Electrical Storm by Ed Kuepper (1985)

Mark Brend

In 1985 I got a job at a well-known chain of second-hand record shops in London. The interview was a music quiz and I got all but one question right, my failure something about Frank Zappa. I still don’t feel too bad about that.

The biggest event in my time there was when Bob Dylan turned up in one of the shops. To my eternal regret, I wasn’t working that day. The story I heard was that when the great man entered the shop most of the staff fell back in amazement, like the apostles at the Transfiguration, and busied themselves with menial tasks. Only one held his nerve and served Dylan, who bought a classical record. That exchange would have been conducted with studied casualness and due deference. We tended to be polite but not gushing with our rock star customers, who included regulars Tom Verlaine, Brian Eno and Mick Jones. For most common punters we reserved a demeanour somewhere between blank indifference and downright contempt. The customer was not always right.

Australian music of the era was popular among the staff – Nick Cave, The Go Betweens, The Apartments, The Triffids – so the appearance of Ed Kuepper in the deletions department one afternoon caused a stir. At the time Kuepper had just released his first solo album, after leading the Saints through their first three albums, and then forming the Laughing Clowns. Both those bands were favoured at the shops, and by me. I’d seen the Laughing Clowns supporting The Fall in Manchester, and revered the Saints’ Top of the Pops appearance for “This Perfect Day” – one of the great punk-era contempt-for-the-miming-process moments. Thankfully, I was working on the day Ed came in, though I have no recollection of any interaction with him.

 

 

I had that first Kuepper solo album, Electrical Storm, on heavy rotation through 85 and 86, at home and when my turns came to play a cassette in the shop. Very much a solo record, Kuepper wrote, sang, co-produced and played the album, backed only by a pianist and a drummer. He’s one of those artists with a knack of combining disparate influences into a whole that could only be him. Crazy Horse playing Morricone. A mandolin hoe-down in a roadhouse blues bar. Pop structures in the spirit of free jazz. The album is a hard boiled mystery that doesn’t quite resolve, the closing song, “Rainy Night”, hanging in the air like a question mark.

 

 

The first entry in a prolific and still thriving solo career, Electrical Storm was reissued on vinyl in 2023. A spare, desiccated record, to this day it evokes for me telegraph poles stretching across a sweltering outback I’ve never seen. And equally, a rainy Tuesday afternoon in an empty shop in Shepherds Bush or Notting Hill.

For a while working in those shops seemed a paradise of sorts. The money was OK, and you could accrue a decent record collection. But after a while the appeal faded. What once looked bohemian and louche appeared shabby and dirty. A few older colleagues – aspiring musicians, artists, writers, actors – seemed stuck, growing bitter as their dreams faded. Worried that I was becoming like them, I left. A few days later I split up from my girlfriend, who I’d met shortly after starting. I felt free.

In 2022 I took my son to visit the shop where I’d seen Ed Kuepper. The first record he saw when browsing the racks was the sole album by my 80s band, The Palace of Light, which was released when I still worked there. £10 only.

 

Mark Brend is a writer and musician based in Devon, England. He currently records as Ghostwriter. His latest book, published August 2025, is a biography of David Ackles.