Ten Years of Left & To The Back - Top of the Back

In the ten years "Left and to the Back" has been in existence, there's one question people have stopped me in the street to ask more often than most.

"Hey Dave," they tend to say, "of all the tracks you've uploaded to your legendary blog, which I understand was once given a twenty-five word mention in The Guardian as one of their internet picks of the week in 2010, which has been the most viewed?"

And you know what, I've never really had an answer, because I've never been bothered enough to check. Until now, that is.

The simple truth is that the most popular blog entries on here have always been about novelty records or one hit wonders rather than sixties records slowly building an underground reputation. There was a point in the blog's life when Freddie Starr's "It's You" accounted for about a tenth of all its traffic, which probably depressed me sufficiently to never want to check the stats in microscopic depth ever again.

Hopelessly obscure Christmas singles have also often held a special allure around December time, presumably from people bored of the traditional shopping centre fare and seeking something different to listen to. Oh, and if a group or artist ends up on a "Top of the Pops" repeat, it has roughly the same effect on overall public interest as it did in the good old days when people would buy the singles in Woolworths the following afternoon.

Anyway, the charts are in, and here are the top ten most-read entries.

1. The Snowmen - Nik Nak Paddywak

This one holds the pole position with remarkable ease, and not really (I suspect) on any particular merit, least of all the quality of my research at that point. BBC4 have frequently repeated a Christmas edition of TOTP2 which features these four wobbling around on stage precariously, and an on-screen info box 'fact' that "Ian Dury or Jona Lewie are rumoured to be behind the single".

Some blog readers suspect that the BBC's research team simply lifted this speculation (and it really is just speculation) from the blog entry on "Left and to the Back", but to be honest, it's boosted our readership no end every Christmas time as readers Google in from all corners of the UK, so I won't grumble.

As for who was behind the single, I'm delighted to report it was actually session musician and library music jobber Martin Kershaw, whose other works include "Music Inspired By Birds" and "The Magic of Acoustic Guitars". It's hard to imagine this fact turning up inside any BBC info-box in the near future.

I doubt my publication of the above will put anyone off believing that Ian Dury might have been behind the record, though, or cause the BBC to re-edit their show for future repeats.

2. Fun And Games - Grooviest Girl In The World

This is absolutely one of the best sixties bubblegum singles, albeit one that sold in disappointing quantities at the time, and I'm really not surprised to see it so high in the stats. Here's what we said:

"This actually just as easily sits somewhere between garage pop and glam. Filled with shouts of "Hey!", fuzzed up guitars, close vocal harmonies, thumping drums and pure joy, it's as close to pop perfection as the late sixties ever got. Placing this on your turntable is like inviting the contents of a local fairground into your living room - the hooks spin around your head and flash with neon colours until it all becomes a little bit over-exciting."

And clearly an awful lot of people agree.

3. Driver 67 - Car 67

 Paul Phillips, yer man behind the wheel here, was kind and generous enough to actually write to me a few years back offering me permission to host this mp3 on my blog for free, and perhaps unsurprisingly it's been a popular entry ever since. I strongly suspect that most people are going to the page to quickly grab the mp3 to download, but even so, I delivered an honest assessment of what I feel is a somewhat underrated song.

"The truth is that "Car 67" is a peculiarly innovative pop record which is loaded with gimmicks, and as a result sounds quite unlike anything else that was in the charts at that time. There's no punk spikiness here, no moonlight soul crooning, no early evening variety show-friendly chirpiness. Initially it appears to essentially be an earthily sung ballad... perched on top of a repetitive riff with spoken interjections from a switchboard operator from Birmingham. Having set out its bizarre stall quite early on, the song then weaves a narrative around the jilted cabbie, slowly revealing the source of his angst and woe in the manner a country songwriter would be proud of, taking various little musical backstreets and detours along the way. The mournful outro, in particular, is wonderful."

4. Regents - See You Later

This minor late punk hit with its terrifying minimalist B-side was unavailable for some years, leading to it gaining a slot on "Left and to the Back". Since that entry was written, the group has appeared on "Top of the Pops" repeats, the single and the group's other works have been reissued on iTunes, and order has been restored to the world, meaning a reupload of this is - unfortunately - never going to happen.

5. Darwin's Theory - Daytime/ Hosanna

The B-side of this track was featured on the "Chocolate Soup For Diabetics" series and for a brief period last decade became a popular spin in sixties garage clubs, which almost certainly accounts for its incredibly high placing here. It doesn't hurt that the A-side wasn't bad either, featuring a piece of stoned, Dylanesque early psychedelia about a girlfriend who just won't 'give out'.

