Although My Foolish Friend didn't make it onto second album It's My Life, it continued to feature in their live sets up to 1986.
I originally got the 12" version on a Canadian import of the mini-album, It's My Mix. Years later, I discovered a copy of the 12" single in a secondhand shop in Perth, Western Australia. I bought it, dubbed the tracks onto a mixtape, then shipped it home to the UK with a box of other stuff via sea mail, eventually reunited with it in late 1991. Worth it for the James Marsh cover painting alone, let alone the music.
The B-side featured an early version of a song that subsequently appeared on It's My Life, albeit dropping from plural to singular along the way. This stripped down version of Call In The Night Boys features Phil Ramacon on piano and is a portent of the musical direction to come.
Again, the more uptempo version of Call In The Night Boy was still featuring in Talk Talk sets years later, though the original, minimal version remains my favourite.
