"PPP- Pink World - the definitive edition"

Pink World (25 years later)

In the early 80s, I was just starting a solo career. It was a time in which you were allowed to make mistakes and learn your craft - unlike today, where you get to release a single (that someone else wrote and played), and hope for a hit - no hit, no more singles. I was fresh from a truly wacko experience in a hard rock band. That's been fairly well documented elsewhere (but not completely).

I moved to Germany by accident/default/marriage, and started recording - a lot - and spent 1979-85 in a blur of 20- hour da(ze)ys, 19 nervous breakdowns (in retrospect drug-induced, but we won't go there now), recording everything from instrumental disco to early prog to country and western - and teaching myself to play with myself in the studio (should read "play along with," but one's the same as the other).

My partner and friend was Nigel Jopson, who engineered everything I did in those days. It was he and I in the studio, along with assorted German lowlifes providing the necessary motivation. The "producer" of my early records had bigger fish to fry than actually enter a recording studio - this music is Nigel and I trying to stretch the rules.

The mixing engineer was Andy Lunn, a true talent, so I'll not forget him here.

The "producer" was quite talented - at making deals and money - all of which he kept for himself. His streak over, he's now hiding out on a small island in the Mediterranean (heh heh). At any rate, in 1982, we made an arrangement with Geffen Records to release my output.

Our contact person was John Kalodner, who in my estimation was almost singularly responsible for the dumbingdown of 80s music - you remember all those hair bands that sounded/looked the same? JK. So John flew to Germany, with the result that Geffen released Planet P Project and the Why Me? single, which made a slight impact on early MTV.

Then the trouble started. The next record due was to be Some Tough City. John hated the lyrics to both A Fine, Fine Day and The First Day of Summer - and I wouldn't change them. I was of the naïve opinion that record companies existed to promote what they considered to be worthwhile music.

While we were going around and around about Some Tough City, I delivered Pink World, and the shit REALLY hit the fan. Some of the comments that filtered back to me were "unreleasable" and "this kid's crazy." And some bad ones, too.

Long story short, I got traded like a baseball player to MCA Records, which went ahead and released both of these records, plus the doomed-to-obscurity Blue Highway, which suffered from other problems unrelated to me and VERY related to the "producer." Pink World hung in there somehow, despite my attempt at commercial suicide - the vinyl version goes for up to 200 bucks on eBay and Amazon today.

So here it is on CD - I've remastered it (very slightly) and brought it up to digital pressing standards. I'm not going to tell you what it's about - that's for YOU to figure out.

(I've gotten a kick out of all the well-meaning interpretations I've read.)

Does it stand the test of time? I don't know. Wonder where I've been and what I've been up to? Have a look at www.truebeliever.de.

Thanks for listening.

Tony Carey
Germany
October 2008