This has also been reissued and compiled more times over than I can count now. As for who Darwin's Theory were, why, none other than the slightly unpredictable and madcap French group Les Cinq Gentlemen making a bid for UK success which never materialised.

6. Joy Sarney - Naughty Naughty Naughty

A minor, bouncy novelty hit about a wife-beater ("he's been in trouble with the law for grevious bodily harm/ I'm his puppet, but he won't pull my strings") being compared to Mr Punch, this was always going to attract readers who perhaps couldn't quite believe it even existed in the first place. I suspect that many people Googled this after wondering whether they were remembering some awful childhood cheese dream or an incident that actually occurred in real life.

Repeat showings on "Top of the Pops" and other clip shows highlighting awful seventies television kept it high on everyone's reading lists, and it remains jaw-droppingly weird to this day.


7. Hylda Baker and Arthur Mullard - You're The One That I Want

Whereas at least in this case everyone involved was aiming for sheer awfulness. This version of the Grease classic actually sold far better at the time than subsequent reports have suggested, even after the pair's disastrous "Top of the Pops" performance.  It was lapped up by the public, some of whom might have been people who enjoyed the perverse thrashing it gave to Greasemania at the time, others (like my Dad) who just found the sound of two cumbersome old sods trying to sound raunchy hysterically funny.

Clearly the fact it's the 7th most read "Left and to the Back" entry indicates there are many others who wanted another sip at this particular fountain. Mine is not to reason why.

8. Microdisney - Everybody Is Fantastic

This is no longer available for download due to the emergence of official remasters and reissues since, but it's heartening to see it picked up so much appreciation. The band's sound hadn't quite solidified yet, and some of the production values of this LP are rather low-rent, but it nonetheless contains some wonderful material. Or, as I put it at the time:

"There are moments on here that clearly show the direction they were heading in - by far the most impressive track here (and the sole single) is "Dolly", an acoustically plucked, warped ballad referencing bitter drunkenness and poverty, featuring the fantastic kiss-off line "Send me love and peace/ two more things I can't afford". "Dreaming Drains" follows a similar pattern, the spite against eighties decadence shining through the slightly muddy production."

9. Susan Fassbender - Twilight Cafe

Damn you lot, this should be a hell of a lot higher (and I suspect would be if a free download had actually been in the offing). Susan Fassbender and her songwriting and performing partner Kay Russell just had this one minor hit in the eighties, and it remains a floor-filler to this day - a pumping great New Wave inspired ditty which is immediately recognisable despite its somewhat modest chart resting place.

The blog entry goes into enormous depth about Fassbender and Russell and their other work, a lot of which has recently been issued for the very first time.

10. Camille - White Christmas

The Christmas singles I uploaded to the blog in 2017 were unusually popular, and none more so than this one, which was a strange one-off synth-pop version of "White Christmas" produced by Mike Thorne (of Wire and Soft Cell production fame). I still have absolutely no idea who was behind it, but it's a fascinating curiosity.

Bubbling under: The Crew, Yellow Chair, Peter and Gordon's "Hot Cold & Custard", Freddie bloody Starr, and Sue Wilkinson.

Microdisney - Love Your Enemies (aka "We Hate You South African Bastards")

