Oldie but Goldie: Love/Hate – Blackout in the Red Room

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I’ve started going through my old CDs now that I have them out of boxes and in a huge cupboard in the living room. While I’m pretty much mp3-only these days, I’ve a pretty huge collection and I can see me digging through and ripping some of the older ones. Amongst them are some classics I’d pretty much forgotten about so now and again I thought it would be nice to pop them up here. Some have memories that go with them, so do excuse me if I waffle.

As Hans would say, it’s my blog so I can write what I want!

First entry is the first release from a Hollywood band called Love/Hate entitled Blackout In The Red Room. To the best of my knowledge (without going to Wikipedia, in other words), they only released one other album – Wasted in America. [update: they had another five including a "best of"]

If memory serves, I got my first copy of this album – on vinyl – as part of a competition prize, probably at the Gateshead Garden Festival way back in the late 1980′s. I absolutely loved it. High tempo, sleazy, varied, shouty choruses… perfect.

I was also lucky enough to see the band at the Newcastle Riverside back in the days when it was a tiny venue, not the dance club or offices that it later became. This dinky place held around 500 (probably far less, really) and the gigs were rarely more than a tenner. This one was packed to the rafters and the band played pretty much the entire album plus a couple from the second album which hadn’t been released at the time. I recall the title track and a lovely ballad called “Don’t Fuck With Me”.

I believe the band are still going, with their last tour in 2009 including a UK leg that I didn’t know about (dammit). If the album’s still on sale, it’s definitely worth checking out. In the meantime, if you go to what I think is their official page (lovehate.com) there are links to all their songs in mp3 formats. Many of the links don’t work, but those for the first album certainly do.

The Oldie but Goldie: Love/Hate – Blackout in the Red Room by Mosher'sUnimaginativelyEntitledBlog, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported License.