Sundays

AN IMAGINARY COMPILATION ALBUM : #411: THE SUNDAYS

A guest posting by strangeways

The first thing to do is begin with a disclaimer in so much that memories from almost forty years ago are offered in this ICA. Added to these are some opening assumptions regarding the music press and the ongoing post-mortems that might still be occupying Sundays fans. For these components I’m happy to be thought of as an unreliable narrator.

So let’s imagine it’s 1988 and the then powerful British music weeklies have received an All-Patrols Broadcast consisting of just four words: Find The New Smiths. But, but, but… already Morrissey’s flying high, having quickly lifted himself from the post-split canvas with the well-received LP Viva Hate.

Connected to this: a couple of first-rate singles in Suedehead and especially, for me at least, Everyday is Like Sunday. As both records delivered ace b-sides, collating them could have provided a whole other album (and a couple of years later kind of did via the feted compilation Bona Drag). So for the press and wider media, galloping away on my surely imagined hunt, was the new Smiths actually the old one?

No. Still the search persisted.

Meanwhile there was something brewing in London, via Bristol. Student sweethearts Harriet Wheeler and David Gavurin were writing songs. She, a singer. He, a guitarist. Joining them: drummer Patrick Hannan and bassist Paul Brindley. Collectively, they became the Sundays. With a demo on hand, and after a clutch of gigs, Rough Trade won the signing battle.

The 1989 debut single Can’t Be Sure cast the first spell. And in a really strong year for John Peel’s Festive Fifty – think Pixies, Wedding Present and Stone Roses all on fire, and all with well-liked LPs to flog – Can’t Be Sure topped the annual list almost a full year after its release.

For the album though, a wait of 12 months was imposed. But when it did arrive, that first smash-hit LP Reading, (apparently as in the singer’s Berkshire hometown) Writing and Arithmetic was beautiful, offering a snow globe land of hideous towns and miserable weather, letter-sending and cups of tea. If only Lunn Poly could have flown you there.

Pretty quickly, no end of front covers and features followed. It was a fact then, and remains one now, that in pop and rock a female singer will become the focus. The Sundays were no different. Ostensibly they were led by an uncommonly arresting and photogenic singer – possessive of both a Penguin Classics name and a look as much at home on a perfume billboard in Milan as it would be mucking out the litter trays at a cat shelter in Middlesbrough. Added to this were the kind of handsome and stoic-looking men who in a few years’ time would be pegged ‘Sleeperblokes’: there, but not there.

So, urged into the spotlight across the likes of NME and Melody Maker and Vox, Harriet was demure in Doc Martens and denims, jumble sale jumpers and a tottering, pinned-up, elegant nest of a haircut that you couldn’t put a century to, never mind a decade.

Hopeless romantics – literally hopeless in my experience – were besotted, and I personally know of at least one kitten who was named in Harriet’s honour.

I doubt anyone reading this requires a reminder, but two more albums followed: Blind in 1992 and Static & Silence in 1997. Accompanying these, if you’re talking the UK discography, emerged a reluctant roll call of just three more singles. Close to the end, one of these, Summertime – arriving, perversely, in the early autumn of 1997 – broke into the top 20. The actual grown-up one. And at number 15. One reward was a live-vocal Top of the Pops appearance. Announced via Jayne Middlemiss, there they really were: ‘Our Sundays. Our Harriet. On Top of the Pops!’ Then, after just one more single, in midwinter, and with no ceremony, it ended. The last gig happened on December 11th 1997 at London’s still-operating Union Chapel, a Grade I listed church venue – maybe a fitting location for a band of this name.

Since then, I’d always thought of the Sundays as the least prolific of groups. But in assembling this ICA, I realise I’ve been wrong about this. Those three LPs are actually a perfectly fine output. It’s, what, one every couple-ish of years or so. My mistake has been to keep the count going beyond December 1997 – a hobby akin to pining for a visit from a dead person or a call from a long-gone partner.

All told, 42 songs, including the deepest of cuts, are on offer. If that sounds like a modest total it hasn’t made the playlist – or its sequencing – any simpler or less contentious. And I’m acutely aware there are big and easily identified misses.

Breaking: they wouldn’t of course be ‘the new Smiths’ (as if such a thing was even possible). But with our potted history – imagined or otherwise – out of the way for now, here’s what I settled on.

