Tracks:
- Death Of An Angel
- I Could Be A Killer
- This Tangled Web
- Fascination And Fear
- Fading Away
- A Million Years
- Love Will Tear Us Apart
- Sad I Cry
- Tired
- This Forgotten Love
- Remember Well
- The Waiting Hour (Once Again)
- Dying In A Moment Of Splendor (Live)
- Love's Way
- The Ways And Wounds (Of My World)
- A Single White Rose
"It's about art...about building a body of work that will leave a mark on someone, moving them to the point that they must share it with another," says singer/songwriter Johnny Indovina of the September 2000 Triple X Records release of The Best of Human Drama.....in a perfect world, a powerful survey of the thirteen-year career of the singer/songwriter who captured The Rock City Music Award for Best Singer/Songwriter three years in a row (1997-1999).
In 1979, Human Drama originated in New Orleans as The Models, self-releasing a handful of 45s then re-locating to LA in May 1985, and adopting. Human Drama plunged into the same frenetic LA waters that produced Jane's Addiction and Guns 'n Roses, emerging on the 1987 Geffen Records release Scream The Compilation, with the self-defining "Wave of Darkness."
A deal with RCA Records followed in November 1988, with Human Drama recording their major label debut Hopes, Prayers, Dreams, Heart, Soul, Mind, Love, Life, Death, followed shortly thereafter by the full-length album Feel (home to "Death Of An Angel" and "I Could Be A Killer"), both recordings receiving high critical acclaim. Within two years, Indovina left RCA, moved to Jane's Addictions original label, Triple X Records, and released the singles "This Tangled Web" and "Fascination And Fear," and in 1992, the definitive Human Drama album, The World Inside.
Critically acclaimed as a songwriter at a time when too many bands were getting by on outrage alone, Indovina's next move was as perverse as any he has ever made, an album comprised entirely of covers. A cunning reinvention of Bowie's album two decades previous (including album cover), Pinups underscored Indovina's interpretations of his own influences - Joy Division's "Love Will Tear Us Apart," Lou Reed, John Lennon, Leonard Cohen and David Bowie, as well as post-Syd Barrett Pink Floyd, the Peter Gabriel era Genesis, Mink DeVille and the Rolling Stones. Not simply a tribute album, Pinups was also a statement of intent, which Indovina's next full-length album would live up to with frightening passion. Highlighted by the epic "The Waiting Hour, (Once Again)," Human Drama's next release was the understated Human Drama EP
In 1995, Indovina delivered the labyrinthine Songs Of Betrayal- Part I and Part II , a deliciously claustrophobic, yet viciously incisive 27-song epic, featuring some of Indovina's finest songwriting ever. By 1997, Indovina based himself in New York and spent much of the next year touring North America, Germany and Mexico before the band hit LA's Troubadour on December 21, 1996, for a live recording which would become the 14,384 Days Later album, featuring material dating back to the Scream days and capturing Human Drama at their very best.
The 1999 release of Solemn Sun Setting proved Indovina's restless musical curiosity and adventurousness were still firing on all cylinders. Lyrically, it is painfully real and musically, as emotional as the subject matter "Love's Way" the most grim of realizations. Of his lyrical content Indovina says, "Human Drama examines the emotions we all have in common as human beings. There is a common thread running through us all, and that is what I speak about. It is a project where emotions are examined, and the fact that human beings are not perfect is repeatedly pointed out." Solemn Sun Setting fueled The Best of Human Drama compilation, a canon of songs which thoroughly explores and exposes the nature of life in the modern world, serving to underscore that even the broadest minded music category is too narrow for the music Indovina creates.
"...all the overstatement, grand gestures, and melodrama that Johnny Indovina hones so meticulously, so calculatedly, somehow miraculously comes off without an iota of pretense, irony or phoniness, Indovina seems to genuinely inhabit some preternatural realm where emotions occur in refined outbursts of bittersweet joy." Option Magazine