Label: Rough Trade
Year of Release: 1984

"This record contains music recorded in the years 1982 and 1983.  The reason why much of it has not been heard before is that, in those far-off days, few had heard Microdisney, and many of those who had thought us worthless.  My, how times change!  Well, at least they've changed enough to permit release of this record, now that it seems plain that we are unlikely to sound like this again.
The earliest recording here is "Fiction Land".  In a draughty converted gym in south Dublin one bleak February afternoon in 1982, Sean and I recorded this song with the aid of engineer Dave Freeley, the first helpful person we had encountered in a recording studio.  Since the failure of our previous Microdisney (which had yet to be formally ended) we had been occupying ourselves with simple things - Sean with his quality control job at the locomotive factory, and me with research in the west of Ireland for a projected book entitled "Sex Among The Subnormally Intelligent".  Gloom prevailed.
However, the results of this session proved encouraging enough for us to visit that gym on several other occasions that year, in between bouts of songwriting in the village of Cork, where we both lived.  As we continued to work with Dave Freeley and Terry Cromer, "Love Your Enemies" (April 1982), "Helicopter of the Holy Ghost" and "Hello Rascals" (both July) saw increasingly effective use of the limited resources available to us.  The opportunity to release the last two recordings on a single was afforded to us by our friend Gareth, who had been releasing his Kabuki Records in London shortly before.  
So September 1982 saw us visiting London, distributing free copies of the new record to the influential people who were to provide us with a source of laughter and misgivings for some time to come.
Back in Cork, we set about scrounging the money to make another record.  We organised a 'mixed media event' in a bourgeois theatre near the meat market, where the cultured house staff decided that neither drunken horticulturalists, vomit, little men with bleeding forearms, nor, indeed, death-threats to the manager appealed to their sense of 'artistic freedom'.  Their loss.  And our profit.
Armed with a little money, we set out for Dublin with a violinist and an additional female voice, in November.  Since the gym had now closed down, we were forced to go, with Terry as our guide, to a tiny studio normally reserved for the making of radio adverts.  In the course of this tense Sunday, when recording was often halted by the rumble of the roller-disco downstairs, we brought forth "Pink Skinned Man", a tribute to the middle class torture to which many people we knew had abandoned themselves totally.
In spite of our satisfaction with the work, it was to take two remixes (the successful one being effected at Divine Wood Missionaries' seminary studio late that winter) to make it ready for release on Kabuki in April 1983.  The time between recording and release saw us withdraw further from the world, writing dozens of songs that were never to be recorded in a small dirty room in Cork, and emerging to play them in public occasionally, to the alternating apathy and amusement of the miniscule "listening public" of Ireland.
The most recent recordings here are "Michael Murphy", "Pretoria Quickstep" and "Patrick Moore Says You Can't Sleep Here".  These were recorded late in June 1983, only days before we fled forever this country which was turning us into cretins.  As usual, the location was odd - an eight-track living room, on the edge of a forest in the hills of west County Cork.  So was the purpose - provision of a soundtrack for a commercial drugs education video which was to be made by the media artist Michael Murphy.  But the video was never made, due to the dubious motives and "morality" of the Irish state services, and the music was not used.  By then, we were in another country, receiving excruciating lessons on the value of self-esteem.
So here it is - music of such potency that it could make Zola Budd, the Springbok Speedball and "British Citizen", dash back to her Daddy's kraal in Bloemfontein (hope she's in time for the lynching luncheon). Such light, I tell you, cannot be hid under a disconnected phone forever!
Some of you (the Freemason pederasts, for instance) may be a trifle confused or even annoyed by the packaging and name of this record.  For all your dumb coyness, I don't think you need to be told.  Just don't go anywhere, don't call anyone.  Bastard."
Cathal Coughlan
("Love Your Enemies" was originally issued under the name "We Hate You South African Bastards")

Well... I'm not usually one for reproducing sleevenotes verbatim on this blog in lieu of actual analysis of the records, but in this particular case, Cathal Coughlan paints a much more vivid and honest picture of the process behind these tracks than 700 words of my own are likely to do.

If you get the impression that the recording process behind many of these sounds as if it might have impacted on the quality of the tracks, you may not be far wrong.  Unlike their later material for Rough Trade, a lot of this work sounds uncertain and rushed, slightly muddy and mixed on the hoof (their later independent material would also be recorded under trying conditions, but the key difference is that it isn't possible to actually hear their struggles on those records).  Coughlan and O'Hagan's songwriting also has yet to develop its full potential, and whilst there are unquestionably some strong tracks on here - "Pink Skinned Man", for instance, is a maudlin single which sounds closest to what Microdisney eventually became - it's an uneven journey.  In particular, the soundtrack offerings are atmospheric and may have worked well in conjunction with the final drugs education film, but as standalone pieces they seem a little insufficient.

Or, in short - this isn't the place to start if you're interested in finding out more about Microdisney, and you'd be better off beginning with a download of "The Peel Sessions", "The Clock Comes Down The Stairs" or "39 Minutes".  If you're an existing fan, however, or even have managed to become a fan through this blog, it plugs some gaps and highlights an interesting point in their development.  The retitled reissue on Revola in 1996 (from which this version stems) also comes with the bonus of the studio versions of "Loftholdingswood", "Teddy Dogs" and "464" which originally appeared on the brilliant "In The World" EP, and all three of those tracks are reason enough to download the album.

(Sorry - this album is commercially available again on iTunes, Amazon and other sites besides, so I've disabled the download link). 

Tracklisting:
1. Helicopter of the Holy Ghost
2. Michael Murphy
3. Love Your Enemies
4. Fiction Land
5. Pink Skinned Man
6. Patrick Moore Says You Can't Sleep Here
7. Hello Rascals
8. Pretoria Quickstep
9. Loftholdingswood
10. Teddy Dogs
11. 464

Microdisney Singles Update (Birthday Girl, Singer's Hampstead Home, Gale Force Wind)

I think I've probably waffled on at length about Microdisney more than most bands, so for an overview of their previous work and career, it probably makes sense to simply skim back over the old entries.

What I'm doing here is scrabbling together the last remains I have of their 45 back catalogue (although there's nothing to say I won't stumble upon more examples over the next few years) placed here so that you, the Microdisney fan - or the soon-to-be Microdisney fan - can enjoy some of the odder moments in their catalogue.



