Yesterday, I had the immense privilege of JC at The Vinyl Villain posting my contribution to the An Imaginary Compilation Album series, this time featuring It's Immaterial. My sixth ICA since August 2020, it was also the 299th ICA in total, a milestone itself in a consistently excellent series. By (near) coincidence, today marks my 199th post on the Dubhed blog, so I thought I'd celebrate with a companion piece on It's Immaterial.
I love reading and contributing to the An Imaginary Compilation Album series. It's a good way of discovering or rediscovering artists and bands and personally I've found music that I've either missed altogether or have appreciated when presented in a new light. It's also great to read the contributor's individual and personal take on the featured artist, the song selection and what the music means to them. As a contributor, it's an opportunity to recreate the mixtape experience and, beyond the general ICA rules, impose all sorts of criteria and discipline to the process of curating the collection. Personally, it's a much different undertaking to my frequently 'on the fly' approach to the (currently) daily posting on this blog. Each ICA will take weeks, often months, to put together, as I play around with the song selection and sequencing, 'road testing' it with multiple listens over time before I'm satisfied with the final order, then drafting and honing the accompanying 'sleeve notes'. The basic format and aim remains the same: 10 songs, usually 5 per side, average running time 35-45 minutes; in short, not far removed from a traditional vinyl album set up. Not always intentionally, but I frequently end up dodging the 'hits', going on a deeper dive into album tracks, B-sides and alternative versions.
This was pretty much the case with It's Immaterial. I'm pretty pleased with the final ICA, it hangs together well, though the final selection ended up with not one single, not even the big UK hit, Driving Away From Home (Jim's Tune) or any of the the songs that preceded debut album Life's Hard And Then You Die. Time to partially redress that here with a visual companion.
The earliest clip I can find on YouTube is a 1983 performance from BBC2's music show Riverside, recorded at the titular studios. It's an excellent quality clip, featuring two songs: Huzza Huzza, which I'd not heard before and I don't think was ever released, and their second single from 1981, A Gigantic Raft In the Philippines, which was re-recorded and re-released in 1984, to similar lack of chart success. The four-piece band is a much different proposition from the core duo of John Campbell and Jarvis Whitehead that evolved just a year later. This performance reminded me a little of contemporary indie bands like Kissing The Pink and it's a compelling performance that, with hindsight, hints at what was to come.
As I wrote in the ICA sleeve notes, Festival Time was the song that grabbed my attention and hooked me onto It's Immaterial's music back in 1986, but there's no denying that Driving Away From Home (Jim's Tune) is a great single. It's been noted elsewhere that this bears a kinship with Faron Young by Prefab Sprout, released the previous year. Maybe Chris Rea was listening to both songs and was sufficiently inspired a few years later with The Road To Hell. Driving Away From Home reached a peak of #18 in the UK singles charts and I've read somewhere that it's continued ascent was stalled as their record label Siren allegedly misjudged it's potential success and struggled to press sufficient additional copies to meet demand. I'm assuming that, aside from the Festival Time promo clip on Channel 4's The Tube, that Driving Away From Home was the first official It's Immaterial music video.
The success of the single also saw It's Immaterial perform the song on television, including Top Of The Pops the UK and TopPop in the Netherlands. There was also two different 12" versions of the song, one of which I included in one of my 1980s mixtapes, posted in July 2021.
Of the three other singles from Life's Hard And Then You Die, I've been unable to find a video for Rope and I don't recall ever seeing one on TV back in the day. It's a great song, and the extended mix appeared in another of my 1980s 12" mixtape selections in May 2021. The other singles - Ed's Funky Diner and Space - both have engaging and entertaining videos and equally excellent 12" versions. Neither troubled the charts, though Ed's Funky Diner did scrape to #65 on it's second go round in 1986. The song featured backing vocals from The Christians (including former It's Immaterial member Henry Priestman), who went on to enjoy much greater success in their own right.
Follow up album Song was criminally under promoted by the then-flailing Siren, with only one single - New Brighton - being released. Life's Hard And Then You Die, despite a hit single, only managed #62 in the UK album chart. Song didn't chart. There's a fascinating interview with John and Jarvis on Japanese TV in 1990, promoting the album. It casts light on the disappointment and disillusionment that followed the debut album and what was to come.
Nobody could have predicted the trials and tribulations that It's Immaterial would face with their planned third album, well documented in more recent interviews. Begun in 1992, it was 2020 before House For Sale eventually got a physical release. Several of the 'lost' versions emerged online in the last decade with some getting the video treatment, including Just North Of Here, which made it to the finished album, and New Moon, which didn't.
There's also a lovely remix by Heinrich Geißler of another 'lost' and unreleased song, Out Of The Blue. Not dissimilar to Todd Terry's remix of Missing by Everything But The Girl and (God help me, here he is again) On The Beach by Chris Rea. The shuffling, Balearic sound beautifully underpins Campbell's vocals. I'd love to hear the original version of this song.
House For Sale is a great album that so easily could never have made it, and I'm so glad that it did. There remain a number of 'lost' songs, available online, that could pretty much make up a fourth album, but it was great to read that John and Jarvis have also begun this year to write and record songs for a planned follow up. If It's Immaterial had called it a day after Life's Hard And Then You Die, they still would have produced an absolutely immense and complex album of beauty. Personally, I'm glad that there was - and continues to be - more.
Great stuff Khayem. Perfect companion piece toy the ICA. The numerological coincidences are nice too.
ReplyDeleteThanks, Adam, it was a nice reminder of how enjoyable their videos and TV performances were. I only came to the interviews a few months ago when compiling the ICA, but fascinating stuff. One of the major benefits of living in the internet age, being able to unearth little pieces of history that you'd otherwise never see or hear again.
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