Alaska Sessions: The Camera Never Lies (1979)

Alaska Studios started out in 1977 as a suite of rehearsal rooms in a damp railway arch in Alaska Street just across the road from Waterloo Station. It was owned by ex-Vibrator bass player Pat Collier, who had trained as a recording engineer at Decca Studio. The obvious next step was to set up a recording studio, which Pat did and Alaska very quickly became the go to place in South London for punk and post punk bands, not only to rehearse and record but also to just hang out.
Among the people hanging out at Alaska was Steve Van-Deller, at a loose end following the break up of his band the Smarties. While in han earlier band Buster Crabbe he had met Pat a few times on the pub-rock circuit as a member of Bazooka Joe. Van-Deller was initially recording demos of some of his newer songs playing most of the instruments himself, and also occasionally playing on tracks for Pat in exchange for studio time.
They also collaborated on a few one-off projects one of which they sent into the demo slot on Stuart Colman’s Sunday morning show on BBC Radio London. On the show that day was Dave Robinson from Stiff Records who asked them to phone in. Steve had “previous” with Dave and had assumed the Van-Deller name to try smuggling tracks to Stiff, and had to come clean on the show. The track, a novelty song, “Boys Have Feelings Too” credited to the GTs (short for Girls Talking) was released on Stiff with a Pat Collier song “Be Careful” on the b-side.
This track was a song Van-Deller had written for the Smarties but only made an acoustic demo of and was one of a number of songs to try and get a further release from Stiff. The track was produced and engineered by Pat Collier, and arranged by Steve Van-Deller. Pat plays the bass and provides backing vocals along with Steve who played all the guitars, and the uncredited drummer was from one of the bands rehearsing at Alaska that day. The guest vocalist is Emma Freud, now a well known tv presenter, cultural commentator, producer and writer who had sung on stage with Mike Oldfield’s Tubular Bells and was visiting the studio with friends.
The track was never used as by the end of 1979 Pat was well on his way to a long and successful career as one of the key record producers of the post punk period. Van-Deller was also busy elsewhere with a solo single released and starting work on a solo album which got abandoned when towards the end of the year he toured and recorded an album with The Dance Band.