Birthday Girl
Label: Rough Trade
Year of Release: 1985

"Birthday Girl" was supposedly the single which caught the eyes of Richard Branson's slaves at the Virgin headquarters, and won the band a major label contract.  Listening to it again as part of the "Clock Comes Down The Stairs" download, it's easy to hear why - this is wonderful stuff.

Equally intriguing, however, is the lesser-heard B-side "Harmony Time" which chooses a jaunty, twanging melody to undercut some anti-Thatcherite lyrics.  "If you want luncheon in your lap/ knife your neighbour in the back/ if you don't do it/ somebody else will" sneers Cathal at one point, emphasising the prevailing culture of the time (which still exists in London and the South East to this day, regrettably).  It was a strange track to relegate to B-side status, given that it outperforms a lot of the "Crooked Mile" album they went on to release.



Odd, off-kilter B-sides were definitely forthcoming, though...



Gale Force Wind
Label: Virgin
Year of Release: 1988

I've never heard a satisfactory answer as to why three different versions of the rather tacky "I Can't Say No" found their way on to the twelve inch version of "Gale Force Wind".  It could have been that the band were trying to piss Virgin Records off - they were certainly at the tail end of their contract by this point, with little hope of a renewal - or it could have been that this was all a private joke the rest of us will never be party to.

I suspect the former, however, as Cathal is heard to utter "What song would our record company like us to do?" at the start of one version, before an inappropriate and rather tuneless Eastern version of the ditty begins.  The "Hackney Aid" version even features assorted cockneys talking about how shit Microdisney are.  It's an interesting one, and no mistake.

"Gale Force Wind", on the other hand, is another anti-yuppie, anti-Conservative piece of greatness, but you all knew that anyway.



Tracklisting:
1. Gale Force Wind
2. I Can't Say No (Betty Lou Version)
3. I Can't Say No (Thank You For Speaking To Me Mustapha)
4. I Can't Say No (Hackney Aid)



Singer's Hampstead Home
Label: Virgin
Year of Release: 1988

Whether "Singer's Hampstead Home" was a genuine tirade against Boy George's excursions into "Hello" magazine or just an attack on that celebrity culture generally is unclear.  The B-sides, however, are peculiar indeed - "Brother Olaf" is a queer old piece, whereas "She Only Gave Into Her Anger" sprawls all over the shop in a manner more akin to the Fatima Mansions records Cathal Coughlan would later create.  The brief segment of the song aping a British Rail advert is so unexpected it's actually hilarious, which was probably the intention.

If I come across any more of these goodies, rest assured you'll be the first to know.

Tracklisting:
1. Singer's Hampstead Home
2. Brother Olaf
3. She Only Gave Into Her Anger

Microdisney - Everybody is Fantastic

Label: Rough Trade

Year of Release: 1984

Long-term readers of this blog may remember that last year I went through a period of uploading a whole host of Microdisney albums, only to stop dead, leaving you all with "39 Minutes", "The Clock Comes Down The Stairs", "The Peel Sessions" and not a lot else. I must confess there was a method in my madness - I do own all their output, but frankly I don't think the remaining two studio albums ("Everybody is Fantastic" and "Crooked Mile") are great introduction points for the band. (If you're reading about the band for the first time, STOP - hold it right there - and go back to my entry on "The Clock Comes Down The Stairs" immediately, which contains an overview, as well as a download of arguably their finest album).

Nonetheless, I appreciate that there are Microdisney completists out there, and that of the two albums, precious little of "Everybody is Fantastic" is available on the career round-up compilations which seem to constitute their available catalogue at the moment. And in truth, there are far worse albums you could download today - it's just that what you're going to be hearing here is a skint band with limited studio time who hadn't quite realised their strengths yet, although on certain tracks they sail extremely close to the heights of their later albums.

The Microdisney technique of savage lyrics combined with West Coast guitars and harmonies is the first thing which doesn't seem apparent on this album. Cathal Coughlan's lyrics, rather than being frothing, fevered poetry on the state of everything eighties, are more like pocket book observations in places. The despondent youths in "Escalator in the Rain" sound shrugging and cartoonish in their thwarted political ambitions, rather than genuinely furious, and Cathal even manages to sound passive himself. "This Liberal Love" is also a tale of a fast bohemian relationship which owes more to the Ray Davies songbook than anything else the band would ever produce, Coughlan playing the detached observer rather than the emotive lyricist we would later come to know him as.

