![[Go up a level]](../../common/elements/badge.gif "Go up a level"){kind=icon}
![[Send E-mail]](../../common/icons/email.gif){kind=icon}
The Kirsty MacColl web site
Strange Facts
This section deals with Music Industry topics, and stuff about Kirsty.
1978 saw Kirsty's earliest venture into the world of live performance, the Drug Addix playing support to Graham Parker and the Rumour. They forwarded a tape to Stiff Records. A year later, when she sent her own demo tape of original songs to Stiff, Akronite Liam Sternberg remembered her and took an immediate interest.
A session was arranged with The Edge, who also masquerade as Jane Aire's Belvederes. Sternberg chose the only slow song on the demo tape as the A side (They don't know) and backed it with the powerful Turn My Motor On - a song written for the Addix. Incidentally, the Addix may not have been Kirsty's very first outfit, in an early interview there was talk of her involvement with Rat Alley, who have long been lost in the mists of local band history.
As Kirsty set up to play her new material in Dublin in 1999, TOTP2 showed archive footage of Chip Shop as performed on Top of the Pops away back in 1981. You can run, but you can't hide.
The title for Electric Landlady was concocted between Kirsty and Johnny Marr, who was living in Kirsty's old flat in Shepherds Bush, so she was his "electric landlady". Incidentally, Brian Connolly used the title for a retrospective of his songs for the Sweet in 1997 just before his death.
Kite was inspired by David Gilmour - asked what present he wanted for playing on the album, he replied "Just send a kite to Armenia" which she duly did.
We're not sure about the origins of Desperate Character, and Tropical Brainstorm was a title that just came to her one day, though she clearly wanted something sunny & joyful.
Which makes Titanic Days the
only Kirsty album named after one of its constituent songs. "Titanic
Days" itself is also the name of a painting by Rene Magritte. It shows
a woman behind hounded by men in suits, and obviously Kirsty could identify
with this given her experiences with record companies.
She spoke about this on a Radio One interview she did at that time. (thanks to BP). The album was called Titanic Days for the way it reflects the experience of massive change and turmoil on both personal and Global levels; "...that dual fear and excitement of a huge tide where everything is constantly changing"
In the US, Kirsty never charted on the Hot 100 or The Billboard 200, but the 1991 song Walking Down Madison went to No. 4 on Billboard's Modern Rock Tracks chart, No. 18 on the Hot Dance Music/Club Play list, and No. 36 on Hot Dance Music/Maxi-Singles Sales chart. In 1993, Can't Stop Killing You went to No. 20 on the Modern Rock Tracks list, and the following year Angel reached No. 26 on that same chart.
© freeworld 1995 - 2008 [ www.kirstymaccoll.com ]
Style [ Standard ] [ Cool Blue ] [ Tropical ] [ Hangover ] [ Text ] [ BIG Text ]