Adult Net - The Honey Tangle (1989)

Aside by me: You know, considering me and Duggie are red blooded males, we don't talk about women all that much. We don't go crazy in the stereotypical male way (if you believe the papers, anyway).

Take my stag night. Well, a stag afternoon really. We (me, Duggie, Westie and Para) met up at about 11am, had a fry-up, walked round a few record shops and started drinking - real ale - at around 1pm.

Because we could only visit CAMRA recommended pubs, there was at least a 20minute walk between drinks. I'd sobered up by the time we returned to the train station.

But I suppose, inside our heads, in that secret place, we're all fantasizing about women.

Right, I'll shut up now, but at least I've put what me and Duggie-boy are just about to say in context.

(a cloud's come over and made us both feel momentarily maudlin)

"You ever heard of Adult Net, Dug?" I say, as Duggie is rethreading a fishing hook. I'm trying to restore my good spirits.

"Mmm? Adult what?" he says, with a mouth-full of twine.

"Net. Brix Smith from The Fall, her band, " I say. And I can see her peroxide image in my mind as I speak.

"Never heard of it, but I remember her. Course I remember her. Woah! What a fantasy girl."

(Brix Smith was married to Mark E Smith, the iconoclastic front-man of art rock band The Fall. She's American, with the glitzy, jangly poppy lightness of an American. He's a dry-witted, some might say depressive and shambolic Mancunian with an interest in Krautrock. She ran off with mockney fiddle-player, Nigel Kennedy.)

"I first got into them from an EP that came free with 'Sounds," I say.

Aside by me: Some explanation required - 'EP' - a 7" single with extra tracks, 'Sounds' a music weekly newspaper that covered more 'rocky' music than NME and Melody Maker - I'll leave it there cos I'm sure me and Duggie will elaborate on this some day, soon.

"Yeah, I remember them EPs"

"I kept them all. Adult Net was like a fluffy piece of 'jangliness' compared to the serious indie stuff. But there was a little picture of Brix Smith there, in glorious black and white (or was it blue and grey and white?). Wow. That was enough, man." I say. Thinking back, she made us want her - paraphrasing Billy Bragg - a girl not good enough to sing or play guitar that well.

"She was a cracker. What was she doing knocking around with Mark E Smith?" says Duggie.

"Dunno, but she was in my dreams, for ages. Around that difficult 18 or 19 year old period." I say.

"What about the record?" says Duggie, casting off once more.

"What?" I say, caught in a dream.

"The Adult Net?"

"Oh, yeah. Album called 'The Honey Tangle'. Came out in 1989, a few years after that EP came out. I only got it because of Brix. The tunes are ok. But we're talking about 1989. There was loads of good stuff came out that year." I say.

Duggie's switched off. Concentrating on ripples in the water.

"The most interesting thing about the LP, apart from a picture of Brix on the back cover, wearing a see-through outfit and the most luscious lipstick, is the fact that it came out on the newly resurrected 'Fontana' label that last saw the light of day in the '60s."

"You're sad." says Duggie.