Details

Classification: Album
Label: Creation Records, Relativity
Catalogue: CRECD027, 88561-8223-2
Date: 1988
Recorded: Alaska, Waterloo
Engineered: Iain O'Higgins
Production: Pat Fish, Iain O'Higgins
Photography: Mitch Jenkins
Sleeve: by accident

Next Move Sideways
Out Of Touch
Get It Wrong
Living In A Village
Swell

Lot 49
The Best Way
Chickentown
Susie
Keeping The Curtains Closed

The Players

Pat Fish (Songs, Vocals, Instruments)
Kizzy O'Callaghan (Guitars, Vocals)
Alex Green (Saxophones)
Greenwood Goulding (Bass Guitar)
Dave Morgan (Drums)
Dave Suleyman (Bass on Lot 49)
Blair MacDonald (Drums on Lot 49)
Laurence O'Keefe (Bass on Swell)
Sonic Boom (Feedback on Susie)
The Perfect Disaster (Backing Vocals on The Best Way)

Samples courtesy of Unit Csawza, Northampton and Frank Bruno Family Favourites, Springfield, Mass. Sandwiches by `The Pantry' Waterloo Road, London. SE1, Liquors by `The Wellington Tavern', Waterloo Road, London. SE1, Thanks to: Mark, Dee, Phil, Eleanor, Robin, Barbara, Jaz, Dan, Sonic, Gilles, A Riot of Colour for X11 string, Jeff, all at Creation Records, and especially to Frank from Hamburg, for taking me out one crucial Wednesday night.

Record Mirror (UK), 1989

Having ended up on Creation Records, which I took as a bit of a validation, I was keen to get as far away from all those "w" words that had followed my group around, and to make it as clear as I could that this was a rock & roll thing, not some "eccentricity". I had my shades and I had my fringed suede jacket and I had the Weather Prophets rhythm section.

In the last flickering days before Marriage and Acid House would change the world Kizzy and I hung out in his dealer's flat in Islington and WALKED to the studio in Waterloo everyday. The sessions were chaotic and funny. At one stage Kizzy arrived 56 hours late for a mix, having been held by the Police under the Prevention of Terrorism Act.

David has this down right as a sort of self-justificatory thing. What disappoints me is that it came out sounding so SMOOTH and tidy. I'd hoped it would be more harsh and mad. I guess perhaps it's the saxes, which, I recall, enraged some reviewers. Sonic Boom does good things on Susie (that's 4 of them big ballads at least, now), that was more the idea. Still, not to slag O'Higgins, who began a lengthy association with the JBC on this recording.

This sold rather well, which was pleasing, and seems widely liked. I can't fuck with that, but I had hoped that it would be more a "change of direction" than it was. But I like Fishcotheque; I wish there more records as good as it.