Singles & Rarities 1985-1988 (2023) + Hang-Ten (1987) – LITTLE LOST CLASSICS

Maybe not everyone knows (although I doubt it, after all, I have a lot of internet knowledge) but the Scottish Soup Dragons already existed before “I'm free”, that Stones cover that made the Glasgow band surf the indie-dance wave – which in turn once emerged from the froth of madchester – and led them to global success.

Half a decade before all this, in the mid-80s, Sean Dickson, Jim McCulloch, Sushil Dade and Ross Sinclair got together to play under the influence of what they loved at the time, basically jangle and English punk, more specifically Buzzcocks. The quartet's first records come from this time, a bunch of EPs and singles released by Raw Product, which Last Night From Glasgow compiled and released in 2023 and you can listen to at the link below.

With this bunch of records on the indie shelves and already encapsulated in C-86 the Dragons signed a contract with Sire, who very cleverly gathered together almost everything that Raw TV had put on the market and sold it in 1987 as the guys' first full album, but which is actually also a compilation (damn capitalism hahaha) called Hang-ten.

What you hear on these two albums is what Soup Dragons liked and they could play in their first years of life, after all in 88 – already more experienced and, uh, daring – they committed the unpalatable This is our artwhich probably didn't sink your boat because two years later it came Lovegod, the album that contains the aforementioned “I'm free”. The rest, as they say, is history.

Ah, before anyone insults me, I really like “I'm free” and all that danceable psychedelia e forced, the vocals of the then almost omnipresent Junior Reid (his toast in “Stop this crazy thing”, by Coldcut) and so on, after all I lived this music and this period in locobut it was in their youth that the Dragons gave us their best.

Attest. Or not. hahahaha