Reupload - Dex Dexter - Another Car, Another Car Crash/ Car Trek

Label: Trade 2/ Island

Year of Release: 1996

Was there ever a music press hyped scene more mocked than Romo? We could talk about Lionpop if you want, but that really fits under the category of "vague and poorly named ideas which only one person ever mentioned". Romo, on the other hand, was a simple case of bad timing and under-prepared artists. Some of the bands involved, like InAura, would produce material which under the right circumstances may have hit home. The issue was that their travelling companions had barely formed five minutes ago, were still in the process of forging identities of their own, and seemed to have an abundance of confidence which belied the actual material gathered. A romantic modernist reaction against the excessive laddisms of Britpop made complete sense at the time, but many of the acts involved seemed like student performance art revue projects caught halfway through rehearsal time having fully designed the costumes whilst only managing to have written one page of the script. In the end, Britpop died, Pop returned, and that was that. You can't invent the future. Sigue Sigue Sputnik will tell you that.

For a scene so hyped it's also shocking that so few pieces of recorded work slipped out. Orlando were the kings, managing one album and a few singles. InAura had a great album ready which was rejected by EMI, and subsequently issued by an indie two years too late for anybody to notice or care. Boutique were allowed a couple of interesting singles before slipping under the radar.

Dex Dexter were even less noticeable, being given permission to put out this single - with one of the greatest titles for an A side of all time - before being forgotten about almost immediately. The curious thing about the end product is how it sounds more like a late nineties lo-fi British approach to indie than "Romo" per se. Each angular guitar riff, each cheap keyboard drone which sounds rather like Sweep the puppet squeaking in protest, and each novelty car horn noise makes the end product more akin to the Teen C frolics of Bis than any serious new movement. At the risk of using idle comparisons for a second consecutive sentence, it's true to say that the sharpness of early Adam and the Ants is equally apparent, but unlike Orlando or InAura, there's not much in the way of sweeping electronic melodrama going on here. Maybe if Dex Dexter hadn't boarded the Romo bus, they'd have stood a slight chance in the indie world outside.

Their demise seemed extremely swift. I was introduced to the lead singer Seb at the Water Rats in Kings Cross mere months after this single was issued, and asked him what they had planned next. "You know as much as I do," he grumbled, his flamboyant persona dropping almost immediately. There were to be no more releases, but if you want to put the expectations of some music critics into perspective, go away and read Taylor Parkes' review of a Dex Dexter live gig here. Seldom has hyperbole been less justified, but hopefully enough time has passed now for the single to be enjoyed for what it is without any weight of expectation attached.

The Creation - Creation/ Shock Horror

Label: Creation

Year of Release: 1994

The Creation are usually one of the first groups on the lips of any connoisseur of sixties music if they're asked the question: "Which truly great British sixties bands fell by the wayside at the time?" 

In truth, they weren't total obscurities. They managed one very minor hit with "Painter Man", and another very near-hit with the big and beastly "Making Time". The former, somewhat absurdly, was later covered by Boney M, while the latter has become ubiquitous even in indie club land in the last twenty years - I was at an indie night in Ottawa ten years ago and heard the DJ play it to a huge dance floor response, and then again at a wedding elsewhere. It may have failed to crack the Top 40 in the UK, but it's since become regarded as a monstrous piece of mod pop as worthy of attention as anything The Who also produced at the time. The Germans were more accommodating in the sixties and found them a home in their charts - the British, for whatever reason, failed to see sense. 

The Creation's stock began to rise during the first wave of the sixties revival in the eighties, and only continued to gain momentum as the nineties set in. If evidence of this is needed, the fantastically chaotic and psychedelic "How Does It Feel To Feel" was covered by Ride and issued as an A side by them. 1994 obviously seemed like the perfect date for the original line-up to get back together and produce new material, and Alan McGee's Creation Records - themselves named after the band - seemed like the obvious home. They were placed in the studio with the label's legendary producer Joe Foster to produce a single also entitled "Creation", presumably with the idea that this three-way match between label, band and song title would be an interesting press story in itself.

What's astonishing about this record is that, unlike many comeback attempts by sixties groups, it sounds totally and utterly rooted in the decade it actually emerged in. The bleeding, compressed, treble-heavy production, attitude and energy sounds like 1994 Britpop as opposed to sixties mod rock. True, this isn't a tremendously large genre leap, but nonetheless the transition sounded surprising at the time and remains startling on relistening today. The A-side "Creation" in particular is a blistering piece of work, taking a simple riff and pushing it into the red. The track is seldom heard now, and probably doesn't stand up with the group's finest, but it's nonetheless worth your time. So many comebacks are riddled with embarrassment and misunderstanding present pop and rock trends - indeed, The Creation also had a crack in the eighties which is best ignored - but "Creation" and "Shock Horror" still don't sound especially distant. 

The Creation continue to tour and play today, but since the death of lead singer Kenny Pickett in 1997 they have been led by guitarist Eddie Phillips, who at present is the only remaining original member.

Boutique - Butterfly & Strawberries and Cream

Label: Trade 2
Year of Release: 1995

Boutique were one of the first bands I wrote about on this blog, and - partly due to the lack of information available at the time, and partly due to inexperience - I spewed out some utterly inaccurate drivel on to the screen. Life is a learning curve, dear readers, and allow me to try and do a slightly better job now.

Arriving at the height of Britpop in the mid-nineties, Boutique almost seemed like a calculated gamble of a signing by the record company, who may have sensed a possible turning tide away from the laddism of the period. Rather than sticking to the tried and tested classic songwriting paths of Blur or Oasis at that point, Boutique were all camp attitudes and art school pretence, owing more of a debt to early eighties synth-pop than sixties mod. At the point of their inception no scene appeared to exist which seemed relevant to their cause, but Taylor Parkes referenced them in a review as an example of a band who might fit a scene he was nurturing called Romo (or Romantic Modernism). Romo would owe a debt to the New Romantic movement of the early eighties, but attempt to also be progressive in its sounds. How well it succeeded on this level is something I'd throw open to question - indeed, I'd argue that for all its rather trad limitations, Britpop did at least allow more creative and extraordinary groups like Pulp and Super Furry Animals to get caught up in its slipstream - but nonetheless nuggets of pop goodness did get spat out of Romo.

