Felix NEill

I've always loved this track.

Colin Vearncombe is much underrated as far as I'm concerned.

This reminds me of attending a house party at an impossibly glamorous friend of a friend who lived in Stoke Newington. Before I moved down to London, I made a brace of exploratory visits, each one convincing me more and more that I had be down there. The land of a gig every night and women and women and women. I'd already bought this record on a trip to see a friend who was doing media studies at Liverpool Poly. I thought this was incredible. "What? You get to study films, and newspapers? And then get a degree?"

On one of my initial visits to London, I attended a Smash Hits party with David Hepworth and Mark Ellen in attendance. There was a "smokers" room I seem to recall, but I was far too young, wide eyed and innocent to participate. I just got pissed on cider and tried to cop off with the girl from Cherry Red records. She was having none of it, unfortunately. I later found out she was going out with Louis Philippe, so I couldn't really compare with that could I?

I'm rambling. Back at the Stoke Newington party, I arrived after a visit to the Virgin Megastore and HMV on Oxford Street. I couldn't fucking believe that there were record shops which stocked EVERYTHING. I bought "Wonderful Life" again on the 12" reissue, as this initial release on Ugly Man Records had pretty much bombed.

Always clued up musically, I felt ahead of the game as I played the twelve to the assembled throng. The gays and women loved it. The men, less so.

I had already fallen in love with London and it was a matter of mere weeks before I boarded the train South to seek out a flat in Battersea, renting a room from a mad woman who played percussion: both in an orchestra and on her CD player. Many's the time I arrived home to the sound of an African drum ensemble.

I have a picture somewhere of me at that party which I should dig out for you. I think you'd like it.

Vinyl rip from the original single release at 320 Kbps. A bit of surface noise, but still worth it.

Wonderful Life.

EDIT: Brilliant update from friend of the blog, Bicksvilla.

"Back in the dim distant student days I used to "borrow" a students Union minibus under the guise of official ENTS Ctte business and earn a bit of extra cash doing bits and pieces for various Liverpool bands. I used to drive Black about and one cold autumn day I was booked by Black's manager at the time (Mike Gaunt) to take the band up to Blackpool for the filming of the Saturday morning kid's TV show on ITV called "It's Wicked" (which was presented by Jake Abrahams - another Scouser who ran a pub round the corner from where I lived at the time), We had to go up on the Friday night as filming was early Saturday morning. We stayed in the Norbreck Castle hotel and I was booked in under the pseudonym Tom Bassey (under which name I got junk mail from said hotel for years!) - the reason for the name was Mike couldn't remember my real name but knew it was something Welsh. Anyway filming was over and we were to head straight back to Liverpool, unfortunately the weather was now awful, gale force winds and driving rain but I had to get back to Liverpool in a hurry, I think we had a gig at the uni that we needed the van for, so I drove back to Liverpool in terrible conditions and most probably way over the speed limit. Colin Vearncombe was lying down in the back of the minibus with a coat over his head, not being able to cope with the speed I was driving in the condidtions. He let it be known that I was never to drive them anywhere ever again. Bit of a big girl's blouse was Colin..."

My favourite bit of detail from that is the name of the TV show, which appears to have been a BBC affair rather than an ITV prog...