Some things are meant to be, it seems. Why else
would there appear on the local high-street, in the depths of winter, a stall
selling secondhand CDs at £2 a time? You’re hardly going to get rich that way,
not round our way. And there were not too many records to set the pulses
racing. A Soul Jazz CD, not the label but an excellent Verve Jazz Club
compilation from 2006, and War’s The World is a Ghetto seemed to be
about it, until in the last box there appeared a sealed copy of Always
Sunshine, Always Rain by Spike and Debbie, from 2018, which piqued my
curiosity and prompted me to take a chance.
To be fair, it wasn’t really a wild shot in the dark, as a quick shufti at the sleeve revealed it was credited to Spike Reptile & Debbie Debris, which suggested I would be on familiar ground, as it got me thinking of Spike Williams who had been in Reptile Ranch, part of the same scene in Cardiff the Young Marble Giants came through, and who was later in Weekend with Alison Statton. And it turned out I was right. Though I would be deducted points for not guessing that Debbie Debris was the Debbie Pritchard who sang ‘Simian’ on The Gist’s Embrace The Herd LP. Anyway, the Spike and Debbie CD turned out to be a rather wonderful thing, even if I was half-a-dozen years late in finding that out. I had absolutely no idea it existed.