However, there are moments on here that clearly show the direction they were heading in - by far the most impressive track here (and the sole single) is "Dolly", an acoustically plucked, warped ballad referencing bitter drunkenness and poverty, featuring the fantastic kiss-off line "Send me love and peace/ two more things I can't afford". "Dreaming Drains" follows a similar pattern, the spite against eighties decadence shining through the slightly muddy production.

The overall problem with "Everybody is Fantastic" isn't just the band's incomplete sense of identity, mind, but the lack of structure to the album. Most of the tracks are world-weary and backed by a metronomic drum machine which, by track thirteen, really makes the record feel stale and airless. Even when they threaten to soar, they frequently just end up a few metres from the ground instead, the slightly lumpen approach to the arrangements and production preventing the songs from reaching their full potential (indeed, some of these tracks sound far more impressive in their Peel Sessions incarnation - a common problem for a number of indie bands in this period, apparently). "Everybody Is Dead" even features some totally inappropriate slap bass playing, for the love of all things sacred, and is so inferior to the slightly disturbing John Peel recording that they may as well have just swallowed their pride and tacked the session track on the end of the album instead.

There are better albums to introduce yourself to the band with, but if you've already heard those, there are moments here which should also be savoured - it's just you'll probably appreciate hearing them more through casual dips than you will in the context of listening to the original longplayer from start to finish.

Apologies for the slight jump in "Everybody is Dead", by the way. I tried.

Tracklisting:

1. Idea

2. A Few Kisses

3. Escalator in the Rain

4. Dolly

5. Dreaming Drains

6. I'll be a Gentleman

7. Moon

8. Sun

9. Sleepless

10. Come On Over and Cry

11. This Liberal Love

12. Before Famine

13. Everybody is Dead

Download it Here

The Fatima Mansions - Against Nature

Label: Kitchenware

Year of Release: 1990

Following the collapse of Microdisney (whose "Clock Comes Down The Stairs", "39 Minutes" and "Peel Sessions" albums are already available on this blog) Cathal Coughlan appeared to waste precious little time in moving on.  No sooner had the last single from "39 Minutes" been thrown carelessly out by Virgin like an unwanted gift than the Fatima Mansions project appeared at the end of 1989.

It would seem that the early line-up of the band was tentative, and Coughlan was scrabbling his way around in the dark for some kind of identity of his own.   In the liner notes for the compilation "Come Back My Children" he even mentions that this period of the band's history saw a lack of "any recognisable style or identity".  It was under such meandering circumstances that the mini-album "Against Nature" drifted out in 1990.  Whilst it carries the Fatima Mansions badge, it actually sounds more like a solo project than anything else, lacking the abrasive, harsher edges that many FM records boasted.

However offputting it may be to hear about albums that lack cohesion, however, "Against Nature" is still a marvellous little record to behold, being a ragbag of gothic baroque ballads, stomping riffs, and even Hi-NRG disco.  It sounds more like a compilation than a studio piece, but - provided you can tolerate swallowing so many conflicting tastes in one mouthful - is frequently a revelation for anybody with an open mind.  This is effectively the sound of a brilliant and criminally under-rated songwriter letting go and dabbling with a wide sonic palette, discovering noises and devices which would later be put to more strident use on later LPs.

Coughlan's love of Scott Walker is no secret, but "Wilderness on Time" and "Big Madness" are the closest he's come to that man's more melodramatic moments.  Both have spartan backings, with the former only having a harpsichord keyboard setting to keep Cathal's voice company, but are rich with drama and intrigue.  "Wilderness" is almost ridiculously surreal lyrically, pushing matters to a point even Jimmy Webb dare not take them, yet sounds so woebegone as to make the most bizarre lines sound significant, and demand to be taken seriously.  It's probably one of his finer moments, and that it should be buried as the third track on a mini-album is a tad unfair.   "Big Madness", too, is filled with end-of-the-affair obsessive attention to detail, containing the simultaneously disturbing and heart-wrenching lines "I phone you just to hear your voice/ so please don't judge me so/ it's just that I don't think I'll rise again/ 'til I've seen how low I can go".  The whole track explores the fine line between obsession/ depravity and common-or-garden romance, backed again minimally but effectively. 

Beyond the ballads, "Only Losers Take The Bus" is probably the best-known track here, and trailing it is "The Day I Lost Everything" which almost explores MOR rock territories whilst simultaneously mentioning Jimmy Tarbuck.  Precious few people could get away with this sort of thing, you know.  

Opening Side Two is also the Stock Atiken and Waterman apeing disco belter "13th Century Boy" which seemed spectacularly contrary at the time, but seems charming now, as well as smelling like a possible hit single in another parallel universe somewhere perhaps, where Jason Donovan styled singles referring to the dark ages regularly visit number one.  

