The inner cover of Star Crossed Plovers presents an insightful letter from Celia Sprocket:
NEIL GARDNER
STAR-CROSSED PLOVERS
Poste Restante
Lake Maracaibo
When I first met Neil Gardner in the early 1960′s, he was a struggling musician in the back streets of Hamburg playing rhythm guitar in an all-girl group called “Maureen and the Heifers”. History records how the band replaced him with someone called Mel B who didn’t have as much facial hair and (thirty years later) they went on to bigger and better things.
Never one to admit defeat, Neil, the original architect of “girl power”, has decided to set the record straight at long last by releasing this CD. Of course I may be biased, and I did co-write and sing one of the songs, but I seriously believe that this album will earn Neil the obscurity he so richly deserves.
Speaking of obscurity, the album also contains a tribute to the much-maligned Libido Lombardo. I can report that Libido is alive and well on a neighbouring estancia here on the shores of Lake Maracaibo. He is living in elegant retirement with his wife Rex and twin daughters Priscilla and Gargantua.
But we can’t hang around any longer. I’ve got another bottle of gin to open and you’ve got a CD to listen to. So hop to it.
Love and kisses
Celia Sprockett