The Sundays: Petrichor

an Imaginary Compilation Album for the (New) Vinyl Villain

Side 1

1. Goodbye (single – from Blind LP, Parlophone, 1992)

The lead-off, and in fact only, UK single from the Sundays’ second album Blind is a beauty. It’s everything you’d ever want: bright and jangly, dreaming and enticing. And in short order it explodes to deliver a real ‘we’re back’ statement (one that singles-wise was required being that it had been well over three-and-a-half years since debut Can’t Be Sure). Consequently, Goodbye deservedly hit the UK top 30 in advance of the LP doing similarly good business at number 15.

At this point, following Rough Trade’s demise, the band was now signed with the major Parlophone, which makes the non-appearance of a follow-up single all the more curious. It’s recalled that the megastores of the time hosted prominent and vertiginous displays of the Goodbye 12” single (and complementing t-shirts), so Parlophone, to be fair, was doing its bit in this regard. Add to this oddity the promotional opportunity of a 14-date November/December tour that year. Parlophone would surely have been agitating for a second single, so you can only assume the Sundays didn’t fancy it and had negotiated a rare level of control for a group on such a huge label.

Meanwhile, Blind’s lead single for the US market at this time was a different track: Love, issued only as a cassette single would you believe, on DGC.

2. Monochrome (from Static & Silence LP, Parlophone, 1997)

If their LPs present three stages of Sundays, the self-produced and home-studio-spun Static & Silence album concluded with the all-grown-up iteration. But don’t worry, even if sensible shoes and togs now also occupied the wardrobe, they hadn’t fully dashed Docs and cardigans and jumpers.

That said, this third LP was not as instantly earnest and charming as Reading, Writing and Arithmetic, or for the most part as easy to receive as Blind. Instead, for me at least, this record demanded your full attention. Aside from the pop hit opener Summertime, and fellow single Cry, there’s little you can instantly ‘get’ without putting in a bit of effort. The Sundays sound is all there though, sometimes newly augmented by brass and flute, organs and more strings. And there’s even a bit of a rocker courtesy of Another Flavour, my friend Juliette’s favourite Sundays song.

But to Monochrome. It’s the last track on Static & Silence, and it’s set at the early-morning moment of the first moon landing. Miles from that satellite though, the song is maybe located in a different kind of mysterious landscape: suburbia. And it’s there where a pair of young sisters pad downstairs to witness the event on TV, likening the astronauts to two slow puppets dancing on silver ground, and all amid the static and silence of the LP’s name.

3. I Kicked a Boy (B-side of Can’t Be Sure single, Rough Trade, 1989 and also on Reading, Writing and Arithmetic LP, Rough Trade, 1990)

Where’d they learn to do that? I Kicked a Boy makes the cut because it simply couldn’t not. It’s just a brilliant song with a fine line in quotable lyrics, including my favourite ‘I’ve been wondering lately just who’s gonna save me’.

The music is every bit as lovely, and a sprightly guitar chimes so much it can probably tell you the time if you ask it. The band clearly revered the track too, lifting it for LP inclusion from the flipside of the previous year’s Can’t Be Sure single.

4. Summertime (single – from Static & Silence LP, Parlophone, 1997)

Is Summertime typical of the Sundays’ sound? Not really. Not for a band that predominantly feels more autumn/winter. But it’s included here to provide a bit of light and shade – a role it played also on its largely pensive parent LP. If that reads like Summertime’s a grudged pick. It shouldn’t. It’s a great song – the Sundays at their absolute poppiest – and an even greater single.

5. Joy (from Reading, Writing and Arithmetic LP, Rough Trade, 1990)

Best enjoyed ice-cold, Joy is a song with a feeling of brooding finality about it. It’s no wonder it closes the debut album. That it does so with such unexpected tumult is all the better. The whole thing – lyrics, singing and music – is kind of like a cliffhanger or a series-closing TV episode, performing that trick of both satisfying you and leaving you hungry for more.

Side 2

6. I Feel (from Blind LP, Parlophone, 1992)

Blind’s first track sees this most polite and demure of bands – they use words and phrases like ‘oh well’, ‘delighted’, ‘wouldn’t it be such fun’ and ‘I don’t mind telling you’ – just suddenly gatecrash the silence. Prettified by a start/stop structure, I Feel is a terrific opener – and like Goodbye it has a reassuring ‘the Sundays are back’ quality to it, particularly when David Gavurin’s unbridled guitar parts enter the plot.

