See I like Portishead. I am particularly fond of their first album Dummy and their third album Third but the second album proved illusive to me until relatively recently.
The reason for this was because, following release, I was told “It’s shit” and “It’s not as good as the first one” by music loving friends of mine whose musical knowledge I once respected.
Of course many years passed following the release of Dummy and trips to HMV waned due to the availability of music through the likes of Amazon and file sharing. Indeed, many years would also pass until the release of Third but that’s a different story.
So when it came about that the internet was the gateway to all the music ever I set about to find the second album. Of course Wikipedia was in its infancy, the web was a bit shit and I had difficulty actually finding the second album. Probably because lots of people also had friends who told them that Portishead’s second album was shit.
To find the album I did what anyone else would do; search on newsgroups for the keyword “Portishead”. It was during this first search I found a wealth of different versions of Dummy as well as compilations featuring the band. I also came across this album, Desolation Row.
Desolation Row is a bootleggy fan compilation of live-ish performances of the band including Later with Jools Holland, Glastonbury (recorded off the radio by the sound of it), some French gig and a studio rehearsal. Mysterons appears twice and so does Sour Times and it’s kind of a low budget version of Dummy with a few extra tracks. Not a good place to start to get into the band really. My suggestion is to stick with Dummy and listen to it on the worst media playing system you have instead.
Stegzy's Music Project 
You must be logged in to post a comment.