-released, but Virgin Records was so disappointed in its chart position that they cancelled the album and refused to release it, with the band dissolving shortly afterwards. Some of the songs from the record eventually appeared in re-mixed form on 'The Devil In Sister George' EP in 1994. and in 2005 a white label 12" of a track from the 1992 sessions called 'Love Your Brother' appeared online, but that second album has stubbornly remained lost. Recently a six track bootleg appeared on Youtube, containing recordings from the 1992 sessions, and so by adding a couple of tracks from the same time period we can approximate what the second album from Jesus Loves You could have sounded like. 

Track listing

01 Am I Losing Control
02 Sweet Toxic Love
03 If I Could Fly
04 Love Your Brother (Supalaska Mix)
05 It Doesn't Happen Every Day
06 In Maya
07 Miss Me Blind (Return To Gender Mix)
08 You Are The Deal

Various Artists - The Hitmakers Sing Lou Reed (2018)

After leaving the Velvet Underground in August 1970, Lou Reed moved to his parents' home on Long Island, and took a job at his father's tax accounting firm as a typist, by his own account earning $40 a week. He began writing poetry, which was published later in 2018 by Anthology Editions, and he then signed a recording contract with RCA Records in 1971, recording his first solo album at Morgan Studios in Willesden, London with session musicians including Steve Howe and Rick Wakeman from the band Yes. The album, 'Lou Reed', contained versions of unreleased Velvet Underground songs, some of which had originally been recorded for 'Loaded' but shelved, but it was overlooked by most pop music critics, and did not sell well. Reed's commercial breakthrough was his next album, 'Transformer', released in November 1972, and co-produced by David Bowie and Mick Ronson. It introduced Reed to a wider audience in the UK, especially the single 'Walk On The Wild Side', which was a salute to the misfits and hustlers who once surrounded Andy Warhol in the late 60's. Each of the song's five verses describes a person who had been a fixture at The Factory during the mid-to-late 1960's, and its transgressive lyrics somehow evaded radio censorship. Ronson's arrangements brought out new aspects of Reed's songs, with 'Perfect Day' featuring delicate strings and soaring dynamics, and while the album contains some of Reed's most commercial compositions, it was some years before other artists felt confident enough to tackle them. This was spearheaded by Eurythmics take on 'Satellite Of Love' in 1983, followed by the choice of 'Perfect Day' as the Children In Need single in 1997, and this seemed to have opened up the floodgates for artists to plunder the album and record their unique takes of the songs. This album is a bit different so most of the others in this series, as the artists tend to take an irreverent view of the songs, witness the versions by A.C. Marias, Enzo Pietropoali and Bikini The Cat, but they are also done with much love for the original material, and so this album has become one of my most played from the series. 

Track listing

01 Vicious (A.C. Marias 1989)  
02 Andy's Chest (Damn Hippie Freaks 2016) 
03 Perfect Day (Kirsty McColl & Evan Dando 1995)  
04 Hangin' Round (Squeeze 2015) 
05 Walk On The Wild Side (Edie Brickell & New Bohemians 1990)  
06 Make Up (B.E.F. featuring Boy George 2013)  
07 Satellite Of Love (Eurythmics 1983)  
08 Wagon Wheel (The Satellites 2015)    
09 New York Telephone Conversation (Enzo Pietropaoli 1997)  
10 I'm So Free (Bikini The Cat 2005) 
11 Goodnight Ladies (Justin Vivian Bond 2018)

Dubversive featuring Boy George - Demographics (1997)

In 1995 Boy George released the rock-driven album 'Cheapness And Beauty', which moved away from the electronic sound of his previous records, and gave us some rock-oriented tracks with a glam-rock edge. One of the reasons he cited for this change in style was the fact that he was revisiting his teenage years while writing his autobiography, 'Take It Like A Man', which was released around the same time as the album. The record peaked at number 44 in the UK album chart, and the single taken from it, 'Same Thing In Reverse', became a Top 30 hit in the US. Having got that out of his system, in 1997 he started a new project, joining up with two long-time musicians, John Themis and Ritchie Stevens, and forming a group named Shallow, which was later changed to Dubversive. The original idea was to make music which incorporated trip-hop, dub and reggae, but despite one single released in 1998, which was a multi-mix version of the Junior Murvin classic 'Police And Thieves', and which featured Mica Paris, the project was not picked up by any major labels, and so it was quietly abandoned. Before that happened, however, the trio went into the studio and recorded an album's worth of material, which was then shelved, with some of the songs later being included on the 2002 Culture Club Box Set. The album is best known as the 'Dubversive' album, but the original title was to have been 'Demographics', and so that's what it's called for this post of an extremely obscure part of the Boy George discography. 

Track listing

01 Police & Thieves
02 Armageddon 
03 Hiroshima 
04 Shoreline 
05 Run Run Run
06 Children 
07 Righteousness 
08 I Could Be Someone 
09 Petrified 

Boy George - Covers Up (2021)

Boy George has announced that he's recording an album of cover versions several times in his career, but never followed through, although he has often included covers on his albums, as well as gifting them to tribute albums, film soundtracks, and posting them on his Instagram account. As he's never got around to doing it himself then it's up to us to do it for him, and so this collection includes demos, internet leaks and Instagram posts to make George's very own 'Pin Ups', titled 'Covers Up'. The earliest recording on here is from 1988, and the latest is from March 2021, while the choices run the gamut from 60's pop through to 70's glam and 80's electro-pop, and is book-ended by his individual take of a couple of soul classics, so while we wait for the official covers albums to arrive this should tide us over nicely. 

Track listing

01 I Can't Stand The Rain
02 Love Is A Stranger
03 Children Of The Revolution
04 It Ain't Me Babe
05 Somebody To Love
06 Down By The Riverside
07 Sorrow
08 The Crying Game
09 Make Up
10 What Becomes Of The Broken-Hearted

The cover is a superb piece of artwork by Mark Ashkenazi.