The Tights on Cherry Red Records

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Bad Hearts / Cracked / It
 
The three tracks on this ep were recorded on 16 track over a weekend in Cheltenham at Millstream Studios 1978, produced by John Acock.
 This was the first time the band had recorded in a 'real' studio. The demos submitted to the record company were recorded in a builders lock up amongst scaffold, planks, and plant machinery. All that remains of the demos is a single cassette tape, with several unheard recordings
 All rhythm tracks were 1st or 2nd takes, with vocals and lead guitar added as the only overdubs.The instruments and amps used were all copies, or home made. However after John Peel played 'Bad Hearts' on the radio, and Record Mirror made it 'Record of the Week' the initial 2000 copies sold out fast, making it number 6 in the punk chart.

Howard Hughes / China's Eternal
 
This double 'A' sided second single was recorded a few months later over two days, again at Millstream Studios, with the same crew.
 With just a £200 publishing advance, the band updated their gear to something less crap....a new bass guitar and a marshall stack.The production on the guitar and bass was fantastic.. so the boys let rip.
 Barry Island played bass, and ropey analogue keyboards. Rob Banks played wonderfully out of tune guitars. Malcolm Orgee sang like he was 16 yrs old....which he was!
 The cover picture is of Charlie Watts' limo, the newspapers in the windows were added later.
 Only 4000 copies of the single were pressed, but it did appear on an album entitled 'Business Unusual', and several hundred 'cassette singles' were pressed
...(the first and probably last ever) very rare.

 

The Guardian - City Diary - by Adam Jay '04
The British Phonographic Industry effectively called time on the cassette single yesterday, when it disclosed that not one tape had been shifted in the first quarter of the year. It's 26 years since they were introduced - with the release of The Tights' unforgettable Howard Hughes. Perhaps that's why the format has suffered such a drawn-out death, having not been seen in public for years.