Liverpool bands were everywhere in 1983. All the offspring of the Eric's audience weres preading their wings and making their own way in the Pop world, releasing records that were landing in and around the charts. The Bunnymen were in their pomp and Wah!, China Crisis the Lotus Eaters and Icicle Works were also getting serious daytime radio play. Dead & Alive and Frankie, containing key faces from the Eric's scene, were just around the corner. John Peel was using every opportunity to play bands from his home town on his nightime shift. Then there was Care.
Care was a meeting of two more notables from that Eric's scene; Paul Simpson and Ian Broudie. Simpson was the cooler older brother figure described by Will Sergeant in Bunnyman, who made him feel comfortable in the club when he first braved it as an unkempt and spotty teenager. Simpson went on to play in an early line up of The Teardrop Explodes before moving on to Wild Swans.
Broudie's back story was even more impressive. He was a member of Big in Japan, the original Eric's Punks who showed the club's audience it could be done. He produced the Bunnymen's debut Crocodiles and had had his own band Original Mirrors.
So Care was a meeting of heavyweight musicians but the music they made together was distinctly light. Flaming Sword, their best known song, made the UK Top 50. It's nourishing and satisfying but highly sugary. Like Care's other material, it's tasty, like a great slice of Christmas cake where you'd like to eat the cake itself, but perhaps without so much marzipan. It set Broudie up nicely for the fabulous Lightning Seeds debut Cloudcuckooland, which arrived in 1990. Simpson is due to publish his memoirs later this year. I imagine they will be well worth reading.
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