Ben, didn't you tell me one time that you'd been to a club with some friends and tried to persuade some girls you met that you were Martin McAloon? Or was it one your mates that was pretending? On the basis of the picture of Martin on the cover here, you could have just about passed for him.
I didn't have this album back then. Having bought their first album Swoon the year before, I skipped over this one, probably for the same snobby reason that, having bought The Smiths' and Billy Bragg's first albums, I ignored their second and third. Just to highlight the point that I was there in the early days before others caught on.
I rejoined the Prefab Sprout story around the time that Protest Songs came out. I think Jordan: The Comeback may be by favourite, but I've only ever had that on a tape that Neil Smith did for me (and which I doubt I could find now).
But lots of people talk about Steve McQueen as though it was a landmark, and I finally got it at the beginning of last year when I saw it in Fopp for a ridiculous £3 (less than half the price it is on iTunes, and I can burn an uncompressed digital copy whenever I want to).
I've listened to it several times, and many of the songs were familiar anyway from the radio or other people's collections. But for some reason it doesn't stick. Maybe I've just had my fill of Prefab Sprout doing what they do. Though I think it may be that it just doesn't stand up that well in the light of the better stuff that came later.
 MusicBrainz entry for this album
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