Song Of The Day 3/10/2016: Grab Grab the Haddock – “Last Fond Goodbye”
Cherry Red – I haven't really gone much into Cherry Red Records or why I'm a fan of theirs except for some thinly-veiled begging for their employment of a seasoned music professional. (That's right -- they still exist.) They sustained themselves by diversifying into a lot of different directions, and I mean a lot. They gave homes to a lot of subsidiary labels, run by connoisseurs passionate about preservation of important music that slipped through the cracks. I got something in the mail from them regarding a new release of theirs by the Three Degrees. The Three Degrees. They have a label exclusively devoted to songs associated with specific football (to you, soccer) teams. They may have saved the football chant. You can decide for yourself whether that was a good thing. Still they've done all this while flying somewhat under the radar, at least to American shores. We heard all about Rough Trade and 4AD over here, never much about Cherry Red. Which makes it doubly attractive as a workplace, because I'd getting to that point where I'd kind of like to disappear. In some ways. Not terminally or anything.
Anyway. Grab Grab the Haddock evolved from Marine Girls, who were the first group to feature Tracey Thorn from Everything But The Girl. Thorn's not in Grab Grab the Haddock though. That would be Jane and Alice Fox. They released two singles, including the wobbly and beautiful song featured today, then went the way of the haddock, I suppose. Grabbing a haddock is not as slam-dunk as it sounds.