Wreckless Eric
England Screaming
"That album has always been a regret to me because I think these songs mark my coming of age as a songwriter, but not, alas, as a recording artist." In 1985 Eric Goulden released an album entitled A Roomful Of Monkeys on the Go! Discs label under the name Captains Of Industry. It was a disaster - most people didn't like it - where it wasn't roundly ignored it was critically slated. Forty years later he decided to use these songs, written in the Medway Towns between 1982 and 84, as the basis for a new album: England Screaming "I felt liberated: my songwriting took on an entirely different tone. There was no one telling me what I should be writing any more, so I wrote about what was around me, stuff I knew about - drugs, home-ownership, bankruptcy and bridal wear; being from somewhere, keeping up appearances, delusion, failure" On the new recordings Eric played most of the instruments himself. Sam Shepherd played the drums, Amy Rigby and Marc Valentine sang backing vocals, and contributed piano along with Eric's art school friend, performance artist Graham (Graham) Beck. England Screaming is a sonically savage world apart from the insipid, half-arsed (Eric's words) original album. He has succeeded in marrying a young and unrealised vision to the wisdom and experience of his older years, incidentally posing the question: how far have we actually come as a society?