Patrik Fitzgerald - "Live in Bern, 18/01/2013" (Bootleg) 2013

Patrik treating a sparse Suiss,audience to a run through of some of the songs he isn't sick of yet.Plus a couple of unrecorded tune,"Captain Of The Championship Team"....at least I think its unrecorded,and "What Can I Do?"
Obviously he had been playing a lot of gigs on this tour to promote "Subliminal Alienation",as his voices sounds a bit hoarse,as it reverbarates in the room. The audience clearly came to listen,and submit some shy applause.
Who would want to be a solo musician,or stand up comedian? A thankless task.
I suppose that back in 1977 Fitzgerald was punks Ed Sheeran.....compare and contrast the two and you get an accurate analysis of the difference between the two epochs.The vacuous emptiness of the Ed Sheeran generation's work,and the honesty of the ,for want of a better word, the 'Punk' era.
At least the only ginger hair in punk rock was via the use of a bottle of dye. 

Tracklist:

01 Exist
02 Grey Echoes
03 One Little Soldier
04 The Serving Classes
05 Company Bus
06 All My Friends Are Dead Now
07 Smile
08 Gifts And Telegrams
09 Dance Music Late Night
10 Live Out My Stars
11 Inside Me There Is Nothing
12 Little Fishes
13 Down
14 Captain Of The Championship Team
15 What Can I Do
16 The Next Revolution

DOWNLOAD and feel the bern HERE!

Patrik Fitzgerald ‎– "Grubby Stories" Small Wonder Records/Polydor ‎– 2383 533,) 1979

Bought this on my 15th birthday with the record token my Auntie Joan sent me from Skegness.A town where I bought a lot of my albums in the late 70's,during my summer holidays which were always spent in Skeggie. The Clash,Stranglers,Damned etc.....and by default Patrik Fitzgerald,as this shop was where my Auntie always bought those 'Record Tokens' from. 'Herrick-Watson' was almost equal in stature to 'Revolver' in Leicester for my youthful purchases.
A family business that provided Records and Televisions to this bleak seaside town for 87 years.Sadly I have just discovered that it has now closed its doors since november 2019, as the owners are retiring,and no-one wants to buy a record shop anymore. Boo-Hooo!
This was Patrik's 'sell-out' album,and included the song that summed up his entire musical career, the post-Ironic "All The Years Of Trying".
As Woody Allen said, "80% of Success is just turning up", which I am a great subscriber to.
Just bang away and eventually, you will get some reward.Regretably U2 understood this principle only too well. Just stick at it, until superior rivals fall by the wayside, and you will be the only ones left. Thats why U2 are still making records,and Echo and The Bunnymen do nostalgia tours.
In Patrik's case,he's still trying and appears to be the exception to this rule.He's still virtually ignored,but not on Die Or DIY? he ain't.
As Pat points out in "All The Years Of Trying", the first word in Success is 'Suck'.He was all too aware that as a consequence of his attempt to 'make it',risked alienating his fan base.....and it did.
Swiftly given the boot by Polydor when the LP failed to shift enough units to be number one,he formed a group that didn't include the punk stars that helped out on the album,and didn't sound like the album on the tour.This probably lost the few fickle fans that he had left. He then faded into the background for a couple of years until indie label Red Flame signed him up for three albums.
The first of which "Gifts and Telegrams" was another unpopulat shift in style,far from the acoustic urban troubador to a purveyor of down beat minimal synth cold wave. This was about as popular as a dose of gonorrhea,and fell between several stools.So much so that redFlame didn't release his next,and best, album "Drifting Towards Violence" and licensed it out to avoid another loss.

You can download and read what shit i had to say about "Gifts and Telegrams" HERE!


Tracklist:

A1 As Ugly As You
A2 Nothing To Do
A3 All My Friends Are Dead Now
A4 Adopted Girl
A5 Don't Tell Me Because I'm Young
A6 When I Get Famous
A7 Little Fishes
A8 Lover's Pact
A9 All The Years Of Trying
B1 But Not Anymore
B2 Suicidal Wreck
Written-By – Fionna Norris
B3 My Secret Life
B4 Conventions Of Life
B5 Parentgames
B6 No Fun Football
B7 Make It Safe
B8 Your Hero

DOWNLOAD to make your life grubbier HERE!

