The debut EP that really isn’t?
It was Pages 121-122 of Grant McPhee‘s hugely enjoyable book Postcards From Scotland : Scottish Independent Music 1983-1995 when I fully learned the story behind the debut EP by The Soup Dragons.
On 7 December 1985, the band recorded their first 7″ single, and it was to be for the Bristol-based Subway Organisation. The band went into an Edinburgh studio and recorded three songs, with a fourth added later on in Glasgow. Here’s what Sean Dickson, the lead singer with the band, told Grant McPhee:-
“We did a four-track EP called The Sun Is In The Sky, and it shows you how naive we were because you don’t know things like that, on a 7″ record…..if you have a certain amount of time on a 7” inch single it deteriorates the quality….so basically the EP didn’t sound that great, it sounded awful when it got pressed.
And the cover, the Letraset had slipped as it went to the printer so the cover was just a complete dog’s dinner.
And I remember us all sitting there nearly crying, you know, put it on, it sounded like shit and the cover looked like shit and so we were ‘Shit, what do we do? So we pulled it, much to the hatred of Martin (Whitehead) that ran the Subway Organisation, but you know, a lot of gratitude to him that they actually did agree to it then.”
The EP, while never officially being released, did make it into a few shops, which is how you can still come across copies on the second-hand market today.
mp3: The Soup Dragons – Quite Content
mp3: The Soup Dragons – Swirling Round The Garden With You
mp3: The Soup Dragons – Fair’s Fair
mp3: The Soup Dragons – Not For Humbert
A short while later, the Whole Wide World EP would be recorded and in due course be accepted more widely as the debut, one which went to #2 in the UK indie charts and sold more than enough copies to make up the costs involved with the withdrawn single.
THE NEW VINYL VILLAIN 