Felt – Index

From a 1992 article in Record Collector Magazine:

The embryonic Felt's first release featured Lawrence on his own, playing guitar and singing in his bedroom. According to the man himself he used two five-watt practice amps, one electric guitar and a £7 mic from Tandys, and taped the tracks on a £16 tape recorder, which was then transferred onto mater tape at the pressing plant. 'Shanghai' was his own label and "Index" was restricted to just 500 copies. Even more elusive are the first 100 or so, which featured written notes from Lawrence on the cover, he wasn't happy about the text so it was blanked out on later sleeves. A Japanese bootleg from 1990 circulates for around £10, although index is now available on the "Absolute Classic Masterpieces" Collection.

LAWRENCE: "I didn't know how to make a record and I found an advert for a company called SRT in the back of 'Melody Maker, offering mastering, pressing and labels. They did it all in one.
The Cover was printed at a high street Xerox shop. I folded and stapled them myself. The label on the bootleg is completely black while the label on the original was black and yellow with writing. There was no text on the bootleg at all.
When I first had it pressed, me and Nick Gilbert had befriended Scritti Politti. The drummer took it into Rough Trade who immediately took, I think, 100 copies. And that was probably all it sold for a year. It got a couple of reviews. Then, when we formed the band in 1980, I sent it out again as a new release and it got 'Single Of The Week' in Sounds'."

Nick Gilbert, Lawrence's childhood friend and bassist with Felt for their first two albums further recalls in the liner notes to Absolute Classic Masterpieces:
"Lawrence made the first single, Index. I thought it was a joke at the time, but it was a really big thing with him. He just got on and did it. There were some early copies and they had some kind of really pretentious blurb. He changed his mind about it and had it all blanked out. I'd got a copy of this and a couple of years on he begged me and bribed me to sell him this copy do that he had all of them and could destroy them."