UK Decay

[paulrabjohn]

i won't shout it from the rooftops , but plans now well underway for a cherry red re-issue of the furyo material. exactly what will be on the cd is not 100% clear , definitely the 2 EP's and possibly some "bonus material".

anyway , as part of this project i have been contacted by cherry red publishing , who "own" the furyo songs. along with all the tracks i knew , there were also published a batch of songs in 1985 (so probably post furyo) by abbo and someone called jenny prestana. cherry red had no idea what these songs were , fairly sure they never got an official release.

so then , does anyone know who jenny prestana was or what band/project abbo wrote these songs for? this is all a complete mystery to me (and cherry red) , any help on identifying these songs would be hugely appreciated.

any thoughts? p

[paulrabjohn]

well ask and you shall find out. as part of the furyo cd release on cherry red , i helped them out with some of the background info. cherry red were aware of ms prestana and i found out the following (this really amazed me , i knew nothing of this lot) ;

after furyo abbo embarked on a project with jenny prestana (who also played with click click under the name jenny onviola). the project was called "badland" , and was basically abbo , jenny and a couple of other string players (ie it was abbo fronting a string quartet). an albums worth of material was written and recorded (and published by cherry red , which is how they knew all this) but the album never got released.

however , one track did see the light of day. the track was called "til the stars fall" and it appeared on a double compilation lp called "for your ears only" on Third Mind Records in about 1985. i've tracked one down , and it is undoubtedly mr abbott crooning a very mellow ballad with part of an orchestra behind him. no rock instruments at all , its pretty far out stuff. this must have been very low key , never ever seen this mentioned anywhere.

also (even better) abbo and jenny apparently put on a production of Brecht's "Caucasian Chalk Circle" in Dunstable. anyone know anything about this ; sounds like a great night?

i will try to get some more info on this , but in the meantime there's a challenge for all you record collectors out there try www.gemm.com if you've got a lot of cash to spend on a copy (no i didn't pay that much before you ask)

happy hunting. p