Well, nobody found the Birds Fate Ruins Xmas EP during the past week. Which is hardly surprising, given the story of its creation and deletion. Besides, Prof Paul, Mouthsounds Steph and I have made a point of scouring car boot and stoop sales, second-hand record stores, and record fairs for Birds Fate material for more years than I think any of us care to remember.
But you know how it is with your favourite bands – you don’t listen to them for ages, and then you put ’em on and remember why you loved them in the first place. So it was that the Prof went back to his Birds Fate archive after reading last weeks post.
[More whimsy, more material, more secrets at the Apoplexy Tiny Letter.]
The problem with hoovering up rare material is, a lot of it has been forgotten for good reasons. And Christmas cash-ins are particularly guilty. I mean, if I was Marti Pellow of Wet Wet Wet, would I rather be remembered for my band’s 15-week Xmas number one smash cover of The Troggs’ Love is All Around, or blue-eyed Scottish soul classic, Wishing I Was Lucky?
So it was that when Prof Paul was rifling through a rack of LPs in a Lower East Side ramen place a few years ago, it wasn’t even in hope, never mind expectation. A bootleg of Phish covering Dark Side of the Moon was worth picking up. Alanis Morissette’s Under Rug Swept might have received good reviews, but it was just another circle in the holding pattern before the cash-in exercise that was Jagged Little Pill Acoustic.
When he picked up a copy of Birds Fate Ruins Xmas from the rack not long after hearing The Fall’s will-this-do Peel Session version of Hark the Herald Angels Sing, it didn’t take long to forget about it. You know how it is – life gets in the way.
But last week’s post jogged Paul’s memory, and after he dug it out, I’m very happy to use apoplectic.me to present to you in its entirety the genius that is Birds Fate Ruins Xmas.
Merry Christmas!
