I know you've got this because you reminded me about it last September. I heard the Peel session on both occasions it was broadcast in 1983, and then explained the conceit of Let's Evolve to you. Did I have the presence of mind to tape it? If I didn't there was no other way to hear it ever again, since Strange Fruit's issue of Peel Sessions didn't begin until two or three years later (this being the fifth of their releases, which I snapped up as soon as I saw it).
I still find Let's Evolve amusing, and now, in addition to the evolution-as-self-improvement-fitness-workout joke, there's the way it provides a window back onto 1980s ad-speak. Why is it that the past always seems less riddled with hyperbole and less Americanised? Could it be that it actually was?
I'd forgotten about Side 2, probably because it's less memorable. It's called Relationships and it takes an engagingly non-linear turn.
What happens to a band as creative and unsaleable as this after they realise that Oh Superman was a one-off and their sounds are not chartbound? Is the Lee Shale who is listed on percussion for this session the same Lee Shale who was Location Manager for the recent Joy Division film? Or were the only traces they left old discs like this one and that remarkably large and durable graffiti of their name on the wall of Sidney Sussex college?
| Buy from eil.com subject to availability | Discogs entry for this album |
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