The elusive 'Home Again'
This record became somewhat of an obsession with me throughout the 1990s.
Not the usual music-obsessive behaviour of playing it over and over again for months on end, although I would probably have been happy to do so; this was more like a Captain Ahab-esque obsession with hunting the bloody thing down, a hunt that wouldn’t end until 2001.
Doughboys were a brash but melodic pop-hooked punk band from Montreal, and I first started listening to them shortly before the release of their 3rd album Happy Accidents. Their Whatever debut was getting played constantly by myself to whoever would listen, and I managed to get hold of a Restless Records CD sampler containing a track from this, their 2nd release. Could I find this for sale anywhere? Could I buggery. It was mentioned in hushed, reverential tones in fanzines. Friends in the tape-trading fraternity I was a part of at the time spoke of its existence but only ever in terms of knowing someone who claims that a friend of theirs had it. The local independent record stores had it listed in their huge, magical catalogues but every time they tried to order it, it was never available. I got a phonecall at home once from one of these stores, announcing that they’d found it, but when I gleefully bounced up to the counter the following day, I was informed that it hadn’t turned up in their delivery, and when they contacted the supplier, nobody could say where it went.
So. Sort of like Captain Ahab, if he had been hunting Keyser Soze.
Fast-forward to October 2001, and I am having a bit of a holiday in Montreal (which requires a whole tale of its own, but not here). Finding this album had become a bit of a running joke over the years, as everywhere I had been required a thorough rifling of any and all record stores in the vicinity. Surely the home of the band would bear fruit?
It very nearly didn’t, as all the little stores I was dragging my increasingly-exasperated friend round didn’t have it, and hadn’t had it for some years. I finally found it nestled in the racks of Montreal’s HMV, and I felt as though I’d found the last Golden Ticket (to, erm, Keyser Soze’s Chocolate Factory it would seem. I’ve mixed my metaphors far too much), actually running to the counter just in case someone nicked it off me.
I would have been gutted if, after all these years looking for it, it had been crap.
Happily, I absolutely love it. As well as an ending to a search which ended up going on for over half a decade, it was a brilliant reminder of a great week in great company in Canada. The song Numbered Days (from which this blog gets its title) has a rather sad connection however, as it was the soundtrack to a countdown to a return to Montreal that didn’t eventually happen. Still, I have the time I spent and a great album with which to document it, so no regrets from me.
Of course, this sort of nonsensical running around looking for records doesn’t really happen anymore – it’s probably on iTunes or something, so nowadays I wouldn’t need to even sit up to find it, let alone dig it out of a CD rack the thick end of four thousand miles away. But where would be the fun in that?
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