Customer Reviews

Fireside Favorites

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Between punks fading light and the dawn of evolving New Wave Synth bands such as Human League, OMD & Ultravox et al came the impossible to describe `Fad Gadget'. After his 1st two brilliant singles `Back to Nature' & `Ricky's Hand' I was really looking forward to his debut album & it turns out to be a wholly unique affair. Simple Synth lines accompanying Frank Tovey's snarly nasty sarcastic vocals which serve his droll lyrics and view of the World very well.. Check out his wonderfully snide take on Nucleur oblivion on Fireside Favorites. However, my favorite track here would have to be Coitus Interruptus, just for the sheer gall of having a chorus line with the line coitus interruptus in it. For some reason, neither of his 1st two seminal DIY Synth records `Back to Nature' and `Ricky's Hand' were put on this album, which in a way is good to see - as anyone wanting to buy the album would have already had these. He is however an acquired taste and I can imagine people not really appreciating his talk-sing style. `Pedestrian Wait' has a lot of his trademark growls and grunts in it. All the while you get the feeling that he was trying to shock his audience and this is mostly effective. The music is simple and aggressive but pretty original for 1980. Usually overlooked as one of the innovators of the early early 80's synth style this unusual record is a one-off experience, being thoughtful, shocking and enthusiasticly nasty whenever it can. I'll give it a 4 out of 5.

The first artist to sign Mute Records was Fad Gadget. And here is his first album. He was a true pioneer on the synthesizer based music that shortly after appeared everywhere! There are many fantastic (and a bit crazy) songs on this album. Songs like "pedestrian", "fireside favourites" and "newsreel" are songs you will remember. When it comes to the tracks that you will ALWAYS return to, it had to be the sexual " coitus interruptus" and "Insecticide". When you play these songs you will laugh and shake your head and say: This dude is BRILLIANT CRAZY!....and then you play them again. :-) (you were one of my childhood heroes mr.tovey (aka fad gadget), you gave me many fine moments, and a start to explore electronic music.Thank you and Rest In Peace)

I bought this when it came out on vinyl and really liked it. It's great to have it on CD now. A couple songs are a bit "out there," particularly "Insecticide," which is rather irritating to listen to frequently, but the rest of the songs are quite good. "Arch of the Aorta" is a particularly moving instrumental. After 30 years, this album still holds up very well. It certainly is better than the crap most of the more popular groups using synthesizers were putting out at the same time (sappy Human League, ABC, etc.). Frank Tovey was not simply a fad(ish) gadget but a fascinating musician who reflected and expressed the anger, fear and disgust people were feeling at the time.