All their releases are amazing, but Quickspace, the Super Plus EP (released as Quickspace Supersport), Supo Spot, Precious Falling and the Precious Mountain EP are essential, in my opinion.I would have had Reason for Living over BBB and what no Spanish Horses.It was only after this set, which extended out to well over 100 minutes, that I fully appreciated just how many great songs hes written over the years under his own name and of course under the label of Aztec Camera.
And that was after a set that didnt include all four of his Postcard songs. Its the opening track to what was the third LP released under his own name. I rarely like when ballads open up albums but this is such a lovely little understated song with very fine acoustic guitar plucking and a melodoica. It is a record packed with ridiculously catchy and memorable tunes and some wonderfully observant lyrics. And of course Roddy Frame wrote most of the songs before he had reached his 18th birthday. Love is over-produced to the point where at times it becomes near unlistenable which is a damn shame as some of Roddys best songs can be found among its nine tracks. It is when you hear them played nowadays, almost 30 years later, with just the voice and the acoustic guitar to occupy your thoughts, that you get a full appreciation of their majesty. As with this, the sublime second track on Love but captured live in Osaka, Japan in September 2006. And Grant McLennan and Robert Forster will have looked on while they made their fleeting visit to Glasgow to record for Postcard and smiled at being in the presence of a genius. I realise now that my musical tastes in 1981 hadnt quite evolved enough to appreciate it. Its now probably my favourite Aztec Camera song of them all. But it is the b-side I have always been really fond of.not least as it helped me along the way to reassessing how I felt about J ust Like Gold. A short while later I fell for the charms of Billy Bragg and theres many a time Ive thought that Orchid Girl is the greatest BB love song that he never wrote. There would have been a real irony if Bigger Brighter Better had turned out to be his return to the singles charts. But theres just something a bit special hearing Roddy, with just a guitar for accompaniment, deliver this ode to his roots at a venue thousands of miles away and realising that its a song capable of bringing a lump to the throats of an audience who have never set foot in the famed bus station. However, the slicker production and the fact the tempo on the album version is slightly slower allows the song to breathe a bit more. Oh and its also nearly a minute or so longer in length with a cracking solo from Roddy thrown in that ensures its place on this imaginary compilation. The lyric was always a social commentary on life in the UK under a right-wing Tory government with no prospect of things changing but was kind of lost in the bombastic tune that with the help of Mick Jones took Aztec Camera into the charts for one last time in 1990. This live version demonstrates just how great a song it is.maybe it is time for it to be dusted down and updated to take account of life under David Cameron. Nowadays, and this is what he did at Glasgow the other week, Roddy extends it out with a coda of Its Alright Ma (Im Only Bleeding) and then shows off his guitar skills. Theres a few versions of this out there but the fact that this was another gig in front of a home crowd who you can sense are going wild in the aisles of the historic old church makes it an ideal closer for this imaginary compilation.
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