It's the sixth day of my Eighties Challenge, a seven day stroll down a memory lane that's in dire need of better street lamps, foraging through the overgrown musical shrubbery.
In many ways the Eighties were a simpler time, with less distractions and smaller supermarkets. Fewer television channels, no Internet, no mobile phones. To be honest I wonder what we did with ourselves without Facebook or Wikipedia to keep us occupied. Surely we can't have spent the whole time drinking tea and making polite conversation about the weather? Thank heavens that nice Tim Berners-Lee bloke invented the World Wide Web so I could stay home and look at vinyl online, not spend a lot of my time in record shops ogling their merchandise.
Back then my home town of Fareham was blessed with several of places to buy vinyl, consequently many of my Saturdays were spent ricocheting from shop to shop in pursuit of some 12" or other. The record sections of WHSmith and Woolies, the bijou shininess of Our Price and, of course, the slightly dog-eared delights of Venus Records. I spent hours in all of them, but the most time in Venus, flicking through the racks, admiring the posters on the walls, paying attention to the tunes that got played by the staff (that scene in High Fidelity, where Rob states that he will sell five copies of The Three EPs by The Beta Band, is embarrassingly close to the mark; I bought the 7" of Perfect by Fairground Attraction from there after hearing to it played over and over; the Scottish guy behind the counter was adamant it would be a hit, and he was right).
A large corner of my bedroom was taken up with an ever growing collection of vinyl, most of it brought home in the familiar white carrier bags that sported the Venus Records logo, a ridiculous haul of 12" singles. As I near the end of this seven day challenge, and the memory banks of my brain warm up, I'm remembering too many of these songs that I could post. Do I pick The Big Dish's Christina's World, a nice slice of Scottish pop rock? How about Horse's mighty You Could Be Forgiven? Danny Wilson's evergreen Mary's Prayer (the 12" of which features a country-flavoured take, Mary's Prairie, on the flip side) perhaps? Am I swayed by the choice vocals of Do-Re-Mi's Deborah Conway on Adultery or do I take the opportunity to choose something by the Pet Shop Boys? Nope, none of those (though I may do a follow post of 'bonus tracks' later).
Today's band, Fire Next Time, were a four piece from Leicester; strange then that I only heard of them thanks to spending way too much time loitering among the racks in a record shop in Fareham. They never broke it big, only releasing a handful of singles and the one album before disbanding but, thanks to them scoring a support slot for a tour with The Icicle Works, I got to see them live. To be honest my memory is a bit hazy about the gig itself; I remember them being rather good, I'm fairly certain that at least one of them was wearing a loud Hawaiian shirt, I'm definite that neither my brother or I were all that bothered about watching Icicle Works' set after. The other thing I'm sure of is that we bumped into the aforementioned Scottish chap from Venus Records, he who sold me Perfect, as he turned out to be chums with Fire Next Time too (well, stranger things have happened I suppose). After a brief and, yes, probably fanboy-esque chat with the band we turned down the offer of going for a curry with them (no, really) and headed off to Scott's Bar for a few pints. I know, what might have happened if I'd gone for the curry? Sometimes my life really is like a Gwyneth Paltrow movie.. err.. anyway, here then from 1988 is Fire Next Time..
In many ways the Eighties were a simpler time, with less distractions and smaller supermarkets. Fewer television channels, no Internet, no mobile phones. To be honest I wonder what we did with ourselves without Facebook or Wikipedia to keep us occupied. Surely we can't have spent the whole time drinking tea and making polite conversation about the weather? Thank heavens that nice Tim Berners-Lee bloke invented the World Wide Web so I could stay home and look at vinyl online, not spend a lot of my time in record shops ogling their merchandise.
Back then my home town of Fareham was blessed with several of places to buy vinyl, consequently many of my Saturdays were spent ricocheting from shop to shop in pursuit of some 12" or other. The record sections of WHSmith and Woolies, the bijou shininess of Our Price and, of course, the slightly dog-eared delights of Venus Records. I spent hours in all of them, but the most time in Venus, flicking through the racks, admiring the posters on the walls, paying attention to the tunes that got played by the staff (that scene in High Fidelity, where Rob states that he will sell five copies of The Three EPs by The Beta Band, is embarrassingly close to the mark; I bought the 7" of Perfect by Fairground Attraction from there after hearing to it played over and over; the Scottish guy behind the counter was adamant it would be a hit, and he was right).
A large corner of my bedroom was taken up with an ever growing collection of vinyl, most of it brought home in the familiar white carrier bags that sported the Venus Records logo, a ridiculous haul of 12" singles. As I near the end of this seven day challenge, and the memory banks of my brain warm up, I'm remembering too many of these songs that I could post. Do I pick The Big Dish's Christina's World, a nice slice of Scottish pop rock? How about Horse's mighty You Could Be Forgiven? Danny Wilson's evergreen Mary's Prayer (the 12" of which features a country-flavoured take, Mary's Prairie, on the flip side) perhaps? Am I swayed by the choice vocals of Do-Re-Mi's Deborah Conway on Adultery or do I take the opportunity to choose something by the Pet Shop Boys? Nope, none of those (though I may do a follow post of 'bonus tracks' later).
Today's band, Fire Next Time, were a four piece from Leicester; strange then that I only heard of them thanks to spending way too much time loitering among the racks in a record shop in Fareham. They never broke it big, only releasing a handful of singles and the one album before disbanding but, thanks to them scoring a support slot for a tour with The Icicle Works, I got to see them live. To be honest my memory is a bit hazy about the gig itself; I remember them being rather good, I'm fairly certain that at least one of them was wearing a loud Hawaiian shirt, I'm definite that neither my brother or I were all that bothered about watching Icicle Works' set after. The other thing I'm sure of is that we bumped into the aforementioned Scottish chap from Venus Records, he who sold me Perfect, as he turned out to be chums with Fire Next Time too (well, stranger things have happened I suppose). After a brief and, yes, probably fanboy-esque chat with the band we turned down the offer of going for a curry with them (no, really) and headed off to Scott's Bar for a few pints. I know, what might have happened if I'd gone for the curry? Sometimes my life really is like a Gwyneth Paltrow movie.. err.. anyway, here then from 1988 is Fire Next Time..
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