Joan Armatrading
Joan Armatrading
1976/1987: A&M 75021 3228 2
“When I die,” sighed Jeff (the Grateful-Dead-roadie-type and now fellow-Electrician working with me at Alaska Repertory Theatre) one afternoon at the ART shop in an industrial blockhouse beside a PCB-laden dumpsite in Anchorage, “I wanna come back as a lesbian.” His statement, and he was not joking, was occasioned by a copy of one of Joan Armatrading’s early albums which was playing on our shop tape deck. Which one? I didn’t know then and can’t be sure now.
For some strange reason half of her catalogue has not been generally released on CD—unfortunately this includes my two favorites of hers, The Key and The Shouting Stage. Ironically the latter was originally given to me on cassette by my ex shortly after our breakup….
Joan, or any of her record company representatives, if you’re reading this, PUT THOSE OUT ON CD, PLEASE!!!! I managed to track down very very rare copies of the official CD releases of those latter two albums, but it took many years.
Jeff was onto something back in Anchorage, and the memory of that sound stayed with me all those years until I finally got a copy of Joan Armatrading and Show Some Emotion in the summer of 2000 as I was between residences. I’m just embarrassed that it took me this long to get around to enjoying them.
Comments © 2005 Mark Ellis Walker, except as noted, and no claim is made to the images and quoted lyrics.