Boutique appeared to consist of Chris Johnstone on vocals and Gary Chapman on synths, both of whom were a pair of outsiders from small-town Essex (The PO Reply Box on the back of the record's sleeve suggests Harlow) who, had Romo come along or not, would doubtless have carried on down their own particular electronic pop path in spite of the dominant trends around them. Three singles were issued on Trade 2 Records, none of which managed to even crack the Top 100 in the UK, though they did manage to make their presence felt in the indie chart. This wasn't enough to satisfy anyone at the record company that it was worthwhile issuing their LP, however, and it was filed away in the vaults where it remains unheard to this day.

A slight shame, that, because while all their singles ("Butterfly", "Strawberries and Cream" and "I've Told You Before") were simple, short, sharp affairs, there was an angularity to their style and arrangements that made them compelling. That's keenly in evidence on "Butterfly", where Johnstone's hiccuping, eey-oreing vocals collide with bleeping and gurgling antiquated synths, antiquated by both today's standards and certainly 1995's as well. Even duos like Erasure were trying to constantly modernise and update their synth equipment at this point, so the arrangement here feels consciously dated, in much the same manner that the arrangements of Cast or The Las were in thrall to a certain sixties period.

(Entry continues beneath the sound files)

Label: Trade 2
Year of Release: 1996

For my money, however, the band's best single was their third and final offering, "Strawberries and Cream". There are obvious and cheeky steals from both The Jam's "Start" (or is it The Beatles' "Taxman"?) here as well as David Bowie's "Ashes to Ashes", making it a thoroughly bizarre meshing of two pop cultures. But besides that, it's a two minute wonder of a single, effortless and optimistic while also being plainly strange. The buzzing, ringing synths throughout the chorus try their hardest to convey a perfect summer scene, then the clod-hopping guitars thump in immediately afterwards... and it's an enjoyable confusion of a record created by two people who were clearly in love with many different aspects of pop music, however fashionable those may or may not have been.

Their promo videos have finally been uploaded to Youtube too, meaning you can observe the style of a band who, while they were definitely in thrall to Bowie and the early eighties, seem unquestionably mid-nineties to me as well. Something about their youthful enthusiasm, magpie thievery and spark date-stamps them to an era when faintly dorky kids with huge record collections could gain record contracts and raid the pop charts - and while so much of that time was littered with bilge, if it allowed groups like Boutique to have their little moment, maybe that's an acceptable price to pay.

Butterfly
I've Told You Before
Strawberries and Cream

Inside Moves - The Man With The Child In His Eyes/ I Wish

Label: The Brothers Organisation
Year of Release: 1992

I blame Candy Flip. For a brief period in the early nineties, following the soaraway success of their indie-dance cover of The Beatles "Strawberry Fields Forever", swinging dance cover versions of established classic tunes became a relatively common proposition. Some were enchanting, most were just awful, and some neither offended nor delighted, but were definitely odd talking points.

This cover of Kate Bush's "The Man With The Child In His Eyes" by Inside Moves - a group who didn't appear to go on to record any other work - is an unexpected find. It's true to say that "Cloudbusting" was sampled heavily by Utah Saints for "Something Good", so Bush had already had one excursion on to the dancefloor, but this is actually a straight, soulful reinterpretation of her work. It slips and slides down its own smooth and tranquil Ibiza path with its puffing flutes, exquisitely delivered vocals and triad piano lines. It's clearly primed for chill-out compilations, and it does actually work incredibly well within that genre - but seems to have largely slipped out unnoticed at the time, and certainly isn't played at all now.

I have no information on who Inside Moves were, but if their movements were typical of many of the dance producers and performers of this period, they probably naffed off somewhere else to work on another project under another name once this had flopped.

Reupload - Angel Pie - She

Label: Echo
Year of Release: 1993

A slightly unusual upload, this one, in that it's a promo cassette rather than a piece of vinyl - hence the picture above bears no relation at all to what I have in front of me, which is simply a rather blank looking cassette thrown into a plain company case with the details printed on white card.  It is of bugger all value, but... let's not let that get in the way of the track itself, which slipped out almost completely unnoticed in the early nineties.

"She", far from being a cover of the Charles Aznavour classic, is a unique slice of ambient pop which oozes both class and atmosphere, from the slightly ominous chiming opening to the hushed vocals (delivered by Marina Van-Rooy) right down to the rather toytown psychedelic lyrics.  It sounds like an epic sixties orchestral belter turned inside out, with the peaks replaced by smooth, delicate ambient troughs - sound effects burble in and out of the mix, almost taking priority over the music at the tail end, and the strings are so subtle you might not necessarily notice they've arrived until a few seconds after they begin, drowning as they are in the audio soup and heavy bass the rest of the record offers.  Whilst the melody is very simplistic and delivered with breathy, girlish vocals, the record itself has so much going on that, despite owning it for many years, I've never really lost interest in it.  That it wasn't a hit shouldn't be very surprising, though - on the one occasion I heard it on daytime Radio One the DJ playing it simply sounded baffled as soon as the song ended, unsure of how to deliver his next link.  A promo video is on YouTube, but it's safe to say that it probably didn't get much in the way of MTV attention at the time either.

According to the information I have in front of me, Angel Pie were supposed to have had an album called "Jake" out, but I've never seen a copy anywhere and can only assume that it remains locked away in the vaults.  Their debut single "Tin Foil Valley" was more akin to snappy, Saint Etienne styled pop but did little business, and a third single "Tipsy Q Horses" appears to have been slated for release, but so far as I can see never materialised.  If my memory is correct the band were Liverpool-based and involved the producer Mark Saunders as a key member, but that's as much detail as I can recall.

