Itchy and scratchy

Before I moved to London I used to get the train down a lot to visit my girlfriend and for the journey I'd always get a newspaper or two and a music magazine to read. While some people clearly found a couple of hours on a train a bit of a drag I loved it, especially when they still had smoking carriages. (The same with hospital waiting rooms - there's always someone moaning about the wait, I regard it as a golden opportunity to thoroughly read the papers - once they had the Ashes showing on the telly as well, I could have sat there all day.)

Anyway, back in the day I left a free cd given away with one of my train journey magazines at my girlfriend's flat - generally these cds were poor but on one there was a track that I found utterly beguiling, its appeal heightened because I only got to listen to it every three or four weeks (I never took it back with me for some reason). I always meant to pick up the band's album but before I did the cd was mislaid in a move and I realised I'd forgotten both the track and the band name.

I like having a half remembered track or two to be hunting down at any given time, but as the years went by it occurred to me that I'd probably had it with this one. My attempts to track it down were, it transpires, only hindered by my having a vague recall that the bandname contained the word hospital and that the female vocalist was Scottish.

But, wuffling round the blogosphere the other day I saw a band mentioned in a post and a little lightbulb pinged on above my head. Less than a minute later I was reunited with my long lost track.

The Paradise Motel Derwent River Star

This just leaves me now trying to track down a very brisk reggae track with the vocalist toasting over the top a lyric about "them old, old Europeans" and a Dub track that I can only describe as sounding quaintly science fiction spacey with a very tight whirring noise running through it. I despair of ever finding the Dub track.