49 minutes, 5 seconds

Data-Bank-A
Cover Story

Try as I did to find a cover image of this album, I came up empty. In fact, it appears as if any record (no pun intended) of this CD ever having been released has been expunged from the True Age Records/Data-Bank-A Web site. Which is a shame, but understandable. My guess is that DBA frontman Andrew Szava-Kovats never bothered to secure the rights to release the songs on this album (all cover versions, you see--hence the title), and he had to, um, cease and desist, as they say in the fancy lawyer letters.

I guess that makes my copy of the CD rare and valuable! Uh, except it's only a CDR, because Szava-Kovats was too cheap to press his later releases on CD. Or couldn't generate interest from a record label. Not sure which is the kinder thing to say.

Anyway, it's a fun disc. Szava-Kovats applies his fat analog keyboards and doomy vocal delivery to songs we know (Depeche Mode's "Never Let Me Down Again," Kraftwerk's "Radioactivity") and those just on the periphery of our collective listening experience (Soft Cell's "The Girl with the Patent Leather Face," the Psychedelic Furs' "Sister Europe"). I think my favorite is his nervous-sounding version of Joy Division's "Isolation," which also appears, appropriately enough, on the Isolation EP Data-Bank-A released back in the '80s.

Too bad Cover Story was eighty-sixed from the DBA catalog, but I'm glad I got my copy before the lawyers arrived.

Also today:

49:05 In Strict Confidence, Collapse
49:05 Noise Unit, Strategy of Violence
New arrival! 59:37 Amnistia, Neophyte