The Fatima Mansions are an unjustly sidelined band, and of all their catalogue, "Against Nature" is probably the most unjustly sidelined album.  It's not their best piece of work, but it's certainly a long drop away from being their worst, and is a fascinating glimpse of a great songwriter with his guard down, free of the constraints of a contact with a major label and doing a smash-and-grab session through various genres and sections of pop's great music store.  Coughlan still frequently performs "You Won't Get Me Home" live, which seethes with fantastic one-liners which haven't dated one iota, and most of this album has aged in a similarly graceful way.   Like most of their back catalogue, it deserves a reissue.

Download It Here

Tracklisting:

1. Only Losers Take The Bus

2. The Day I Lost Everything

3. Wilderness on Time

4. You Won't Get Me Home

5. 13th Century Boy

6. Bishop of Babel

7. Valley of the Dead Cars

8. Big Madness/ Monday Club Carol

Microdisney - The Peel Sessions

Label: Strange Fruit
Year of Release: 1989

This is the third entry on Microdisney, and I may lay off uploading any more material from them for awhile. It's also a rather unique Peel Sessions album, in that it was released the year after the band split when their profile was probably at its lowest. John Peel and Clive Selwood clearly had no plans to hang around for a few years waiting to see if the band developed a "legendary" or "cult" reputation before letting this see the light of day, and somewhat oddly didn't much care to put it out whilst they were still an active concern. It must be reasonable to assume that the main motive behind this release was to showcase some fantastic music, and it managed to deliver that in spades.

Of all the bands who needed to have a Peel Session album or EP put out, Microdisney must surely be somewhere near the top of the list. I'm obviously not claiming that they were more important or influential than Hendrix, Queen, Pink Floyd or even Adam and the Ants, but the Maida Vale sessions they produced certainly showcased another side of the band, whereas most of those other acts didn't deviate too much from their usual sound at the BBC. Whilst their studio albums were glossy, slick and occasionally overproduced affairs, the Peel Sessions for Cathal and company were rawer, and much more emotive. This is not the sound of a band who have had to do eighty takes to achieve a more eighties sound - this is much more gutsy, effective noise which makes some of the material off their weaker albums ("Crooked Mile", for example) sound almost heartbreakingly good. The version of "Bullwhip Road" here is blistering compared to the 'proper' release, which is so understated it almost falls asleep on the job.

True to their previous form, the album delivers the same barbed wire fist lyrical punches combined with the smooth and studied sunshine backings, like Lou Reed holidaying in California with the members of Steely Dan. The most disturbing moment comes in "Everybody Is Dead", where Cathal Coughlan decides to screechingly repeat "I love you!" over and over until it becomes meaningless, hateful demonic hollering and yelling, and the band collapse around him. This was another moment that never quite made it on to an official studio release - the "Everyone is Fantastic" LP version consists of bland, bored repetition of the phrase as an alternative to the original statement.

I like to think that this album shows off what some of the weakest later Microdisney material could (and probably should) have sounded like, and also offers enough interesting alternative versions of some other fine songs to be worth sticking with from start to finish. Conversely, some of the earliest tracks sound less low budget and more rehearsed than their LP counterparts, too (I'm thinking of "Sun" here in particular).

If you've never heard a note of Microdisney before, this is actually a very good place to start to get an accurate overview of their career. And if you're very familiar with their work, you have absolutely no excuse never to have heard this as well, especially now I've uploaded it for your pleasure.

Tracklisting:
1. Sun (3 August 1983)
2. Moon (3 August 1983)
3. Dreaming Drains (14 April 1984)
4. Everybody Is Dead (14 January 1984)
5. A Friend With A Big Mouth (14 April 1984)
6. Teddy Dogs (14 April 1984)
7. Before Famine (3 August 1983)
8. Genius (2 October 1984)
9. Loftholdingswood (14 April 1984)
10. Horse Overboard (2 October 1984)
11. 464 (2 October 1984)
12. Town to Town (3 December 1985)
13. Bullwhip Road (3 December 1985)
14. Begging Bowl (3 December 1985)

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>> YouTube Update <<

Just a quick flick through the YouTube videos for some of the artists I've mentioned over the last month...

First up, here's the rather basic promotional video for David McWilliams' "Days of Pearly Spencer", undoubtedly one of the best flop singles of the sixties. It was re-issued three times, but only Marc Almond could actually take it into the top ten...



I was also thrilled to learn yesterday that some kind soul has put more Earl Brutus videos up on the service, and here's "The SAS And The Glam That Goes With It":



Other videos for "Navyhead" (shot in Portsmouth of all places, although blink and you'll probably miss it) and "Life's Too Long" can be found here and here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Fb96TzPpso & http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K7YA-frg2tw Thanks to Simon from Sweeping the Nation for pointing all those out.

