My record collection
#056: Dean & Britta - Mistress America

Having assumed that the previous Mistress America CD was sent to me by Dean I guess I must have bought this somewhere, although I can’t find any evidence to suggest where. This one’s been opened so it was the first one I owned.

Dean & Britta - Mistress America

So having damned the album with faint praise last time out - “while perhaps not loving it, I could at least appreciate it” - let’s consider the other aspects that didn’t really make it a Dean & Britta album… namely the tracks that aren’t by Dean & Britta:

• Souvenir - Orchestral Manoeuvres in The Dark
  This is clearly the baseline inspiration for D&B’s recordings for the soundtrack… in fact, until the vocal arrives if you didn’t know better you’d assume it was one of their contributions. Since it was a big hit in the UK in ‘81 I was already familiar with the song.
  Souvenir was released in the UK on the 4th August 1981 - on the 1st August I was at Port Vale stadium watching Motorhead… OMD were that off my radar!

• No More Lonely Nights - Paul McCartney
  … OK, so I was a headbanger in ‘81, but I’d always been, and would always be, a Macca fan - since the red/blue Beatles comps came out in 73, and probably even before then. And I sometimes loved Wings more than The Beatles (me and Partridge!). No More Lonely Nights is from Paul’s underrated Give My Regards to Broad Street film/album, and is a beauty.

• Dream Baby Dream - Suicide I didn’t really know Dream Baby Dream until Luna covered it on the (enclosed please find) Your Invitation to Suicide comp in 1993, and hadn’t heard Suicide’s version until a while later. Interesting choice here to pop it on the OST right after the Macca track. Not sure I’d have chosen to put it there.

• You Could’ve Been a Lady - Hot Chocolate
  Oh… here’s the guitars! Early Hot Chocolate, and earlier than anything else on the album, but a lovely finish to the album. Surprised that this was only a minor hit in 1971, and yet is a song I’m very familiar with. I guess it got lots of radio play in later years. The thing about Hot Chocolate is that they were one of those acts that were just so effortlessly brilliant that even though they made music that generally wasn’t my cup of tea I loved them all the same.

• Catalogue Number: AHFOW 10/127
• Artist: Various Artists
• Title: Mistress America: original motion picture soundtrack
• Notes:
• Packaging: Jewel case
• Format: CD
• Bought somewhere for some money?

Previously in my record collection

• #045: Mistress America soundtrack CD