IT'S FRIDAY...I'M IN LOVE WITH GREAT SCOTTISH SINGLES (Part 27)

I really do envy those of you who haven't heard today's great Scottish single before, because it really is something quite special.

I previously posted this single back on July 2007. As I said at the time, I had just picked up the track on a CD compilation entitled Ave Marina - Ten Years Of Marina Records after many years of unsuccessfully trying to track down a copy of Abandon Ship, a single originally released in 1984. Since then, I've bid a few times for the bit of vinyl on e-bay, but it always seems to go for really silly money.

Anyway, for those of you who know nothing about today's band, here's a lift from last fm:-

'April Showers were a Glaswegian indie-pop duo comprised of Jonathan Bernstein and Beatrice Colin. April Showers released their only known single "Abandon Ship" on Big Star, a subsidiary of Chrysalis, in 1984.

This was backed with another sparkling piece of pop genius "Everytime We Say Goodbye" and an instrumental of Abandon Ship; Abandon Ship Sing-A-Long-A-Wonder Mix.

Plans to release a second single on the label Operation Twilight came to nothing, and the inclusion of Abandon Ship on the compilation album "10 Years Of Marina Records" seems to be a footnote to the woefully brief story of April Showers, the perfect example of a band that has disappeared into, and whose status grows with, history.'

As I added back in July 2007, Beatrice Colin was the girlfriend of James Grant who was then part of Friends Again and later the lead in the acclaimed Love & Money. She later became a features journalist who often wrote for The Herald, a Glasgow-based broadsheet, and in recent years has become a successful novelist as can be seen here.

Abandon Ship has a magnificent production, courtesy of Anne Dudley, who was then part of The Art Of Noise and someone who worked closely alongside Trevor Horn (whose talents were the subject of this previous piece on TVV, courtesy of John Greer, one of the team of highly valued Sunday Correspondents).

It is also one of those songs that instantly takes me back to my student days, and in particular the genuinely long hot summer of 1984.

It was the first summer living away from my parents. I managed somehow to pass all my exams and have no resits. In addition, as it was University accommodation, the rent had all been paid upfront and so there were no money worries. It was also a time when full-time students could sign on the dole in between terms....looking back it was the last totally and genuinely carefree period of my life. No wonder I hark back to so many sounds of that era......

mp3 : April Showers - Abandon Ship

I know that Drew is keen for all the stuff we play at the forthcoming Flying Duck nights to be vinyl offerings (more details coming your way again tomorrow) but this is one that will, unless someone gets a bit of plastic to me in the next 7 days, have to come via a digital recording.

Happy Listening.