Behold the awesomeness of The Passions' "I'm In Love With A German Filmstar", plus, an ambitious conjecture

Yeah, bout 7 mins I think. I recall WBS playing it on his show once, slightly underwhelmed by the single edit as a result.

Chris Whitley covered the Passions song on the first of two posthumous records that have come out, the one entitled Reiter In. Both records are tremendous. His death was a great loss.

How could anyone hate the steve harley song? (or love)

Come up and see me is shithouse.

ph3ar my skillz as a critic.

Heard it a million times too many.

You never hear "Sebastian" or "Tumbling Dice" on the radio, to name at least two of Harley's infinitely superior songs.

So, whither Barbara Gogan and the lads these days?

(Their follow-up single "Skin Deep" was a hugely underrated beauty)

Drummer Richard Williams was in the identity parade on Never Mind The Buzzcocks in the last series. Barbara Gogan did a couple of dance-ish records IIRC. Didn't latter-day guitarist and keybds player join Bowie's Tin Machine at some point. (This could be bollocks!)

They were a good band - for some reason I saw them around 7 or 8 times circa 81-82, they seemed to play at my Uni every term. Marcello is right about Skin Deep. I'm also very fond of the first album Michael and Miranda.

This long version....

Is it on LP?

The version on the 12"/80s set I've got purports to be a "long version" but is only 3'58", so I think it lies.

xposts to Marcello: My only experience of SH has been his Greatest Hits, on which CUASM was buried away somewhere in the middle. Even when judged on an equal footing as Sebastian and Tumbling Down (which are both still very, very good), it came out on top in my estimation.

Get the first two albums - The Human Menagerie and Psychomodo. Howard Devoto and Magazine five years ahead of their time.

More than half of 'The Psychomodo' is on the Greatest Hits anyway! I love it, it's awesome, weird, but often disarmingly straightforward pop. The title-track especially is a stunner.

I'd like to have a crack at the debut. I've heard 'Death Trip' is an experience not to be missed.

This is a brilliant song. I usually assume she's talking about Klaus Kinski. Who else could it possibly be?

Imperfect clothes:
http://www.verticalpool.com/media/kinski.jpg
http://www.reflectingarea.com/humans/KlausKinski/fitzcarraldo.gif

Trying not to pose
http://www.photos12-vintage.com/images/CFR02067_041.jpg

Playing the part of a real troublemaker:

It's a glamorous world:

Okay, let's do that again:

Playing the part of a real troublemaker:
http://www.german-films.de/app/filmarchive/images/mybestfiendkinski.jpg
http://gfx.filmweb.pl/blog/94504/79184.1.jpg

It's a glamorous world/trying not to pose"
http://www.lviv-life.com/media/pics/venus-sacher-masoch-furs.jpg

More imperfect clothes:
http://250kb.de/u/061018/j/015ab981.jpg
http://www.folgendesdasein.de/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2006/11/kinski-jesus.jpeg

Playing the part of more troublemakers:
http://www.revistazunai.com.br/materias_especiais/werner_herzog/img/herzog_cobra_verde.jpg
http://www.hatii.arts.gla.ac.uk/MultimediaStudentProjects/00-01/0009135b/fruits/images/woyzeck/woyzeck13.jpg

..in a bar, sitting in the corner
http://www.klaus-kinski.de/devo/autogramm_edgar_wallace.jpg

(in imperfect clothes of course)

Still trying not to pose:
http://dvdtoile.com/ARTISTES/1/1535.jpg

Wow could I forget this troublemaker too:
http://www.shystee.com/shysteeblog/archives/aguirrecut.jpg
http://stalker.hautetfort.com/images/medium_aguirre.2.jpg

this is indeed a brilliant song.

i don't see what's so good about this song... it's really slow and trudgey and messy sounding but not in a good way. just sounds like bauhaus fronted by a female singer.

"sounds like bauhaus fronted by a female singer"

why would that be a bad thing?

It's not messy sounding.

yep, this one one of my favourite songs of all time and i always think about Klaus Kinski when i hear it. and yet it's taken me til this thread to realise it's "in imperfect clothes" not "and in perfect clothes".

although kinski wouldn't "try not to pose" to the cameras and girls - he'd be posing like his life depended on it.

the guitars on this album = great proto-Marr jingle jangle

I Love the '80s

I can't believe the Foo Fighters have covered this.

The original "Long Version"...

Who has seen this? I saw the LP in a shop, the version was short.

Did I really say it sounds like Bauhaus? I don't even know what Bauhaus sound like. Weird.

The long version is on that 3 cd set called "12 inch 80s vol 1" which is priced ridiculously cheaply considering the amount of wicked tunes on it.

...except that version is under 4 minutes long

Did I really say it sounds like Bauhaus? I don't even know what Bauhaus sound like. Weird.

i was gonna say, what the hell Bauhaus does this sound like?

Holy hell, how have I managed to not be aware of the Passions for this long?

Just went through Thirty Thousand Feet Over China and that is like some serious lost classic status.

I spent ages looking for a seven minute version of "German Film Star" thanks to this thread. I'm pretty sure it doesn't actually exist, unless it was the Pet Shop Boys/Sam Taylor-Wood version, which is 9 minutes.

No way you could ever confuse it with the original band, though.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=diKoTWcYEEo

So, I got the first two Passions albums, and wow, they're really excellent records. I love Barbara Gogan's voice; vaguely reminiscent of Debora Iyall, which is never a bad thing for me. Just fantastic guitar sound throughout, as well. As a new waver, I can't believe it took me this long to get around to them.