More information on the band would be appreciated, most especially what happened to their album (which, believe it or not, I was actually looking forward to) and what they're up to now.

(This blog entry was originally uploaded in February 2011 - and nope, nobody ever did get back in touch to tell me what became of the album. If you know more, I'd love to hear from you). 

Reuploads - Blessed Ethel - Rat and Fat Star

Label: 2 Damn Loud
Year of Release: 1994

These days, when a consortium of critics and music industry insiders get together to name who the most important artists of the coming year will be, there's little danger involved.  Trends are easy to predict.  Does the band have 768,000 Facebook 'likes' already?  Have they just been signed for a lot of money by a cash-strapped major label who absolutely has to see a return on their investment?  Are they Brit School graduates?  With every year's announcements, you can almost hear the noise of check-boxes being ticked.

It wasn't always thus.  In the nineties, predictions were likely to be very wonky indeed, which is how Blessed Ethel infamously got voted above Oasis as being the band most likely to succeed at the Manchester "In The City" live event.  This isn't as unusual as it sounds.  In the early nineties, suspicions in the music press were rife that Oasis were nothing more than a re-heated baggy band.  Blessed Ethel, on the other hand, had vitriol and a sneering energy which sounded much more of the moment - elements of the still relatively topical Riot Grrrl movement were apparent, and much was made of the band's oddball outsiderness, an absolute virtue in those pre-Britpop days.  The NME and Melody Maker wanted weird kids in the charts back then, not everyman styled stars.

We all know how the story ended.  Blessed Ethel did not conquer the world, but "Rat" gives some clues as to how they might just have given the impression they could.  It's ferocious garage rock capped off with Sara Doran's urgent and hysterical vocals; breathless, desperate and really rather brilliant in its own way.  True, at the time this would have been no more or less original than Oasis' known output, but the full-throttle nature of the single showcases a band keen to leave a scalding great mark.  Compare it back-to-back with an Oasis demo such as "Cigarettes and Alcohol" (one of the limpest, weediest, least representative demo recordings I've ever heard in my life), and everyone's favourite monobrowed pop stars suddenly sound  less fierce, less full of themselves.

As for any musicians reading this who may have recently lost a "Battle of the Bands" contest... take heart.  It means nothing. (Scroll down past the mp3s for another Blessed Ethel single…)

"Fat Star" is a rather more subtle outing for the group, but great nonetheless - simmering with heated paranoia and relying on a central atmospheric guitar riff rather than sheer aggression, it was the band's last proper single. Released a mere year after "Rat" in 1995, the public had had their chance to familiarise themselves with the band and the major labels had seen their opportunities to wave cheque books around, but it seemed all for nought.

A pity, as Blessed Ethel had an oddness and tension about their work which was utterly missing from so many of the nineties 'big hitters'. They had enough of a pop sensibility to cut through, but somehow missed out completely, and one album ("Welcome to the Rodeo") later, it was all over.

Reupload - 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.

(This blog entry was originally uploaded in May 2010. "Why have you given us two reuploads in a row?" you're possibly tempted to ask me, and I can only apologise. Sometimes life gets a bit busy, and I'd rather stick something up here for people to look at - especially if I think it didn't get enough readers first time around - than nothing at all. I'll try to come up with some fresh material over the weekend). 

Reupload - Upholstered Eldorados - I Wanna Talk Like Iggy Pop

Label: Box 52 Records
Year of Release: 1990

Now here's a complete oddity with an all-star cast behind it (albeit an all-star cast from the Fourth Division of pop, with the exception of its main attraction). Andy Stennett - the keyboard player out of eighties disco wonderboys Freeez - worked on this track, along with female vocalist Helen Shaw who had a few hits as the frontwoman of various club singles in the nineties.

Yer main man in all this, however, is obviously Iggy Pop. Absolutely all the lead vocals for this track were culled from an edition of Radio One's Roundtable where he was a guest reviewer of the latest singles releases, and the lyrics are simply found snippets of conversation where Pop frequently bemoans the state of pop. Possibly my favourite moment in the whole song is when Helen Shaw tries to "sing along" to his studio chatter, to fantastic comedic effect.

This was something of a cult club hit at the time, and obviously a one-off for all concerned - Iggy loved the track and gave it his blessing, but obviously didn't work with the individuals behind it in any other capacity, and they in turn presumably moved on to whatever their next DJ/ studio project was. Musically, it's a bit of a treat too - its shuffling early nineties, baggy-ish groove meant that it worked its way on to "Indie Top 20 Volume Eleven" without sounding too out of place, from where I must confess I got this recording. I don't own the original twelve inch, which can change hands for quite a bit of cash now.

One has to wonder if an equivalent project could be attempted by somebody today - this is certainly the only example of the "studio interview/ club record" crossover I can think of, although I'm happy to be proven wrong.

(This blog entry was originally uploaded in August 2008. I've not much to add except to say that the other person responsible for this track's creation, Sweeper, dropped into the blog to say hello, so we can now note his involvement in a slightly more official way.)

Reupload - S*M*A*S*H - Barrabas (Piloted)/ Turn On The Water

Label: Sub Pop
Year of Release: 1994

S*M*A*S*H must surely rank as being one of the most forgotten NME hype bands of all time. Not for them the mocking references reserved for Menswear, or the curious nods given to Godspeed You Black Emporer - they're almost never mentioned at all these days, despite reforming to make another album in 2007.

How different it all was. From the stories, reviews and celebrity plaudits that were given at the time of the band's first singles, you'd have thought that they were the next brave band of conquerors, the great hope of British music generally. Tales were told of grown men crying in their presence (no, really), frenzied gigs, and an angry, intelligent left wing political agenda (it's difficult to imagine now, but that kind of thing was considered really bloody important to the music press before Britpop came along). Whilst a lot of these stories were bog-standard hyperbole, I did witness S*M*A*S*H live a couple of times and can verify that they were an astonishingly powerful band when on form. At one gig, Joe Strummer stood near the front jumping up and down enthusiastically, which must have seemed like the baton being passed on from one act to another at the time, as well as seeming like a dream come true for the band.

