Last Friday I stumbled upon a repeat of BBC Four's documentary on Stiff Records. It was a great bit of telly and what's more, it was 90 minutes long...by the end I felt that I probably knew all I was ever going to need to know about the label, its disastrous tours, its constant flirtation with bankruptcy and its eclectic roster of hopefuls and hopeless cases (from Wreckless Eric to Madness to Lene Lovich to The Pogues to Elvis Costello to Jona Lewie to Ian Dury etc etc)
I even came away with a couple of things I never knew...1) Pete Waterman was a producer for Stiff and 2) Alvin Stardust released four singles on the label. Oh yes.
But stronger and stranger was the inescapable conclusion that the world was a very different place back then. Punk had changed the rules or at least hidden them somewhere, and there was still money in making singles. Could you imagine a record like this making number one these days?
Thought not.
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