Patrik Fitzgerald - "Singles and EP's" - (Mostly Small Wonder) 1978-82

Pictures of Patrik in scenes of urban decay were a regular sight in the music press of 1977/8. Many of the other groups had similar photoshoots,but only Patrik seems to belong there? He certainly had a face that suited being framed by corrugated iron and crumbling plasterwork. Unlike the other punk groups, the clothes he wore weren't selected by a fashion designer, thats how he really looked. Bone Fide Oxfam chic. I think we actually believed that Patrik actually lived in a bombsite,and made a living begging on the pavement......which he probably did!? He certainly lived in a squat,which was a very middle class thing to do for many of his fellow 'squatters', but Patrik was the real thing....at least I hope he was, I have no information to the contrary.
He popped his demo cassette in the letterbox of Small Wonder records and they decided he was 'Punk' enough to be signed up for a string of singles,then sold on to Polydor for the market price. This led to accusations of  'selling out', which in a purists world I suppose was correct? Everybody else was doing it so why not Patrik Fitzgerald?Although as an Unplugged Punk,it was hardly selling out.Punk without the Rock bit.
Here's all the singles and EP's.......except the pseudonymous 'Josef Garret' single which you can get HERE!

"Saftey Pin Stuck In My Heart EP" (1978)
A1 Banging & Shouting
A2 Safety Pin Stuck In My Heart
A3 Work. Rest. Play. Reggae
B1 Set We Free
B2 Optimism/Reject

"Backstreet Boys EP" (1978)
A1 Buy Me, Sell Me
A2 Little Dippers
B1 Trendy
B2 The Backstreet Boys

"Improve Myself EP" (1979)

A Improve Myself
B1 The Bingo Crowd
B2 My New Family

"All Sewn Up" (1979)

A All Sewn Up
B Hammersmith Odeons

"The Paranoid Ward EP" (1978)

1 Babysitter (Tippy Toe Music)
2 Irrelevant Battles
3 Cruellest Crime
4 The Paranoid Ward
5 The Bingo Crowd (Instrumental)

"Tonight EP":

A1 Mrs & Mrs 2:10
A2 Animal Mentality 3:38
A3 Tonight 4:40
B1 A Superbeing 4:11
B2 Waiting For The Final Cue 2:20

Personal Loss 7" (1982,Red Flame)

Personal Loss (2:53)
Straight Boy (2:30)

DOWNLOAD these extended patriks HERE!

Patrik Fitzgerald ‎– "Subliminal Alienation" (Crispin Glover Records ‎– BEAG3CGRCD010) 2013

There comes a time in life when you wish you had an young actor to represent you at social gatherings,or, if you are a musician, at gigs.
All those re-formed bands, all squeezing their fatter bodies into black suits,all with male pattern baldness hidden under a black trilby, sweating profusely, busting a bloodvessel to recreate their glorious youth for a few thousand quid in front of a crowd of similarly shaven heads......who wants to watch that? The sad demise of a childhood hero, like a performing monkey who's lost his teeth. No thanks.
I've seen pictures of Patrik Fitzgerald performing in recent years, and he was wearing shorts for fucks sake!!!!..... and sandals,with long curly hair!!!?...at least he hasn't reformed,mainly because he really hasn't stopped,and hasn't resorted to the popular reformed punk band uniform of suit and trilby.
You may have noticed that that isn't our Pat on the front cover,but an actor playing the role of Fitzgerald as a street musician in what seems to be Norway?
This album may turn out to be his last.(although facebook friend Stephen Surreal,a chum of patriks,was supposed to be recording his farewell album a few years ago.....i dunno if that actually happened or not...but i hope it did,and it will appear someday soon?)
With a title like "Subliminal Alienation", this could have been a greatest misses compilation, but no, its, nearly, all new or unheard stuff. It could have been recorded in 1980 as far as i can hear.His voice is just as youthful as back in the day,and the guitar work uses the same barely tuned chords that he uses in all of his songs,usually with a droning E-string.....a technique that Lemmy from Motorhead made a career out of.
This album could be even bleaker than "Drifting Towards Violence" i'm not sure? There are a couple of tracks that appeared on his demo tape and a peel session back in 1977/78, but there are many new, unheard tracks that are classic Fitzgerald. 
"The Company Bus" tackled the uncomfortable theme of Racism with his traditional honesty.
"Routine Never Stops" revisits the mundane regime of dream crushing normality, a much explored theme in the works of our favourite 'Punk Poet'.
It gets bleaker...."Inside Me There Is Nothing"......i think the title tells it all?
"Pilgrimage" seems to sum up the Punk Nostalgia industry very nicely indeed.
"Teacher Teacher" is another exercise in the pointlessness of trying to better yourself....the message is 'Give Up'?
I won't go through all the songs one by one, like most modern music journalist do.....you know i hate that shit?I'm just treading water here!
Play them for yourself without me dribbling out my silly analyses'.

