The Impossibles - The Drum/ Our Love Is God

Fantastic baggy(ish) cover of the 1974 Slapp Happy tune (clumsy typo on the label though, Fontana).

Label: Fontana 

Year of Release: 1991

There were numerous cultural parallels between the late sixties and the 1989-91 period, which barely need emphasising - the "Second Summer Of Love" tag felt slightly like a lazy media invention to enable Mums and Dads to get a better grip on what was going on (and Danny Wilson to release snarky records on the topic) but nonetheless was more accurate than usual. Besides that, plenty of acts during the period were not ashamed to cover some of the hairier moments of rock's past. 

It didn't always pay off, though, as evidenced here. This cover of Slapp Happy's "The Drum" fell into complete obscurity at the time. I used to see copies of it in the reduced box at my local record store, and was intrigued by the fact that the long-haired woman pictured on the sleeve looked uncannily like someone who used to attend my local indie nightclub week in, week out. Was it her band?

Apparently not. It transpired that The Impossibles were actually from Edinburgh, and revolved around the nucleus of the duo Lucy Dallas and Mags Grundy. In one of their very few press interviews, they self-deprecatingly suggested that the only reason they managed to get signed to Fontana was because they were fanzine editors who had built up an enormous array of music industry contacts as a result. It seems as though they were being needlessly modest - their debut single was a likeable piece of jangly indie-pop produced by Kevin Shields, but the second release "Delphis" went one better, being a scintillating piece of ambient yet funky electro-psychdelia which glided gracefully through the clouds of the cold, dark winter of 1991, noticed only by the most eagle-eyed of spotters. 

Poppy Factory - 7x7/ Stars/ Fabulous Beast (EP)

Label: Chrysalis
Year of Release: 1991

Something very unusual happened at the turn of the eighties. The success of the Happy Mondays, Stone Roses, Charlatans and Inspiral Carpets suddenly caused major labels to smell possible money in a lot of alternative rock or, more likely, indie dance acts. In the middle part of the eighties, large labels were sometimes sniffy about signing alternative acts, taking very careful, low budget punts on a small handful of bands then often half-heartedly promoting them at best - by the nineties, they were either snatching acts off indie labels just as they were creeping towards the Top 40, or signing them before the indies even got a sniff.

Poppy Factory were an example of an indie-dance act who, self-released debut "Drug House" aside, never came within a centimetre of an indie label. Cradle-snatched by Chrysalis on the tail end of the baggy scene, their exposure actually probably suffered slightly as a result. It sounds hard to believe now, but in those days if you didn't struggle on a small independent label for awhile, you were often regarded as being somewhat inauthentic and over-stylised by the music press.

The group, consisting of Jock Cotton on guitar and vocals, Michael Dale on keyboards and bass, and Jon MacDonald on keyboards, emerged out of Bradford with an innovative live show which frequently featured surrealist live props such as neon lobsters and out-of-context film clips, giving them an automatic parallel with World of Twist who were using similar bizarro stage distractions at the time. Sound-wise as well, the two bands have much in common - the indie-dance backbeats and the heavy leaning on distinctly eighties keyboard sounds make them feel like kindred spirits.

The debut single "7x7" is arguably their finest work. With its chorus and opening cry of "Call me Charlie Bubbles!" harking back to the sixties film of the same name starring Albert Finney, it combines electronic psychedelia, confused surrealist lyrics and an incredibly dramatic atmosphere to astounding effect. "Maybe the rooftops are hidden under the floors!" cries Cotton in an anguished, almost camp voice. Part E generation muzak and part rewrite of Scott Walker's "Plastic Palace People", it's indicative of how under-rated a lot of singles being released during this period were, and how grossly unfair it was that the indie-dance genre sparked and fizzed out quite so quickly. It's a very brave and immediately striking "proper" debut single which gently nudged its way into the Top 100 despite its odd edges.

(Entry continues beneath the sound files) 

Label: Chrysalis
Year of Release: 1991

Follow-up "Stars", on the other hand, is very brazenly a pop record, with its chiming keyboards, whispered backing vocals, and bongo-bashing groove. Gone is the delirium of the debut and in its place is a record which is rather closer to the shiny slickness of ABC. Absolutely nothing wrong with that, but the conventionality of the track can't help but be slightly disappointing.

