There was a time before the kids had portable telephones and Internet computers, a time when we had to ask our parent's permission to use the phone, (after six o'clock in the evening), or walk out and find a phone box to make private calls. Some of those private calls would have been to arrange outings to the weekly club night where they actually played proper music. In those days of yore, there was a band called The Wonder Stuff.

For an all too brief period, The Wonder Stuff were huge. Scoring hit singles with 'Size Of A Cow', 'Welcome To The Cheap Seats', 'It's Yer Money I'm After Baby', and of course the one that really put them on the mainstream map, their cover version of Tommy Roe's 'Dizzy' with Vic Reeves. Festival gigs and Top Of The Pops appearances became the norm.

The Wonder Stuff split up in 1994, and Miles Hunt never stopped live work, forming Vent 414 before touring almost constantly as a solo artist, and collaborating with Erica Nockalls. In 2000, The Wonder Stuff were sort of back together, with various different line-ups apart from the constant presence of Mile Hunt.

Now they have released their first album of original material in seven years, which could of course gone either of two ways.

Their PR guy had asked me in the week for my postal address for a copy of the CD (I love my job), and today I finally had the time to do absolutely nothing but listen. We don't just sit and listen to music anymore, we listen to music while we're doing something else. Are our lives so ridiculously busy these days that we can't afford to just switch off and lose ourselves in music? I remember sitting with big headphones on and doing an LP in a sitting. That was how I listened to The Next Day, and it is how I listened to Oh No It's...The Wonder Stuff.

I wrote in my review of The Stranglers for The Nottingham Evening Post, (as I still call it), that the last thing you want to hear at a gig is the dreaded introduction, "and now for one from the new album". However, having sat and listened to every note of this offering from what Smash Hits probably referred to as 'Ver Stuff', I am looking forward to seeing them performing these news songs. I'd been aware of the From The Midlands With Love project for quite some time, having played 'Blackberry Way' on the old incarnation of The Sunday Alternative, so was interested to hear the finished result there. As regular radio listeners will be aware, I do have a thing for a well crafted cover version, and the second disc of the album doesn't disappoint. The covers album is usually a stop-gap release to hide the fact that there is writer's block at work. Not so FTMWL, which pays loving homage to Birmingham's contribution to popular music; Slade, The Move, Pop Will Eat Itself, The Beat, and Duran Duran among others are dealt with in true Wonder Stuff fashion.

As for Oh No It's...The Wonder Stuff, it would be rude to call this a return to form, as they never suffered from a decline in standards. This is classic sounding Wonder Stuff, at the same time thankfully managing to sound fresh and 'new' and not trading on past glory.

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