Tracklist:

Company Bus
Routine Never Stops
Junior Gangstas
Inside Me There Is Nothing
Knockabout
All The Splattered Children
No Cause For Concern
Teacher Teacher
Laughter Far Away
Amateur
The Serving Classes
Acid Wisdom
The Next Revolution
Pilgrimage

DOWNLOAD the sublime and the alienated HERE!

Patrik Fitzgerald + 3 ‎– "Tunisian Twist" (Red Flame ‎– RF 48) 1986

I guess this is Patrik's "Bluejeans and Moonbeams",when the artist, tired of making faultless work, understandably tries...and fails....to make commercially acceptable pop to maybe get paid for once.
Like the good Captain Beefheart's noble efforts to appeal to the consumer, it ended up appealing to precisely nobody. "Bluejeans" and "Unconditionally Guaranteed" were slaughtered by fans and critics alike, but i've grown to love those albums better than some of Don's  pretentious 'comeback' era albums.
When "Tunisian Twist" came out it wasn't panned by the critics and fans, it was just ignored. Punk rock wasn't even considered as something that ever existed by 1986,like it never happened, unless you were one of the uniformed herds of mohawked wilderbeast,flocking to see one of those D-Beat bands.
I think the record label thought they had a new Mat Bianco,Swing Out Sister or something, and Patrik thought so too!?
Thankfully, he couldn't restrain his instincts, so the words and their delivery are as bleak as ever.This isn't pop for a top forty radio station, its a distress call from the heart of a wasteland....a bit like a Patrik Fitzgerald concert in England 1987.
Of course, i didn't buy this at the time,and wasn't even aware that PF had made any more records since about 1980. This was the time of Ron Johnson Records for me, Bogshed, bIG fLame, Jackdaw With Crowbar etc,which was quite exciting stuff, so i wasn't gonna look for new Patrik Fitzgerald releases.He was long forgotten....and maybe now he's little bit less forgotten? I dunno?!

Tracklist:

A1 Factory Of Wines
A2 The Finger Of Lesotho
A3 Putting Wings On Aeroplanes
A4 10.000 Years Of Weeping
B1 Pilot Of A Private Yacht
B2 Down Mexico Way
B3 Poor John
B4 Tunisian Twist

DOWNLOAD and stick don't twist HERE!

Patrik Fitzgerald Group ‎– "Pillow Tension" (Lazy Dog Records ‎– LZD 012)

