More Nikki Sudden

Around April 2003, I was helping to play a Rough Trade night in New York, centered around the long-loved, long-lost U.S. compilation that the label put out in 1980 called Wanna Buy A Bridge? As part of this, I contacted the original artists collected on Bridge to get some comments to read for the show. As part of this, I got a communique from Nikki, who supplied this nice message to share with the assembled (note in the beginning that I told him that we needed it within a week of when I first contacted him).

"Jason & Co.

It always takes a deadline to get anything out of me...

Back in 1980 Rough Trade approached the Swell Maps and asked if we could come up with a cover design and title for a compilation album they were releasing to test the US Market. The result was, Wanna Buy A Bridge? ~ A Rough Trade Compilation Of Singles.

Maps' guitarist, Richard 'Biggles' Earl did the cover photo, using an Action Man and a few other accessories. I have vague recollections that this was the cover he wanted to foist on the band for our second album, Jane From Occupied Europe. But he was beaten to it by Epic and Jowe's similarly strange submission. Things were becoming a bit murky by then...

Wanna Buy A Bridge? ended up being released in the States at around the time the Maps broke up... We'd played an Italian tour and - even though we didn't yet know it - the band broke up en route to the last couple of shows. A US tour had been scheduled. Our fifth single, which would have been Back To The Coast, would have hit the UK top 40. But we broke up anyway. I didn't know why for a long time... But talking to Richard some years back he told me that the others were scared of the success they saw coming fast... They decided it was easier to fall apart than to take on the world.

This is what I'd aspired to the whole time. And still do. My latest album - my twentieth, or so - will be released this September. It's called Treasure Island and has touches of the Maps alongside everything else I've touched over the years. I'll be touring Europe, touring the States. touring the World - as usual - when the album is out. I think if you're a musician then you should be playing gigs or making records. I try and play around 100 shows a year - half solo, half with my band, The Last Bandits...

Just remember that you can take the boy out of the Maps but you can't take the Maps out of the boy..."

And then since the Maps song from Bridge was "Read About Seymour," he thoughtfully supplied the lyrics (Ari Up and the Tall Boys were on the bill but RAS didn't get performed, sad to say).

Read About Seymour
Read about Seymour yesterday
In the news that found it’s way
To where I sleep and seek to be
Where I am, I hear, I see.
Read about Seymour in my mind
Window stacks across the blinds
The lightning tower on Pyre Hill
I wonder where I’ll find my field.
Don’t look out…
Don’t look out…
Don’t look out…
Don’t look out…
Read about Seymour, look my way
Feel him near day after day
All cutlass and alone, alas
The spirit sank like mourning glass.
Read about Seymour yesterday
In the news that found it’s way
To where I sleep and seek to be
Where I am, I hear, I see.
Don’t look out…
Don’t look out…
Don’t look out…
Don’t look out…

Thanks Nikki, you Mappish boy...