The Little House of Concrete Version 4.0

A Very Fashionable Hovel

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Having spotted The Sports Fair Game EP when it appeared as NME's Record Of The Week in 1977 I've been watching Stephen Cummings' career over the intervening thirty-five years with considerable interest. While The Sports attained a reasonably high profile, after the band broke up in 1981 Cummings went, more or less into stealth mode, releasing albums at regular intervals and maintaining an increasingly lower profile.

Sure, he had a habit of turning up on Channel Nine's Sunday program when there was a new album out, and there was, at one point, a social media presence that provided interesting reading as Cummings mused on various matters but that went belly up a while back (though he was back blogging at http://www.spiritualbum.blogspot.com.au/ earlier this year), and I only learned of his most recent album (Reverse Psychology) in a passing reference.

Situations like that produce a visit to iTunes, and while you're there you tend to have a look at what else is there with a view to filling in any gaps in the collection, which is how I ended up catching Happiest Man Alive which had slipped by undetected or forgotten in 2008.

The Pelaco Brothers (1974–1976):
1976 The Pelaco Brothers (EP)
1977 The Notorious Pelaco Brothers Show (live EP)
1978 The Autodrifters and The Relaxed Mechanics Meet The Fabulous Nudes and The Pelaco Bros

The Sports (1976–1981):
1977 Fair Game (EP)
1978 Reckless
1979 Don't Throw Stones
1979 So Obvious (EP)
1979 O.K., U.K.! (EP)
1980 Suddenly
1981 Sondra
1981 The Sports play Dylan (and Donovan) (EP)
1982 All Sports
1987 Missin' Your Kissin'
1997 This Is Really Something
2004 Definitive Collection

Solo:
1984 Senso
1986 This Wonderful Life
1988 Lovetown
1989 A New Kind of Blue
1991 Good Humour
1992 Unguided Tour
1993 Rollercoaster (compilation)
1994 Falling Swinger
1996 Escapist
1997 Puppet, Pauper, Pirate, Poet, Pawn and King (compilation)
1999 Spiritual Bum
2001 Skeleton Key
2003 Firecracker
2003 Live at the Big Room — (originally released as Live 2002 as a bonus disc to pre-orders of Firecracker but re-released as Live at the Big Room in 2005)
2004 Close Ups (unplugged)
2005 Love-O-Meter
2007 Space Travel
2008 That's My Cave Man (compilation)
2008 Happiest Man Alive
2009 Tickety Boo
2012 Reverse Psychology

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