Found:
Passion Fodder
Editor’s note: in ND #16 (July-Aug. ’98), reader Ron Koperdraad of Toronto, Ontario, wrote to inquire about a band called Passion Fodder, whose lineup included Sixteen Horsepower’s current rhythm section of Pascal Humbert and Jean-Yves Tola. Not being familiar with them ourselves, we put the question to our readers, and received the following response:
I’m writing from Belgium. I got a subscription two years ago because I’m a great country punk fan. I started listening to country with Jason & the Scorchers and the Violent Femmes. (You’re never writing about them but I find “Country Death Song” a great country punk song.) Then I discovered ten years later Uncle Tupelo and more classic country artists like Gram Parsons.
I like your magazine. It’s the only one I got a subscription for. But sometimes, there are too much artists I find old fashioned and boring. So I’m writing to answer the question of Ron Koperdraad about Passion Fodder.
Passion Fodder was the band of one man, Theo Hakola. Before Passion Fodder, he fronted from, ’80 to ’83, Orchestre Rouge, a cold-wave Euro band in France. Here’s the Passion Fodder discography:
1984: Songs, EP
1985: Hard Words From A Soft Mouth, LP (Upright Records)
1986: Fat Tuesday, CD (Beggar’s Banquet)
1988: Love Waltzes An Anarchy, CD (Beggar’s Banquet)
1989: Woke Up This Morning, CD (Beggar’s Banquet)
1991: What Fresh Hell Is This, CD (Barclay)
1993: Songs Sacred And Profane, compilation CD (Barclay)
Then Theo Hakola went solo an recorded four albums, singing in French and English: Hunger Of A Thin Man (1993), The Confession (1995), Goddamn Songs (1995) and Overflow (1997).
Unfortunately, there are till now no real online CD stores in Europe to find these albums.
–Mike Defresne
Belgium
Reading material:
Don’t try this at work
A few months ago, I was reading two books during breaks at work: Please Kill Me and Despair. One is Legs McNeil’s history of punk rock and one is a Nabokov novel, but my co-workers were alarmed by the titles and assumed I was dangerously depressed and looking for help. That wasn’t a lasting impression, but now I need to be careful. The May-June 1998 cover of your magazine with No Depression in big letters and a “Doctor” Ralph Stanley with no musical instruments in sight made me decide that I’d best read it at home.
— Dan Burke
