Japan member Mick Karn released his solo single 'Sensitive' in 1982. On the track, he collaborated with Ricky Wilde, who had just had his production debut on his sister's debut album 'Kim Wilde' in 1981. Ricky produced the track and also performed guitar and keyboards on it.
The one-off collaboration between Midge Ure and Mick Karn, 'After a fashion', was released in 1983. I had a hard time finding the 7" single, but when I did, I thought I had it all. That is, of course, until I found this 12" single today. I didn't know a 12" single existed, but I'm glad I was able to buy it right away.
Obviously, my parents weren't thrilled that I spent most of my time at home watching music TV stations like Music Box and Sky Channel, while I should actually be making homework. But it was obvious that I was never going to do that while there was so much going on in music at that time. While I was hoping for my favourite clips to show up, I learned a lot about the UK music scene. I would run into videos like this and then find out that the songs were actually very interesting. I often couldn't get the singles in the Netherlands, and so I just kept them on my mental want list. I bought 'After a fashion' in 1994, a decade later.
Having collected Kim Wilde records for more than a decade, it's not so strange that I started 'branching out'. The singles released by her brother Ricky were hard to come by, since they were all released in the seventies in rather small quantities. So the first Ricky Wilde record I found was 'Sensitive' by Mick Karn, which was produced and mixed by Ricky Wilde together with Mick Karn.