2. Virgin Prunes…If I Die, I Die
AM: There’s a whole generation of us that were just picking records based on the cover and the name. It was a really fun time. $10 was a lot of money, so it was just like, ‘am I going to buy this weird-looking one by the Cramps or am I going to buy this weird-looking one by someone called the Virgin Prunes?’
NK: This one has [semi] naked people on the cover, so it’s always more exciting.
AM: This is one of those records that is so alien that it sometimes takes years to make it into your favourites. I remember getting PiL’s Second Edition [US release name for Metal Box] when I got this record and I was thinking, ‘this is so alien, I don’t know how to enter into it’. But you didn’t have four billion records at your fingertips, so you would really spend time listening to it. So every now and then I would pull it out and be like, ‘what is going on here?’ It really educated me.
NK: This is one that really came back into our playlist in about 2004, after being over a lot of the trends in electronic music and searching for different ways for us to operate, bringing in guitar and more bass. But there’s also something so haunting about the way Gavin Friday and Guggi sing. I remember hearing their vocals for the first time and thinking, ‘what is this?’
AM: We’re obviously huge Colin Newman fans and he produced this record too. Also, for us, when we were wanting to make our third record and be like, ‘surprise – you don’t know who we are, we don’t even know’. This record, especially the more accessible side, was important.
NK: Some of the instrumentation might be more accessible but the vocals aren’t. I mean that is a very original distinct voice and I am incredibly drawn to it.
AM: Nicola doesn’t have a huge vocal range but she finds solutions around that I don’t find many other singers coming up with. if you look at some records she’s picked, you can hear that in the singers she’s picked: John Lydon, Genesis etc. It’s like, ‘I’m no Diamanda Galas so how am I going to come up with something unique?’
Is this one of those records that if it came out in the streaming era you might not give it as much time and repeat listening?
NK: Absolutely. Same with the Cure’s The Top. When I bought it I just really didn’t like it, I was like, ‘this isn’t like the other Cure records.’ But today, because I had to listen to it so much because I only had a handful of cassettes, I have a deep appreciation for that album and it contains some of their most unique songs. Back then having to sit and fast-forward through a whole song was so fucking annoying that you would just listen. You couldn’t just click ‘next’.
AM: That being said, not every record would make the cut. I remember this first album I had from this band called the Red Hot Chilli Peppers. I would try and try and try and try and thankfully to this day I never got into it.
