THE TESTIMONIAL TOUR OF 45s (aka The Singular Adventures of Edwyn Collins)

#11: Bridge : Orange Juice (Polydor, OJ5, 1984)

Before we get onto the next Orange Juice single, here’s some TV footage which is needed as part of the backstory.

It’s taken from a show called Switch, which aired on Channel 4 on Friday evenings between 25 March and 2 September 1983, filling in the gap between the first two series of The Tube. I can’t give you the precise date of the Orange Juice appearance, but you can see it is the Collins/McClymont/Ross/Manyika line-up playing the big hit and a new song, albeit it had been made available on flexidisc to readers of Melody Maker earlier in the year.

All appears well in the clip, but this masked reality

The band were working again with Dennis Bovell in the studio on the third album.  Plans were in hand to release A Place In My Heart as its lead single in October 1983, with the album to come out the following month, positioning itself well for the pre-Xmas market.  Out of the blue, David McClymont and Malcolm Ross decided to leave the band, citing ‘musical differences’.  The album was only half-finished……

A salvage job was put into operation.   A six-track mini-LP, Texas Fever was scheduled for release in March 1984, with things rounded off, appropriately given the circumstances, with the inclusion of A Sad Lament, the b-side a year earlier to Rip It Up.   The advance single was changed from A Place In My Heart to this:-

mp3: Orange Juice – Bridge

Given the band were somewhat at odds with one another during the recording process, it really is quite something that they delivered such a great sounding single, albeit Bridge was a song that had been part of their live sets for a while, with Malcolm Ross playing keyboards.  It was something new and different from what had come before, and I’ll happily admit that I really enjoyed this harder-sounding version of Orange Juice, and Bridge had a groove and rhythm that was infectious, not least the handclaps that made listeners (well, me at least) want to replicate if it ever got played on the disco floor. Not that the chance ever came, as DJs and indeed radio stations shunned it, leading to an undeserved #67 flop.

The b-side was another new, frantically paced number, one that wasn’t included on Texas Fever (but would subsequently be recorded in a much slower form and slotted into the final OJ album almost a year later).

mp3: Orange Juice – Out For The Count (single version)

Polydor‘s marketing people did their best.  A 12″ version was released, as was a limited edition 7″ version which came with an additional flexi disc.  The 12″ didn’t feature an extended version of Bridge, but it did add in a band-produced take on things, one that in effect was the demo provided to Dennis Bovell; please don’t be fooled by the crowd noise at the beginning and the end…this is a decades-old version of ‘Fake News’ as these were added to give the impression it was a concert recording….the rapturous applause at the end clearly gives the game away as Orange Juice gigs never got that sort of reaction!.

mp3: Orange Juice – Bridge (Summer 83 version)

The flexi disc claimed to be a live recording of a Postcard-era single when in fact it was a new studio recording, produced by Dennis Bovell.

mp3: Orange Juice – Poor Old Soul (flexidisc version)

The Polydor contract had been signed when the band consisted of Edwyn Collins, James Kirk, David McClymont and Steven Daly.  Only Edwyn remained, and there was just one other official band member in Zeke Manyika.  There was still belief that hit singles would come along, and rather than cutting their losses, funding was made available to have the duo, with guest musicians, go back into the studio.  The songs to emerge from those sessions proved to be among the best of Edwyn’s entire career…..

JC