Sometime after Davey Henderson had ceased on his mission to lubricate your living room and the Fire Engines had stalled, he ponied up with new outfit, ‘Win’, which I rank in my top three Scandalously Neglected Acts Of The ’80s and who also hold the dubious accolade of being The Band I Spent The Most Money On A Single CD On for when I simply, positively, definitely, absolutely had to scratch that materialistic itch and possess the shiny, silvery disc of ‘Uh! Tears Baby’. If you are unfamiliar with Win (and it would not be difficult, regardless of their swagger, given the lack of commercial success they enjoyed despite the music machinery’s best efforts to Re-issue Till We Got The Message And Bought The Damn Thing with ‘You’ve Got The Power’), their confections of delicious, sugar-thrill, polished to perfection ramshackle pop, wrapped in the then relatively fresh packaging garb of über-corporate irony, certainly appealed to yours truly, if not the greater populace. But before producer David Motion had brought the same gleaming machine-finish that he had squeezed and primped Strawberry Switchblade into for Win’s ‘Shampoo Tears’, ‘Super Popoid Groove’, et al, their first release was the rougher-cut ‘Unamerican Broadcasting’. And this short but sugary sweet post shines a light on the curious custom sleeve promo copy I came by back in the day in the second-hand bins and which, until this last weekend, I had never seen another copy of knocking around.
You probably don’t need to be all that familiar with the band or release to get the idea that this particular package was somewhat, urrr, ‘homemade’. I don’t know the story behind this effort, but the glued on colour photocopy to the plain white single bag and the grungy black and white photocopies were not what came with the regular 12″ single release.
‘Unamerican Broadcasting’ was later spruced-up and polished to a high lustre for its inclusion on ‘Uh! Tears Baby’ (including an extended mix on the cassette and CD formats), making this original release’s two versions spread over sides one and two a much more basic romp. You can read more about this and other Win releases here: http://home2.btconnect.com/iconic-trash/charms-of-powerful-trouble.html
