I’ve been missing those Sundays where I stay at home listening to 7″s. Today, at last, I’m having one of them. It feels good. I may order for delivery some late lunch and in the meantime I’ll finish cutting the 1000 inserts for the next 2 Cloudberry 7″s. I’ve cut so far around 350 I’d say. Some minutes ago I was rumaging through my record collection, wondering what to play, and this record was the one that struck me, the sole A Thousand Miles of Sunshine single.
“A Thousand Miles of Sunshine” this winter. It’s quite cold in Miami, colder than we are used to. These are the first weeks were I have the AC off. And let me say I’m not missing the sun, I enjoy cold weather. So I find it funny that this record was the one I craved playing. I’m wondering what’s a 1000 miles from here, I believe the distance to New York is around those numbers. I’ll be there in May during the Popfest, still have to figure out where to stay, but I can’t miss the third year of this great festival. Another please 1000 miles from here is San Juan, Puerto Rico. Not a place that I would go crazy to visit though the Fort of San Cristóbal looks great for a postcard. Houston, Texas, is another place separated by a thousand miles of sunshine, the gulf coast and the Caribbean sea. I’ve been there once and I didn’t like it much, a big prefab town with not much personality. I was impressed by the amount of mansions though! Oil money galore!
The needle starts playing these two songs on the 7″. The A side is “Jimmy Highlife” and the B side is “Try Again”. Both tunes are as cheerful as they can be. Catchy, not really indiepop, but great guitar pop. Hooks here, hooks there. Not very introspective, but more of a festive sound. Of course, this is sunshine music! A joyful breeze that comes with boy/girl vocals, the youthful excitement of having a band, and the sun dawning while dancing in the beach, maybe Brighton? maybe Bournemouth? Who knows. There is no information about the whereabouts of the band on the sleeve and even less info on the web. What is sure is that, when playing these tracks, your whole room will light up! Oh! it’s sunshine!
What I do know about this single is that there is also a 12″ version which includes these two tracks plus an instumental version of “Jimmy Highlife”. It was released the same year I was born, 1984 on the Go! Discs label (later home of The Housemartins or The Trash Can Sinatras). This should be an easy single to track down and shouldn’t be that expensive as it was backed up by Chrysalis. The only name that appears on the single is that of Arthur Kennedy, credited to writing “Try Again”. Wonder if there’s a way to know more about them. If they had more songs recorded and if they played in any other bands after. Sunshine shouldn’t last that little.
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2 Responses to “:: A Thousand Miles of Sunshine”
I know exactly who this band are. My uncle was in it! It was the first record he ever played keyboards on when he was 17 and still in school. They supported Aswad on tour, and were even made BBC Radio 1’s record of the week, but unfortunately failed to have any further success. Check out my uncle- Chris Jerome – Long Distance. Kinda Dukish is recommended
My Dad was in this band! He wrote most of the songs, played the guitar and sang, lovely to hear there are fans out there. The songs have’nt been forgotten in our family and are still sang often 🙂