7. Can’t Be Sure (single – from Reading, Writing and Arithmetic LP, Rough Trade, 1990)

Preceding what would become synonymous intricate guitar work, a few seconds of pitter-patter drums announced the Sundays’ arrival. This is a rasper of a debut single, and it caused – deservedly – quite the stir at the time.

So many years later, and even counting its screeds of memorable lines about weather (bad) and desire (even worse), it’s the let-it-all-go lift on the penultimate word ‘later’, the frantic scramble of guitar and the ‘yeaaaaahhh’ ending that remains the moment-and-a-half to experience.

8. God Made Me (from Blind LP, Parlophone, 1992)

Pipping, at the last moment, More, from the same Blind LP, is God Made Me. Is the song a response to religious indoctrination? A weary line – ‘that’s what they told me before, who know what they’ll say today?’ – that follows the sung title suggests so. And later on there’s maybe an atheist awakening delivered via ‘imagine my eyes when I first saw we can do what we want’. Notable also for offering the world’s greatest-ever sung pronunciation of the word ‘supposed’.

9. My Finest Hour (from Reading, Writing and Arithmetic LP, Rough Trade, 1990)

When Bobby Gillespie – the man at the heart of the muscular, swaggering Velocity Girl – condemned the Sundays as being ‘the opposite of rock ‘n’ roll’, perhaps My Finest Hour was the song that tipped him over the edge.

One of the greatest cuts in the entire Sundays songbook, this shy belter reeks of mothballs and thrift shops, and is so quaint it ought to be kept in a hatbox. The song sighs about, and longs for, a match-up that really should but shan’t. Words are high on self-effacement – ‘my finest hour that I’ve ever known was finding a pound in the underground’ – they run a mile also from anything approaching sophistication or commitment: ‘poetry is not for me, and much as I’d like to stay, oh I just want to go home’. In summation, it all feels not so much the joy of missing out as the fear of things going great.

It follows then that your best china and the good biscuits are called for whenever My Finest Hour is played. It’s peak early Sundays and a candidate for the band’s best track ever, ever, ever.

10. Cry (single – from Static & Silence LP, Parlophone, 1997)

The final Sundays release is a lush and swooning lament. With its references to ‘standing on a platform’, coupled with its central theme of lost love and general glumness, the song feels influenced by the 1945 David Lean film Brief Encounter. The track’s words, including the moving contradiction ‘you’re with me so much, though you’re never with me anymore, and it makes me cry’ could easily pass for an internal monologue from that drama’s buttoned-up housewife Laura. It’s of course at a train stop that her unconsummated extramarital affair with Alec, a doctor, begins, persists and ends, although any steaminess is largely provided by the lovely trains populating the key location of Carnforth station in Lancashire.

I can see that yet again I’ve not addressed the actual song terribly much. But rest assured that with its shimmering strings, plus a dinky mandolin and wistfully-delivered words, Cry makes for a deliberately emotional end to this ICA. And if, as is surely certain, it’s the band’s last canonical statement too, it’s one that’s wholly appropriate.

Extra track

Wild Horses (B-side of Goodbye single, Parlophone, 1992, and LP track – and single – on Blind in USA, 1992, DGC)

Stapled to the end of the US release of Blind, this is a beautiful cover of the Rolling Stones’ 1971 single. In 1993 the Sundays version was itself elevated to a single in the States (again on the leading US format at that time: cassette), and with a video in the can perhaps there was a feeling Wild Horses could have done good business in North America.

It didn’t – Billboard-wise at least – but for my money, it would have been zero surprise if Wild Horses had gone on to satisfy that US penchant for emotionally charged ballads. Adding steel to this assertion, maybe, is the fact that the song popped up in a film (Fear, 1996) and in an episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer three years after that. Finally, at attention, drinkers: Budweiser slapped it on one of its commercials too.

And here in Britain, had the cover been released, and had it garnered the then crucial patronage of daytime radio, Wild Horses would surely have had a tilt at the top ten. Could it – whisper it – have even been a chart-topper?

I know this has all been a bit ‘if my auntie had wheels she’d be a bicycle’, but I still maintain that with a fair wind behind it, Wild Horses could have done well in either territory.