Sadly, it was not to be for them - they wouldn't be on this blog otherwise, would they? This was their last single to generate any press interest, though, their one America-only release put out to try and crack that "all important" market (ambitious as they'd barely cracked their home market at the time). For my money, it's also one of their finest pieces of work, expanding upon their punkish beginnings and creating something which sounded more modern and brittle. There's a marvellous false ending, some brilliant lyrical sloganeering, and lots of unexpected musical twists and turns. The B-side is a cover version of the Afghan Whigs "Turn on the Water", possibly included to seem friendly to the US market.

S*M*A*S*H's initial career was cruelly brief, and they only managed one album ("Self Abused") before disappearing. Nonetheless, when I lived in University Halls of Residence at the time, it could be heard blaring out of various rooms, not least from the room of my immediate neighbour who worshipped them - so there was some truth to the NME's claims that they had an army of devoted young fans. The only lie in that sentence was the use of the word "devoted" - they were as fickle as anyone else, and couldn't wait to drop them as soon as Britpop arrived.

(This blog entry was uploaded in 2008, and S*M*A*S*H do seem to have been periodically active on the live circuit since, though I've not yet got around to giving them another look. One memory I fail to mention above is the time I queued up to see them at the Portsmouth Wedgewood Rooms and a notorious local homeless man - whose catchphrase was "Can you spare some change? Purely for alcohol, you understand" - tried to sneak in to see them for free. I'd like to think that if the band had ever found out, they'd have put him on the guest list). 

Aurora Borealis - Aurora Borealis Parts 1 and 3

Label: Kalevala

Year of Release: 1997

I've been through the Kalevala story already in detail in this entry here, and that really gives you all the background you need. Ostensibly, these weren't records by 'real' groups as such, but disguised fantasy outfits created by Bill Drummond of the KLF to weave a peculiar narrative around the bewitching cultural niche of doomed, obscure bands and independent records (I can't see what the allure is myself. Whoever would waste a lot of time thinking about that, I wonder?)

Of all the releases that crept out on the bogus label, this for me was really the finest, and also the one where the mask slipped the most. Even in the press release, the fictional group were mentioned as being influenced by The KLF's "Chill Out" album, possibly one of the few instances in music history where an individual has listed his or her past work as the main influence on a record. The chirping crickets and Deep South Americana of "Chill Out" are here replaced by an icy, arctic kind of ambient soundtrack which in its own brief way is as wonderful as anything on that record.  And in truth, Peter Green of Fleetwood Mac is  a clear influence on this too (as he was on the album).  With its pounding drums and plucked strings, this is "Albatross" beginning an uncomfortable flight over the tundra. 

Unless somebody - and that 'somebody' is probably only Drummond himself - knows better, this also counts as being the last piece of original material he released.  As an exit point, its hopeless obscurity (only 500 copies were ever issued) damns it to insignificance, and yet it's a far better resting point than "F--k The Millennium" ever was. If you want to push an analogy to breaking point, those pounding drums and icy blasts seem almost funereal and the noise of a natural end of something, whether that would be the concept of Kalevala - this is the last single 'they' issued - or the terminus of Drummond's recorded musical career. 

This record was never really intended to be heard by many ears and I suspect Drummond is frustrated at having his plans thwarted, but it's already done the rounds on the Internet several times over, and I have no desire to let it die. It's too good for that.

I've placed "Part 3" first in the Box below as "Part 1" is really just one long, Finnish spoken word introduction - and if anyone is capable of translating it, please do let me know - but if you want to listen in the order of part 1 and part 3 (part 2 is missing entirely), that's up to you.

The Fuckers - Sexy Roy Orbison

Label: Kalevala
Year of Release: 1997

Back in November, you'll remember that I talked about Bill Drummond and Mark Manning (aka Zodiac Mindwarp) and their peculiar mission to create a series of fictional Finnish bands whose singles they could release in quantities of 500 copies each. From ambient brilliance to garage rock to techno stupidity, the singles were varied in style and tone.  Ultimately though, I doubt anyone was quite prepared for the non-existent Finnish punk band The Fuckers.  Drummond writes in his excellent tome "45":

"They are the only Lapp punk band in the world.  They have been together for over ten years, no line-up changes, thousands of gigs, no success and no selling out.  They always get drunk before they go on stage.  Once on stage they fall over, break strings, get in fights with each other or members of the audience.  The night always ends with them being ripped off by the promoter.  They hate everyone and everything, but especially Helsinki.  To them, Helsinki is full of soft, southern, disco-loving, homosexual, rich, arty wankers, and full of girls they want to shag but never can, things they want to own but never will.  The Fuckers are the eternal dispossessed outsiders, failures and fuck-ups.  All of their own doing, though of course they'll never see it that way.  As far as I'm concerned, The Fuckers are the greatest band in the world".

So while "Sexy Roy Orbison" is probably one of the finest song titles of the nineties (though perhaps not as provocative as the song they apparently penned in honour of Princess Diana's death, "One Less Slag") does it cut the mustard?  Yes and no.  Possibly unsurprisingly, "Sexy Roy Orbison" actually sounds rather like the KLF colliding with Extreme Noise Terror as they did for a version of "3am Eternal", but perhaps less powerful and searing.  It sounds exactly what you'd expect a pissed-up underground punk band without a clue to sound like, and in that respect it's such an accurate parody that it would be hard for anyone to tell this wasn't the real deal if they were blindfold tested.  Buster Gobsmack Eats Filth this isn't.

It is a full-throttle, ferocious burst of noise and huge fun, but I doubt you'll need to listen to it more than half-a-dozen times before getting the gist and moving on.  The concept behind the group is mightier than the product itself.  Though I shudder to think what Google searches are going to get directed here as a result of the band's name and song's title….

The Daytonas - Faster Gimpo Faster Kill! Kill! Kill!

