So, it turns out there was indeed a bit of a story behind the copy of Lions that just sold on Ebay.
The seller was Karen Atkinson, who’s a photographer, songwriter and singer, working with the Legendary Pink Dots and Youth of Killing Joke.
Some time ago, Martin heard her voice and songs and liked them, and asked her to sing on some demo’s of some of his own songs. One of these, a remix of “The Long Kiss Goodnight” in a dance mix, has been floating around for a while via a Soundcloud upload by the producer. I don’t think it was that widely known, but it was about. It was offered for a film soundtrack but not used.
However there were some additional songs, which Karen has been kind enough to put on her soundcloud page. You’re looking for “Letter to Burt”, “There’ll Always Be Someone”, “The Long Kiss Goodnight”(two versions), and “There For You”.
Nice to hear these – we wouldn’t have Prefab Sprout as a band we could listen to without Martin’s drive and hard work in the early days – not only did he work to get the early demo’s heard by A&R people, he worked shifts to get the money to record the first single – and it’s a shame he’s somewhat been in his big brother’s shadow. In fact I’m as guilty of that as anyone, my first thought when Karen sent me the link was to wonder whether they sounded like Paddy’s writing at all.
Anyway there’s enough here to intrigue and make you wonder what might have happened had the age gap been a little less, and both brothers had contributed to the writing.