'It's time that the tale were told.'
You had to work hard in the Eighties. If music was your main obsession and you were hunting for deleted or unavailable records. Scour record shops. Record Exchanges on Camden High Street were the best option. Girlfriends could be another.
I wanted Pylon product because R.E.M.had insisted they were better than them. My beloved girlfriend went on a BUNAC summer camp in Pennsylvania in 1987. She had a wail of a time. She met a mouthy Black American co-worker who mouthed on about hot beef injections and such stuff. How vulgar ! We wrote regularly and she called whenever she could. I was terriby ill, carrying out tests on an illness that was eventually diagnosed and the recue mission was mounted. Almost forty years on, I bear no scars.
I asked my love to buy me Gyrate while she was in The States. She did so and brought it back to me in her return. It's an enduring act of love which I still feel grateful for. Which is why I'm writing about it here.
Gyrate itself is is of course a timeless record. It spins, pivots. Arcs in the spotlight. It's a model lesson that great art and Rock & Roll is the product, not of great technical skill necessarily but ideas and guile and applying your skills in a directed and inspired manner first and foremost.
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