No matter. It remains a breathtaking cut. As delicate as a cobweb and every bit as intricate, it’s a real head-turner wherever and whenever it’s played.

Hopping mad that not all your favourites made the cut?

Same here. On any other day you’d have been reading about the likes of Here’s Where the Story Ends, You’re Not the Only One I Know, Hideous Towns, More, 24 Hours, and She.

But there it is. And to this day, among an interested cohort – the kind of people who tut at barcodes on postage stamps and go on a downer because nobody really wears a watch anymore – I like to think the Sundays generally, and Harriet specifically, are spoken of in awed, hushed tones. Their very disappearance is, ironically, keeping them front-of-mind and puzzled over like the doomed, unsolvable Lisbon sisters of the Virgin Suicides. Bands, and not just of the indiepop variety, naturally attract the curious, the obsessive and the tenacious of course, so it’s maybe not so big a surprise if the Sundays do remain revered, remembered and sought-out.

But to temper all this bluster it should be noted every person and every pop group maintains the right to disappear. To this end, it’s a fact – and an admirable one – that the band has studiously remained off-grid for almost thirty whole years (and the last twenty or so of those have been hosting the existence of ever-more intrusive iterations of nagging, toddler-class social media).

If the fancy took them, they could do the opposite. Even barring new music, a tour could be built solely on the back of Reading, Writing and Arithmetic – and it’d do very well indeed. But it feels kind of right that this has never happened.

Even on the racks the group is not traditionally anthologised either. In the perhaps fading world of best-of collections – essentially the same product re-imagined then re-released as soon as it’s commercially polite to do so – the closest one gets is the recent (2024/25) re-unleashing of all three albums on vinyl. And if this activity was fanfared anywhere, I didn’t hear a parp, myself. At least those feeling the itch can now maybe swipe up that once-elusive plastic inside those elegant sleeves (and has any other band’s cover art expressed its sound and tone so immaculately? Well, one other maybe).

The only documented public cheep across all this time has come from, of all things, an in-flight magazine (American Airlines’ ‘American Way’), which in 2014 somehow snagged a short interview with Harriet and David. This was conducted, perhaps unsurprisingly, via email.

Although the content of the piece offered little drama, it did at least confirm that the couple continues writing – a tantalising fact that’s been backed up by old pal David Baddiel, although he doubts that any of these labours will ever be heard publicly.

The downer of course is that a couple of discs of currently unknown oddities, plus maybe a gig, would actually be both welcome and entirely justified, But right now, aside from internet-available demos and sessions, plus two live-only tracks, one named Something More, the other titled Turkish – you’ll find recordings of varying audio/visual quality online – for the Sundays completist, the task remains simple.

A bit more indulgence to finish with

Here’s a small, and to be honest inconsequential, Sundays anecdote. Probably it’s of no interest to anyone, really, but here it is regardless.

It’s February 2nd 1990 – a Friday – and the Sundays are to play the Queen Margaret Union, a venue connected with the University of Glasgow. This will be the band’s second visit to the QM in just over a year, having supported Throwing Muses there the previous February.

Attending the gig will be two eighteen year olds – boys – old enough now to fulfil the age restrictions that plagued shows at that time. Keen perhaps to avenge that barring of twelve months ago, a plan has been hatched to visit the union in the afternoon. The scheme is dedicated to maybe hearing the band soundcheck, and as the QM is open for facilities – including a bar, a cafeteria and a laundrette – gaining entry is a snap, even for those unaffiliated with the place.

Quickly, one of the union’s regulars, an older man known by sight to the boys via their weekly attendance at the venue’s indie discos, spies the two lads. They’re stood, like winter urchins facing a bakery’s window, at the doors which lead into the ground-floor space where the group will later perform.

This regular, who may or may not have been connected with something like the students’ representative council, approaches and asks what the boys are up to. The caper is explained. Then, in a flash, this figure enters the performance area revealing for a moment, via a swinging door, that the band is inside. They’re not currently playing music, but the soundcheck is going on.

Encouraged, and gingerly stepping into the space – but maintaining a reverential, terrified, pinned-to-the-wall distance – the boys can now see that this character is speaking with Harriet. She looks across at the pair, and is seen nodding. She approaches and somehow – somehow – the two now find themselves face to face with her. They didn’t curtsey, but it was probably on the cards.