Perhaps unexpectedly, the public agreed and the single failed to make as much of a splash as "7x7". Reduced, remaindered copies of this were a common sight during my teenage years, all of them sitting and gathering dust in the budget boxes of my local independent record shop. The pop art sleeve almost tempted me into buying it a few times - I should have done. It could be obtained at a much lower price then.

(Entry continues beneath sound files)

Label: Chrysalis
Year of Release: 1991

The Fabulous Beast EP was the group's last shot at chart stardom, and almost inevitably didn't make it. The title track is another slice of pop, this time much more frantic and retaining the faint sense of surrealism the debut single had. It's a return to form after the disappointment of "Stars", and should perhaps have performed better, but by this point the public's interest in both the band and baggy-inspired indie groups was seriously waning.

Another track on the EP, "Acceleration", shows that they had an obvious flair for faintly warped and melodramatic yet decidedly poppy ditties. It also seemed to prove that the forthcoming LP "Goodtime" was going to be an interesting proposition at the very least.

Sadly, the LP, while completed, never got released. Chrysalis dropped the band, noting their declining sales (and they never started from a very high base in the first place) and left the album in the vaults. To this day, it's never been heard by the general public, and nor have the group been widely remembered by anyone except those who paid close attention to the British alternative scene at the time.

Given a lot of emerging revivalist trends in this area, and how close some of them veer to Poppy Factory's sound - I'm thinking very much of bands like Swim Deep here - it's a pity nobody has thought to revisit those abandoned master tapes yet. Perhaps their time might have come.

Reupload - The Bridewell Taxis - Don't Fear The Reaper/ Face In The Crowd

Label: Stolen

Year of Release: 1991

When I started this blog, I made a solemn vow not to make life too easy for myself all the time. Uploading a Moonshake EP is an example of going for the easy option, purely because precious few people would deny that whilst their noises may not have agreed with the popular ear, they certainly had imagination to spare. Going for the tough option, on the other hand, involves uploading items that received crap reviews as well as poor sales at the time not because they were misunderstood, difficult to get to grips with or ahead of the plot, just that the general consensus (which seems very unlikely to change whatever I say to the contrary) was that they were awful.

So then, The Bridewell Taxis' supposedly "Madchester" cover of Blue Oyster Cult's "Don't Fear the Reaper" was never going to get an easy ride. The fact that many of you are possibly laughing at that sentence alone speaks volumes. It came out at a point where many indie bands were scoring rogue hits with covers of classics, the biggest smash of which was undoubtedly Candy Flip's shameful "Strawberry Fields Forever", a record which does get raved about online now, but frankly I don't care if I never hear it again. It was increasingly being seen as an opportunistic move, an attempt to launch whole careers off the back of other people's good work which, as it happened, very seldom actually paid dividends.

Then there's the minor issue of the tastes of the early nineties - "Don't Fear The Reaper" was, as cover version choices go, inadvisable. Most bands at the time were idly whacking on funky drummer loops and wah-wah guitar to bog-standard covers of sixties classics to gain psychedelic cool points. The excesses of seventies adult rock hadn't really been explored yet, for the simple reason that music critics were still surprisingly sniffy about that era.

Given these walloping great facts, then, you could be forgiven for wondering what the case for the defence actually is. Primarily, I would argue that "Don't Fear The Reaper" is actually a really good song, but Blue Oyster Cult's original version of it has multi-tracked vocals so limping, anaemic and lifeless they sound like two lovers committing suicide by slowly drowning in porridge. Suffering from the worst kind of clinical seventies over-production, there's no emotion in the rendition at all, and a lot of nastily fussy guitar lines far too high up in the mix (and if you're reading this and shaking your head, you should probably be aware that I'd be happy to throw even worse insults at some album Pink Floyd did called "Dark Side of the Moon").

What The Bridewell Taxis did was create something which is definitely rougher, with squeaking organs where the guitars would normally be, a slightly harder, more agitated vocal, and some brilliant subtle use of brass which reminds me of the Salvation Army band on a weekend. It's a much more pleasing version which is more foggy and autumnal, but still manages to add some grit into the mix. And well... you can't deny that the driving riff was always a good one to start with.

It helps that I always did like The Bridewell Taxis too, a band who were much hyped by the NME and Melody Maker when they entered the music scene, then promptly forgotten about as soon as it became apparent they weren't going to go the distance. Despite the fact they hailed from Leeds, they were lumped in with the Manchester movement, which actually made precious little sense for reasons far beyond those of location. The noises they created appeared to owe a greater debt to the Northern alternative bands of the early eighties like The Teardrop Explodes and Wah! than any current white label spinning at the Hacienda. Their solitary trombone player also added a very low-budget Northern Soul effect, like some token, lo-fi nod to the mod movement.

