Hohokam - Harlequin Tears/ To Sleep

Numan backed synth-pop band who came closer than most of his signings to breaking through

Label: Numa

Year of Release: 1985

Gary Numan tended to be everyone's favourite critical football in the eighties. While Numan the pop star pasted himself in make-up and donned a variety of uniforms for each phase of his career, playing the chameleon role with apparent ease, Numan the interviewee was usually consistent. Family orientated, inadvisably honest, prone to bouts of post-adolesecent naiveté and Thatcher and Royal Family worship.  If he'd been trying to be a wind-up merchant like Jaz out of Killing Joke, I've no doubt this would have hurt his image none. But he wasn't. So it did. The rock and pop world has always admired fraudulence and pretension over straightforwardness. 

I've no idea if the passing of the decades has changed his political views, though his last LP "Savage" had a keen enough grasp on the environmental crisis to impress the Green Party of England and Wales' deputy leader Amelia Womack. What I do have a sneaking admiration for, however, is either the generosity or downright foolhardiness (or both) behind his Numa Records label in the eighties. 

Numan had some form as a talent spotter. On seeing Depeche Mode performing a minor gig in the early eighties, he immediately alerted the boss at his label Beggars Banquet about their existence. While Mute Records got to them first, it must have boosted his confidence and belief that he could find equally huge stars elsewhere. He left Beggars and released his first records on his own Numa label in 1984 - and that's really when the mess starts.

Firstly, his sales and credibility were declining rapidly by the mid-eighties, suffering from the two pronged attack of a newly sincere and increasingly non-electronic post-Live Aid music scene, and continued savage brickbats from the music press and his fellow pop stars. Nor did it help that his material at this point sounded slightly confused and lost, at one moment aping Prince, the next Billy Idol. His confidence in his own style and voice seemed hugely diminished. If the success of his own work was supposed to help bankroll the rest of the label, that set things off on completely the wrong foot.

Handing over Numa's distribution deal to PRT was also a schoolboy error (though obviously, I have no idea what other options were on the table at the time). While PRT - formally trading as Pye - had enjoyed some glorious days in the sunshine, by the mid-eighties they were an even more confused force than Numan himself, and wouldn't live to see the nineties. Numan also found being a music mogul expensive work. In an interview with Fast Company in 2016, he commented: "Back then you still had your big record chains like Tower Records. They absolutely killed me. For example, I put out one album. They would order a thousand and they would only pay for one in 20 of those that they ordered. And if you didn’t accept that deal, they didn’t stock you at all... Because of those ridiculous deals, small labels, and probably even bigger ones would crumble. You’ve got no power. You’ve got nothing to fight them with. So you give them a thousand albums and then hope they do well enough that it gets in the chart. And then maybe someone else will stock it. And you can get your money. Nine times out of 10, that didn’t happen. You go out of business, the company folds. My record company folded fairly quickly."

You get the sense that he remembers this period with little fondness, and perhaps that's no wonder. But actually, it's an interesting label for a budget strapped collector, especially when you step away from his own material and delve a bit deeper. It's filled with failed pop plans and electronic acts who might have fared better a couple of years beforehand, and Gary's own production hand and favoured studios and engineers are ever-present.

Hohokam were probably the label's main hopes, and one of the main reasons Numan apparently started the label. "Harlequin Tears" here is a supremely energetic and menacing slice of synth-pop, sounding bit part Depeche Mode in their leather-and-whips pomp and Dead or Alive at the height of their "Spin Me Round" world domination. It was the closest the label came to a non-Numan chart hit, though given that it failed to even touch the Top 75, it clearly still fell a long way short of the target. 

The Slade Brothers - Love and Comfort/ Clearly I See

Canadian ex-pats with contemplative debut single

Label: Pye
Year of Release: 1965

The Slade Brothers are probably best known to record collectors for their hypnotic, fuzz-guitar driven third single "Peace In My Mind". That really was a complete anomaly in their catalogue, though, with its vaguely hippy-ish undertones acting as a red herring against what was a rather 'straight' folk and pop orientated career.

The pair Jack Klaeysen and Ralph Murphy (not real brothers, you'll note) hooked up in Wallaceburg, Ontario in the early sixties, and began composing songs together. After hearing The Beatles for the first time, they decided that the North American continent clearly wasn't where it was at anymore, and in winter 1965 took a ship to Liverpool to try their fortune over here.

On board, they had the good fortune to meet Joe Collins, Joan Collins' father, who saw them entertaining passengers and asked them to consider inking a deal with his talent agency. The fact that they seemingly thought he was a chancer on a wind-up meant that the boys didn't sign on the dotted line until some weeks later, but not long after seeking him out they began to get major support slots with acts such as The Pretty Things and The Byrds, and a deal with Pye.

