51st State – New Model Army (1986)

Description

Additional information about this, New Model Army vinyl art.

New Model Army – The Artist/s

New Model Army are an English rock band formed in Bradford, West Yorkshire, in 1980 by lead singer, guitarist and main composer Justin Sullivan, bassist Stuart Morrow and drummer Phil Tompkins. Sullivan has been the only continuous member of the band, which has seen numerous line-up changes in its four-decade history. Their music draws on influences across the musical spectrum, from punk and folk to soul, metal and classical. Sullivan’s lyrics, which range from directly political through to spiritual and personal, have always been considered as a key part of the band’s appeal. By the time they began making their first records in 1983, Robert Heaton, a former drum technician for Hawkwind, had replaced Tompkins.Whilst having their roots in punk rock, the band have always been difficult to categorise. In 1999, when asked about this, Sullivan said “We’ve been labelled as punks, post-punks, Goth, metal, folk – the lot, but we’ve always been beyond those style.

51st State – The Song

’51st state ‘ is a single by New Model Army, which appeared on their 1986 album The Ghost of Cain. The lyrics to the song stated that the UK was the 51st state of the United States and were believed to be behind a ban by the American Musician’s Union on the band, which prevented them touring the Ghost of Cain album in the United States. The track was released as a single through EMI and reached number 71 on the UK Singles Chart, spending just two weeks in the listing. It was the band’s fourth appearance on that chart. Originally this song was written by Ashley Cartwright and performed by his band called The Shakes, from whom New Model Army took the song after The Shakes broke up in 1983.

The Human Hand – The Shape

This record has been carefully crafted into an outstretched human hand. A hand is a prehensile, multi-fingered appendage located at the end of the forearm or forelimb of primates such as humans, chimpanzees, monkeys, and lemurs. A few other vertebrates such as the koala (which has two opposable thumbs on each “hand” and fingerprints extremely similar to human fingerprints) are often described as having “hands” instead of paws on their front limbs. Fingers contain some of the densest areas of nerve endings in the body, and are the richest source of tactile feedback. They also have the greatest positioning capability of the body; thus, the sense of touch is intimately associated with hands. Like other paired organs (eyes, feet, legs) each hand is dominantly controlled by the opposing brain hemisphere, so that handedness—the preferred hand choice for single-handed activities such as writing with a pencil, reflects individual brain functioning. Among humans, the hands play an important function in body language and sign language. Likewise, the ten digits of two hands and the twelve phalanges of four fingers (touchable by the thumb) have given rise to number systems and calculation techniques.

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