Cathal Coughlan

about one million years ago in a village on the edge of civilisation (I exaggerate slightly, it was in Preston and about 1990ish) I wondered into a tiny cobwebbed record shoppe on Church Street, and when I wondered out I found that I'd bought a tape called "Against Nature" by Fatima Mansions.

I'm not sure if that was before I read one or more interviews with the main dude in Fatima Mansions - Cathal Coughlan. He gives good interviews, including one in which he summed up Bono in three words. But too rude to reproduce here, apart from the copyright issues...

Anyway, I listened to this tape quite a few times (favourite song was the opener: "Only losers take the bus"), and then I met someone (Stacey) who had an album by them too. And this album had great song titles ("More smack, vicar?" and "Look what I stole for us darling")

but the moment when I realised that Cathal Coughlan was a genius was when I heard his cover of "Everything I do I do it for you" and if you weren't subjected to UK music radio/tv in 1991 you can't imagine the pain caused by this awful song spending 16 weeks at number one in the charts. But when I heard the Fatima Mansions cover on the NME ruby trax compilation I felt that justice had been done.

Anyway, not really sure what happened to the band. but Mr Coughlan seems to still be around, and he has some rather fine MP3s on his web site

Unbroken Ones

We Are The Sinister World Government

Fruit & veg today? - loads
Exercise today? - i really should do some sit ups
Hours of sleep I'm going to get tonight? - a good chance of eight