i can't pretend to have been there at the start of sarah. i had a friend who was lending me lots of fanzines, and i even sent off for some myself, so i was kind of aware of the label and the names of the bands and had read interviews with some of them and there were glimpses on compilation tapes, too: but i hadn't bought the sha-la-las or the kvatches at the time, just read them secondhand, in a spot we had on the edge of the school field, just around the corner from the playground. i even remember borrowing "the shadow factory" lp when it came out, but i only taped (i.e. really rated) three tunes off it at the time: "fabulous friend", "i'm in love with a girl who doesn't know i exist" and "sure to see". and although the latter, in particular, hit me like a sledgehammer, it wasn't until i borrowed the lp again a few months later that i started to really understand - perhaps struck by that phrase on the sleeve, "full of wrong notes and wrong chords but crammed with right everything else's" - and bought my own copy soon after.
as far as the singles were concerned, meanwhile, sarah 7"s (and that was all the sarah product there was for a while) circulated at school: they were lent, loaned and loved or loathed just as much as wedding present records, as metallica records, as anything else that did the rounds back then. the 1st sarah 45 that really struck me was the second sea urchins' single: and while "please rain fall", the one that all the fanzines were mad for, seemed ok, it was "solace" (the one that wasn't on "shadow factory") that kind of blew me away. still does, especially when i dig out my original tape of it, where the vinyl crackles brilliantly as the song begins, flickering it into life.
yet sarah only became a proper obsession from 1989, and i recall the crucial moment perfectly because it was john peel playing "sensitive". he introduced it by reading from a note that clare & matt had given him which suggested in their usual understated way that it was one of the best records ever. i listened, and i wasn't initially sure it was - yet something in that last two minutes, the instrumental section that bobby wratten later admitted he loved so much, suddenly made me sit upright and stare at my radio, and think "i must buy that record". and so the next opportunity i had, i was up to london on the train and grabbed it at rough trade in covent garden.
this, along with playing the record incessantly, was the start of an avalanche, and apart from the single-number sarah singles (including, sadly, "solace") it was still possible in those days to catch up on other bits of the back catalogue without too much trouble. "emma's house" was bought in rhythm records in camden: many others required only a visit to basildon "our price". and we must remember, however much we now see matinee or cloudberry as "the new sarah", that amongst the many differences between sarah and other is a crucial, consumerist one - availability. for while many preferred to send off postal orders to clare and matt, who would usually send the records out from 'the garden flat' with little handwritten notes full of "...um..."s, it was usually the case that you really could go, not only to any local independent record store worth its salt, but to quite a few chain stores in unfashionable towns, and buy sarah 7"s.
which, of course, would not have mattered save for the one other thing that is really important. go back to the sleevenotes of "shadow factory" again, and what should be a template for any label:
"POLITICS, not as some distant unreal end... no sanctimonious 'socialist' pose hawked popstarry-eyed with a thatcherist gleam when it comes to THE SELL, but something that's basic and pure..."
and, as such, from then on there are a million sarah memories, many of which yes, we have bored you with before. but hey, i'm on a nostalgia tip, and with no more brighter records to review there's no other theatre for such reminiscence anymore, so here's a starter 10:
* sitting at the ostrich pub in bristol's waterside before a sarah summer party at the thekla and commenting in passing that i had bought ivy's "avenge" on cd single (which included the two tunes from their initial 7" "wish you were") and receiving out of the blue an absolute broadside from a girl i'd never met before shrieking "you can't do that!" and going genuinely apoplectic that i hadn't bought the two 7"s instead. i never found out her name, but i think i love her;
* not having a ticket to get in to said party, but being shepherded in anyway by a kindly bouncer who spotted as i loitered with intent at the quayside that i was wearing a bristol rovers t-shirt: if i'd just been wearing my regulation horizontal-striped shirt, or the famous sarah cherries, i'd never have got in;
* the bloke at revolver records in bristol who always "tsk"'d at me when i bought sarah records and suggested i broaden my mind. he often cited gallon drunk, in particular, in this regard;
* harvey williams going up to keris howard at the bull and gate circa 1992: "how are you, keris ? inside, i mean ?" - don't know why, just tickled us;
* there were frequently sarah gigs at bristol's fleece and firkin but my abiding high and low are probably (1) going up to amelia fletcher after a typically amazing heavenly show - the first time i'd ever plucked up the courage to say a timid "hello" to a pop star; and (2) the sweetest ache playing once when, for whatever reason, the crowd had decided not to clap or cheer between songs, so when they got to the end of each one, there was just a kind of awkward silence that we were all too shy to break. still makes me cringe slightly even now;
* surfing on a friend's back (you probably had to be there) at an even as we speak gig in oxford, while the meadows brothers (the sugargliders had just supported) did the same right next to us;
* sarah band people on tv: not so much the well-documented stardom of cathy rogers, more that we swear we can remember the guitarist out of action painting! helping out shampoo on top of the pops, and amelia assisting huggy bear on that amazing "the word" appearance;
* being so keen to get to the islington powerhaus in time to see brighter open up that me and my mate - zoooming straight from school - arrived before the place even opened and clare had to shoo us politely away as we unwittingly wandered in the "stage door";
* john peel reading out forthcoming gigs and inadvertently describing gentle despite as "genital desperate" (which at the time would not have been a surprising name for a band feted by j.p);
* tramway live at the thekla - britpop attitude and swagger before it got trendy.
and these memories may not seem all that, but the point is, if we all have 1,000,000 of our own (and i fear many more of mine will follow), when you add them all together that's a highbury fieldsful of ace memories.
*group hug*.
