Nail
Keenen, Andy Morgan, Joseph Porter, Sarah Lewington and Curtis Youé
Back
in the olden days, before NME, Sounds and Melody Maker cottoned on to
the fact that Blyth Power was unfashionable, the first LP was recorded.
It was December 1986. Joseph had just sacked the entire band, but they
were still going to play on the recording. Clearly he had a lot to learn.
Any self-respecting dictator worth his salt would have shot them all
out of hand. We like the coincidence that 56076 had its Blyth Power
nameplates removed around this time, and put onto 56134 instead. It
must have been an omen. Anyhow, the band went into RMS studio in Crystal
Palace and churned it out. Of mild interest in the wake of this release
is the publicity campaign which the then solvent All The Madmen Records
paid for. There was this chap called Spike who got paid £400, and in
return he blagged interviews with all the music papers. Joseph even
got to make an ass of himself on Radio 1's Newsbeat show. Hurrah! Think
how much more press we might have gotten if we'd paid for advertising
space as well… There were two vinyl pressings. The first had a green
sleeve and the second had a blue, and the lyrics were included in a
booklet. Mr C. at ATM rejected the original artwork design for the sleeve
as it offended his vegetarian principles. Boo hoo. We thought it was
funny. When the second pressing sold out, the LP languished in obscurity,
until the first in a long line of generous and public-spirited benefactors
was rash enough to lend us the cash to put it out on CD. It was thus
the first release on Downwarde Spiral Records. To add spice to the re-issue
we included a re-mixed version of our first cassette release, A Little
Touch of Harry in the Night, which had also vanished into obscurity.
This relic was recorded on a 4-track machine in a basement in Hackney.
It's one of those things that old punks get dewy-eyed over, and claim
we shouldn't have done. "The original's better," we never tire of hearing.
"Why don't you release all the new stuff on vinyl….."