Label: Kalevala
Year of Release: 1997

Some time ago, you may remember me talking about Zodiac Mindwarp and Bill Drummond of the KLF collaborating on a project in Finland consisting entirely of imaginary bands releasing one-off singles in limited runs of 500 copies on the here-today-gone-tomorrow label Kalevala records.  I have already written about one of these items, Dracula's Daughter's "Candy", and I was absolutely staggered to see this one turn up in a local charity shop for £1 recently. Obscure limited edition singles with links to the KLF don't just turn up in thrift stores with dismissive price tags attached, after all - that's the stuff of fantasies, like Beach Boys acetates being left on garden walls.

It's an especially thrilling turn-up for the books as this is one of the prime cuts of Drummond's last real music industry folly.  While some of these Kalevala singles trough into mediocrity or just plain silliness, "Faster Gimpo Faster Kill! Kill! Kill!" is a spot-on parody of early sixties surf guitar music, featuring throttling guitar riffs, a squeaking organ, a stripped back drum kit, dramatic flourishes and hollering backing vocals akin to the Red Army Choir.  Only the stereo mix betrays the modern origins of the record and makes it sound like a nineties rather than sixties construction, the roughness and rawness of the sound is in all other respects perfect.  If this were an actual obscure sixties record, there's no question it would have made it on to this blog on its own merits.

The B-side, on the other hand, isn't a proper remix as one might suspect but the original track overloaded with sixties studio effects.  Even Joe Meek would have stopped short of calling it a good idea.

As for why the Kalevala project existed in the first place, Drummond is oddly forthcoming in his book "45": "The fact was, none of these bands existed anywhere but in our imagination.  Mind you, that's where all great bands exist. Being in a band or into a band is all about building, living out and worshipping (or loathing) a myth.  Doing it this way, Z and I were safe from confusing our various alter egos with our real selves".  

He goes on further: "When people ask me, 'Don't you miss the music business, Bill?' I try to tell them that the music business is about making unsuccessful bands successful.  Successful bands by their very definition are as interesting as packets of cornflakes.  No, it's strange, weird, fucked-up, unsuccessful pop music I dig.  Deluded pop music that wants to be successful and can't understand why it isn't…. records from places far away, by people who have no understanding of how things work in the worlds of London or LA but think they do. Records with crap sleeves".  

And that, my friends, feels like the perfect statement to start "Left and to the Back" rolling again.

As for my lucky charity shop find, you may ask whether I slyly dropped the organisation some extra money to make up for their pricing mistake.  To be honest, I haven't yet.  This is because at the beginning of the very same month I found this record, I also dropped a rare KLF record into another charity shop in another part of London as a gift to them.  Something about the serendipity of The Daytonas seven-inch turning up later on made me believe that perhaps this was all supposed to happen. But you're right, I'll probably write them a cheque soon.

Countdown to Christmas Party Time - Solid Gold Chartbusters - I Wanna 1-2-1 With You

Label: Virgin

Year of Release: 1999

The lists bookies produce on possible Christmas Number Ones aren't necessarily as accurate as one would often believe. For every nail-on-the-head prediction they make, there are a few that are hopelessly wrong - and today's "Left and to the Back" entry focusses on a KLF-related front-runner which nobody in the real world gave much of a stuff about.

"I Wanna 1-2-1 With You" really, really should have been a big deal. The people behind it were Jimmy Cauty of the KLF, who obviously had a track record for producing hits of some note and had a huge fanbase hanging on to his every release, and Guy Pratt, sometime session man with Pink Floyd. It promised up-to-the-minute jokey novelty satire about that very new (at the time, obviously) phenomenon the pesky mobile phone ring, combined with the finest rhythms, dance diva vocals and a comedy video. Given the pedigree of the track, the major label backing - something the KLF never really had in the UK, incidentally - and the public's appetite around Yuletide for daft ideas, surely we were looking at a sizable hit a la "Doctorin' The Tardis" here?

Whilst the Bookies obviously thought so, sales were actually tremendously sluggish and the single scraped an embarrassing number 62 in the charts. Despite being one of the very few people who rushed out and bought this during Christmas week, I have to say that the end result wasn't too surprising. There are several things wrong with the track - firstly, it is far too irritating for the sane consumption of just about anyone, making "Crazy Frog" seem like a soothing baroque masterpiece. The grating, bleeping mobile phone ring the entire track hangs on is horrendously sharp and ear-bothering, and could ruin even the greatest groove or riff. And as it happens, the beats per minute here were very dated by 1999 - whilst the KLF in their prime had put out records of a similar tempo, clubland had moved on to faster, more frantic noises, and this sounded like something from another era to many people. Even if you isolate these drawbacks, the tune itself is, to be frank, minimal, and the joke essentially a Trigger Happy TV out-take and little more. It's a huge shock to find myself writing this sentence - and I feel it may be the only time I bother to do so in my life - but Dom Joly did this whole schtick just so much better.

So then, this is an example of how sometimes people hopelessly fail to "design" Christmas Number Ones, not even with the right personnel in the studio. Westlife won the race with "Seasons in the Sun" in the end, if anyone's interested, and "I Wanna 1-2-1 With You" has become something KLF fans tend to forget ever existed. I apologise for bringing the topic up again, but it is an interesting exercise in novelty wrongness at the very least.

(This blog entry was originally uploaded in December 2009). 

Countdown to Christmas Party Time - Animals That Swim - A Good Xmas

Label: Elemental
Year of Release: 1996 (on the album "I Was The King... I Really Was The King")

"I had a good Xmas - we stayed in a hotel - it must have been good, because she's still not talking to me and my lungs ache. They rack my body". 

As Dylan Moran - a man probably not much at odds with the general philosophies of Animals That Swim - has pointed out before now, the British and Irish tend to measure how much of a good time they've had by how much they've screwed themselves up in the process, and that snatch of dialogue in "A Good Xmas" is therefore possibly more relevant to the season than anything else I'll upload this week.  True, strictly speaking this isn't an ideal track for the office party, and nor do I suspect that the band were going for a feelgood vibe, but still... there's more Christmas in that one line than Wizzard ever managed.  

