The Tourists - Reality Effect [New Wave] 1979 torrent

The Tourists



Never heard of them? Could be. Should not.
This was the band which Ann Lennox and Dave Stewart formed before their breakthrough as The Eurythmics.

Musicians:
Ann Lennox: Lead Vocals, Organ, Piano, Harpsichord, String Synthesiser
Peet Coombes: Lead Vocals, Electric 6 String and 12 String Guitars
Dave Stewart: Electric Guitars, Acoustic Guitar, and Vocals
Eddie Chin: Bass Guitar
Jim ‘Do It’ Toomey: Drums, Percussion, Bolero Dancing, and Wet Fish

Produced by Tom Allom.
Recorded at Olympic Studios and DJM Studios, London.
Logo Records.

Digitalised by WV Lowil, 2009.



From Wikipedia

The Catch
Peet Coombes was a guitarist singer-songwriter, while Dave Stewart, also a guitarist, had been a member of the folk rock band, Longdancer, who were signed to Elton John's Rocket Records label. The two moved to London and encountered Scottish singer Annie Lennox who had dropped out of her course at the Royal Academy of Music, where she had been studying flute and keyboards, to pursue her ambitions in pop music. The three of them initially called themselves The Catch, and released a single Borderline in 1977 on Logo Records, which failed to chart.



The Tourists
By 1978, they recruited bass guitarist, Eddie Chin, and the memorably nicknamed drummer, Jim "Do It" Toomey, and rechristened themselves The Tourists. This saw the beginning of a productive two years for the band and they recorded three albums The Tourists, Reality Effect, and Luminous Basement and half a dozen singles, including the singles "Blind Among the Flowers" (1979), "The Loneliest Man in the World" (1979), "Don't Say I Told You So" (1980), and two major hits, the Dusty Springfield cover "I Only Want to Be with You" (1979) and "So Good to be Back Home Again" (1980), both of which reached the top 10 in the UK. "I Only Want To Be With You" was also a top 10 hit in Australia, and made the lower end of the US pop charts at #83. Coombes was the band's main songwriter, although later releases saw the first fledgling compositions by Lennox and Stewart. The band's music expanded using their folk roots, demonstrating some punk energy, reggae and 1960's pop influences. A key development was their decision to record later material with legendary German avant-garde producer Conny Plank secured a transfer to RCA Records in 1980. The band toured extensively in the UK and abroad including a support role on the Roxy Music "Manifesto" tour, but despite modest chart success, they were given a critical savaging by the punk-championing UK music press. This combined with the legal wranglings and also some personal tensions led to the group disbanding in 1980.



Break-Up
Coombes and Chin reputedly began a new project Acid Drops, but this met with little success and Coombes, despite originally being the main artistic force behind The Tourists, drifted out of the music business into obscurity. Lennox and Stewart split as a couple, but decided to continue working as an experimental musical partnership, under the name Eurythmics.