Little Red Cherries

 Various Artists ‎- Pillows & Prayers [Z RED 41 UK 1982 24-Bit FLAC]

Alongside Pay It All Back Volume 1, here is the other most important independent record label compilation of all time. It was only 99p, we all bought it didn't we - it certainly opened my eyes and ears to a wide variety of music after the blinkered years of my youth. My copy has seen a lot of play and cleaning this record up was a time consuming challenge. I think I've nailed it, let me know what you think.

These days Cherry Red are reissue label scraping the bottom of the musical bargain bucket and inflicting heavily compressed compact disc remasters on the listening public. However, there once was a day when they were one of the most important independent labels with an impressive roster varying through acoustic pop, folk, new psyche (and old psychedelia), poetry and alternative synth-pop. Famous as the label which launched Everything But The Girl (and their respective parts), The Nightingales and Felt, they also rescued post-Virgins Kevin Coyne & The Monochrome Set, as well as importing a fledgling Dead Kennedys from America. 

Everybody will have a favourite here, for me Joe Crow's one-off minimal synthpop masterpiece Compulsion is worth a thousand 99 pences. Those outside the UK will struggle with Atilla The Stockbroker, but he is very funny and still performs these days. The inclusion of obscure California sixties psychedelia act The Misunderstood (with a good deal of assistance from John Peel) adds to the variety but also hints that perhaps the roster was perhaps becoming a little too varied. Tracey Thorn & Ben Watts spent a few years in their Hull bedsit singing love songs to each other, before with more than a little help from Paul Weller & Geoff Travis, they hit the mainstream. 

You probably all know Thomas Leer's synth-smooch classic All About You from a earlier post, Eyeless In Gaza generated moody synthpop in the vein of an electronic Talk Talk. Manchester's The Passage never really found success outside their home city and the energetic Xoyo was their biggest single. Likewise Birmingham's The Nightingales who deserved much more than cult status - I think they just came from the wrong city.  Raconteur Quentin Crisp was widely known for being really old and proudly wearing his diversity on more than just his sleeve.

Great memories throughout ....enjoy!

A1 Five Or Six - Portrait

A2 The Monochrome Set - Eine Symphonie Des Grauens

A3 Thomas Leer - All About You

A4 Tracey Thorn - Plain Sailing

A5 Ben Watt Some - Things Don't Matter

A6 Kevin Coyne - Love In Your Heart

A7 Piero Milesi -Modi 2 (Extract)

A8 Joe Crow - Compulsion

B1 Marine Girls - Lazy Ways

B2 Felt - My Face Is On Fire

B3 Eyeless In Gaza - No Noise

B4 The Passage - Xoyo

B5 Everything But The Girl - On My Mind

B6 Attila The Stockbroker - A Bang And A Wimpey

B7 The Misunderstood - I Unseen

B8 The Nightingales - Don't Blink

B9 Quentin Crisp - Stop The Music For A Minute