Standing proudly upfront as the second track on their strongest album "I Was The King...", "A Good Xmas" lacks the linear narrative of most of the rest of the LP and instead snatches at images - the woolly-hat wearing builder-neighbour, passing buses, overheard conversations. Wintery as hell in its feel without being specifically festive in many places, it nails Zone 3-4 London life exquisitely, with a repetitive, insistent chorus which combines glam rock hand-clapping with the sarcastic line: "Made in Japan by my own sweet hand".

Besides being an excellent song in its own right, this is also a superb track to stick on a festive playlist if you're actually slightly at odds with the time of year - the bleary morning moodiness of the song conflicts with the clarion call of the trumpet parts, like a hungover man caught in the crossfire of a Salvation Army march.    It shouldn't, but the whole thing makes me feel a lot warmer than "I Wish It Could Be Christmas Everyday".

Animals That Swim actually reformed in 2011 and released a new single - but if you don't own "I Was The King... I Really Was The King", you should remedy that immediately.  It stands up as being one of the finest albums of the nineties.

Countdown to Christmas Party Time - Vic Reeves - Abide With Me

Label: Sense/ Island

Year of Release: 1991

Vic Reeves needs no introduction to UK readers, and I really can't be bothered to give him a detailed one for the benefit of overseas types. His comedy career has never really travelled successfully beyond these Isles, and isn't especially easy to explain to native newcomers, much less people with cultural barriers to contend with. Journalists tend to get around the problem by firing the words "surreal", "slapstick", "music hall", "dada", "Gilbert" and "George" around a bit in the hope it does the work justice, but in truth, it seldom does.

As somebody who had previously had a failed career as a lead singer for a variety of experimental and post-punk bands who never quite elevated themselves beyond the bottom of the bill in various small pub venues, let alone got a record contract, it shouldn't have been too surprising that Vic Reeves signed with Island when his career as a comedian took off. He had already been singing ironic cover versions (or were they?) of songs by The Smiths and Bryan Ferry in the "Vic Reeves Big Night Out" series, and the label must have been hoping for a pleasing Christmas stocking filler in 1991, perhaps consisting of similar material.

What we got was actually a very sympathetically produced comedy album in "I Will Cure You", which combined a number of party-pleasers with some oddball tunes of the man's own making, not least my personal favourite "Summer of '75" which combined rustic folk charm with crude Shane McGowanisms. "Abide With Me" featured on the album, but was a peculiar item, being neither funny nor frothy. The hymn itself was written by Henry Francis Lyte in 1847 as he lay dying from tuberculosis, and has since become something of a funeral standard, meaning that the associations many listeners have of it are not necessarily pleasant ones.

Uproar commenced from certain religious types in the UK when the track was then issued as dance remix single. "This is like dancing on people's graves!" shouted one Reverend, and a largely-forgotten campaign began to get the BBC to ban the record. Whilst the BBC never did officially ban it, I can't recall hearing it on the radio much during Christmas 1991, and Reeves was thwarted in his frankly bizarre attempt to get the number one spot that year, making do with the paltry number 47 position instead.

The song itself is actually quite enjoyable with its vocoder declarations of "Abide With Me!", its sampled and treated choir noises, and Vic's rather too spirited vocals, not to mention the groovy house piano noises The Grid layered on to the single. It does somehow manage to over-ride its slightly morbid tone and become a winter solstice disco number rather than a pean to death, but it has to be said that of all the ideas Vic Reeves ever came out with, this surely has to be one of the oddest. That Island thought it might be a hit is odder still. When Lyte lay dying in his bed, his last thought surely can't have been "And when I die, at least my song will be immortalised by a surreal Northern comedian in the next century".

(This entry was originally uploaded in December 2009).  

You can view the video here, and download the track by visiting iTunes.  

Reupload - Marnie - Bell Jar/ Be

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Label: Progression
Year of Release: 1995

If you're the kind of person who gets advance copies of singles for review - which, for a brief time, I was - there are certain sleeves that just guarantee the waxing will be shoved to the bottom of the listening pile. It's not that you don't intend to listen to them at all, of course, it's just you sometimes get the sense that any indie band who is prepared to allow certain designs to dominate their work are simply sending out messages that this is "not for you". And so it went with this particular 45, whose Plath referencing sleeve with Plath referencing song title immediately made me suspect the people behind it were the sorts of folk who wrote very angst-ridden teenage poetry and had decided to set it to music. "Play later," I thought, filing it behind a whole bunch of stuff I was genuinely excited about.

When I finally did get around to spinning the A-side "Bell Jar", I was pleasantly surprised by the contents. It does indeed sound like a tremendously moody piece of work, but the interesting thing I find about many bands who attempted this stuff in the mid-nineties is that they glossed the bleakness over with plenty of production sparkles. Had this been issued in '92 or '93, there's little doubt it would have been a Courtney Love referencing slab of angry, clattering gloom, but the mid nineties model introduces more fragile harmonies and melodic guitars to the mix. It starts off like Hole with clunking bass noises and despairing vocals, then somehow loosens up to take you by surprise. It's the music of a parallel universe where grunge didn't so much die, but was given a thorough sheen, and allowed to become slightly more fragile and snuggle up to its poppy side.

Far, far better than the A-side, however, is the flip, the lengthy, 33rpm spinning "Be", which features Roman Jugg out of the Damned on keyboards and just builds and builds upon a very simple idea, ending on a riot of moaning synth noises and soaring guitars - it's a tried and tested rock formula, and if it's one you don't care for much, this isn't going to change your mind one iota, but it's deftly done and leaves me wondering what Marnie might have been like live.

As for who Marnie were, I'm afraid to say I've lost the press release and can't remember, but seem to recall that they were from Essex, had at least two women in the line-up ("Michelle" gets the credit for the A side of this single, and "Olga" the B-side) and released a string of singles through the nineties which failed to sell in sufficient quantities to register in the upper regions of the indie charts. I never did manage to get to any of their gigs, which always seemed to be advertised as taking place in tiny pubs around the UK, and whilst they managed to keep on plugging away until the end of the decade and there apparently is an album out there somewhere, the Internet is keeping very quiet about it.

