| Moss Side Story | |
| Type: | Album |
| Artist: | Barry Adamson |
| Cover: | Moss Side Story.jpg |
| Released: | 6 March 1989 |
| Length: | 54:00 (with bonus tracks) |
| Label: | Mute STUMM 53 |
| Producer: | Barry Adamson |
| Next Title: | Soul Murder |
| Next Year: | 1992 |
Moss Side Story is the debut solo album of British musician Barry Adamson released in 1989. The album is a concept album, a soundtrack album to a non-existent crime film.
The music is almost completely instrumental except for occasional screams, vocal samples and a choir. To achieve the soundtrack effect, the song titles are descriptive of a film noir plot outline. The inner sleeve came with a short story written by Dave Graney which added to the concept. This complemented outer sleeve which displays the tag line: "In a black and white world, murder brings a touch of colour..." In a 2017 interview, Adamson reported that he recorded Moss Side Story due to his fascination with film music and as "a calling card [to] send it around to people" in hopes of being hired to write music for actual films.[1]
Moss Side is a neighbourhood in the city of Manchester, Great Britain, where Adamson was born. The album title is a play on words in reference to Leonard Bernstein's West Side Story. The title of "The Swinging Detective" plays on Dennis Potter's series of television plays The Singing Detective, while "Round Up the Usual Suspects" quotes a line made famous by Claude Rains in Casablanca.
CD versions came with three bonus tracks. Two of them - "Alfred Hitchcock Presents" and "The Man with The Golden Arm" (composed by Elmer Bernstein) - are drawn from TV or film themes. "Alfred Hitchcock Presents" is a reworking of the theme to the series of the same name, Charles Gounod's "Funeral March of a Marionette."
The NME review of the albums describes it as a "Grand filmic suite intended as the soundtrack to a "provocative film thriller set in Manchester's Moss Side" and that Moss Side Story is "one of the best soundtracks ever, the fact that it has no accompanying movie is a trifling irrelevance."[2]
A retrospective review by Ritchie Unterberger of Allmusic described the album as "a sinister and edgy soundscape" that remained Adamson's best solo effort by far.
The album was included in the book 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die.[3]
All music composed by Barry Adamson; except "Everything Happens to Me" by Barry Adamson and Seamus Beaghen; "Alfred Hitchcock Presents" by Charles François Gounod and "The Man with the Golden Arm" by Elmer Bernstein.
Act one - 'The Ring's the Thing'
Act two - 'Real Deep Cool'
Act three - 'The Final Irony'
'For Your Ears Only'
Technical