Greece never forgot all the heroes of the post-punk era, unlike in the United Kingdom,where all that brilliance was dumped in the trash for the sake of dancing themselves silly and taking enough erroneous drugs to create a soon arriving Tsunami of dementia for the so-called 'Trainspotting Generation'.
So naturally this was the only country (apart from Norway) that would touch Patrik Fitzgerald with that proverbial barge pole. The result was this mid-nineties Greece only CD recording of Patrik and Group, giving a slick portrayal of songs old and new,all making their only appearance on any recorded media format.
Again Patrik sounds like he's still only twenty,and the songwriting is as good as always,and as bleak as always. "Frozen Dreams" is one of my favourite PF tracks of all-time.....maybe its because i can identify with the turmoil of becoming a parent.Most songs describe this life changing/ending experience as something truly wonderful,but the reality is that this opinion rarely surfaces post-natal,among its victims. Also deemed 'Beautiful' is the actual birth process,which was like a scene from Hellraiser.As soon as i saw the blood soaked stainless steel chain of the ventouse pulling my trapped daughter into the world, I was immediatley struck with the reality that there really was no God!All hope died in that moment.
Its like giving birth to a prison,and all the depressing prospects that come with a long tranch of penal servitude.....all because of a long period of penile servitude. My advice to all you fertile types who probably aren't reading this blog about vintage musics, is.....keep the fucking thing in your pants...its for pissing.
Twenty years later, i have emerged from the darkness to feel grateful that I have a Daughter,and nothing really matters. Except, that to bring an innocent lifeform into the bleak doom of existance is a selfish crime of enormous proportions......again keep it in yer pants ladz.
Now i'm too fucking old to do everything we talked about in our youth,(I say 'we',but of course we split up), and don't expect your kids to hang around to ease your lonliness either......those ungrateful fuckers will be off on the adventures you never had, except for the annual visits they will grant you for the final twenty years of your wasted life.So in fact one will see your loved progeny only another twenty times before you die.....unless the virus gets you first,and then they get your house that you broke your back to aquire,for nothing?!
If i'd have heard this album before my biological clock,or cock, told me to procreate..... a special kind of madness!?.....i might have heeded the warning;but i had no idea that patrik had made any albums at all after 1979.......now i do,and so do you, so no excuses. Either abstain or put a 'Rubber Johnny'* on your knob#.

* a British colloquialism for a condom or sheath.
# a British colloquialism for a Penis

Tracklist:

1 Background Paints The Picture 3:44
2 Frozen Dreams 4:34
3 Restless 5:21
4 Carnival 0:25
5 Tears 3:23
6 He Wants To Hold The Baby 4:24
7 Charlie Leads A Life Of Crime 3:41
8 Dying For Someone Else's Money 3:09
9 Moon In The Gutter 3:36
10 Author 5:25
11 Boy On A Motorcycle 2:52
12 Give It Up 5:07
13 No Reason 7:25
14 Breathing's Painful 3:06

DOWNLOAD to relieve the tension HERE!

Patrik Fitzgerald ‎– "Drifting Towards Violence" (Himalaya ‎– HIM 009) 1983

"Grubby Stories" may be the Patrik Fitzgerald album I have the greater emotional attachment to, but this one is easily his best. Boy are the lyrics depressing. Banality never sounded more painful than this.Songs about subliminal alienation, living just above the poverty line, fading love affairs, unattainable dreams,the creeping apathetic acceptance that makes up normality,......all the fun stuff that are given facts of life. I'm sure somewhere Patrik is saying that it doesn't have to be like this,but the realist that he most certainly is knows that it IS like that and nothing's gonna change.
Parenthood and dysfunctional families are one of his most frequently used themes, and this album is no exception,as touched upon in the title track....How's this for a poem?.....

"Dear mother. Dear father
Can you answer some questions
They're stealing my friends
Like they broke all my toys
Taking my freedom. Crushing my hope
I asked for some string
And they gave me some rope
And now I'm drifting towards violence
Drifting towards violence again
Dear mother. Dear father
Can you answer some questions
I've tried to find freedom
And I've tried to find truth
But I cannot see reason
I cannot see logic
And I cannot break away
From the turmoil of my youth
And now I'm drifting towards violence
Drifting towards violence again
Dear mother. Dear father
Many thanks for your present
Though I couldn't but resent
When I removed the wrapping
It wasn't what I wanted
Though he worked
For a short time
To take my mind away
From the production line
Dear mother. Dear father
Can you answer some questions
I've tried to find reason
And I've tried to find truth
But I cannot see reason
I cannot see logic
And I cannot break away
From the turmoil of my youth
And now I'm
Drifting towards violence
Drifting towards violence again"

Fun Stuff?

Tracklist:

A1 Smile
A2 In This World
A3 Family Outing
A4 Domestication
A5 Working Hu-Mans Casino
A6 We Seemed So Suited
B1 My Perfect World
B2 Scattered Villages
B3 A Life Sentence
B4 Down
B5 Drifting Towards Violence
B6 Mystery
B7 My Perfect World (Part 2)

DOWNLOAD or i could get violent quickly HERE!

