Andy Pawlak In The Kitchen

Sometime in 1985 (after April) I bought a homemade demo tape titled 'In the Kitchen'.  The singer songwriter was a guy called Andy Pawlak.  I didn't even buy the tape off him, but off a friend of his.  The songs were recorded in his kitchen on the 4th April 1985 and I was hooked from the first listen, it was just him and his guitar. (And from the sound of it a shed load of talent and genius).

Here's a few pictures of the original tape.

'In the Kitchen' Front Cover (Cam K750i)

Inlay and Cassette (Cam K750i)

Inlay close up (Cam K750i)

I thought AP would make it big and would bang on about him to my mates.  In 1989 (give or take a year) he released a couple of singles and an LP called ‘Shoebox Full of Secrets’, which I bought.  He made at least one appearance on the TV, the program was Pebble Mill at One.

Anyway that ended up being that. I don't know how well the Album did, except no other album was produce and he just faded into obscurity.

Many years later when I was replacing my vinyl LP and tapes (converting from analogue to digital) I was confronted with AP again, all my other records were fairly mainstream and were easy to replace but ‘Shoebox Full of Secrets’ wasn't available.

 ‘Shoebox Full of Secrets’ Front Cover (Cam K750i)

Searching more deeply on the internet I found the album had been re-released in Japan and promptly ordered a copy, being even more happy that my Japanese copy was all printed in English.

All my vinyl and tapes are long gone, the only one tape I kept hold of was the homemade demo.  Over the years I've occasionally typed 'Andy Pawlak' into Google only to be met with a host of American University students, until now.

Andy Pawlak now exists on Myspace.

What a strange moment it was, I almost didn't believe this was him, but he was still doing music and it certainly sounded like him, good enough for me.  It transpires that a second album was recorded and finished but the record label was taken over before it's release, Andy Pawlak was dropped and the album was never released.

Scott Donaldson (a musical friend of AP’s) and Andy have re-recorded some of Andy’s old tracks from the second album and released them on iTunes under the name of Subdeluxe - Tales from the Monkey Shed. Find it here.   It is well worth a listen, how this guy never made it still surprises me.

Scott kindly offered to transfer the tape to CD so my collection is complete again.  It’s great to listen to the songs once more, can't believe that these songs are 22 years old.  Wow!  The song This our '85 is as relevant today as it was back then.

Visit Subdeluxe at Myspace here. Subdeluxe

Visit Andy Pawlak at Myspace here. Andy Pawlak

Visit Scott Donaldson at Myspace here. Scott Donaldson

Thanks

(For Reference - this blog first appeared on my ‘Myspace’ four years ago, it was my one and only blog).