Waiting to be Seen - 1987

Now here's a record that was really going somewhere musically, until just 12 months or so after it was released, and nothing much else had happened, so the die was cast and the split announced pending formation of two new projects and the bedding in of those projects on the club circuit.

There's not a single on here (remember that Friday on my Mind was the last one, from halfway through 1986, well before the Waiting to be Seen album came along) and a lot of money seemed to have been probably thrown at this one, what with the gatefold double album sleeve (it was still a single album) and the certainly more extensive effort put into the cover design (I suppose they daren't let the infamous Lez Bradley loose on two sleeves!).  So photo sessions were held, on location even, outside the quite well-known cult cinema in, the Hyde Park Picture House, a pre-war style restored and maintained arthouse flicks in the well, Hyde Park area of Leeds.  The photography is credited to Monty Rakusen, a well-known commercial photographer in Leeds and whoever the Creative Communications were that are given the credit for design I don't know, but the whole concept comes out pretty well.  This must have cost a bob or three!

The basic idea was to have a sort of Sergeant Pepper feel and concept to it, and it works quite nicely, with the cast of assorted characters all queueing up behind the band for a Gents show.

The concept is continued with the record being designated into two distinct sides, one the "dancing side" and the other the "listening side", another way of saying fast ones and slow ones.  The title song of course is one of the Gents oldest songs, having first seen the light of day on the This Way to the Gents cassette.  And that being the case, it really does highlight the irony of the fact that it had taken all this time, a quality band with quality songs and yet still queueing up for their fifteen minutes, still waiting to be seen.

The dancing side featured a couple of those very very old Gents songs, in the title track Waiting and also Hey Girl, a very early effort by the band which they apparently just dug up from the grave after ten years and gave the treatment.  It was one they never played live and to be frank, I'd never heard it before it surfaced on this recording, the first and only place it ever appeared.  Lively song though.  The rest of this side of the record was made up of some songs which I had first on a cassette demo of some rehearsal room recordings Steve Chambers had given me eighteen months to a couple of years before.  What a Fool, Trapped and Don't Tempt Fate.  Trapped was a real foot-tapper and was one of the ones that was being suggested and touted for a next single at the time when everything got forgotten because the wind-down and split was announced.  What a Fool and Don't Tempt Fate were equally as catchy and proved that really Martin could still come up with decent songs, even after eight or nine years in the same outfit.

The opening track of Side 2, the "Listening Side", Something Happened, was the other song that was touted for a possible single and I have heard on the grapevine that the album mastertape includes an extended version which would be considered for a 12" single version.  However, whether or not that can ever be brought to fruition is a matter for yourself and our campaign section!

Yesterday Men and I Just Don't Know were also songs from that cassette demo I mentioned, I Just Don't Know having had a working title at the early stage of "Blod's Song" (Blod being Glyn's nickname - he's Welsh-ish!) and then Set You Free and In Your Hands more examples of the mature songwriting that the band was still capable of, and quite a number of the songs on the album are joint efforts crediting-wise.

The sad thing about this whole record is that it was just when this wonderful band had managed to put together the best long-playing record and collection of songs of their career, the whole drudgery and slog of ten years in the clubs with minimal recognition became too much and and they slung in the towel.  All terribly terribly sad.