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Baker's Dozen

Rediscovering Mystery: Neko Case's Baker's Dozen
Emma Madden , May 15th, 2018 10:23

With her ninth full-length album set for release at the beginning of next month, Neko Case takes Emma Madden on a trip from The Cramps to Joanna Newsom, as she calls at 13 ports of strangeness for her Baker's Dozen.

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Frankie Goes To Hollywood - Welcome To The Pleasuredome
When this came out I was just coming into the awareness of people who are gay and a lot of my friends were coming out at the time. I saw how painful it was for them and I was so impressed by the fact that this band would just come out and be so in your face gay. I just thought that was the most powerful, exhilarating, brave, awesome thing. And I loved the fact it was a huge fucking worldwide hit. 'Cause when things like that happen, even if it's not a perfect moment, to see that as a young person gives you so much hope. And seeing my friends go through these incredibly hard realisations and trying to figure out how to tell their families, how to be at school, how to live their life - adolescence is hard enough - and so the fact that the biggest band in the world at the time was super openly gay and just crushing it was pretty great. The fact that they were gay is not why I love them, I thought the music was so great. I think that Trevor Horn did a lot of the playing on it as well, and he's just this multifaceted swiss-army knife of a performer, producer. The man makes good fucking sounds. Even today it doesn't sound out of place, it's not aged.