My Brilliant Career

2008 eight CD box set. Cherry Red Records marks it's 30th Anniversary in style with this lavish 185 track boxset. I'll Give You My Heart chronologically plots 61 single/EP a and B-sides from 1978 to 1983. Features 24 tracks from the U.K. Top 50 Indie chart including 12 Top 20 and two #1 hits. Includes cuts from Dead Kennedys, the Monochrome Set, Eyeless in Gaza, the Runaways, Marc Bolan, Everything But the Girl, Robert Wyatt and many more. A comprehensive 78 page booklet plots the story of Cherry Red Records and details many rare 7" and 12" picture sleeves. Features extensive interviews conducted by Alex Ogg with 'fly-on-the-wall' accounts from label founders and band members. Cherry Red.

After a series of low-key UK school bands, Robert Lloyd (b. 1959, Cannock, Staffordshire, England) formed the Prefects - one of the earliest punk bands - who toured with the Clash. They split up in 1979 and Lloyd assembled the Nightingales using the best of the musicians who had passed through the ranks of the Prefects. The first of many subsequent line-ups comprised Lloyd, Alan and Paul Apperley, Joe Crow and Eamonn Duffy. They were ably championed by BBC Radio 1 disc jockey John Peel, for whom Lloyd recorded more sessions under various guises than any other artist. The Nightingales’ debut single, ‘Idiot Strength’, was released in 1981 on the band’s own Vindaloo label in association with Rough Trade Records.