IN THE EARLY PART of 2001, Paul and I were determined to bring to fruition an idea which had been germinating in our heads for a while. Because we'd both been involved in the Liverpool scene for a long time, it dawned on us that there was a load of great locally recorded stuff out there which merited either re-release or the chance to see the light of day at last.

I suppose the whole Nuggets compilation mentality and the fact I'd loved Roger Eagle's Jukebox at Eric's compilation made us all the more determined to release a collection of great under-rated local recordings. It turned out to be a real labour of love because the more we looked, the more we found and it soon became apparent that we'd have to do more than just one collection in our Unearthed series. I approached the ever knowledgeable Bernie Connor to help with the sleeve notes again for the CD booklet (he submitted a great essay called ‘Once Upon a Time in the West’ as an introduction) and he also pointed us towards more great tracks, like lost psychedelic rock classic ‘Run of the Dove’ by The Last Chant.

Compiling the tracks proved remarkably easy. Almost all the artists involved were either friends or associates, but then Liverpool was intimate that way – Big enough to be a city, yet still small enough to be a village.

There were few exceptions and even anyone we didn't know well enough to approach personally came into the equation through friends of friends.

In the end, Unearthed: Liverpool Cult Classics Volume 1 was released in March 2001, housed in a sleeve featuring an old tin globe I had. I liked the fact it gave the record an aspect of global importance, which of course Liverpool has.

The compilation featured wonderful, often out-of-print or hard-to-find tracks (spanning the late ’70s to the early ’90s) by The Wild Swans, The Stairs, Space, It's Immaterial, Benny Profane, The Tambourines and Barbel, among others. Paul and I were really proud of it and even more gratified when the reviews were almost universally positive.

The Big Issue in the North set the ball rolling almost straight away, commenting that ‘It's not just ‘70s bands, this worthy compilation spans Liverpool's music scene up to the early ’90s. Roll on Volume 2!’