Rave reviews from Melody Maker and NME and plays by Peel and Lamacq were also apparently forthcoming, but one suspects that the band suffered from being associated with a tiny indie, and just didn't have the publicity money to turn those fleeting mentions and snatches of airplay into greater things. But this, of course, is all just speculation again...

(This blog entry was originally uploaded in October 2008, and no further information has come to light since.  Marnie are an incredibly secretive band, it seems, although I can't really understand why.  If anyone saw them live or knows who they were, drop me a comment please).

The Belltower - Exploration Day EP

Label: Ultimate
Year of Release: 1991

In 1991, the term "shoegazing" was predominantly used by critics (originally as a rather derogatory term) to describe a sudden rash of British kids with cute fringes obsessed with both My Bloody Valentine and the numerous functions of their guitar effects pedals.  These days there are whole blogs and websites dedicated to this sub-genre - we'll argue about whether it can sensibly be called a genre another time, perhaps - and a lot of superlatives are thrown around about how wonderful it must have been to have been young at that time.  Well, I was, and I can tell you that whilst many of the records were indeed strong, live almost all of these bands were deeply dreary, and it was sometimes difficult to tell if you were watching one of the support acts or the headlining act, since they all looked rather similar and were often reluctant to introduce themselves or engage in any banter.  If this sounds like NME styled propaganda, I'm sorry - it really is the truth.  Or, at the very least, it's my truth.  You may have different needs from live gigs.

Whilst Britain tended to dominate the field at this point, a few acts from across the pond with similar ideas did emerge, perhaps most notably Drop Nineteens and this bunch, who enjoyed a lower profile.  Whilst Boston's Drop Nineteens shot music videos of themselves going for spins in huge American cars and had vague, grungey hints of the American underground in their sound, there was little to distinguish The Belltower from their British counterparts.  This, their debut EP produced by Terry Bickers, featured guitars melting in the era's favoured treacly effects, dreamy vocals (handled at times by their male lead singer Jody Porter, at others by Britta Phillips) and an intriguing welding of the punkier edge of indie and psychedelia.  It was critically lauded at the time, but in retrospect perhaps the band lacked enough of a firm identity of their own to really stand out amongst the pack, and they never really did push through to the levels of minor success that many of their kin managed.  Jody Porter eventually went on to perform with Fountains of Wayne, whereas Britta Phillips has since enjoyed a reasonably successful career as an actress.

The high point of this EP is the wintery "Solstice" with its blissful organ backdrop, the low point "Never Going Home" which almost (though not quite) nudges towards Celine Dion-esque puffing Celtic noises.  As for what they were like live, I don't know - they were a support act at a Chapterhouse gig I attended, but for some reason never showed.  And I did count all the acts on the bill as they emerged, so I'm sure I'm not mistaken to say that they were missing.

Tracklisting:
1. Outshine The Sun
2. Beatnixon Blues
3. Solstice
4. Never Going Home

Reupload - Jumbo - Brighten Up/ H.O.N Honey

Label: Bright Orange Biscuit

Year of Release: 1999

"It was inevitable, really, as pop music choked on stale dadrock pie, that we'd soon turn to some evanescent psychedelic sorbets to clean the palate..." - so began the NME's review of Jumbo's only album "CB Mamas" back in 1999. During the tail end of the nineties, there was a belief in some critical quarters that now the chief adult rock librarians Noel Gallagher and Paul Weller had decided to allow the likes of Ocean Colour Scene unlimited access to their vaults (even on early closing Wednesdays) to pilfer riffs, music had to go in a lopsided direction to remain fresh. If they didn't think that the Super Furry Animals, Mercury Rev and Olivia Tremor Control were showing us the way, there was a belief that perhaps post-rock may be the future instead. Some are inclined to argue that it was at this point that the mainstream music press "lost its way", backing bands who were utterly peculiar and unlikely to sell large quantities of records - personally, I believe it was just beginning to get back on track again, but lost its bottle pretty swiftly. A pre-Britpop NME would never have given a shit about whether their critical praise actually translated into platinum sales, and the fact that many of the above mentioned bands failed to become the next U2 or Oasis shouldn't have been the main criteria for excluding them from the magazine in the long term.

Whatever - there's now precious little information about Jumbo available, which is surprising for a band who emerged as the Internet had just begun to get seriously whirring, and also had an NME CD compilation appearance (as part of 1999's "On"). From my utterly inaccurate memory where "citation needed" shall be our guiding catchphrase, they hailed from Newcastle and composed a pack of confusing, lysergic and staggering ditties, with wild horns, scattering guitar lines, berserk time signatures and hollered vocals. Their products owed a lot more to the US underground than (for example) The Super Furries or Gorky's Zygotic Mynci were producing at the same time, but were intriguing and actually quite awkward records. Whereas Gorky's were engaging in English pastoral whimsy and silliness, Jumbo sounded like a competition between a youth club orchestra as to who could hold dominance over a song's direction or mood. Both "Brighten Up" and "H.O.N. Honey" are uneasy listening, but a lot of fun if you're in the right frame of mind.

Sadly, I'm also forced to agree with the NME's reviewer's sentiments about Jumbo seldom transcending the sum of their influences, but across seven inches they did make a nice noise. One is forced to wonder what became of the pups, and whether they're in bands now producing equally interesting material. It's an odd question to ask of a band who ceased trading a mere ten years ago, but sometimes acts do seem to slip off the radar very quickly indeed.

(This entry was originally written in March 2009. Little information has come to light since, but apparently members Andy Hodson, Gary Bowden and Jon Lee are still making music around Newcastle - and if they'd like to step up and plug their material, they'd be very welcome indeed).