Patrik Fitzgerald - "1977 Demo's" - (Bootleg) 1977

These are the songs that got Patrik his deal with Small Wonder records. The boss was so impressed that four of them were included on his 'Paranoid Ward' mini-album.(you may have noticed that I used the opening track of side 2 with the radio four snippet here?).
This is the birth of DIY punk,recorded on a cassette in the squat that Patrik lived in while he tried to get his pop career going. Trouble is that he was so poor he couldn' afford an electric guitar and amp to get in one of those new fangled 'Punk' bands, unlike The Pistols with their top notch equipment that was, alledgedly stolen from David Bowie by Steve Jones. The evidence is quite tenuous for that story,but it explained away how they had thousands of pounds worth of frontline musical equipment. Its alright shouting about having no future and stuff, but there aren't many teenagers with a white Gibson Les Paul like the one Mick Ronson had,and still had on the night that Jones and Cook were supposed to have stolen everything backstage at the Hammersmith Odeon...there's video evidence provided by D.A. Pennebaker.
Patrik never had a manager who could buy him a Gibson,fender amp,and lots of designer clothes.He did audition for the Mick Jones' London SS proto-punk band,but he wasn't 'cool' enough. Hair too short probably,and didn't have a cool axe.
Poverty did provide Fitzgerald with a unique angle in the Punk Explosion,as the only act with an acoustic guitar. This led frequently to Patrik having to dodge the odd missile as he plied his trade across the gob-soaked stages in the Punk wars of the UK in 1977. Including an unpleasant reception at the Rock Against Racism concert at Victoria Park London in 1978, while the 100,000 strong crowd waited for The Clash to play.


Tracklist:

1. Life At The Top
2. Ragged Generation(for Real)
3. Live Out My Stars
4. Amateur
5. Who'll Be My Jah?
6. Every Girl Loves a Boy in Uniform
7. Falling Apart
8. Restless
9. Saftey Pin
10.You Ain't Nothing But A Funny Face
11.George Is Innocent

DOWNLOAD what do you call two gay protest singers?...patrik fitzgerald and gerald fitzpatrik , hahahaha HERE!

Patrik Fitzgerald - " Dark Side Of The Room + Peel Sessions + Oddities" (Die or DIY compilation) 1977 - 2006

Patrik released a shared album in 2006, with someone called 'Pog', but Pog weren't very good, so i've took the Fitzgerald tracks and beefed them up with three Peel sessions, and a few oddities from Pat's long and fruitless career.So,please excuse me my rights to invoke my artistic licence,it makes for a better experience for you...my beloved public.
The cd-r insert notes are a good read,which includes the revelation that he didn't write 'Suicidal Wreck'.....it was by some unknown band called 'The Murderers'? 
So read the notes as I won't write much,cus i'm probably gonna end up posting all of the lisping bard of bedsitland's back catalog.There are frequent humourous references in the notes to killing his own career,which is always a welcome approach around these 'ere parts.
"My beautiful Career" they often say...What career? As Patrik would agree,we,and everything we ever do are all going to the same place reserved for us in Oblivion.Whether you're Picasso or the homeless pisshead on the corner of the street begging outside the Off-Licence for small change.And at the end of civilisation as we know it......which,at the moment, is seeming to be sooner than we think.....we all will have created precisely...Nothing!
We are,each and every one of us part of an enormous Portsmouth Sinfonia playing on the deck of the Titanic.Time to realise that its too late to rearrange the deckchairs and just Play On until the icey black waters rise above our nostrils.End.


Tracklist:

"Dark Side Of The Room":
1 – How The Fuck ?
2 – Chains Instead Of Brains
3 – I Don't Believe
4 – A Bit Of Male Liberation
5 – No-One Different
6 – Sound Of My Street
7 – Backstreet Boys
8 – Without Sex
9 – Suicidal Wreck
10 – No Reason
11 – Palace Of Dreams
12 – The Old Dope Peddler

"Peel Session (08/02/78)"

1 - Don't Tell Me Because I'm Young

2 - Safety Pin Stuck In My Heart

3 - Little Dippers

4 - Bingo Crowd

5 - Backstreet Boys

"Peel Session (17/07/78)"

1 - A Mixed Kid

2 - The Sound Of My Street

3 - No Fun Football

4 - Little Fishes

"Peel Session (10/04/79)"

1 - All The Splattered Children

2 - Dance Music Late night

3 - Improve Myself

4 - Suicidal wreck

5 - Tonight

"Oddities"

1 - Don't Tell Me Cus I'm Young

2 - Who'll Be My Jah?