It’s reported after the fact that Harriet, inside that Brutalist building, was every bit as kind and polite as you would hope and dream and pray for. Furthermore it’s been revealed that she was patient to a fault when confronted with a couple of fawning, socially inept twits whose eyes – containing stars where you’d routinely expect pupils – ping-ponged with alarming frequency from the floor to the singer and back. But mainly to the floor.

She also used her magic indie superpowers to assign, correctly and with a pointed finger, the boys’ names, (OK, it’s a 50-50 shot, but still). She’d read these from her own response to a letter the lads had sent her (they’d brought it with them, and handed it to her as a kind of hall pass/permit for diplomatic immunity). That correspondence is currently MIA, unfortunately.

Beyond commenting on the tendency of the Harriet of this era to continually sport earrings styled like tiny padlocks, not a lot more is remembered about the actual and short conversation. But after the event, and after of course the gig itself (attended by one other who stalks this blog), much would have been discussed that day – The Day They Met Harriet Wheeler – and I know for a fact that this memory is still dusted down with quite obnoxious regularity.

Thanks to Sundays Fan Bible…

Most useful in checking out dates and facts for this ICA was the Sundays Fan Bible – an extensive resource of granular-level information. Amid an internet going wrong, it’s the kind of ultra-valuable labour of love that’s deserving of the highest praise.

https://sites.google.com/site/mysundayssite/home

…and thanks to Jim…

…for the platform, and to you for reading (as in the activity, not the town in Berkshire).

 

strangeways

 

One Dove

THE CD SINGLE LUCKY DIP (33) : One Dove – White Love

And yes, you have heard these four tunes previously they featured away back on 13 September 2016

– – – – –

One Dove were a Scottish act founded in 1991, and comprised the vocal talents of Dot Allison, and the musical brains of Jim McKinven and Ian Carmichael (the former had been part of Altered Images in the early 80s).

They were around for no more than 3 years, during which time four singles and one LP were recorded. Their sound was a mixture of pop, dub, ambiance and rock. I’ve only one CD single in the collection, and it dates from 1993. It’s a track that reminds me an awful lot of parts of Screamadelica, but in a sense that’s hardly a surprise given that Andrew Weatherall was heavily involved with the band at this point in time.

There’s four mixes available on the CD, and all of them are well worth a listen.

mp3 : One Dove – White Love (Radio Mix)
mp3 : One Dove – White Love (Lonesome Demo)
mp3 : One Dove – White Love (Weatherall’s Guitar Paradise Mix)
mp3 : One Dove – White Love (Weatherall’s Meet The Professionals Dub)

The one common feature is Dot’s wonderful dual-delivery which to me sound like the silky poptones of Sarah Cracknell backed by a manic Kate Bush. The radio mix is the most accessible, coming in at just over four-and-a-half minutes, and it was worked on by Stephen Hague who delivered many a chart hit in the 80s and 90s. But I particularly like the 10 minutes plus of the ‘Guitar Paradise’ Mix’ which shows just how close the relationship between rock and dance can be – when in the right hands. It really begins to kick in around the 1:45 mark. Play loud!

– – – – –

 

JC

Bauhaus

THE 12″ LUCKY DIP (35): Bauhaus – Bela Lugosi’s Dead

This really is a quite remarkable 12″ single.

Bauhaus, consisting of Peter Murphy (vocals), Daniel Ash (guitar), David J (bass) and Kevin Haskins (drums) found themselves in an unremarkable studio in an unremarkable town in the middle of England in January 1979, less than two months after forming. The plan had been to come up with a demo that they might be able to hawk around some record labels.  Six hours of work yielded five songs, one of which was more than nine minutes in length, and was more or less recorded live.  No producer or engineer would be credited when said song emerged blinking into the daylight in August 1979 as their very first single, issued by Small Wonder Records, a label which operated out of a record shop in what was then a very unfashionable part of East London.

mp3 : Bauhaus – Bela Lugosi’s Dead

There was no option other than to release this on 12″ as it wouldn’t have fitted on a 7″ single….and fair play to the record label as there might have been a temptation to * cut the song in two, fading it out on one side at an appropriate moment, and fading it back in again, calling it Bela Lugosi’s Dead (Parts 1 and 2).   It would have made more commercial sense, and indeed might (but probably not) improved its chances of being played by radio stations, but it is clear from the outset that this needed to be heard in all its glory.

