From 1977 to 1979 Billie McKenzie and Alan Rankine were given plentiful access to Craighall Studios in Edinburgh, and used the time wisely to record a large quantity of demos of songs that they'd written together, utilising a makeshift group of cabaret musicians who hung around there. They also recorded a cover of David Bowie's 'Boys Keep Swinging', which they laid down within a few weeks of the original being released, and which they then illegally released as their first single. When the lawyers turned up to ask them to stop selling it, it gained them quite a lot of publicity, as well as a record deal with Fiction Records, and it really kick-started their career. The following year they laid down some more demos at Morgan Studios in London, some of which later appeared in reworked form on their debut album 'The Affectionate Punch' in 1980, and this album is a mixture of sessions from both studios, picking out the best tracks from both of them and arranging them into an album which could have come out in 1979 if they'd really wanted it to. For once, I'm glad that they didn't release these songs at the time as they needed a bit more time to polish their sound and come up with the songs that would eventually become that classic first album, but they're still well worth hearing as the sound quality on all of them is excellent.'The Shadow Of My Lung' starts out with a wild take on mid-period Sparks, with equally surrealistic lyrics, and halfway through the middle eight drops to 1/4 tempo and becomes a distinct parody of 'The Shadow Of Your Smile', only to speed up again to finish the song. '18 Carat Love Affair' here is the original stripped down version, later to be swamped in strings to become a hit single, and 'Not Tonight Josephine' has the Ronsonesque crackle of 'Aladdin Sane' period Bowie. Some of these tracks have turned up on an archive release entitled 'Double Hipness', although that added in some later period demos from their reunion, but also missed some other songs which could have been included, like 'Schmoltz', and I've also added 'You Were Young', the b-side of 1980's 'The Affectionate Punch' single, as the sound fits in nicely with the rest of the songs.
Track listing
01 The Shadow Of My Lung 02 Do The Call Girl 03 Not Tonight Josephine 04 2000 Years Of Mental Torture05 Green For Grief 06 Schmoltz07 Saline Drips08 Galaxy Of Memories 09 18 Carat Love Affair10 You Better Mortice Lock The Door Before He Slips Out In The Night, Baby 11 You Were Young12 Geese 13 Window Shopping 14 Double Hipness 15 The End
