Part two of the possibly on-going series that is the Unpopular Sunday Connection belongs to The Pastels. I have had a strange relationship with The Pastels for a long time. Back in the mid ‘80s I was briefly besotted with them. Or rather, I was besotted with the idea of them. I didn’t really listen to their records and I didn’t go and see them play. I just kept looking through Juniper Beri Beri and thinking that oooh, wouldn’t it be rather fine to be like Stephen Pastel or Brian Superstar? I even made a Brian Superstar windmill, using the cut-out plans in the aforementioned Juniper Beri Beri. The idea was that the windmill would make Brian play his guitar, but my engineering skills were rudimentary at best, so it never really worked.
Well, I did get to hear those early Pastels records of course and I loved them dearly. For some reason though I lost touch with them after Up For A Bit (I never did buy it – the vinyl copy on the shelves is actually C’s) and ‘Comin’ Through’. Didn’t they start to become quite trendy at that time? That probably did it for me. That and the fact that I was moving into different sounds, and there were lines to be drawn and stood behind. Gosh, those things seemed so important at the time…
Of course the early Pastels records were collected on the Suck On retrospective in 1988 (or retrogressive, as the sleeve proclaimed). I am shocked that it is unavailable these days, either as a download or a repackaged CD. There are no doubt rips of the CD available on the Interweb somewhere, but I couldn’t be arsed looking, so ripped my vinyl copy last night. It was the first time I had played the record in ages. It sounded terrific. If you don’t already have it, you can grab it from the link below. My Sunday gift to you.
A bit personal note but "Suck On" was my first purchase at my very first visit at one of the UK's Record Fairs in early 90s.
Posted by: Arthit | June 09, 2009 at 13:39