SHOP ASSISTANTS : Will Anything Happen

I Don't Wanna Be Friends With You / All Day Long / Before I Wake / Caledonian Road / All That Ever Mattered / Fixed Grin / Somewhere In China / Train From Kansas City / Home Again / Seems To Be / After Dark / All Of The Time / What A Way To Die / Nature Lover / Bonus Tracks / Looking Back / All Day Long (Slow VersionSadao

With line-up changes and an abbreviated name, they released the ‘Shopping Parade’ EP a year later, which saw Morrissey describe ‘All Day Long’ (included on this collection) as his favourite track of the year.

The band’s David Keegan (who would subsequently join the Pastels) then formed 53rd & 3rd Records, which housed the band’s ‘Safety Net’, one of two songs, along with ‘I Don’t Want To Be Friends With You’ (again, included here) to be voted part of John Peel’s Festive Fifty of 1986. The Shop Assistants, aka Will Anything Happen, is their sole album release, and is accompanied here by two bonus tracks; ‘Looking Back’ and the ‘slow version’ of ‘All Day Long’. Although reissued in 2001, it has long been out of print, fetching scary prices on a well known auction site in acknowledgement of its status as one of the indispensable articles of the C86/shambling/independent scene.