Details

Classification: Album
Label: Glass
Catalogue: MGLALP011
Date: May1985
Recorded: February 1985, Woodbine Studio, Leamington Spa
Production: John A. Rivers
Photography: Mitch Jenkins
Sleeve: Buffalo Shame
A-Groove: boris is digging the potatoes

Big Saturday
Holiday
Red Pets
Only A Rumour

President Reagan's Birthday Present
What's The Matter, Boy?
Walk With The Devil
Down The Drain

The Players

Pat Fish
Max Eider
Owen Jones
David J.
Graham "Felix" Fudger

For absent friends

One day's rehearsal in Kevin Haskin's living room, five days' recording and two days' mixing was all it took for us to make my favourite of the Glass records.

Now that the band had done a few dates with decent p.a. systems and stuff, I was beginning to have some sort of a bead on this singing business. Also, having exhausted the initial stick of JB songs (several of the A Scandal In Bohemia tunes had actually been written at the time of Bath Of Bacon, but were rejected back then as needing further development), I was obliged for the first time to write about my life as it was at the time, which was very different to the way I lived when writing the first two records.

Now I was "in a band", had left my day job, had been to Europe... I even started to write songs that were not self-consciously deferential and mocking. Hence, I guess, the arrival of the first recorded "big ballad" in Only A Rumour, where David J. harmonies at the end STILL give me the shivers.

I think that now we had started to learn about actually creating recordings rather than just recording the sound of a bunch of pals fooling around, and the disc does have a nice, unified feel. Credit John A. Rivers for his high-speed mixing job. When I think about it, this l.p. doesn't really have any "great" tunes, in the sense of numbers that people request or whatever, but it has a nice totality, a good, atmospheric vibe. This one I'd actually defend at length if I had to.