Who the hell makes those missiles? The Sound & Adrian Borland

When I’m not doing the other things I do, I regularly maintain a Twitter feed for Wimbletweets. Its a place where I tweet and re-tweet information, events and observations about the area that is better known for an event which takes place every year in June. My saved searches contain words and places around the  town and whilst searching for Wimbledon Station last week I came across the name Adrian Borland. It was an answer to a music quiz question and the respondent had a stated he had killed himself at the station in 1999.

Intrigued I googled the name and on reading and hearing about Adrian and his work with his band The Sound I became a fan. At the same time I was saddened to read that he had in fact taken his life aged only 41, at Wimbledon Station  (like so many do) after years of battling depression.

Like myself, you may not have heard of The Sound. Though critically acclaimed the band never achieved the success at home that it found in Europe. They split in 1988 and Borland went on to have a solo career whilst producing for bands like Felt.

Whats interesting now is there maybe more new people discovering the work of Adrian Borland through the planned 2014 documentary on him ‘Walking In The Opposite Direction’.  There’s a trailer and information about the Crowdfunding campain here.

If you want to learn more then visit the site Brittle Heaven. In the meantime enjoy the rest of the 1982 No Nukes performance.

Listen :
The Sound – Jeopardy
The Sound – From The Lion’s Mouth

No helmets, no lycra, but a cool electro theme! Cycling in the 80’s!

No helmets, no lycra, but a cool electro theme! Cycling in 80’s London. Showing you that nothing really changes and the safety issues remain the same today.

Virgin Record Stores present The Virgin Rappers

Back in the mid 1980’s if you wanted to see a music video you would have to hope that it might appear on Top of The Pops, the Tube or something similar. If you were lucky you might have access to MTV or your local pub might have a video jukebox. If not then you had to go out and buy a VHS video cassette instead. Heres how Virgin sold that idea to the youth back then…

The Virgin Rappers :: Dolly Rapper

The Virgin Rappers :: Dolly Rapper – Smash Hits advert

Archive: The The – ‘Perfect’ press ad 1983

This fell out of a book along with a few more The The clippings the other evening.


An advert for The The – Perfect, which has been cut from a 1993 issue of Smash Hits magazine. I’ll scan the other clippings in due course. In the meantime its a perfect day to have a listen.

Its Matt Johnson doing his best Syd Barrett impression as he passes between Burning Blue Soul and Soul Mining.  Personally I prefer the version that turned up on the cassette release of the latter along with some other cuts from the unreleased ‘Pornography Of Despair’ LP. Sadly that album remains locked in the Johnson vault.

Listen: The The – 45 RPM – The Singles Of The The

New Order > The Perfect Kiss

Low slung bass…

Listen: New Order – The Perfect Kiss – Live version from Video