40 years ago Ministry was in the studio putting the finishing touches on “With Sympathy”, their first full-length album on Arista Records. Based on the wealth of information captured on Prongs over the years, I thought it would be fun to track some key dates and milestones over the next year.
January 1983:
The band is in Boston recording “With Sympathy” at The Cars Syncro Sound studios on Newbury Street with producers Ian Taylor and Vince Ely. Mark Ellis (aka “Flood”) assists as the recording engineer.
Early Ministry tracks “Revenge”, “Work For Love”, “Effigy”, and “She’s Got A Cause” are recorded for inclusion on the album, while instrumental track “Primental” is reworked with lyrics and becomes “I Wanted To Tell Her” with Shay Jones on vocals.
“Same Old Madness” is also recorded but ultimately does not end up on the album.
The “Work For Love” 12-inch single is released at the end of January and promotional singles are sent to radio stations including KROQ in Los Angeles and WLIR in Long Island, New York.
Al presumably writes “Say You’re Sorry”, “What He Say”, “Should Have Known Better”, and “Here We Go” during the recording sessions to finish out the album.
Feel free to add / amend as needed. I’ll try to update each month.
I didn’t hear WS until after LORAH, TMIATT and Psalms - I absolutely hated it on my first spin (I was 17, and not really receptive of any type of music that wasn’t angry as fuck)
With time, it has grown a lot on me - now it’s one of my favourite 80s pop albums, and it’s not far away from being in my Ministry “top 5 album” list.
Now I’m 43 and I absolutely love WS. And when I heard the other songs from the WS timeframe featured on the TRAX box, I really wished they’d made a second album. Those songs are mostly top stuff.
Hard to believe it’s been 40 years! A deluxe edition would great, or even some individual archival releases.
There was a remastered release in 2012 (I think) that included a few of the 12" mixes, including the unreleased remix of “Revenge”.
Some of the later demos from these sessions showed on the Trax! Box release.
There’s some other cool nuggets that we’ve heard bits of pieces of over the years that would make for some excellent releases. I’d love to see a pristine copy of the First Ave performance, that one has always been a favorite.
I like “Revenge” okay, but other than that, I just can’t get into this cheesy faux Brit pop. It just sounds like Wham! or ABC or some other silly tripe of that era. I never understand the mass circle jerk spank fests surrounding this album.
Count me in the “I don’t get it” category…it’s an ok synth pop album…nothing more nothing less imo…that fake British accent Al put on is hard for me to get around…
That’s the mystic of ministry…I mean everything recorded without Paul is total trash dribble but listenable.
I can’t name one track post Paul except for the let’s name every track starting with a "w"album.
Just a complete trainwreck actually…but alas, listenable.
Ahhh, With Sympathy. The much maligned first official LP.
I love it in it’s own way, though I truly don’t spin the album proper very often.
I first purchased it in high school after getting In Case and a couple others and was quite confused.
But it wasn’t much longer before I learned to love the synth charms of early Ministry.
I’ve tracked down and listened to more than my share of early Ministry demos, live cuts, and offshoots over the years.
A few interesting tidbits:
She’s Got A Cause originally had a couple final verses that talked about Al contemplating suicide by gun and pills. The song’s always been a favorite of mine, but that really helps turn the song from just a melodic track into one with a bit of the sarcastic bite you could find in some of the early tracks. I think Wempathy shared the version of this from their first concert with the full lyrics included.
There was only 1 version of I’m Not An Effigy. No demos. No remixes. Nothing. They played it live and I think there may be a remix from a remix-service (though that one might count as fan-made, I guess), but nothing in-house. I’ve found demo versions of literally all the other WS tracks, but Effigy must have been a one-and-done or hated by the band or something.
The breakdown part of Work For Love originally had vocals by Shay Jones. It’s the part that only appears in some of the 7" mixes with Al saying (in one version, slightly different in the other) “Girl I’ve been working for you for so long, why do you keep rejecting me” The original reply was Shay saying “Cause you ain’t got what it takes”. It was replaced with a different singer for some reason on the final version, with 2 different versions of the exchange on 2 separate mixes. It’s super minor, only appearing on the 7"s, but it’s super corny and one of the funniest bits of the whole record.
Revenge was originally titles “Revenge From The Balcony” on at least 1 demo tape. And one of the early versions has a really nice piano intro that was somehow cut from the final version. The “piano intro” version on Trax box has an 8 second snippet of it, but the good one’s about half a minute long.
I can’t really get into I Wanted To Tell Her or Work For Love. Why those were the singles, I’ll never know. I’ve listened to dozens of different versions of both of them (There were 7! different officially-released versions of Work For Love between the album and the various single versions) over the years and they just have never grabbed me. They had 12" versions of She’s Got A Cause and Same Old Madness. Either of those would have made a much better single. This is one of the decisions that I chalk up to Arista interference.
At the end of the day, if they’d have released an album in 82 on Wax Trax with more of the tracks they were doing at the time, it would fit right in with some of the brilliant post-punk albums that came out in the early 80’s and be one of those under-loved classics people would put on lists of “best albums you haven’t heard”. But instead we got the version we got. It’s fun and syrupy and fits in better with poppier contemporaries like Human League/OMD/Thompson Twins.
There’s likely a ton of tracks that haven’t surfaced, but I think a much better version would be:
I’ve seen the following live recording of Revenge for years. At least for the time the video quality might as well be hd. You can see Al sweating his ass off. What was the story behind this? Club getting promotional material? Arista planning a concert vhs that never went through?
These 1984 shows were after Ministry left Arista. Wax Trax! Records had signed a U.S. distribution agreement with Front 242, and Ministry toured with them in 1984. The video source appears to be someone connected with Front 242.
He was planning on sharing those concerts in full after the release of Industrial Accident. I think we’ll probably see them at some point.
Wax Trax teased photos of early demo tapes and vhs concert tapes too. Not sure what it takes to get these in the hands of the fans. I might nudge them and see if I get a response
The same people criticizing the phony British accent probably worship the slew of '70s rock bands that faked southern accents. I guess since hard rock went on to have several more decades of success they got the idol treatment? I remember when I was 12 and found out Zeppelin, Stones, Pink Floyd, etc. were a buncha British honkeys I laughed my ass off. For the longest time I thought they were from the deep south by the way they mimic bluesy accents in their music.
WS… It’s a cheesy album with little substance but I like cheese in moderation. I don’t think Jourgensen was a particularly great songwriter or uber charismatic for the synthpop genre to highlight his strengths. Going underground and relying on production ingenuity and work ethic really tapped into his potential, the whole DIY industrial schtick was tailor maid for him.
