Peter Straker - This One's On Me (3CD Set) (2020)

Peter Straker, concert and cabaret star of stage and screen, and long term confidante of Freddie Mercury, released three hybrid rock / cabaret masterworks. These long out of print and highly sought after cult classic, cross-over albums were originally released between 1977 and 1980 and were all produced by stellar production talents.

• Freddie Mercury co-produced Straker’s career defining “This One’s On Me” album alongside Roy Thomas Baker – who was the celebrated producer behind Queen’s classic albums, “Queen”, “Queen II”, “Sheer Heart Attack”, “Jazz” and “A Night At The Opera”.

• Straker’s 1979 album “Changeling” was Tim Friese-Greene’s first full album production role before his acclaimed association with Thomas Dolby and his becoming the de facto 4th member of Talk Talk on their critically acclaimed later albums.

• At the controls for 1980’s “Real Natural Man” was Reinhold Mack whose career includes producer credits for Queen, The Rolling Stones, The Scorpions, Meatloaf and Deep Purple.

• Peter Straker has been hailed as one of the great voices of the British stage. He is the actor-singer who recorded with Freddie Mercury (Barcelona, Time), starred in the notorious musical Hair, in Ken Hill’s original Phantom of the Opera and who is acknowledged as a leading virtuoso interpreter of the Jacques Brel songbook.

• Adept at trailblazing gender-fluid roles, he first shot to fame in 1968 when he starred as Hud in the original London production of Hair. He went on to star in the pioneering queer movie Girl / Boy in 1972 and to play the coveted role of Frank-N-Furter in The Rocky Horror Show. More recently he played the Acid Queen in the revival of Tommy, written by The Who’s Pete Townshend. Signing his original 1972 RCA recording contract within weeks of his friend David Bowie, Straker has been referred to as the ‘Black Bowie’ in acknowledgement of their similar hybrid careers that straddled film, theatre and rock.

• This deluxe CD Box Set contains Peter Straker’s three best known albums, majoring on “This One’s On Me”; the album that best reflects the diversity of the artistic interests and creative influences that have sustained Straker’s long cabaret, concert and theatrical career. It contains songs about the golden age of cinema, ‘The Day The Talkies Came’ and ‘Ragtime Piano Joe’; about the murkier side of showbusiness and performance in ‘The Saddest Clown’, ‘The Annual Penguin Show’ and ‘Vamp’, as well as the cabaret standards ‘Alabama Song’ by Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill and Jacques Brel’s ‘Jackie’. An undoubted highlight of the album is ‘Heart Be Still’, Straker’s own breathtakingly heartfelt take on Lorraine Ellison’s 1967 single.

• A narrating troubadour through the badlands of broken hearts, compromised lives and the underside of theatrical glamour, Straker’s albums are a master class in poetic sensibility and the eternal struggle for happiness, survival and acceptance.

• This three disc set contains all three original albums in reproduction album covers and includes a comprehensive 48 page illustrated booklet containing full album lyrics, Straker’s reminiscences of Freddie Mercury in an essay called Freddie & I, a thorough autobiographical memoir of his own recording career and a full chronological list of his performance credits in Screen, Stage, Concerts!



CD1
1. Ada (0:34)
2. I've Been To Hell And Back (2:46)
3. The Day The Talkies Came (5:04)
4. Heart Be Still (4:07)
5. Alabama Song (4:04)
6. Ragtime Piano Joe (3:43)
7. Jackie (3:14)
8. The Annual Penguin Show (4:36)
9. The Saddest Clown (4:17)
10. Vamp (5:22)

CD2
1. D-D-D-D-D-Danger (3:39)
2. Doesn't Give A Damn (2:43)
3. Believer (4:11)
4. Sweet Sweet Music (2:23)
5. Legs (4:21)
6. Star Circus (3:49)
7. Tear Down The Walls (4:43)
8. The Fab Samba (3:32)
9. The Black Swan (5:01)
10. Talk About Me (2:05)
Bonus Track
11. Queen Of The Self-Service (2:12)

CD3
1. Late Night Taxi Dancer (5:09)
2. Nasty (4:47)
3. Possessed (2:36)
4. It Aint Easy (4:28)
5. They've Got You Dancing (4:26)
6. Wappem Bappem (1:02)
7. Illusions Confusions (3:40)
8. Melancholy (1:45)
9. Mrs Warren (3:46)
10. Real Natural Man (1:53)
Bonus Tracks
11. Zoo New (3:21)
12. I Can't Help It (3:23)
13. Taxi Dancer (7 inch) (3:39)





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