Today I've spent a few hours in a time machine. First an early morning trip to the late Nineties with the Beta Band. And now, after an online lesson, and doing some shopping for my mother I'm having an out of body experience with Introducing the Hardline According To Terrence Trent D'Arby. Or Sananda Maitreya as Terrence prefers to be called these days.
This is a true Back to the Future experience for the likes of me. Introducing the Hardline was the true frontline rank of cool in my first year at university. Terrence had the look, the moves, the talent and the songs. Nobody has any right to the talent and songs that man had.
I bought the NME religiously and was not averse to sneaking a look at my honey's copy of The Face when she wasn't looking. I did buy the album as both of these publications practically ordered me to. The music wasn't really my thing at that point in time. Literate boys with Rickenbackers. Or Fender Telecasters, was more to my liking then. But I was learning, and fast.
The others I hung out with in my accomodation block at Fifer's Lane had no such reservations. They had the look; the polo neck sweaters, the Denim 501s, the regulation Doctor Martins. Scott Crilla cords too if you will, according to something I heard from a very good friend from those days earlier on today.
I thought they were a bunch of fashion victims frankly although I loved them all at first sight and we had a wonderful time for three terms before I decided what I really wanted was my honey and practically moved in with her early on in the second year. That's not the whole story I'm afraid to say. But it's all you're getting here. It's my story so I have every write to tell it my way.
But listening today, almost forty years on Introducing the Hardline is clearly as cool as it gets and doesn't age a day even if the rest of us do. If The Picture of Dorian Grey were an album, this might as well be it. It's absolute state of the art Soul Pop panache and bravado of the highest order. 'Sign a Name Across My Heart. I want you to be my baby...'
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