OK here goes...

I guess I loved AMC from the moment I bought "Engine" when it came out. I loved the fact that there were songs by someone who was not afraid to express fear and pain when the world was listening to bland corporate cock rock! I had just come back from living in Holland and felt isolated and a bit of an outsider but I heard something in their music that touched me, in a similar way that Bill Evans does and Coltrane, it's just very deep music which touches parts of you that cannot be defined by words.

I admired Mark Eitzel for his honest performances and his ability to make beautiful melodies. We had the fortune to support Mark a few times when he came to play in England and I was always inspired by him and found him to be a very warm and genuine man, it's a great shame that he is not more widely known and held in higher esteem by the whores of mainstream spice-world. 

We chose to cover "This Year" as it seemed to be the only song I could find that I felt it could be improvised a little more in the sense that it could be shaped to sound a little different. It was a song I loved but not one that I felt I could not touch due to its significance in my life. So many of their songs are very special to me and the worrying thing was that I know so many like me hold particular songs very dearly to themselves and I didn't want to make a disaster of "This Year"...

We were incredibly nervous about accepting the request to contribute!!! I hope we haven't made arses of ourselves, please accept our apologies in advance...
Chris Hooson

# Cover This Year # Musicians - Chris Hooson : vocal - David Buxton : bass guitar, pedal steel guitar - John Shepard : drum kit - Peter Haslam : piano - Richard Formby : harmonium, bowed double bass,    tape effects # Contact Dakota Suite PO Box 220 Leeds LS7 4TX England e-mail : dakotasuite@hooson.demon.co.uk site : www.hooson.demon.co.uk

# Discography - The Way I Am Sick (2002) - Morning Lake Forever (2001) - Signal Hill (2000) - Navigators Yard (1999) - Songs For A Barbed Wire Fence (1998) - Alone With Everybody (1997) # Links Everton FC