And finally, Microdisney with "Birthday Girl" on the Tube, being introduced by Ivor Cutler ("Heh, look at that, 'We Hate You South African Bastards', isn't that perfect!"):

Microdisney - 39 Minutes

Label: Virgin
Year of Release: 1988

"If a power were to lift him up/ make him rich, would he admit it was luck?/ or say he'd earned it/ claim a state of grace..."

We've already been acquainted with Microdisney thanks to my entry on "The Clock Comes Down The Stairs", of course, and in that I claimed that "39 Minutes" was their most satisfying major label album. I might also be so bold as to claim it's the album where their identity became the most solid, Cathal Coughlan's lyrics suddenly finding untold levels of bile whilst the arrangements of the music became more lush and fully realised.

The stories that surround this period of their recording career are legendary in some circles. When I interviewed Sean O'Hagan back in the mid-nineties he claimed that Virgin Records were a particularly "predatory" company to be signed to, and the effects of this environment began to eat away at his psyche almost as much as the salad years on Rough Trade had some years before. The Microdisney who were now being fed still didn't seem any fitter or happier. When they asked to be given control of their own mechandising, they ran off a series of "Microdisney are Shit" T-shirts, an act which may now seem like a rather childish piece of rebellion, but in the context of the marketing obsessed times actually seemed amazing. This was, lest we forget, an age of multi-format picture discs, square shaped records, overpriced CDs, free posters with the twelve inch single, etc. It made complete and total sense to mess with and parody everything with an anti-slogan. Virgin, to their credit, appeared not to mind much.

It didn't end with the T-shirts, however. There's a sneaking sense on "39 Minutes" that the band knew their number was up with the label, and were pissing on their remaining chips. The lead single "Singer's Hampstead Home" was a very thinly veiled attack on labelmate and cash cow Boy George. As Cathal Couglan stated at the time, it's a lyrical tirade against the mentality of celebrities who compain about their lack of privacy then invite the press around to talk about their houses and locations, purely to show off their wealth. Precisely what Boy George was doing in Hampstead at the time, of course. "He only had planned lines to say/ but he said them in a witty and stylish way" sneers Cathal indignantly on the track, mocking the pseudo-Wildeisms of the star in question.

Amidst the lush production of the album, there's also a sense of some very eccentric overspending which at times seems hilarious. Stock Aitken and Waterman protegees The London Boys feature on the anti-Benetton track "United Colours", for instance, although there are some other similar sounding backing vocalists credited elsewhere who are known as The Fabulous Golden Showers. We can only hope that this wasn't a pseudonym. Additionally, there's a joyful tap dancing solo on the anti-Royal Family track "Send Herman Home". Rumours have persisted that they actually hired professional tap dancers to deliver this in the studio, but that seems like an expensive kitchen sink too far.

Whatever, there's no doubt that whilst "39 Minutes" isn't a perfect album (nor the best Microdisney LP, in fact) it is possibly the only one I can think of that marries apparent anarchy with eighties gloss so successfully. It's more or less impossible to see the joins between O'Hagan's soft and sleek (and occasionally orchestrally enhanced) visions and Cathal's seething contributions. At its best, in fact, it's like a savage parody of the worst excesses of late eighties culture - embracing the thing it despises so hard that it shatters its rib cage. You might not like the album, but it's certainly a difficult thing not to admire. More so than any other album of the period, it gives an honest impression of the styles and attitudes of the time, condemning them not long before the cracks began to show. As a cultural artefact, it's worth 39 Minutes of anyone's time.

Tracklisting:

1. Singer's Hampstead Home
2. High & Dry
3. Send Herman Home
4. Ambulance For One
5. Soul Boy
6. Back To The Old Town
7. United Colours
8. Gale Force Wind
9. Herr Direktor
10. Bluerings

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Microdisney - The Clock Comes Down the Stairs

Year of Release: 1985
Label: Rough Trade

When I’m wed, I will dream/ in champagne haze of my first affair/ like a private joke on the one I love…

Sometimes it’s difficult to understand why Microdisney weren’t huge in the mid-eighties. Their reference points – Steely Dan, Scott Walker, Big Star, The Beach Boys, The Eagles – were simultaneously music press friendly and yuppie friendly. The spit and polish of their production sat well amongst the other sounds of that decade. Above all else, at their none-too-impressive “peak” (just missing the Top 40 with “Town to Town”) they managed to consolidate all the good feeling that had been building up around their work with peak time television and radio exposure.

