A Review of "Ghost Of A White Face Clown" by Jeff Tolva
(who gave it 7 out of 10)
January 21st 1997

The tribute tape contains 10 groups covering 9 different Gary Numan tunes from "Listen To The Sirens" to "Bleed". Needless to say, there are quite a few covers missing from all these years Gary Numan has been in the music business. It has a running time of about 50 minutes. It's unfortunate there couldn't be more partipation for this tribute album even if it had to come from outside the Seattle area.

Most all the covers are "straight" covers of the tunes meaning without extra improvisation to the track itself. I think these Seattle-based bands pay excellent tribute to Gary Numan with this tape. The tracks were recorded properly in either a home studio or at a professional studio. The tracks were then digitally mixed which gives the tape an overall coherant "feel". NEC should be commended for their time put into this tribute project!

Many of the bands on this tape give a unique vocal perspective to the tracks; some tracks have female vocals and others have male vocals, but overall I'd say they follow in a Numan-esque style. Only on a couple of tracks, I found the vocals a bit annoying.

The bands sound well-rehearsed for their performances and feature guitar, bass, percussion, and of course keyboards in various fashions. It would be interesting to know if any of these bands included their Gary Numan covers in any live performances or studio albums of their own. I certainly think any of these covers would be fine played live or put on a studio album.

Other than being released as a limited edition cassette tape, I find nothing wrong with the tape itself. Even the cover is a creative arrangement of the Berserker single and looks spectacular in color! Much thought was put into this project.

A must have for the Gary Numan collector!