Mother Sky’s actually one of the weaker songs on the album for me. Oh well - just goes to show the overall quality I guess.
For me, Mother Sky sounds like Brix-era Fall doing Krautrock which is just tick, tick, tick - I would ordinarily avoid voting for a cover, but this one really got me.
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I’ve stuck it on again. It is indeed superb, but what isn’t on this album? Possibly sticks out a little compared to their originals - a bit more psychedelic and repetitive than I’m looking for.
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I liked this one, obviously has a lot of common ground with what was going on with Sub Pop and so in the US, but has enough trace elements of C86 jangle and Sarah tweeness to give it its own identity
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Sorry, I meant I’ll have to give Th’ Faith Healers a go! Love Quickspace, one of Bradford Cox’s favourite bands.
Went out today and got these, will listen later.
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Lovely stuff - enjoy your listening this weekend!
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LADS I LOVE TH’ FAITH HEALERS
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Love Song sounds a lot like Dry-era Peej too.
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Great to see Lido getting so much love. It really is a fantastic record
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Blimey - not sure we’ll ever see an album score that highly again - and quite right too, I was one of those 10s.
Although there was a tie, I added ‘Love Song’ to the Greatest Hits since it’s on both the original version and the American one. Love ‘Repile Smile’ but there you go 
@BodyInTheThames is up next - and very sorry as I forgot to message you on Friday. Will do so now!
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Good Morning … my turn
JULIAN COPE - PEGGY SUICIDE
April 1991 | Island Records
18 tracks : 75:44
This link is to the Deluxe version which features bonus tracks
So…
- I am 8 years old. There’s a guy with shaggy hair, dressed like an airforce pilot on Top of The Pops belting out a driving pop song with brass stabs and a half shouty lyric. This is great. A few weeks later he was on the show again with another song, later in the year a third song, standing barefoot on a white grand piano going ‘do - do - do - do - do’. I love it. Christmas day TOTP - he’s back with the shouty brass-stab song again but this time he’s wearing stripy pyjamas. His band have a very cool name - The Teardrop Explodes
I’d been into music for as long as I can remember but up until about Christmas 1980 I guess it was all my parent’s music - ELO’s Out of The Blue & Michael Jackson’s Off The Wall along with the Beatles, Stones & Beach Boys records & (to a lesser extent) The Bee Gees. That Christmas 1980 though, my teenage cousins all wanted records for Christmas presents so my elder sister dragged me round Woolworths as we bought The Specials, More Specials for cousin Andrew, Parallel Lines & Eat to the Beat for Janet, the first two OMD albums, and singles by Dexy’s Midnight Runners & The Police. We even bought Barbra Steisand’s ‘Guilty’ album for mum & Roxy Music’s ‘Flesh & Blood’ for dad. My sister bought herself ABBA’s Super Trouper - which I hated.
One year later, by Christmas 1981 I wanted in too… I wanted my ‘own’ bands and this guy I kept seeing on TOTP seemed like a dude that rubbed my parents up the wrong way & that was just what I was looking for. I asked my parents for the Teardrop Explodes album Kilimanjaro and they bought me the cassette. As an 8 year old I didn’t really understand any of it and the shouty trumpet one wasn’t even on it - which I couldn’t understand either. It wasn’t until years later that I realised the original release from 1980 never had Reward on it and it was added on the 1981 re-release, which my parents somehow managed to avoid despite it being the one in all the shops - they likely found the 1980 release in a bargain bin
So that was it for me & The Teardrop Explodes and that shaggy Julian guy. What a letdown. And suddenly all the synthpop bands arrived anyway and I was into The Human League & Spandau Ballet & Adam & The Ants & Soft Cell & Culture Club (but NOT Duran Duran)
Over the next decade I obviously noticed Julian popping up here & there singing ‘World, Shut Your Mouth’ and ‘Charlotte Ann’ & so on …and I liked it … but he always seemed a little bit at a distance from any other scene or trend or wave and didn’t really fit in anywhere (I never realised the connections at the time). And none of my friends were really into him that much so I never could climb back on board the Cope train somehow as my tastes veered into mid-80s US FM rock (Mr Mister!) and bookish UK floppy fringe pop (Lloyd Cole) and out the other side into The Cure & The Smiths just as the latter were splitting up.
Ffwd to summer 1990 and the young lady for whom we were to be each other’s first time sent me a mixtape in the post. On that mixtape, rounding off side one, was a sublime achingly whimsical pop song from Mr Julian Cope’s 1984 album Fried that had completely gone under my radar (too busy listening to Thriller, Purple Rain & Like a Virgin (ironically enough) probably) - Sunspots. What a fucking tune
Near the end of 1990 I, now 17, joined a band. The bass player & tour manager were big Julian Cope fans and we often had Teardrop Explodes & Cope stuff on in the van to & from gigs …and honestly I found half of it impenetrable & obscure …but always compelling somehow
And as 1991 started Julian Cope was active again with new material and some kind of Magnum Opus double LP on the way.
So, after a decade of being in & around his oeuvre I was, for the first time, waiting in anticipation of a Julian record
That’s the backstory. I’ll write more during the week about the Peggy Suicide album itself & my subsequent falling in love with the Cope universe; the biographies, the -rock sampler books, the Modern Antiquarian archeological explorations, the obscure b-sides & the singularly unique character in British rock history that is St Julian
Press play
“Pristeen … take two”
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Great album which I haven’t listened to for a couple of years.
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I swear you guys are reading my mind…have I been listening to Sunspots and Beautiful Love (from P.S.) all last week - you bet I have! Great choice! Been ages since I listened to the whole thing.
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Great album, this was the beginning of peak Cope for me, which lasted all the way through to Interpreter. Love that run of records, love the autobiographies, love the Modern Antiquarian, and a touch of the paranormal in the West Country.
as a bonus here’s a picture of the very young Riverwise with the Arch-Drude at a signing in the HMV in Portsmouth many many years ago
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To flash back a few weeks, members of this club may like to know that Levellers have just announced a November tour with support from Ned’s Atomic Dustbin. Impossible to overstate how much my 1991 self would have lost his shit over that.
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Great spot - yes, I’ve just signed up to the Levs mailing list in the hope of getting Barrowlands tickets early. My 1991 self would have (rightly) been annoyed that the Neds were in support and not the other way round! Although my 2026 self is looking forward to finally seeing the Levellers live…and doing the whole of Levelling the Land too!
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that is the most incredible bill.
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Not sure about this album at all folks, the opener was ok until Manzarek keyboards kicked in and then I couldn’t hit the skip button fast enough.
Will keep trying.
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I loved it this time round, but I do recall having little patience with some of it in the past. Not sure why, possibly just my mood? Definitely going to give the whole thing at least another play through before Friday.
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Have a lot of love for Cope. PS is a fantastic album. Have great memories of the Peel session from that time. The last track was called Soul Medley - its a cracker.
Big fan of his Modern Antiquarian work as well. Heres a BBC documentary where he revisits some of the more prominent sites. Callanish is a highlight. Dont think it was ever repeated on tv which is a shame.
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