I (and you, you lucky people) have a piece in The Herald magazine to thank for getting this wee series on the go again – it’s been in abeyance for quite some time.
Anyway, Teddy Jamieson said in a column “anyone remember the Fruits of Passion?” in relation to Scottish indie bands of the 80s.
I do, though only really for the tune below. The scene then, as I recall, was typically ’80s’ i.e. most Scottish bands (Boots For Dancing and Dog Faced Hermans aside) wasn’t all that far removed from the New Romantic / ‘futurist’ / bad white boy funk that was sweeping the rest of the UK – a world of bad hair, worse trousers, and slap bass (self-explanatory).
To be fair, any decent groups that were kicking around I somehow missed out on – time catching a small flurry of local support like the Berlin Blondes gave way to far too much time spent on studying. So I was rather less immersed in the local ‘scene’ than I would be later on, into the 90s and beyond.
There was the occasional gig of course, and I think I saw this lot, probably at Glasgow Tech, maybe supporting the Monochrome Set, quite possibly with Friends Again also on the bill? I mention the latter since I’d thought a pal from primary school, Raymond Docherty, was their bassist, though the web only throws up mentions of his time in The Big Dish. Last time I saw him it was on a bus in Glasgow – he had Lloyd Cole’s Portastudio with him (whether the head Commotion knew this wasn’t made clear).
Anyway, I digress. This was easily FoP’s best, most-likely-to-bother-the-charts tune. Though it didn’t. Maybe if they’d had a video it could have made the difference… (there was one for Love’s Glory though).
Back in 1987, I was a penniless adolescent, so most of the music I got to knew came from the radio. One afternoon I was in my room, with a cassette tape recorder. I was trying to catch tunes from the radio to play for me at any time. I remember I pressed the rec button for two songs: one was “Goodbye Lucille #1” by Prefab Sprout (nowadays my favourite band), and the other was “No More Tears From Yesterday” by Fruits of Passion. But I could not know either these tracks’ names or the bands until much later, thanks to Internet, youtube, etc. But the songs have remained my favourites all throughout these years. Curiously, right now -I mean, today- I finally could find out about Fruits of Passion and that song of theirs that had lingered in my memory. And while searching for information about the band on the web, which is practically non-existing, I bumped into this page of the song of the day. I’m Jaime, I’m 44 and I live in Argentina.
Saludos, cheers
Was mainly into the weird post punk an heavy indie scene in the eighties, but always loved the fruits of passions loves glory. Shame the internet and YouTube weren’t about then. So much good music and bands have disappeared and only come to memory through nostalgic drunken conversations in the pub. When you see some of the talentless one hit wonders who get their breaks through the internet you can’t help wonder if only.