Poor Phones Sportsman (David Barrington) is often overlooked in Swell Maps retrospectives but his contributions to the Maps, and early solo albums by both Nikki Sudden and Jowe Head, should not be underestimated! He also plays along with Epic and Golden Cockrill on 'Big Store' from the first Jacobites record.

What can be said about his 1980 solo disc on Rather records?
It's a five track single that definately went against the grain of what his contemporaries, and even the Maps themselves, were doing at the time! Side one, 'I really love you', is an over-the-top fifties doo-wop parody full of blubbering vocals and twangy guitars. In some way it feels like a companion to the Cult Figures 'In Love' also released on Rather Records around the same time (The other membersof Swell Maps had played on the Cult Figures classic 'Zip Nolan' single the year before). The track itself had been an old song of Nikki Sudden's which Phones ad-libbed vocals to.

The other tracks on Phones' single defy description... There is a stomping version of 'Get Down and Get With It!' that sounds like a wild party! 'Woke up this Morning' is a free-form rant with Jowe Head screaming away in the background, 'Wah Wah' shifts between being a song and being a cry for help! Phones list the things he like to do... "I like to beat up little boys, I like to beat up little girls!". Very disturbing! "The Olton" is a super-funky bass riff which is over way to soon. (Olton is the part of Solihull that Phones lived in).

To listen to the NoMen doing their own versions of these songs CLICK HERE>

Jowe Head - "I intervened in his solo session at WMRS to pass him more instruments to hit but he was so hyped up that he took this as an insult perhaps! He was very helpful to me in the arrangements on the final session for my Pincer Movement LP. He was the truly avant garde member of the scene....he was into Stockhausen, Cage, and the dada sound-poems of Kurt Schwitters, I recall! He made some astonishing home recordings (I got copies of some of them) which I would like to see released on CD with the single tracks sometime!"

It's an interesting record with hilarious artwork. The two main tracks can be bought on the Swell Maps compilation 'International Rescue'. READ WHAT PHONES SPORTSMAN HAS TO SAY!!! and see some amusing photographs....