How Much Are They?
Opening track of Full Circle, a bass line from Wobble edited by Czukay with a razor blade.
Holger Czukay, from Full Circle (1982)
Czukay plays a drum machine on it and Wobble bass, vocals and synthesizer; Liebezeit is not credited, and Lusardi mixed and recorded it. Wobble told the Electricity Club in 2020 that after leaving the Human Condition he went to Cologne to work with Czukay and Liebezeit, and that the album came out in late 1982 including the minor European hit "How Much Are They?". He said he wrote the basic parts, the bassline, drum beat, string parts and chords, and that Czukay took it back to Cologne to edit it quite radically; he called Czukay the architect, editing with a razor blade. An Electricity Club list from 2017 describes Wobble's full-on bass with Czukay's chattering beatbox and dictaphone and Liebezeit's trumpet, dates the track 1981, and says it was dedicated to Ian Curtis, a claim from that one source only.
A Rock Town Hall blog called it a European club hit at the time; we found no chart positions, video, covers or samples, and no setlist data. The upload we hold is the album track.
Sources
- Full Circle, Wikipedia
- Holger Czukay, Electricity Club
- Jah Wobble, The New Vinyl Villain
- Jah Wobble, Trouser Press