In the mid 1980s there were a handful of record shops within easy reach. As a regular visitor, you got to know their stock pretty well — especially the stuff that wasn't moving. That was how I came to buy this record: it was in the Our Price on Bridge Street in Cambridge at a pricey £6.49 (I still have the label), which was especially steep for a mini-album featuring two tracks I already had from Virginia's From Gardens Where We Feel Secure album. But no-one else was buying it, so I did, and I'm glad.
I didn't have a record player in Cambridge, so I had to take my records round to friends' rooms if I wanted to hear them. This meant that every audition of a new record was a social experience. Technology's not like that any more: you don't often go to a friend's place and say, "I've got this new MP3 file, but I don't have the means to hear it, so I was wondering if we could play it on your equipment". I heard this in Richard Verity's room in Orchard Court (I think I read recently that the building has now been demolished). I was keen on the setting of Wilfred Owen's Futility, but Richard homed in Love's a Lonely Place to Be. What a great lyric for Valentine's Day:
Friends no longer call around
And we no longer smile
It seems to me although you're here
I'm more alone than ever before
We are fools to believe that life is for this
I've got you here beside me
But love's a lonely place to be
All the songs feature Virginia Astley's trademark combination of sweet arrangements and melancholy lyrics that verge on being morbid. Somehow they carry off the mix, in the way that few others (apart from David Lynch) can without just being sickly.
This work stands alone, and its aura is stronger for Astley having more or less retired from making music some time ago. It attracts some avid followers; none stranger, I hope, than Deke Rivers, whose eulogy can be found at the bottom of this page.
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