WARNING: ANOTHER PORCUPINE TREE RELATED POST AHEAD.
There was a time when Porcupine Tree was just the name of Steven Wilson’s personal project, before he pulled Colin, Chris and Richard in so that he could actually play his creations live — last time we all checked, it’s kind of hard to play guitars, bass, keys and sing at the same time. The origins of the name remain unknown today, but it first appeared as the “joke band” name that released Tarquin’s Seaweed Farm on cassettes in 1989 (the year I was born!) with material from ’87-’88 (before I was born!)
This is a recording of Radioactive Toy taken off that casette. One of the oldest PT/SW songs but still respectable much like a lot of his early creations, this is probably the oldest version of it out, with Steven playing all of the instruments…
Porcupine Tree indeed!
The following is the same song included on “On The Sunday of Life”, which is supposedly Porcupine Tree’s first album but is really a collection of Wilson’s oldest solo material. This version has the great solo but doesn’t have the atmosphere of the older recording, cassette buzzing and all. Steven is still playing all of the instruments.
Run through forests on a hot Summer day
Trying to break down walls of numbing pain
Give me the freedom to destroy
Give me radioactive toy
Taste the water from a stream of running death
Eat the apple and cough a dying breath
Feel the sun burning through your black skin
Pour me into a hole, inform my next of kin
Run through graveyards on a dusty Winter day
Spit the dirt out and try to say…