Music today has gone determinedly early eighties starting with the great and mostly forgotten Comsat Angels from Sheffield and their second album, Sleep No More (1981). It was the only album to (almost) crack the top 50 in the UK (No. 51), the following two albums, Fiction and Land, hit the nineties. But that was it. They reached No. 44 with this album in New Zealand. Such a great band and hearing them back in the same breath as these other early eighties bands it’s hard to determine what went wrong commercially – I guess they were too serious, too good, wrong hair maybe.

Talking of great hair I went for Crocodiles by Liverpool heroes, Echo & the Bunnymen, and I have to say it’s a wonderful album, the songs, the words, the mood, McCulloch’s voice and the band with Will Sergeant on guitar and that fantastic rhythm section of Les Pattinson on bass and Pete de Freitas on drums. How sad that we lost him. The Bunnymen were of course the most successful of this quartet of bands with lots of well deserved acclaim.

We toured America with Wolverhampton’s Mighty Lemon Drops. I played their debut Happy Head (1986) tonight. I’m distant mates with Dave Newton, the guitarist. Very much a Bunnymen sound, but Dave played these weird Italian guitars that gave him his own sound. They managed an album in the UK Top 40, their second album World Without End reaching No. 34, the debut No. 58.

Following this I had to play The Sound from London. One of the great underrated bands of the eighties. It’s the saddest story of all as singer Adrian Borland left us prematurely. We covered I Can’t Escape Myself from their first album Jeopardy (1980) on last year’s Afterdeath EP by Noctorum.

It’s time for bed, a busy week ahead unwrapping all of those presents.