Viva Dead Ponies has been back on frequent rotation again this week. I felt the urge to listen to some "angry" music - I wonder why - and The Fatima Mansions are more than up to the task. I bought this on CD from Kay's record shop in Yate, a place which holds the dubious pleasure of being the birthplace of J.K. Rowling and named 45th worst place to live in Britain in the 2003 book Crap Towns. Kay's is long, long gone now but at the time was arguably the only reason for a trip to Yate. It stocked all the usual chart and mainstream stuff but Simon the manager also had a knack for slipping in some unexpected gems. I remember buying this on spec for £7.99 in the early 1990s. It was a brand new CD but had clearly sat unloved and unsold for sometime, and may have been at a discounted price at this point. This was the 1990 first issue of the album with 19 tracks, before it was reissued and rejigged to include Blues For Ceausescu and Only Losers Take The Bus. I love both of these songs and have the singles, but the original album was perfect and the song Thursday didn't deserve to be a casualty of the 1991 revision. The production and some of the synth sounds place the album in time, but Cathal Coughlan's songwriting and performance is unbeatable. As a proper introduction to The Fatima Mansions, the album blew me away and still resonates today. I finally got to see The Fatima Mansions live in concert in 1994, in support of their - as it subsequently transpired - final album, Lost In The Former West. It was an incendiary performance.
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