3 - God's Song

4 - Live Out My Stars

5 - Running Away

6 - German Misery

7 - The Old Folks

8 - A Super Being

9 - Goodbye Voyager

10 - Patrik Fitzgerald-Famous Punk Musician

DOWNLOAD these odd ditties HERE!

Patrik Fitzgerald ‎– "Floating Population" (Self-released cd-r) 2006

He may have suvived the New Zealand earthquake of 2011 (thats where he lives by the way),but he didn't survive the Punk Rock earthquake of 1977....or at least I thought he didn't.I had all his Small Wonder works and his 'sell-out' album for Polydor (get it HERE!),but he seemed to disappear down one of the cracks in the post-punk nuclear winter. It never occurred to me that he may have just...carried on regardless?In the late nineties someone in the pub said to me, "Hey remember Patrik Fizgerald?".....fuck yeah! I had completely forgot about "the Punk Poet".I staggered to the Record and Tape Exchange shop in Camden,and found a compilation of Pat's post punk releases called "Tresures from the Wax Museum", and christ, was it good,better than I remember.So,as usual,this sparked an autistic kind of obsession to find more.

Luckily,he was 'Big' in Norway,so it was possible to get some of his more recent releases,and he sounded exactly the same as back in the day,like he'd been defrosted from a cryogenic chamber dated 1977,voice and slight lisp still very much intact.

This CD was released in 2006 as a souvenir to Patrik's UK and Norway tour. The songs are a mixture of unreleased material and re-recordings of older songs.Its Great basically.

All the old themes are there, alienation, lonliness, the pointlessness of existance,the casual drift into alcoholism and violence.I can't think of many other artists who can articulate this cruel drabness quite as appealingly.Just hide those razor blades.

INFO:

Track 1 was recorded at Gateway Studio (Clapham) in 1979.
Tracks 2, 9, 22 and 23 were recorded at Leyline Studio (Fulham) in 1997.
Tracks 3, 5, 8, 13, 14, 15, 17, 18 and 24 were recorded at Plains FM Studio (Christchurch, New Zealand) in 2006.
Tracks 4, 6, 10, 11 and 16 were recorded at Pathway Studio (Islington) in 1992.
Track 7 was recorded at Pet Sounds Studio (Kennington) in 1981.
Tracks 12 and 20 were recorded at Blackwing Studio (Southwalk) in 1980.
Tracks 19 and 21 were recorded at Southside Studio (Clapham) in 1994.'

Tracklist:

1 Don't Feel Safe 4:20
2 Dance Music Late Night 5:03
3 Safety Pin Stuck In My Heart 1:55
4 No Fun Football 2:19
5 Island Of Lost Souls 3:27
6 Perfect Childhood 1:17
7 Dressing Up In Funny Clothes 3:10
8 Gifts And Telegrams 3:02
9 Bones In A Graveyard 3:42
10 Museum 4:27
11 Dying For Someone Else's Money 2:52
12 One Little Soldier 4:56
13 A Life Sentence 3:24
14 Mrs And Mrs 2:42
15 Punch 2:38
16 Poor John 1:46
17 What If... 2:39
18 10,000 Years Of Weeping 3:18
19 Love Limbo 1:41
20 Breathing's Painful 3:34
21 Poll Tax Payers' Street 2:30
22 Concrete Jungle 3:27
23 Shadow Of A Man 4:32
24 Birth Of Human Beings 3:45

DOWNLOAD the sound of a population hitting an iceberg HERE!

