Indie Top 20 - The Blog

In a move I'm hoping is going to be more of a joy than a burden, I've started a blog about the history of the largely forgotten "Indie Top 20" series, and the bands that featured on it. This series was a huge part of my teenage years, and it struck me that while there are any number of blogs online looking at the "Now That's What I Call Music" and "Hits" compilation LPs, this was my chance to write about my own experiences further out on the margins (or further into the safer orthodoxies of guitar-based pop, depending on your point of view).

If you fancy joining me, the blog is here. Please link back and spread the word if you can. 

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.

Mike Quinn - Apple Pie/ There's A Time

Label: CBS

Year of Release: 1969

When The Beatles career went well and truly nova, cash-in singles like Dora Bryan's "All I Want For Christmas Is A Beatle", The Carefree's "We Love You Beatles" and Bill Clifton's "Beatle Crazy" trickled out into the marketplace, all basking in the collective golden halo that surrounded the four moptop's heads. Anything with the word "Beatles" in it seemed to sell at least some units in those days, even if it was rush-recorded and did little more than hold a mirror up to the hysteria of the day and stated "Look!". Mediocre records that simply declared "I'm a fan of The Beatles too!" stood a slight chance of charting, as if the entire music industry had gone into some weird feedback loop and everything began with and returned to them.

By 1969, however, Beatles covers aside - and there were still plenty of those leaking out - records celebrating the existence of The Fabs had pretty much dried up, and we were left with this instead; a single gently poking fun at their silliness. "Apple Pie" had originally been co-written by Portsmouth comedy folkie Jon Isherwood, and issued on the flip of his single "Old Time Movies" in January that year. The single flopped (though was later compiled on a "Circus Days" compilation put out by Strange Things Are Happening) but was given a second lease of life by groovy Carnaby Street store owner and DJ Mike Quinn in September 1969. 

The basis for the track's gentle satire is obviously the huge debacle surrounding Apple in the late sixties. Opened up as a boutique-come-talent-funding-facility-come-technological-research-lab-come-record-label-come-hippy-commune-come-whatever-the-hell-was-in-the-Fabs-heads-that-given-day, the business gullibility of Lennon, McCartney, Harrison and Starr became grimly apparent now Epstein was no longer around to keep watch. While many clothes and valuable items were stolen from the boutique by anarchic hippies, the Fabs apparently also funded some "interesting" artistic research schemes which went nowhere. The person responsible for most of this work gets highly litigious when they're mentioned anywhere, so for the sake of a quiet and uncomplicated life, let's just say that nobody can really remember whether The Beatles were promised a large quantity of Electric Paint from somebody working for them or not, or a Special Invisible Security Force Field - what we do know is that many rumours have cropped up over the years insisting that they did. And even if those rumours aren't true, they paint a very interesting picture of other's perceptions of the organisation at that time. There's no question that Apple leaked money from seemingly every department and squandered a large part of the fortune The Beatles had built up. Apple had always sounded like a tremendously utopian idea, and unfortunately it's these businesses - in the media, technology, the arts or elsewhere - which tend to hit Earth at a very rapid velocity, whatever the wealth or good intentions of their original owners. 

The track "Apple Pie" seems to ponder whether the artist (or more likely Jon Isherwood) should or should not have been signed to Apple Records. "Then I sit and ruminate/ cos Apples give you belly-ache/ so Apple Pie my friend I'll pass you by" sings Quinn against a marching and faintly Starr-ish backing track. It also features a crude impersonation of Paul McCartney saying "Do you want a chip butty?", gentle rib-poking about George's meditation, and turns the vague anti-establishment political concerns of The Beatles into something as cartoonish as Yellow Submarine. At the time, this probably felt very naughty indeed, but by today's standards we can only shrug and say "Well, fair enough. They meant well, but Apple was filled to the brim with bad planning and far too many people cutting slices of pennies and pounds".

In the end, "Apple Pie" acts as a dose of common sense being injected into the tail end of the psychedelic era, but it's not anything like as vicious as it could have been. Isherwood carried on as a comedy performer and remained particularly popular in the Portsmouth area, and Mike Quinn carried on with his fashion business. And The Beatles... well, we all know what happened there.

