I’ve featured the Darling Buds in this space once before, writing about the way my affection for the band was compounded by their recording life cycle synching up exactly with my tenure as an undergraduate student who basically set up camp in the college radio station. At that time, I included a track from the band’s swan song. Today, it’s time to consider their debut.

I don’t recall with certainty when I first encountered Pop Said… but online sources suggest it was released very early in 1989. That would certainly help explain why it locked in so solidly with me. It was around that time I became even more deeply involved with the station, first serving in a de facto co-Music Director role to fill a brief leadership gap and then formally being ushered onto the executive staff in much same capacity. Those early weeks, in particular, were like a perpetual Christmas with Santa’s bottomless bag of new records. We were plowing through a backlog of material in the big metal cabinet that every college radio has, while simultaneously heading to the mail room daily to find a new teetering stack of cardboard shipping boxes loaded with records.

Somewhere in that abundance was Pop Said… and it carried the thrill of discovery with it. So many of the albums I loved that spring were fabulous peaks from college radio staples (Lou Reed’s New York, the Violent Femmes’ 3, the Replacements’ Don’t Tell a Soul, Robyn Hitchcock & the Egyptians’ Queen Elvis, I could really go on all day), which helped made a bright, thrilling debut of pop mastery like Pop Said… really stand out. It also helped establish something important for me, that still informs my approach to music. No matter how certain I might be as to which records I need to anticipate, there’s value is always being open to something completely new. This isn’t to say I was blindsided by the Darling Buds. They’d had enough success with singles in their native U.K. (and there was still so much attention paid by college radio press to which bands were bubbling to life across the pond) that’s it’s entirely possible, even likely, that we knew to keep an eye and ear out for this release. Still, it would have been easy enough to stick exclusively with artists I already knew, those I’d formed satisfied positions on. Loads of music fans do just that. But then I wouldn’t have found my way to something like “Burst.” I didn’t want to miss out on anything great. And I still don’t.

Listen or download –> The Darling Buds, “Burst”

(Disclaimer: Okay, I’ll admit it. I didn’t even look it up this time. I guessing that Pop Said… is out of print. Even if it’s not — and if there’s enough interest in the Darling Buds for reunion gigs, presumably there’s enough interest in the Darling Buds to justify having their debut release in print — I feel okay sharing this here. If Pharrell is making a pittance for a kajillion streams of “Happy,” then me sharing one MP3 isn’t the problem with the music industry. Still, I mean no harm in sharing this and in fact encourage anyone who likes it to talk to the proprietor of your favorite local, independently-owned record store about how copies of their music can be procured, particularly in a manner that compensates both the artist and the proprietor of said shop. I know the rules. If I’m asked to remove this track by any individual or entity with due authority to make such a request, I will gladly and promptly do so.)