I’ve three songs by The Wilderness Children on the hard drive, all of them courtesy of compilations. It turns out that the blurb in the booklets for Big Gold Dreams and C88 are near-identical.
“This defiantly lo-fi Dundee four-piece were fronted by singer Andrea Reid, surfacing first in 1987 on a self-released two-track flexi (There’s A Good Time A-Comin b/w On The West Coast). The gloriously-titled EP, We’re A Council House Punk Band, on Doss Records, boasted the messy fuzz of Mrs Susan Spence (name borrowed from a dentist!)
mp3: The Wilderness Children – Mrs Susan Spence
The jangly If You Love Him, Let Him Go duly appeared on scenester Alan Wood‘s Magic Bus label in 1989,
mp3 : The Wilderness Children – If You Love Him, Let Him Go
, before hot on its heels, a return to Doss threw up the immortal Plastic Bag From Tescos 7″. A final release – the EP Paint A Picture For Me – appeared in summer 1990.”
The third song I have is from that final EP and is included as part of the Make More Noise : Women In Independent Music 1977-1987 box set. Andrea Reid offers an evocative and far from rose-tinted reflection of the times, reflecting on just how hard it was to try and make any sort of breakthrough, never mind a living, via the music industry, and how hope was just about what everything seemed to be built on. Lots of touring in tiny venues, with almost everything arranged through phone box calls in the pre-mobile era. It ends with:-
Different times, the winter always a bastard on our jeans, we were fucked up and going nowhere but burning with dreams, desires, rage and, above all, love.
The box set included one from the original flexi:-
mp3: The Wilderness Children – There’s A Good Time A-Comin’
As Dirk would say, enjoy!
THE NEW VINYL VILLAIN 