January 27th
A Sudden Sway-Dance of Joy-To You With
reGard E.P.
Rumbelows were
an electrical retail chain pre-Dixons/Comet/PC World etc. They sold stuff like
irons, fridges, cookers and the like. They were mired deeply in the post war
50’s-70’s retail style. Their store in Liverpool was spread over three floors
and was full of the technological wonders of the age; deep-fat fryers,
Sodastreams and Breville sandwich toasters. (The store in Liverpool was
actually the old NEMS store from which Brian Epstein launched his career).
In
the basement of the store there was still a record department. This was
distinctly old-school. You could still see where old listening booths had been
back in the NEMS days. If you wanted a record by, say Vera Lynn, then you fully
expected to be asked if you would prefer it as a 78 or on wax cylinder.
Anyway,
in 1982, Rumbelows decided to shut the Liverpool store and as part of an
intense closing down “everything-must-go” sale over about two weeks they
attempted to make the best of a bad situation by selling all the records off at
low prices. They were that desperate to get rid of everything that it evolved
over these two weeks into a musical jumble sale. Prices were slashed day by
day, to the eventual ridiculousness of one price in the morning and a lower one
in the afternoon. By the end you could haggle and name your own price.
I kept
bumping into friends in there at random times, and we were all trying to get
records at the lowest price possible. Matters reached levels of absurdity if we
were all after the same record. We started to hide it in the racks so it
couldn’t easily be found by each other, in order you could return at a later
date when the price had dropped. (I remember hiding Neil Young’s “After the
Goldrush” within the M-S section so that my friend Andy wouldn’t see it reduced
to £1.49 and hoping it would have plummeted to less than a quid when I went
back later. It did, and I got it for 79p. Sorry, in retrospect, Andy).
There was no
such hunt for A Sudden Sway’s “To You With reGard” E.P. though, but there
should have been. That there was such an esoteric record being sold next to
hairdryers and four-ring hobs defies all understanding.
It had been released on
such a small independent label and had had little or no press coverage. I think
that there was a tiny four line review in one of the music weeklies and I never
even heard it on the John Peel show.
It was a mystery, an audio piece of
driftwood, the fact that it had ended up filed beside Paul Simon and Sister
Sledge in an electrical retail shop. Unless you were actively looking for it,
it could have stayed there for years, as the sleeve was so nondescript. It was
a 4 track 12” E.P. in a murky blue matt sleeve. The name of the band was in
small print and the only artwork was a strange white line drawing of a weird
character (a wizard-y type I think).
I’d never heard anything by A Sudden Sway
until I got back home and listened to it.
Even now, after 30 years it still is
a totally unique record. I would not know how to categorise it-avant-garde,
progressive, dance-y, poppy. Hummable, ethereal, melodic and mysterious. I
searched high and low on the internet for a copy of it for years after I
foolishly sold my copy. After a decade of being online, I finally found an mp3
of it and for once, it lived up to the reputation I had given it. This is truly
a classic record and should have been a massive hit.
The fact that it wasn’t
means it counts for so much more.
"Totally Shuffled" here as a Kindle e book
and here in a paperback
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