Sorry for the pops and clicks on these recordings. They have been, shall we say, quite well loved.

Skyband - Pie In The Sky/ Dream Machine

Label: RCA
Year of Release: 1975

Skyband were one of many polished seventies groups whose line-up contains a member of a cult and highly collectible sixties mod/ freakbeat group. Peter Beckett, here serving as a member of Skyband, began his career as the guitarist in mod group The Thoughts. Their solitary single "All Night Stand", penned by Ray Davies, is one of the most sought-after singles of the period, and not for no reason. Besides being a top-drawer Davies effort, The Thoughts performance is riddled with energy and electricity - that it wasn't a hit is one of the era's more baffling mysteries.

Following the dissolution of The Thoughts, Beckett joined Winston G and then cult prog rockers Paladin, before eventually jumping into Skyband with Lane Caudell and Steve Kipner. Fans of "All Night Stand" will be disappointed to learn that this isn't proto-punk, but actually disciplined soft rock for the most part. Their first single for RCA "Bang! Ooh! Ya Got Me!" does have a distinct glam slant to its sound, but it's slightly atypical - the follow-up "Pie In The Sky" is much more 1975 in its approach, imagining a future where orderly, smooth pop-rock ruled the airwaves (albeit with buzzing Moog noises in the background).

It's perfectly good, though. The careful vocal harmonies and bouyant arrangements bring to mind Supertramp or Pilot, and fans of either of those bands will probably find something to enjoy here. Somewhere in the background, supervising the band's self-production efforts, is John Pantry, sixties popsike songsmith most famous for The Factory's legendary effort "Try A Little Sunshine".  So that's two cult sixties artists with singles worth hundreds of pounds in the studio at the same time. It's a strange old world.

The Epics - Travelling Circus/ Henry Long

Label: CBS
Year of Release: 1968

The Epics were an East London based group consisting of Mike Blakley - the brother of Tremeloes member Alan Blakley - on drums and backing vocals, Vic Elmes on lead guitar and lead vocals, Ian Jansen on guitar and Stuart Tann on bass. They had put out two singles on Pye, "There's Just No Pleasing You" and "Just How Wrong You Can Be" before jumping to CBS for this final effort.

The A-side "Travelling Circus" is a very ordinary track which is still commercially available, and can be found on YouTube. Penned by the Trems top team of Blakley and Hawkes, it's a very simple, chipper little ditty which clearly went after the mainstream pop market of its time, but was not especially effective at hitting home.

It's the B-side, "Henry Long", which tends to get psychedelic collectors in a lather. Straight from the "Arnold Layne" lyrical school of local eccentrics behaving in an illegal way, the tale of Long is told through distorted gramophone horn vocals, wobbly banana-fingered piano lines, and mellow guitar riffs. Mr Long, we are informed, was caught out and about with no clothes on, wearing just a top hat, and is now being asked to explain himself in a court of law. "For his mother's sake/ give an absent minded boy a break/ anyone could make the same mistake" sings Elmes forlornly.

The track admittedly sways towards the twee end of British psychedelia, and those of you whose noses get put out of joint by chirpy popsike are going to get tremendously irritated by this one. Still, for my money it's charming and brilliantly silly. Lyrically it's also a damn sight wittier and sharper than the cash-ins surrounding it, to the extent that nobody would have batted their eyelids had a Ray Davies songwriting credit been present.

Shortly after this single was released, The Epics toured Europe and had some small success in Denmark with a cover of Chris Andrews' "Yesterday Man" with their Danish road manager Johan Lind on lead vocals. On returning to the UK they changed their name to Blossom, then Stuart Tann left, only to be replaced by Alan Ross. Their name was changed yet again to The Acid Gallery, and their sole 45 was a cover of Roy Wood's "Dance Around The Maypole", which remains a psychedelic collectible.

Ian Jansen nicked off not long after that single flopped, and further shufflings of the line-up lead to Jeff Christie joining and the band Christie being formed. "Yellow River" was a monster seventies hit, but had so few original members of The Epics involved that regarding it as a continuation of their earlier career would be something of a mistake.