#29: Johnny Teardrop : Edwyn Collins (Setanta Records, SETCD 112, 2002)
Edwyn Collins‘ fifth studio album, Doctor Syntax, hit the shops at the end of April 2002. It was a very low-key release, coming out on CD only, and with no advance single to help with the marketing and promotion, albeit The Beatle$, which had come out in the autumn of 2001, was one of its eleven tracks.
It’s an album that I have always found quite difficult to appreciate. It’s self-produced, with some assistance from Sebastian Lewsley, and other than some drums from Paul Cook (on two of the tracks), all the instruments are played by Edwyn. It therefore suffers a bit from nobody really being around to offer second opinions or guidance, and with all the songs being over four minutes in length, it does tend to drift and meander a bit too much. None of the songs have made it onto the two ICAs that have previously been compiled….but the one that came closest to making its way into the second of the ICAs was this:-
mp3: Edwyn Collins – Johnny Teardrop (single mix)
I’m not sure when this remixed and edited version of Johnny Teardrop was issued as a single (it’s about 20 seconds shorter than the album version). I’ve seen a photo of a promo which gives a date of 30 September 2002, and if this is accurate, then it was fully five months after the album had been released. There was certainly a bit of an effort made to promote the single in that a fabulous video was made, one which is full of the sort of pithy humour with which many associate Edwyn with him cast as a pop show presenter while others get to perform the song:-
I’m really not sure if the video was ever aired anywhere….I certainly only saw it decades later via YouTube. The single didn’t come anywhere near the charts. There were two other tracks on the CD:-
mp3: Edwyn Collins – Never Felt Like This
mp3: Edwyn Collins – The Popstar
The first of these was the opening track on Doctor Syntax. The second was a previously unreleased song. It has a sound quite similar to those on Doctor Syntax, albeit the temp was a bit faster than most. And you can probably tell by the title alone, it’s another of Edwyn’s lyrics that question why anyone would want to consider making a living as a musician.
It would take another five years before Edwyn was able to release his next single.
THE NEW VINYL VILLAIN 