SCRITTI POLITTI – SONGS TO REMEMBER LP – Nr MINT A2/B1 ROUGH TRADE

Scritti Politti – Songs To Remember
(Rough Trade/Base Records  1982  ROUGH20  Italy press)
Matrix No’s: A2/B1

Embossed Sleeve in Very Good+ condition
– some ringwear and a few marks

Vinyl in Nr MINT condition
(there are some surface marks visible on the vinyl when held up to the light but they don’t affect the sound quality)
 

Scritti Politti is a British band, originally formed in 1977 in Leeds, England, by Welsh singer-songwriter Green Gartside. He is the only member of the band to have remained throughout the group’s history.

Beginning as a punk-inspired collective of art students and squatters, Scritti Politti released several early post-punk recordings on Rough Trade Records before transitioning into a mainstream pop music project in the early to mid- 1980s, enjoying significant success in the record charts in the UK and the US. The group’s most successful album, 1985’s Cupid & Psyche 85, spawned three UK Top 20 hits with “Wood Beez (Pray Like Aretha Franklin)”, “Absolute”, and “The Word Girl”, as well as a US Top 20 hit with “Perfect Way”.

The band’s 1988 album Provision was a UK Top 10 success, though it only produced one UK Top 20 hit single, “Oh Patti”. After releasing two non-album singles in 1991, as well as a collaboration with B.E.F., Gartside became disillusioned with the music industry and retired to south Wales for more than seven years. He returned in the late 1990s, releasing a new album, Anomie & Bonhomie, in 1999 (which included various rock and hip hop influences). In 2005 Rough Trade released the compilation Early, which collected the band’s first releases. In 2006 Gartside released the stripped-down White Bread, Black Beer.

Songs to Remember is the debut album by the British post-punk/new wave pop group Scritti Politti. The album’s recording had to be delayed for nine months due to frontman Green Gartside’s collapse and illness, and then after completion its release was delayed for a further year at the band’s request. It was eventually released on Rough Trade Records on 3 September 1982, reaching number 12 on the UK albums chart. The album’s lead single and best known track, “The Sweetest Girl”, was recorded and released as a single by British pop group Madness, reaching number 35 on the UK singles chart in 1986.

The album was heavily influenced by 1960s and 1970s funk, disco and soul music, and marked the start of Scritti Politti’s move from their underground DIY ethic towards making commercial pop music and their mainstream and international breakthrough with the follow-up album Cupid & Psyche 85 three years later. Although Songs to Remember and the three singles taken from it were not the big hits that Green had hoped for, the album was acclaimed by the critics and featured on many lists of the best albums of 1982. It remains a highly regarded record: in 1989 the British music magazine Record Mirror placed it at number 14 in their critics’ list of the best albums of the 1980s, and it was included in journalist Garry Mulholland’s book Fear of Music: The 261 Greatest Albums Since Punk and Disco where he described the record as “a unique and modestly epic fusion of pop, reggae, funk, soul, jazz and lyrics submerged in the deep end of political philosophy”.

The Scottish pop group Wet Wet Wet took their name from a line in the track “Gettin’ Havin’ & Holdin'” – “it’s tired of joking… wet, wet with tears”.

Track listing

All songs written and arranged by Green. On the album credits “The Sweetest Girl” did not include the inverted commas used on the single version of the song.

Side one

1. “Asylums in Jerusalem” – 3:12
2. “A Slow Soul” – 3:16
3. “Jacques Derrida” – 4:58
4. “Lions After Slumber” – 6:09
5. “Faithless” – 4:13

Side two

1. “Sex” – 4:20
2. “Rock-A-Boy Blue” – 5:52
3. “Gettin’ Havin’ & Holdin'” – 5:16
4. “The Sweetest Girl” – 6:15

Personnel

All personnel are credited on the album by their first names only.

• Joe Cang – bass
• Green Gartside – vocals, guitar
• Nial Jinks – bass
• Mike McEvoy – keyboards, vocoder on “Faithless”
• Tom Morley – drums (rather than a standard drum kit, several tracks feature the LinnDrum drum machine instead, also programmed by Morley)
• Mgotse Mothle – double bass on “Rock-A-Boy Blue”
• Jamie Talbot – saxophone on “A Slow Soul”, “Lions After Slumber” and “Rock-A-Boy Blue”
• Robert Wyatt – keyboards on “Asylums in Jerusalem”, “Jacques Derrida” and “The ‘Sweetest Girl'”
• Jackie Challenor, Lorenza Johnson, Mae McKenna – backing vocals
• Matthew Kay – organisation (management)

Although he does not appear on the album, Steve Sidwell played trumpet on the single version of “Faithless”.