Wednesday 18th June

In the mid-eighties there was a flury of brilliant groups who had grown up listening to the Beatles and the Stones, and lived through the nightmare of punk and now wanted to play sophisticated cool music for a new generation.  They included Prefab Sprout, Everything But The Girl and my favourite – Aztec Camera.  Led by song-writer in chief and singer Roddy Frame they came from Scotland and were straight away brilliant.  Every song had a great melody, and words to match.

Songs like Spanish Horses, Deep and Wide and Tall, Good Morning Britain and Killermont Street.  Songs wit an understanding of life and love far beyond Roddy’s tender years.  They petered out some time in the late nineties and Roddy now records sporadically under his own name.  Many bands are fashionable for a while, they have a hit record or two and then disappear, and a few years later you play their record and you wonder what you ever saw in them in the first place.  Not so with Aztec Camera, they get better with age.  Their songs sound as fresh today as they ever did.  Wonderful and timeless music.