Without laboring the point or wallowing in nostalgia,we spent a lot of time in bedrooms (wasted at least carnally!) garages and church halls making a loud racket - as young men with noisy toys are wont to do..!
Eventually all this playing with ourselves obviously reached a point where the consensus was.......doing it to \ for others would be a much more interesting proposition.

We eventually got given (amassed?) Kym Bradshaw,a dodgy orange ford transit van,assorted bits of bigger blacker noisier equipment and several debts.
One of which was the studio bill that was to become the first Saints single.
I`m stranded \No time.with the aid of the post office and the foolish notion that we were budding record moguls (soon to be bigger than Motown) we sent our youthful meisterwerk to the far flung corners of the globe.

The Brits at the time being in the orgiastic throes of of the then "new teen phenomenon"that was "punk rock"responded immediately with saliva dripping jowls.
We gave (did a deal for??) the single to an english label called
"Power Exchange" By all accounts it was recieved warmly and got fairly hysterical reveiws.
As to whether it sold-your guess is as good as mine.
However the hype was fairly thick.

So hype being what it was - and still is - a major record label sent via their colonial office a pair of teeth in a satin bomber jacket armed with a fairly impressive looking briefcase to our humble antipodean abodes.
Using vastly superior logic and language (peppered liberally with the words "fame" & "money")
this exalted and otherworldly being produced from his aforementioned terribly impressive briefcase "A Record Contract"...!!

Youthful revolutionary ideals be damned!

What else was there for us to do?

We signed..........

And Stranded,the first of the three EMI albums followed soon thereafter........

Chris Bailey 1997