Friday Random Ten

Juaneco y Su Combo - Linda Nena
Kinks - Shangri-La
Nocturnes - Third Star to the Left
John Foxx - Europe After the Rain
Ultravox - Young Savage
Pine Box Boys - The Wedding Gown
Eno - Dead Finks Don't Talk
Siouxsie & the Banshees - This Wheel's on Fire
Jam - Tales from the Riverbank
Mekons - Darkness & Doubt

Apparently, our Artist of the Week is John Foxx, frontman for Ultravox when they were good. He did three albums with them: Ultravox!, founding document of the prog-punk genre; the punkier Ha! Ha! Ha!; and my favorite, Systems of Romance, a post-punk tribute to the joys of dislocation. After Foxx's departure, Ultravox put out one pretty good album (pretty good if you forgot they were called Ultravox, that is), then quickly descended into over-orchestrated humorless schmaltz. Foxx put out two classics: Metamatic, chilly, distant, and mechanistic; and The Garden, a lusher album in which at times he veers perilously close to human warmth--without, happily, ever quite stumbling into that pitfall. I don't know much of his later stuff, but he seems to have gone off in an ambient techno direction that doesn't much interest me. Still, three great albums with Ultravox and two great solo albums--not too shabby.

Pick someone from your list as Artist of the Week, and tell us a little about them.