Irrespective of whether they had press acclaim on their side or not, they appeared to suffer from line-up difficulties at an early hour, released an album called "Cage" as The Bridewells which contained none of their initial singles and was a huge disappointment, then disappeared. Nobody has mentioned them much since, and me bringing up their allegedly "ill advised" cover version isn't likely to do them many favours, but do take a look at the video for "Spirit" to see what else they could be capable of. 

(This blog entry was originally uploaded in February 2009.  I have little to add now, and also no apologies to make, though I like "Dark Side of the Moon" a tiny bit more now than I did then.  Candy Flip also had some good tunes, though their version of "Strawberry Fields Forever" does not count among them). 

The Apples - Eye Wonder

Label: Epic
Year of Release: 1991

Like just about every so-called alternative scene in the world, from psychedelia to punk to grunge to Britpop, a lot of major labels got out their cheque books for various baggy bands so late that by the time their records were released, both the mainstream and indie markets had utterly lost interest.  CBS and their sister label Epic were spectacular late-runners, dipping deep into their bank accounts for the likes of Liverpool's The Real People and Rain right at the point where other major labels were considering culling anything indie in its stylings off their roster.  Ill-advised A&R matters clearly didn't stop at the banks of the River Mersey either, as Scottish indie-dance shufflers The Apples were also given a contract around the same time.

To cut Epic a tiny bit of slack here, there's a sound to "Eye Wonder" which points more towards Jesus Jones and EMF than it does The Roses or the Mondays.  Those sampler pressing digits are clearly incredibly itchy indeed, and the angular guitar riffs chop in around some very bass heavy grooves rather than being a constant feature.  It also has a slick, smooth production which, were it not for the subcultural nods around it, wouldn't sound out of place on a Jamiroquai single.

It mattered not, however, as "Eye Wonder" caused The Apples to join the small and unenviable league of bands who only managed one week at number 75 in the UK charts then never created a follow-up "hit".  Judging by the sheer volume of copies I saw of this in bargain bins for months after its release, Epic were also patently overly optimistic about the quantities they needed to press.  There are serious lessons here any A&R executive would do well to learn - but it doesn't stop "Eye Wonder" from being a pleasant piece of period work which quite a few baggy fiends do try to track down now.

My Jealous God - Easy

Label: Fontana

Year of Release: 1992

In the early nineties, the British music press probably used the word "opportunistic" to describe up and coming acts more than any other word. Many of the journalists writing at that point had been working on the papers when punk broke, and an obsession with authenticity remained. Therefore, "fake baggy bands" were as frowned upon as "fake punks" were in the seventies. And if you were a "fake baggy band" it normally meant you hailed from dahn sarf rather than oop north, emerged after the Stone Roses' first album, and stuck looping funky rhythms over everything you did in a desperate bid to get on to the Sunday Top 40 countdown on Radio One.

When My Jealous God emerged in 1989, suspicion about their motivations lingered heavily amongst most hacks, and their reputation has been dogged even today. Whilst anecdotal personal experiences count for little, I was trying to explain to a friend how great this single was a few months back, and he waved me away laughing "Oh go away, My Jealous God were just shit!" He had no interest in listening to the thing.

That's his loss, in my opinion, though - as it will be yours too if you can't be bothered to click play below. "Easy" is probably one of the finer singles to be released during the baggy era, plonked out by a major label long after the party had ended, and thus utterly punctured on the two-pronged assault of changing fashions and critical hostility. It sounds uncannily like a lost Blur single from the same era, but padded out with squawking organ noises, sixties psychedelic throwback melodies and an insistent, nagging hook. Had it been released either two years earlier or a few years later, it may have met with a more sympathetic audience, but otherwise, it was lost amidst the sea of shoegazing and grunge singles in 1992.

The disinterest "Easy" created seemed to kill the band off. There were to be no further releases - no singles, and no debut album. They disappeared very rapidly, and the lead singer Jim Melly has apparently since become a Professor of Popular Culture who has written several articles and books on various rock bands. The whereabouts of other band members Danny Burke, Chris O'Donnell and Andrew Berkeley remain less clear - but perhaps they'll treat us to a reformation on one fine day, and release the album that should have been.