First Post/Last Post?

So there I was watching Roddy Frame when JC,  (the Vinyl Villain) said "why don't you write your own blog?"

I had thought about it but had decided that it would be just vanity assuming that anybody would be interested in what I had to say so put the idea to the back of my mind. But recently, while jumping about the internet reading the blogs listed down the side I thought fuck it I'll give it a go, post some tunes that mean something to me and hope they are of interest to someone.

The next problem was thinking of a title for the blog, however yesterday the ipod selected ". . . From Across The Kitchen Table" by the Pale Fountains and it kind of made sense as it is an example of how I can get obsessed about a song and is also the location where most of the thought for this blog will be done.

I first heard this song in 1987 when a student, two years after its release. My girlfriend at the time introduced it to me (and to whom I am eternally grateful). The song just stopped me in my tracks, the hair on the back of my neck stood up and when the backing singer sang the line "you saved my life, I fought you" I nearly wept. I fell in love with the track so much so that I asked D to make me up a C90 of just that one song and it became the main track of the soundtrack to my first year at Uni .

I became totally obsessed with the song and bought the vinyl album, however the version on the album was different and inferior to the that on the tape and the hunt began.

In those pre-internet days finding out of print vinyl consisted of searching charity, second hand record shops and the occasional record fair. Through this process I ended up with the song on 2 other formats, the 7" double pack and cd album, neither of which was the correct version. It took about another ten years and the internet for me to get the 12" extended mix on a cdr of Pale Fountains and Shack rarities and not until 2006 did I manage to get a copy of the 12".

The Pale Fountains were a band from Liverpool formed in 1980, 2 of whose members were Michael Head, who went on to form Shack and Andy Diagram who joined James. They produced 6 singles and 3 albums and in From Across The Kitchen Table an epic to match any penned by Pete Wylie or Ian McCulloch.

Pale Fountains - from across the kitchen table