This song originally appeared on the Fish Waltz EP the previous year and is apparently a comment on the various line-up changes that had reduced It’s Immaterial to a duo.
Side Oneġ) The Better Idea (Album Version) ( Life’s Hard And Then You Die, 1986) Keeping with the 10-track ICA format, I’ve reluctantly skipped the early singles and narrowed my focus to the three albums, a couple of ‘lost’ versions and one of the B-sides to the aforementioned big hit.Ī happy accident: when finally settled on the tracklist, I realised that the first line of the first song is “It’s a little bleak around here…” and the final line of the final song is “ Ah, go on, bring me joy”. It’s a remarkable story and a remarkable body of work.
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There’s a fascinating and moving God Is In The TV interview with John Campbell from last year that explains the three decade gap between albums and It’s Immaterial’s brief dalliance with fame in the mid-1980s.
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The truth was that the duo had started work on a third It’s Immaterial album in the early 1990s before a series of events – the illness and passing of Campbell’s partner, the collapse of Pledge music and having to start again financially, the COVID pandemic – meant that it was 2020 before House For Sale finally saw the light of day. However, that seemed to be it for the band. Many, many years later, I discovered the follow-up album, Song, in a secondhand record shop in Gloucester. I went on to buy the subsequent singles and debut album Life’s Hard And Then You Die, a commercial flop at the time but which I loved (of course). The clip is on YouTube (naturally), less than a minute and a half, and it immediately reminded me of why It’s Immaterial made such an impression. My first memory of seeing and hearing them was on Channel 4’s The Tube, in one of the show’s home made video slots, performing Festival Time. It’s Immaterial joined the ranks of one-hit wonders in 1986, when their single Driving Away From Home (Jim’s Tune) spent 8 weeks in the UK chart, attaining the dizzy heights of #18. Albeit not without some adventures and misadventures along the way…
By 1984, It’s Immaterial was a duo – founder member John Campbell and Jarvis Whitehead, who had joined in 1982 – and this partnership has continued to the present day. It’s Immaterial originally formed in Liverpool as a four-piece in 1980, releasing several singles and recording a number of John Peel Sessions. Jarvis Whitehead and John Campbell Ah, Go On, Bring Me Joy: An It’s Immaterial ICA