The Teardrop Explodes: Bouncing Babies/All I am is Loving You

Format: 7"
Label: Zoo Records
Country: UK
Year: 1979
Price paid: $2
Location purchased: Square Records, Cleveland Ohio


I knew little of the band before picking up this single, but I really dig their sound here. Similar to some Cure to my ear, playful yet melancholic. This version has a raw bass-heavy feel missing from the more polished LP version.

'Bouncing Babies' was the band's second single. It failed to chart. The song:

The Teardrop Explodes- Bouncing Babies


The art- This one certainly won't win any awards in my book. A lousy underexposed B&W photograph surrounded by puke yellow. I'm sure the photograph has some specific meaning (it looks to be an early 20th century Surrealist image) but I'd need time to decipher that. For now the message is as cryptic as the song itself. That being said it has a certain naive low-tech charm.

Zoo Records was formed in order to facilitate the release of singles by the band 'Big in Japan.' Other acts on the label include 'Echo and the Bunnymen' and 'Lori and the Chameleons.' The label quickly folded, having only released two LPs and a handful of singles.

Supposedly the 'Bouncing Babies' single was hard to come by, even back in the day. So much so that another band (The Freshies) wrote a song about their exasperation in attempting to locate a copy. As far as I know this is the ONLY single ever released with the subject of the single being another single. Sadly I don't own this single yet; supposedly it's rarer than the single they're lamenting:

The Freshies- I Can't Get 'Bouncing Babies' by The Teardrop Explodes