THE Waterboys
 Scottish singer/songwriter Mike Scott
(pictured at right) started his own punk
fanzine, called Jungleland, in Edinburgh in
1977.
Two years later he formed a group called Another Pretty Face
but soon tired of being in a band and began recording music
himself.
The result was a five-track
mini-album, The Waterboys, released
in 1984 on his own label (Chicken Jazz), at which time the only
other musician was sax player Anthony "Anto"
Thistlewaite.
By the time the second
Waterboys album, A Pagan Place, was released,
Scott and Thistlewaite had added keyboard player Karl Wallinger.
They first gained extensive
recognition for their third album, This Is the
Sea (1985), which got to number 37 in the UK charts and
included the number 26 single The Whole of the
Moon.
Wallinger then
left to form World Party and Scott spent more than three years
preparing 1988's brilliant Fisherman's
Blues.
 His restless musical adventure found him in
Galway, reinvigorating his patented Big Music with a dose of Irish
folk. Apparently the album - The Waterboys' finest moment - was
culled from 159 songs.
It was followed two
years later by Room to Roam. Scott backed
away from Irish folk on 1993's Dream Harder,
which featured a more straightforward, epic rock that recalled
their earlier albums.
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