ATM: Jackie Leven

“ATM” stands in the forum for a request for recommendations (“Ask The Members”): fitterstoke, who has just been given the tribute album, asks where a newcomer should start. Around 25 replies (6/7 October 2021) add up to a kind of collective fan discography. Mentioned are Oh What A Blow That Phantom Dealt Me (a way in via Ian Rankin), Defending Ancient Springs (for “Single Father” and the cover of “You've Lost That Lovin' Feelin'”), Lovers at the Gun Club, Shining Brother Shining Sister, Fairytales for Hard Men, Night Lilies, Creatures of Light and Darkness, Forbidden Songs, Gothic Road (with Ralph McTell), the four double CDs of the Haunted Year series as an entry to the Haunted Valley fan-club releases, and Wayside Shrines with Michael Cosgrave. retropath2 recommends the LP-length version of Songs From the Argyll Cycle and warns that Robert Bly's narrating voice on The Mystery of Love may put people off.

Bogart relays Leven's own story, expressly given with a caveat, that there was meant to be a video for “You've Lost That Lovin' Feelin'” in which Leven and David Thomas dance in women's clothes on the beach at Brighton; he points to Chip Pan Fire (as Jackie Balfour) with the stage speech “Sting Is Dead” and to the whisky “Leven's Lament – The Lonely Spirit of the Glen”. retropath2 explains that the first CD edition of The Mystery of Love was a double jewel case with an empty second tray, which he only filled with the “Mystery Supplement EP” (promo). Vulpes Vulpes came to Leven by buying Doll by Doll's Grand Passion from a bargain bin.