Patrik Fitzgerald ‎– "Room Service" (Beat Bedsit ‎– BASE03) 1996

For some reason, the beyond great Patrik Fitzgerald was always referred to as a..."Punk Poet",by the media!? But,although his lyrics stand up on their own as some kind of depressing street poetry,he has more in common with Folky singer song writers and protest singers than any poet.A Punk Woody Guthrie.
No-one has the knack to reveal the bleak horrors of life through its mundanities like parenthood,paying bills, and the general banality of existence.......wow, I bet you can't wait to listen to this?
Indeed, his lyrics certainly have a rather pessimistic bent,but sometimes,in fact all the time, realism is often mistaken for pessimism.
Unlike his Punk cohorts, Patrik didn't think that getting a job,'a future' was the answer to all our woes,the very opposite in fact.He could make even the most exciting career sound like the highway to the most uninspiring hell AC/DC never squarked about.
Welcome to a world of routine relationships, unhappy childhoods, debt slavery, petty theft, mindless violence, unwanted children,the disappointment of love, tedious careers, and many many more mundane horrors of just, being here.
This rare mid-nineties cd-r, captures Patrik in his natural habitat,in a bedroom,alone,with his acoustic guitar,recording his bleak songs for a minuscule audience of dedicated fans.
As it used to say on those adverts for 100 Country Rock Classics......'Not available in shops'.

DOWNLOAD to feel down HERE!

Patrik Fitzgerald ‎– "Gifts And Telegrams" (Red Flame ‎– RF8) 1983 + "Peel Session 10th April 1979"

Nothing to do with the Astronauts,but their “Pranksters in Revolt” EP reminded me of this minimal electronic urban folk classic.

There are few artist's work who I would say I was a giggling “Fan” of;maybe PiL mark 1, Joy Division, Beefheart,.....Danny and the Dressmakers (?), and ….....funnily enough, Patrik Fitzgerald. The troubled troubadour of squatland himself, who finds himself listed among such venerable luminaries as......er......Danny and the Dressmakers!?

Why Fitzgerald isn't mentioned in the same breath as rediscovered folky genii as Bill Fay, Judee Sill, and Nick Drake I will never understand. Maybe because he didn't die an early death,or be championed by some boring pop star,who knows?

His disastrous career can be summed up in his song “All the Years of Trying(mp3)” from his souped up major label début “Grubby Stories”.(He was dropped when no-one bought it)

“Gifts and Telegrams” however,is the opposite of “Grubby Stories”,there are no new wave illuminatti backing him up, just a few cheap bontempi organs and a crap drum machine. Gone also is the trademark battered solo acoustic guitar, but, most importantly, the negative pessimistic lyrics remain. This belated second album,released three years after the Polydor debaclé on indie label, Red Flame; couldn't sound more different to his previous recorded output. A Career resurrection this would never be. A minimal, bitter, downer of an LP, that would probably lose whoever bought the first album, if they remembered him at all, and further alienate the remainder of the “public”.

As a poet,(he was hyped as a”Punk” poet in his early days) he is an uber-realist ,concentrating on the taboo's of the human condition, the hopelessness, pointlessness of existence.

A cover of Jacque Brel's “My Death” fits in nicely with his perspective. But, unlike Brel, life's high's are edited out of his own songs. This is really a version of Patrik's “hero”, David Bowie('s) solo spot on the Ziggy Stardust tour. Almost replicating Bowie's version exactly, which is a low point on this ,otherwise, great LP.

In the file I have included PF's Peel session from April 10th 1979, which is in the very same style as this recording. So he was developing this style for three years before “Gifts and Telegrams” finally surfaced to universal intransigence.

Patrik has had a increase in profile in recent years,apparently he's big in Norway,where a small label assembled big names acts to record a Fitzgerald covers album, including Jello Biafra amongst others. Also I was amused recently to observe a demonstration outside the Boomtown Rats gig at the Roundhouse,where Patrik was supporting said awful group, urging Patrik NOT to play in apartheid Israel!? As much as I agree that Israel should be Isolated from the civilised world, there must be other richer,higher profile,targets to harass. A Racist Zionist's money is as good as anybody's when you're broke.(Mmmmm,but then again.....?......ahh, just leave him alone will ya!?)

Tracklist:

A1 One Little Soldier

A2 Exist

A3 Personal Loss

A4 Travel Through Dark Though Scented Country

A5 Grey Echoes

A6 World Is Getting Better

B1 Solve

B2 My Death

B3 Work

B4 Gifts And Telegrams

B5 Punch

B6 Island Of Lost Souls

Peel session 10th April 1979:

1. Suicidal Wreck
2. Improve Myself 
3. Tonight
4. All The Splattered Children
5. Dance Music/Late Night

DOWNLOAD a gift by e-telegram HERE!