Reupload - Thurman - Lux

Label: Righteous

Year of Release: 1995

This may turn out to be the least popular blog entry I've ever written on here.  To most critics, you see, Thurman were considered a dreadful band, so mind-bogglingly awful that even their plagiarism was unsubtle.  Their lead singer's hair was mocked in Select magazine (and to be fair, it did look rather like a Royal Guardsman's Busby at one point) the album was derided in the weekly press, and the fact that nobody bought it and it regularly appears in second hand store bargain bins today should surely be no surprise.  It was cursed.

Thurman allegedly bought much of this upon themselves.  Rumours circulated throughout the mid-nineties that they had originally been a heavy metal band who had been asked to change their style to Britpop to get signed.  Wikipedia is still quoting this as fact today.  I feel somewhat ambivalent about this story.  Interfering A&R executives do indeed tamper with the sound of bands regularly in order to get chart action out of them, but a leap from heavy metal to Britpop sounds rather like asking a techno artist to change tack to recording soul ballads.  Why not simply sign one of the several thousands acts out there playing the right genre already?  It may of course be that Thurman did indeed change tack when Britpop was brewing out of their own choices, but they'd be no less guilty of doing that than certain members of Menswear if other popular rumours are to be believed, and the latter didn't exactly have negative press to start with.

Despite this, it's impossible to ignore the fact that "Lux" does sound like a very cheeky, chancey little album, and it's actually that aspect of it which makes me grin from ear to ear at times.  Numerous tracks are so derivative that it's a wonder the band didn't get their arses kicked by a team of lawyers, and in fact I'm sure they would have done had the album sold in any reasonable quantities.  "Loaded" is "Children of the Revolution" all over again, right down to the vocals.  The opening riff to "Cheap Holiday" is as close to "All The Young Dudes" as you can possibly get without directly cribbing every single detail.  There are numerous other naggingly familiar sounding riffs and melody lines throughout the album that show a band determined to pilfer their way through the classic rock catalogue, stopping at nothing.  However, as Elastica were doing much the same thing at the same time to widespread praise for their supposed post-modern daring, why were Thurman rapped around the knuckles by the critics for having keen ears for somebody else's tune?

There have been some rabid online defenses of this record since, but the truth frequently lies between two stools, and in my humble opinion, "Lux" is actually quite a good album - neither a lost classic nor a complete dud, just an enjoyable listen.  There's a gleeful cheek to the whole thing which makes it sound very much of its time even though its clearly in thrall to the past, and rather like the neo-psychedelic bands which littered the eighties, Thurman appeared to be taking elements of mod and glam into their work and parodying them affectionately rather than tip-toeing gently around them.  "Oh... what a luv-er-ly day/ To drink some English Tea" they proclaim during the rather Move-ish track of the same name, banging most of the period details firmly on the head.  Other tracks such as "Famous" chime along in the manner of so many mid-sixties pop 45s, feeling breezy and effortless.

Part of me wants to believe that this album is indeed the work of metallers pissing around and parodying a movement - if so, that makes tracks like "English Tea" pieces of Spinal Tap-esque genius.  Whatever the truth, it's not a bad record, and is probably actually the most typical record of its era that's ever been made.  In the year 2050 when they've finally invented a computer which can produce an album in any style you care to name, and you ask to hear the mighty Hal's version of mid-nineties Britpop, this will be what the great machine spits out, and not "Parklife" like you thought.  Relax with it, and have fun - it's only an album nobody bought.

(Update - this blog entry was originally created in August 2009.  As I predicted, it wasn't a popular write-up with everyone, but not for the reasons I originally suspected.  On the contrary, there were readers out there who felt I should have sold the album more vigorously, with one person arguing that it was up there with "Definitely Maybe" and "Parklife".  I don't particularly want to pour cynical acid over such observations, but I'm afraid I can't agree, and I utterly refuse to budge on my original assessment that this is not a lost classic by any means.

Still, listening to this CD again did cheer me up no end just now, and Thurman sound grittier and sparkier than most of the revivalists on the live circuit at the moment, so I'm far from being completely condemning of the band. 

And apparently they were a heavy metal band before this album, too, calling themselves To Die For - strewth. One wonders what Edwyn Collins made of it all).

Download it Here

Tracklisting:

1. She's a Man

2. Loaded

3. Cheap Holiday

4. Strung Out

5. It Would Be

6. English Tea

7. Famous

8. Now I'm a Man

9. Clowns

10. Lewis Brightworth

11. Talk to Myself

12. Automatic Thinker

13. Flavour Explosion

The E-Types! - Action Packed EP

Label: Square Target
Year of Release: 1992

Among the British retro-boppers there seems to be precious little mention of US neo-mod and garage bands.  Whilst plenty of readers of both this blog and some of the others on the reading list probably tuck into revivalists linked to Billy Childish or signed to Acid Jazz records, mentions of bands such as The Go and The Woggles are rather thin on the ground (and we'll put The White Stripes to one side as a freak accident for the purposes of this discussion).  This isn't perhaps as odd as it might initially appear - the more underground movements are, after all, the more likely it is that their appreciation will become regionalised and localised.  It's highly unlikely that most of these bands have the finances to organise a global promotional tour even if the will might be there.

Sacramento's The E-Types! were a case a point, spending the period from 1987-1992 producing the kind of power-pop which actually seeped into the British charts earlier in the eighties - out in America, however, they were a cult band who played to enthusiastic specialised audiences who probably might not otherwise have gained easy access to bands influenced by The Jam.  Predictably, the contents of this EP sound rather sunnier and less wiry and neurotic than their British counterparts, but maintain a snappy three-minute pop charm which sees the whole thing through nicely.  In particular, the final track "1,000 Times A Day" is shows a band who might have been capable of much more commercial things had they been given the chance to develop further.

It didn't happen, obviously, and - compilation appearances aside - this appears to have been their only release.  Still, one-single and one-EP wonders were also a sixties phenomenon, so perhaps the limited music available from this lot was actually just one more aspect to their authenticity, albeit an unintentional one.

Track Listing:
1. She Changes
2. What's Goin' On
3. I Never Cried
4. 1,000 Times A Day