"Love and Comfort" was their debut single on the label in 1965, released a mere four months after their voyage - most groups, then and now, would gasp at breaks emerging so rapidly - and shows a pair of already slick performers producing minimal, pretty folk ballads. It's a little naive, and really doesn't sound anything like a hit, but acted as a strong springboard for future releases.

The Chances-R - Talking Out the Back Of My Head and Turn A New Leaf Over

Two singles from relentless Southampton rockers and Melody Maker Beat Contest finalists.

Label: CBS
Year of Release: 1967

While Battle of the Bands contests are seen as a bit passé now, back in the sixties the Melody Maker National Beat Contest was a huge opportunity for aspiring groups. Shining a spotlight on bands away from the London hub, anyone who made the final at the London Palladium was at the very least a powerful live act. The competition tended not to leave itself open to mere fashion and hype - if you couldn't deliver, you didn't get through.

Rob Chance and The Chances-R went through a number of heats to earn the opportunity to perform in the final in 1966, and lead singer Rob decided that the best way of impressing the judges and audience would be to sing "Maria" and "Somewhere" from West Side Story. It has been suggested that this stunt reduced them to mere third place, as while Chance's performance was strong, it clearly wasn't in keeping with the other sharp bands on the bill raving it up. In the end, Neath's Eyes of Blue took the top prize, which seems to make perfect sense to me ("West Side Story" errors of judgement from the bronze placed band or not). They were widely regarded to be a fierce live act in their day.

The publicity was obviously valuable to The Chances-R, and they signed to CBS the following year. First out of the traps was "Talking Out The Back Of My Head" in March 1967, a skippy, jolly beat offering with vague Motown undertones, which ironically sounds very slightly like Eyes of Blue circa "Supermarket Full Of Cans". With tight vocal harmonies, an insistent chorus and one of the most dangerously long false endings I've ever heard, it's only fault is probably the nagging use of "la la la la" vocal lines, which are overdone.

It wasn't a hit, but their next release would be a bit sharper and livelier. (Entry continues beneath the sound files)

Reupload - The Household - 21st Summer/ Winter's Coming On

Folksy harmony pop from Blackpool which sounds particularly beautiful on the wintery flipside. 

Label: United Artists
Year of Release: 1968

Another one of those records dealers everywhere are prone to telling fibs about. Oft labelled as a "psychedelic rarity", this actually sits more in folk/ sunshine pop territory, straddling the divide between the Mamas and the Papas and rather more rootsy music.

"21st Summer" is a cute, rustic little tune which has been enjoyed by a few sixties aficionados over the years, but doesn't sound like a hit single at all, which would go a long way towards explaining why it wasn't one. The B-side "Winter's Coming On", on the other hand, is a lot busier and sprightlier and also more appropriate to the present time of year (unless you're reading this in the Southern hemisphere). It has the same combination of pleasingly tight vocal harmonies and kick and bounce of a lot of the best folk-rock of the period, and deserves a bit more attention than it's actually had.

As for The Household, they're something of an enigma - there's very little information available about them, although apparently they were one of the first acts United Artists picked for their new release schedule as a fully fledged "proper" label in Britain (rather than a subsidiary) so clearly somebody in the organisation had high hopes for them.

The Messengers - I Turn In (To You)/ The Semi-Professionals (Theme No.1)

Midge Ure proteges on a distinctly Ultravoxy sounding trip

Label: Chrysalis
Year of Release: 1982

Glaswegians The Messengers were formed from the ashes of the post-punk band Modern Man, who Midge Ure discovered while he was in a bar on Sauchiehall Street. He offered to produce their sole LP "Concrete Life" but the group, signed to the ailing MAM label, failed to generate any interest and quickly disintegrated.

Reduced to a basic duo of Colin King and Danny Mitchell, and focusing their renewed efforts on synthesised pop, they busied themselves after Modern Man's split by recording basic demos of tracks and posting them to potentially interested music business contacts, of whom Ure was inevitably top of the list.

In 1982, the man Midge got in touch and asked the pair if they would like to support and contribute additional instrumentation for Ultravox on tour, and also release a single in order to ensure they had some product to push on the road. The pair quickly agreed, and "I Turn In (To You)" is the fascinating result - produced by Ure himself, and using his favoured equipment and studio engineer John Hudson, it inevitably ends up sounding exactly like a record of his, to the point where drawing comparisons seems futile. You can hear it in every chunk of those melodramatic keyboard flourishes, pained vocal lines, and echoing drum sounds.