Some thoughts and thanks...
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How did I get here?
Sue Dyer and I hanging out in Glasgow, 1990
Two Wheels Good had been out for a few months when a woman I knew recommended it. I bought the LP. I played it a few times and thought it was "OK." I then set it aside for about six months.
I pulled it out again eventually and started playing it. This time it just hit me. Hit me like no album has before or since. It was simply incredible.
Of course I wanted more, and in short order found Swoon, which was the only other album released at that point. (Keep in mind, I live in California near Los Angeles, so collecting a band with primarily UK releases wasn't easy.) I discovered a local record swap meet and started attending it, looking for singles. I had never done this before but in short order I was going two to three times a month to various swap meets, picking up Prefab Sprout material as well as a variety of other recordings. I started subscribing to Goldmine (a US record collecting magazine), and the UK's Record Collector magazine.
I became what is known in collecting as a "completist," which meant that I would collect just about everything from everywhere. For example, if they released a 7" in Australia, I'd try to track it down, even though it might be identical to the UK release in every way. Ideally I'd hope to find cover variations at the very least, or album wording in a different language.
Frankly, I ended up investing way too much time in this -- such is the collecting mania. On the other hand, my record trading brought me some very dear new friends and experiences, so on balance I feel quite happy about my involvement. These days, I don't let collecting of anything dominate my life as much as it did back then.
In 1990, one of the friends I had met through collecting, Sue Dyer, called me from her home in Newcastle to say: "the Sprouts are touring." I immediately made up my mind to go. Except for a trip to Mexico, I had never been out of the US. I ended up going to England and Scotland for four weeks (and have been back twice since then for fun). I saw the Sprouts in Edinburgh, Glasgow, Newcastle, and Sheffield. Sue had this habit of buying tickets right in front but in the second row, so three of the four nights we were in the same spot (the Glasgow show was general admission/standing). By the Sheffield show, Paddy was prefacing his patter with comments like, "Some of you have heard this before..."
I met the band after that show.
Martin was incredibly friendly. Neil and I had a nice chat about his excellent
drumming. Wendy was as sweet as her voice, even though she was in a bit of pain
because she had torn up her fingernail the previous night and it was all
swaddled up. Paddy and I chatted briefly but it is clear he always gets most of
the attention, so I kept it brief. They were all very gracious to a fan who had
travelled so far.
After Jordan, however, little happened from the band, and frankly my interest waned. Unlike their early releases, releases by the band around this time rarely carried non-album tracks, and that was very frustrating. The two new tracks on Life of Surprises weren't enough for me and the Sprouts occupied little of my thinking.
In 1996 I dropped my AOL account and signed up with a proper ISP. They provided a couple megs of space for web pages and I asked myself, "what do I know about that I could contribute to the web?" The first answer was my Prefab Sprout pages. I bought the smallest book on HTML I could find and started typing. (Up until 2002, I typed my html on an old 25MHz Mac LCIII. That's why my site is content-rich but hardly cutting edge. If I ever learn a decent authoring tool, I’ll probably work on my other pages first, so expect my Sprout pages to not change too much.)
Soon after I launched my webpage, the Sprouts chose to release Andromeda Heights, and the hits to my page (and emails asking questions) went way up. I would typically have 10 Sprout related emails to respond to every day, but it was an exciting time. I ran a trivia contest for a few months with monthly prizes and with the grand prize being a copy of the Candle single. When Andromeda Heights came out, fans rated the tracks through my web page, and we sent the data to Kitchenware thinking it could help them select which songs to release as singles. I want to tell you this: having fans write in saying how much they appreciated my web pages was (and remains) a wonderful reward for the hours -- many hours -- of work involved in creating and maintaining them.
Personally, I found Andromeda Heights to be a disappointment, though at least they added non album tracks to the CD singles. As I've stated elsewhere in these pages, the absence of Neil Conti and the minimal presence of Wendy Smith on "Andromeda Heights," and then the complete absence of both on "Gunman," makes me feel as if Prefab Sprout doesn't really exist any more. The band has morphed into what I call the "The Paddy McAloon Project." If you look at it this way, then it becomes less necessary to compare the more recent work to the older stuff. The release of “I Trawl the Megahertz” as a Paddy McAloon solo effort really lends credence to this idea, and I don’t even rank it in my list of favorite Prefab Sprout albums below; it simply is not a Prefab Sprout album.
And, by the way, it doesn't really bother me that the band has changed. I'm grateful for the incredible material that has been produced and understand that change is sometimes necessary to fuel the creative spark -- maybe the best is yet to come. And who really knows what the dynamics were within the band when it was in its "classic" form? Frankly, I think the reported problems with Paddy's eyesight made the issues about the relative merits of, say "Gunman," seem trivial. All best wishes for a healthy recovery Paddy!
Since I am often asked, here's how I rank all the Sprout albums (skipping the two greatest hits albums), starting with my favorite:
- Two Wheels Good / Steve McQueen
- Jordan:The Comeback
- From Langley Park to Memphis
- Protest Songs
- Swoon
- The Gunman and Other Stories
- Andromeda Heights
Buy 'em all and form your own opinion.
My disappointments have been few. The biggest: the lack of a CD containing the non-album tracks, demos, and other rarities. It would be so easy to do and of great interest to fans. Bootlegs of such a CD are now frequently seen on eBay selling for around $40-50.
Prefab Sprout is still special to me. Indeed, I had flight tickets and concert tickets to three shows for the Sprouts UK 2000 tour (including front row center at Manchester) but at the last minute a personal matter prevented me from going. And while I auctioned off the bulk of my collection on eBay in May 2000, I plan to remain a big fan and to continue my Sprout web pages indefinitely.
Thanks for reading and your encouragement!
A Special Thanks
Sue Dyer and I hanging out backstage in Sheffield, 1990. The couple on the left kept getting in our pictures.
These pages reflect my passion for collecting material on the Sprouts, mostly during the period 1986-1990. While I built my collection using many sources, a few stand out in particular and I would therefore like to thank: Joe Alaimo of NYC and San Francisco, who has an entirely different set of passions for music. John Birch, whose Sprout collection rivaled? surpassed? mine -- but then, he had the home-field advantage since he lived in England. Most of all, I am grateful to Sue Dyer. Sue showed me why Geordies are so special. She sent me countless packages from Newcastle and got us great seats for the Sprout shows we saw. Her husband, Dave, indulged both Sue and my odd interests with great patience when, all things considered, he'd rather be at a football match. These pages would not have been possible without them, and their friendship is a better gift to me than the release of "Two Wheels Good."
Finally, I have to thank the lass behind the ice cream counter who first recommended Prefab Sprout, Barbara Siegemund-Broka (then just "Broka"). It took me about 100 ice cream sundaes to obtain that information, but I'm not complaining!
If Newcastle United calls, Dave is
ready!
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