Présenté en direct du stade de Saint-Ouen... non, Saint-Étienne!

Présenté en direct du stade de Saint-Ouen... non, Saint-Étienne!Foxbase Alpha, Saint Etienne's debut, came out on this day in 1991.I didn't hear it straight away. I got to it some time in the months after, when I'd just turned 16, living at a boarding school in Louth, Lincolnshire. I remember being smitten by it from the first listen.My world then was books, encyclopedias, maps, TV, films and magazines, not the internet. Music came on records, tapes and the odd CD, and from whatever the NME and the handful of music mags at the newso in town said was worth hearing – if you could get hold of it. Limited choices, so you listened hard to the ones you had, and things reached you a while after they'd happened.Then I chanced upon this. Chanced is the word. I can't remember how I heard it for the first time. Maybe my roommate Tim had a copy?Only Love Can Break Your Heart was the way in. The album was pop music and dance music, but not the kind I'd heard before. It had an indie heart, put…