Nikki Sudden – THE
BIBLE BELT
Ever since hearing
“Chelsea Embankment” for the first time, I’ve always thought about listening to
that song while walking along the actual Chelsea Embankment. A dream only
realised a few months ago, on a cool summer evening, with a bottle of ginger
beer in hand. I was actually rather spiritual, all things considered. Nikki
Sudden would have approved.
The hopeless idealism
of that dream could only be inspired by this
album. Nikki Sudden was a man out of time and out of any sort of context (he
did toy with the context a little on those Swell Maps albums, but that was
brief and almost accidental). Full of sexual yearning (“Cathy”) and references
to France (“The Road Of Broken Dreams”). But above all – what a great
songwriter. By any sort of standard, “English Girls” and “Missionary Boy” are
some of the greatest songs that nobody in mid-80s cared to hear.
With Dave Kusworth,
he would go on to do greater things (more on this later), but The Bible Belt remains a lost classic.
Apparently Nikki Sudden had no taste in clothes and often looked like a
patchwork of colours and styles. Not musically though. For even when he tried
something as untypical as the funky “Six Hip Princes” – he did it almost as
tastefully and convincingly as Robyn Hitchcock did. If anyone still remembers “Grooving
On An Inner Plane”.
