Bourgie Bourgie – Breaking Point

11th February 2022 · 1980s, 1984, Music

Here’s another forgotten gem from the mid-Eighties. It’s got a gothic grandeur with the deep, rich baritone of Paul Quinn swathed in strings and the searing guitar solo at 2.20.

It reminds me of No Regrets, that final Walker Brothers single (and the first one of theirs I heard) from a almost a decade earlier. It may even be a conscious hommage.

I first heard this song in a very different version – faster, without the lavish string arrangement – on John Peel in early 1984.

It did not prepare me for the lavish production by Mike Hedges (who produced huge hit albums for the Banshees, Manics, Texas, Travis, Dido, U2 and The Beautiful South) that would turn it into an epic; albeit a long-forgotten one.

Named after a song by Gladys Knight & The Pips, Bourgie Bourgie were a vehicle for that extraordinary voice of Glasgow-born Paul Quinn, who started out as a backing singer for his old schoolfriend and classmate Edwyn Collins on the huge Orange Juice hit Rip It Up.

Quinn’s first band was The French Impressionists, followed by the underrated Jazzateers, contemporaries of Josef K, who became Bourgie Bourgie in 1983.

They releaed two singles, including this (I still have the 12-inch) and made an album with Hedges but it remained unreleased when they split up.

Quinn then reunited with Edwyn Collins on a spellbinding cover of the Velvets’ Pale Blue Eyes before forming The Independent Group with Postcard Records founder Alan Horne and members of Orange Juice, Aztec Camera, The Bluebells and Lloyd Cole & The Commotions.

They made twoo albums in the early Nineties and he also worked with a band called Nectarine No.9. Last year a box set anthology of all Quinn’s work was released on a reactivated Postcard Records.