Ah, Earworm – great label. They always seemed to be about the detail and the quality. Interesting bands and music, always packaged with an eye on keeping things fresh and worthy of a collector’s interest. This single, for example, has the simplest of covers, but it’s printed on pleasingly rough brown paper and contains an insert on the same stock, with typography that looks genuinely like it was constructed using old Letraset packs. (This matters in this modern age when a page of type can be instantaneously banged out by computer). There’s another insert in here as well where the exact contact details (at the time) of Earworm boss Dom, and Electric Sound Of Joy’s Paul can be found – actual home addresses along with telephone numbers. Do people still give away this amount of information about themselves these days, when everything can be immediately circulated and distributed across the world?
I once saw Electric Sound Of Joy supporting Godspeed You Black Emperor! in the late ’90s, in some picturesque theatre in London that I forget the name of. That was a great show. ESOJ were sublime, GYBE! (such was the positioning of that exclamation mark back then) were mind-blowing. What’s more, I found myself standing next to Prolapse’s Linda Steelyard for the latter’s set, who asked me who the opening band were. It was a real meeting of minds; the conversation was something like this:
LS: ‘Do you know who that first band were?’
SM: ‘They’re called Electric Sound Of Joy. They were good weren’t they? Are you in Prolapse?’
LS: ‘Yes’.
SM: ‘Cool, I like your band.’
Good times. Standing on the other side of me was where-is-he-now Irish comedian Sean Hughes. Crazy!