Perhaps the reasons for their failure may also lie in some of the above. Whilst, for example, some of their reference points may have been yuppie-friendly, few yuppies would have enjoyed listening to lyrical content snarling at their lifestyles with delicately delivered lines such as “There’s nothing wrong with the young would-be rich/ that a head full of lead would not cure” (although it’s easy to fantasise about Patrick Bateman types humming along without twigging the full content). Additionally, Microdisney despised the music industry so much that there’s probably little doubt they occasionally pissed on their own chips. It’s difficult to forget the Virgin budget they blew on a series of “Microdisney are Shit” T-shirts, although in fairness this prank did emerge at a time when all concerned felt the game was probably up.

Whilst there will always be a divide in their fanbase as to which period of Microdisney worked better, the slightly better fed major label years or the more low budget, squat dwelling indie years, it’s arguably too close to call. The former period produced one disappointing album (“Crooked Mile”) and one which contained endless thrills which combined red-faced rage with pristine melodies (“39 Minutes”). The latter, on the other hand, brought us a rather patchy, slightly dispassionate affair (by their usual standards at least) which suffered from obvious rush recording in places (“Everyone is Fantastic”) and perhaps their finest album ever in “The Clock Comes Down The Stairs”.

TCCDTS should have been awful, of course. The band were so broke and in such a state of disarray at the time of its release that the entire album was recorded arse-about-face, with the drums being laid down after the main songs had been put to tape. A cheap drum machine track was all that held the initial recordings together, which then apparently had to be wiped and replaced with more adequate drumming once the appropriate candidate had turned up. This is not the way “great albums” are traditionally made. To make matters worse, it was supposed to have been their debut major label release, but the initial recordings and demos were rejected amidst some furious arguments at blanco y negro records (a subsidiary of Warner Brothers). It would seem that whilst one director there loved their work, the other was determined to reject it out of hand and instead focus on promoting Everything But The Girl and The Jesus and Mary Chain. More fool him, you might say – except, of course, if we’re judging his decisions based upon commercial success alone, it would be fair to conclude that he may have had a point.

On top of that, the band were adrift from their native Cork in Ireland and living in squats in London, living from one gig booking to the next. According to the sleeve notes on one reissue, they took LSD just to pass the long days in their diaries where absolutely nothing seemed to be happening. Lead singer Cathal Coughlan became so paranoid that nobody in England could pronounce his name he decided that the best thing to do would be to stop responding to it, referring to himself instead as “Blah Blah”.

Somewhere amidst the chaos and odd behaviour they obviously found the time to write some of the best tunes of their career. The album is filled to the brim with them, from the misleading jaunty pop of “Birthday Girl” (misleading primarily because the lyrics are so relentlessly bleak), to the mournful, end-of-an-affair, inappropriately sun-drenched “Are You Happy?”, to the guitar twanging London apocalypse referencing “Goodbye It’s 1987”. Throughout all these tracks and beyond, there’s a sense of a tension between the twisted, scabrous lyrical content and the sun-polished melodies. The entire disc is an eighties pop “Ring a Ring a Roses”, with the title of the collection itself even acting as a subtle metaphor for death.

Without being told, you would also have no idea that the budget for the recording was a struggle for all concerned. The end result is as marvelous as many of the pieces of “production genius” the press were prone to writing about at the time. It has none of the showy mess and clutter of some of the more ambitious works of that era, and a bit more clarity and coherence in its favour. Ironically, their follow-up album “Crooked Mile” was produced by Lenny Kaye, but the band have since agreed that his efforts were less satisfying.

Whilst this album didn’t bother the national charts, it did manage to spend a number of weeks on top of the Indie Albums chart, and generated enough positive press to convince Virgin to sign them. Since then, it seems to have fallen out of print, been reissued, then fallen out of print again more frequently than the eighties themselves have been revived. Some of its content can be found on the compilation “From Daunt Square to Elsewhere”, but it really deserves to be heard in its entirety.

As for the band, their Virgin contract predictably ended without success (the final album “39 Minutes” barely even getting a proper distribution) and Cathal Coughlan went on to form Fatima Mansions, a band named after a Dublin housing estate. Without Sean O’Hagan to act as the yin to his snarling yang, they were a much more noisy and unforgiving proposition, but no less brilliant. Sean O’Hagan, on the other hand, went off to fully realize his Californian pop obsessions in The High Llamas. Traces of both bands can be very obviously heard throughout TCCDTS, and fans of either band should not overlook it – but anyone with a love of lyrical satire and deftly arranged melodies should also tune in. This is as subversive, measured and intelligent as eighties pop ever got, and we will probably never hear its like again.

1. Horse Overboard
2. Birthday Girl
3. Past
4. Humane
5. Are You Happy?
6. Genius
7. Begging Bowl
8. A Friend With A Big Mouth
9. Goodbye It’s 1987
10. And

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