ONE HUNDRED AND ELEVEN SINGLES : #051

aka The Vinyl Villain incorporating Sexy Loser

#051: Lloyd Cole & The Commotions – ‘Rattlesnakes’ (Polydor Records ’84)

Hello friends,

thinking about it, there might be four, five, six albums which, after all those decades, I would still consider to be good throughout. And with ‘good throughout’, I mean all songs: ‘no fillers, just killers’ as we, rather pathetically, used to say when we were younger. Well, I did, at least. ‘Psychocandy’ comes to mind, Billy Bragg’s debut as well as the first one by The Undertones, ‘Crazy Rhythms’, ‘London Calling’ of course (sorry George), perhaps the first one by The Smiths – but also ‘Rattlesnakes’, the first album by one of the finest bands ever to emerge from Glasgow, Lloyd Cole & The Commotions.

I just had to look that up: it was released in October 1984, which means I will not have held it in my hands before the spring or summer of 1985 … it always took a while for good indie stuff to get known in the middle of nowhere in Germany, believe me. And even though there were far more record shops in Aachen, the nearest town, than nowadays, there was no way to get really ‘fresh’ releases basically, especially not when they came out on some obscure indie label. I’m willing to have a small bet that the owner of my favourite record shop (Plattenbörse), Reinhold, and his aide looked at each other and said: ‘oh no, not that twerp again!’ when they saw me on the street approaching the shop. Why? Well, it took me quite a time to understand that they neither were ever in the position to have new records available which I heard on John Peel’s Music a few weeks before nor could they always order those for me …. in hindsight, I must have been a ‘difficult’ customer, I suppose.

But I digress, so back to ‘Rattlesnakes’ – a record that Reinhold did store back then … I mean, it was on Polydor Records, so it probably was easier for him to get hold of this item than that long deleted Peruvian punk 7” on the Fistfuckers Unite label …. yes, I made that up, but you got the point, right?

I remember taking the record home, and it did not get off my turntable for weeks – every song a winner, as I said. I still cannot say what it was that attracted me so much back then. I mean: I can now, but in 1984/85 it was punk/New Wave only for me by and large, so how on earth a record as fragile and in parts even turgid as this managed to meet with my approval, I simply don’t know. Perhaps I just wanted to show off a bit, presenting my oh so clever Dylanesque side to those girls I couldn’t convince with my oh so dangerous Strummeresque side …. as you might already have gathered, none of it worked at the slightest, of course – but hey, I was 16 and desperate! But I loved these songs even when I listened to them on my own, so it wasn’t all about impressing the female population, I reckon.

There are so many perfect songs on ‘Rattlesnakes’, for all I know Lloyd Cole could have chosen each one to become a single. But he went for ‘Perfect Skin’, ‘Forest Fire’ (backed with ‘Andy’s Babies’, another particular favorite) and, after the album came out, this one, the title track:

mp3:  Lloyd Cole & The Commotions – Rattlesnakes

 As much as I do hate snakes, this is a mighty fine tune and for me, it hasn’t aged a bit. Then again I’m still a bit of a hopeless romantic poseur, so …

Dirk