Pillows & Prayers

Infobox Album | Name = Pillows & Prayers
Type = Album
Artist = Various


Released = December 1982
Recorded = various
Genre = Acoustic
Experimental
Post-punk
Rock
Length = 47:35
Label = Cherry Red
Producer =
Reviews =
Last album =
This album = "Pillows & Prayers"
(1982)
Next album = "Pillows & Prayers 2"
(1984)

"Pillows & Prayers" (subtitled, "Cherry Red 1982-1983") is compilation album released Christmas 1982 featuring artists on the Cherry Red record label at the suggestion of A&R head Mike Alway. The record was originally sold at 99 pence (in fact, "pay no more than 99p" was printed on the original sleeve), which helped ensure that the album peaked and remained at number 1 on the UK Indie Chart for 19 weeks and sold over 120,000 copies. Of note are tracks by English post-punk groups Everything But The Girl, The Monochrome Set and Felt, as well as a spoken word piece by writer Quentin Crisp.

In 2007 the album was repackaged as a 3-CD plus DVD box set featuring complementary tracks from the same period. This revised edition won the 2008 Catalogue Release Of The Year award at the Mojo Honours, with three of the key artists, Martyn Bates (Eyeless In Gaza), Lawrence (Felt) and Bid (Monochrome Set) appearing on stage to collect the award, alongside Cherry Red founder Iain McNay.

Tracks

ide one

# Five Or Six — "Portrait" (2:52)
# The Monochrome Set — "Eine Symphonie Des Grauens" (2:19)
# Thomas Leer — "All About You" (3:50)
# Tracey Thorn — "Plain Sailing" (2:01)
# Ben Watt — "Some Things Don't Matter" (4:25)
# Kevin Coyne — "Love in Your Heart" (2:55)
# Piero Milesi — "Modi 2 (Extract)" (1:02)
# Joe Crow — "Compulsion" (4:23)

ide two

# Marine Girls — "Lazy Ways" (2:42)
# Felt — "My Face Is on Fire" (3:04)
# Eyeless in Gaza — "No Noise" (2:49)
# The Passage — "XOYO" (3:26)
# Everything But The Girl — "On My Mind" (3:08)
# Attila the Stockbroker — "A Bang and a Wimpey" (1:41)
# The Misunderstood — "I Unseen" (1:58)
# The Nightingales — "Don't Blink" (4:00)
# Quentin Crisp — "Stop the Music for a Minute" (1:00)