'Sunny Day' Bank Holiday Extra!!

 'Sunny Day' - Epic Soundtracks

There is no 'Addendum' in FAS #157 (don't worry there are three in #158!) so I thought I'd give you something a bit different - and certainly something I feel it is unlikely you will have heard before.

Nikki Sudden (Adrian Godfrey) and his brother, Epic Soundtracks (Kevin Godfrey) are probably best known for their punky work in Swell Maps. In fact the noisy siblings were both BIG Free fans, and both were subscribers to the FAS from very early on. Nikki (later in Jacobites, and with a long solo career), continued to get the magazine up until his death from a heart attack in 2006. Tragic really, he was only 49.

In fact we owe Nikki something of a debt of gratitude as it was he, via his friend BBC DJ Annie Nightingale, that first came across the complete Free BBC session from April 1971 with all the outtakes. He sent me a DAT tape of it. Thus securing it's safety from BBC damage, loss or erasure in the future.

Anyway, Epic (Kevin) also continued to record after Swell Maps had disbanded and in 1995 released a CD called 'Debris', basically a compilation of tracks from other sessions recorded over the 1981-1994 period he'd never made available before. Among these was his solo version of the Fraser/Rodgers song 'Sunny Day', a favourite of his and recorded during the sessions for his 'Sleeping Star' album in January 1994 but not included. I don't think it's ever been available anywhere else, and curiously I can't find this on Youtube so I thought I'd put it here. The 'Debris' CD fetches quite a price these days it seems, often well over £100, so I'm pleased that Kevin sent a copy at the time!

I appreciate of course this won't be to everyone's taste, but the treatment here is very different to the original version by Free on 'Highway' - which is why I like it. This is musically stripped right back, and has a lovely wistful melancholic feel to it, but at the same time it's still very pretty (or I think it is). It's also rather poignant really. You might want to play it a few times before you make up your mind.

Kevin actually died before Adrian, the official cause 'inconclusive' but it appears he passed away in his sleep, way back in 1997. He was 38. Both were good friends of mine, Nikki wrote to me frequently over many years in his spidery writing from wherever he was in the world (in the end that was New York, where he died).  I miss them both, so it's nice to be able to include this little rarity here.

'Sunny Day' - Epic Soundtracks.

From the CD 'Debris' (1981-94 collection)