Rpm Records UK
2005
Can You Hear Me OK?
About This Album
After RPM issued Technicolour Biography, a collection of incomplete demos intended for John Howard's follow-up to his 1975 debut, Kid in a Big World, it seemed like the John Howard vaults were emptied out. As it turned out, that's not quite the case. After CBS rejected the Technicolour Biography material for not being commercial enough, Howard wrote a brand-new set of songs in a little over a month, and then headed into the studio with a commercially savvy producer endorsed by CBS: Biddu, the man who helmed Carl Douglas' camp disco classic, "Kung Fu Fighting." On paper this didn't seem like an ideal match, but the label wanted Howard to have a disco hit, and Biddu seemed to be the producer to deliver on this promise. Such careful plans have a way of unraveling, and CBS' scheming backfired. Howard and Biddu had known each other for a few years prior to recording the album that wound up as Can You Hear Me OK?, and Biddu had wanted to record the singer/songwriter for years. When they teamed for this particular project, they had commercial success on their mind, but it didn't take the shape of what the label had been thinking. Howard wrote a set of a bright, cheerful pop tunes and love songs, sanding down many of the eccentricities that marked Kid in a Big World and Technicolour Biography, yet retaining his exceptional sense of songcraft and very British sense of theatricality.
Track List (try tracks 6,9,10 and 13)

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