...and how I chose a name for this blog.

The Saints, The Monkey Puzzle (1981).

I needed something to listen to while I threw Movable Type onto the machine (it's something to do on a Saturday night), and once St Etienne's Tiger Bay got interrupted by the PC randomly freezing, I went back and poked around for something else to put on. Sitting nicely (if a little precariously) to my left was a pile of CDs I'd bought just before the Singapore trip.

From the drum rolls of the opener Miss Wonderful all the way down to the fairly traditional-sounding cover of Dizzy Miss Lizzy, it's a good ride, from a reborn Chris Bailey-led Saints. While the New Romantic movement was well under way in 1981 (cf. Japan's Tin Drum, and Duran Duran's first album), and the Police had started to move on from their earlier influences with Ghost in the Machine, Australia was doing itself proud with albums like The Monkey Puzzle, Midnight Oil's wonderfully raw Place without a postcard, and The Models' Local and/or General, to namedrop a few things I have sitting about in the house from back then...