Original City Life's Four For '84: Carmel Live at Zion

Came across this today. Carmel, the early mid 80s pop-jazz combo fronted by then MMU student Carmel McCourt was one of City Life's "Four for 84" in our second issue of January 1984. Which bore the year 1983 on the cover, which was otherwise a huge leap forward from December 1983's "Kid's Micros" cover story.

Still baffling now that we chose that consumer to lead with rather than an exclusive interview with Lenny Henry or a well crafted preview of the British Open Snooker. My first words for the title. I can still remember them. "Beer crate seats creaked". Those were the days. Co-founder Andy Spinoza has launched a new facebook group for the original City Lifers, 1983-89.

Among them/us Mark Kermode, Peter Gwyn, Cath Carroll, Sarah Champion, Bob Dickinson, Robert Graham, John Robb, James Brown (possibly?), Jon Ronson, Kevin Cummins, Graham Proudlove, Steve Wright, Paul Herrman, Liz Naylor, Central Station Design, Ray Lowry, Tony Husband ... and many more.

I'll come back later perhaps with a better list, and links for these too.

The other three tipped bands were New Order, The Fall and The Smiths as I recall. Which makes Carmel the odd one out - still waiting to achieve an impact commensurate with their talent, 25 years on.

There's still time. And considering some of the bafflingly successful throw backs acts bothering the higher reaches of the charts, now could be that time. Interesting to see shimmying comrade poet Sonia Hughes involved too, and Rupert from Orlando's Bar and many more.

The Zion Centre where the song "Tous Les Fils" was recorded in 2006 as part of the Manchester Jazz Festival needs to get a shift on also .