ANGELS
Auf der Maur
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Idha Ovelius
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AMIGA
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I warmly welcome Melissa Auf der Maur, the most recent Angel to make her home on my personal website.  The reason that Melissa has been placed on here by me, and the fact that her debut solo album was only released towards the beginning of 2004 is that I felt an immediate attachment to her.  She is a person that is essentially after my own heart - Melissa plays the bass guitar like an absolute goddess, as well as being stunningly beautiful.

I have to make a gigantic confession though.  I was aware of Melissa's presence as a bass player when she was in the band Hole (fronted by the well recognised Courtney Love), and of her involvement in the hugely great band The Smashing Pumpkins during their latter years, shortly before they split.  However, it wasn't until I listened to Melissa's solo debut album all the way through the first time I played it that I realised that I had truly discovered someone who I felt I could emotionally bond with.

Melissa Auf der Maur is here because of the effect her solo album has had on me, and not due to what Melissa has done in her past.  Her debut self-titled album is just indescribably amazing.  It's a rock album full of the lushest vocals imaginable, bass playing beyond anybody's wildest dreams, and an overall sound that just verges on total perfection.

Melissa earned her trade through various bands, but came to the fore with the then hugely popular band Hole.  Although she wasn't an experienced bass player at the time, Melissa spent plenty of time with the group, and made a huge influence on Hole's overall sound.  She contributed her growing song writing skills to Courtney Loves band, co-writing important commercially successful songs from Hole's Celebrity Skin album.  After Hole split, Melissa briefly joined The Smashing Pumpkins during the twilight of the band's career as their bass player.  After The Smashing Pumpkins split, she spent time homing her own song writing and playing skills, and eventually Melissa wrote and recorded her debut album.

Melissa has only released the one album (so far), so below is my opinion of it.

Auf der Maur Melissa's first album is an aural experience from beginning to end.  It's full of mind blowing bass and guitar riffs, memorable songs, and tunes to hum along to.  The strength that this album has is that it has great songs that can be played over and over again, like Real A Lie - a totally amazing song, and this album can be played as a stand alone entity, from start to finish.  All the songs fit together on the album like an intricate jigsaw.  For anyone who has never heard this instant classic of a rock album must investigate this as soon as they can.

Below are a couple of video still from two of Melissa's videos.

	Followed The Waves The video of this song is included in Auf der Maur's debut CD.  It's a video with a distinct nautical theme, intercut with snippets of the band and Melissa.  To be honest, in terms of action, there's not a lot here, but the video looks simply amazing, and really suits the style of the song.
	Real A Lie The still from this video was taken from Auf der Maur's Real A Lie CD single.  Essentially, this is Melissa and her band on a stage, intercut with the divine Angel herself relaxing around on settees, taking photographs and slicing up apples!  All the while, she is wearing a rather nice short green skirt!  Hmmm, tasty.

Below are some miscellaneous images of Melissa that I really love (one of them is quite bizarre!).
Click on any of them to download a larger picture.