I don’t recall hearing it played on Radio 1 or by Radio Clyde…but Peel must have played it some point as someone brought it into school on a cassette, having taped it from the radio.  I didn’t get a copy of the single for a couple of years, by which time I was quite familiar with it as it was one of the mainstays of the alt-disco at Strathclyde students union – the one held in the repurposed canteen as opposed to the main one at the top of the building on Level 8.  Indeed, my copy came courtesy of a fellow student who, having seen Bauhaus enjoy a chart hit what he considered a dreadful cover of Ziggy Stardust, said he was willing to sell me Bela (as it will be referred to from here-on-in) as the band were now ‘meaningless’.

His loss and my gain.

Two songs are on the b-side.

mp3 : Bauhaus – Boys
mp3 : Bauhaus – Dark Entries (demo)

Boys had in fact been recorded in the same session as Bela in January 1979, but the version issued on the first single was recorded later in the year, again at Beck Studios in Wellingborough.

This version of Dark Entries is only 83 seconds long, and the voice of a producer/engineer can clearly be heard.  But as I said, there are no credits for these positions given on the release, but this demo version wasn’t recorded in the January 78 session alongside Bela as that day’s work would eventually surface as The Bela Session EP much later on in 2018.  The finished version of Dark Entries would prove to be the band’s second 45, released on 7″ vinyl by Axis Records (later to change its name to 4AD), in January 1980 and this time the sleeve informs us that it, and its b-side were ‘written and produced by Bauhaus’.

JC

#edwyncollins45s

THE TESTIMONIAL TOUR OF 45s (aka The Singular Adventures of Edwyn Collins)

#34:In Your Eyes : Edwyn Collins & The Drums (Heavenly Records, HVN 219, 2011)

The third and final single to be lifted from Losing Sleep was Edwyn‘s collaboration with The Drums, an American indie-band whose stock was particularly high in 2010, thanks to a well-received debut album and a run of hit singles.

I am sure I read somewhere back at the time that Edwyn’s son, Will, was the person who initially suggested the collaboration as The Drums were one of his favourite new bands, and he thought his dad should work with some younger musicians.  It also helped that members of The Drums had cited Orange Juice and Edwyn Collins as having had a big influence on them.

This one is a bit different in style from the collaboration with Franz Ferdinand, in that it feels like a complete song on which Edwyn and Jonathon Pierce are initially duetting and later harmonising.  In other words, unlike the FF collaboration, you can’t make out the joins!

mp3: Edwyn Collins & The Drums – In Your Eyes

It genuinely is one of the stand-out tracks on the album, and it’s very interesting that when it came to the release of the single, which was seemingly in a limited run of 475 copies, it was attributed jointly.

Released only on 7″ vinyl and housed in a plain brown cardboard sleeve, this time with a blue label and the jukebox-style middle.

I actually couldn’t find a copy of this in Glasgow when it was released at the end of February 2011.  I had to wait a few weeks and pick up a second-hand copy, the sleeve of which was slightly damaged as the original owner had removed the blue sticker advising that the single came with a download code for some live tracks….oh, and the original owner had also used the download!

The b-side was another Edwyn only composition:-

mp3: Edwyn Collins – To Die For

The lyric opens with more than a little nod to Night Fever by The Bee Gees.  As with the b-side from last week, it feels like a song that was written and recorded some years previously, before Edwyn was struck down, with his voice and range being akin to earlier in his career.  It’s quite an interesting number, and if it actually is one that was a few years old, then there must be some sort of tale attached as to why it languished in the vaults.

 

JC

Lola In Slacks

SATURDAY’S SCOTTISH SONG : #505: LOLA IN SLACKS

There was a fair amount of buzz around Glasgow-based Lola In Slacks at the time their debut album, Moon Moth, was released on Last Night From Glasgow back in late 2021. Here was the pr blurb:-

Fronted by petite chanteuse Louise Reid, Lola in Slacks exude the garage swagger of The Velvet Underground spiked with the bold confidence and freedom of Tim Buckley.

Having developed her distinctive vocal and performance style playing on the streets and café bars of Paris as a teenager, Reid brings a Piaf-like authority to the group’s noir atmospherics. Reid’s affaire de coeur with Scotland’s ancient ally runs through the band’s songs. Their indelible songs are written by Reid and guitarist Brian McFie and brought to life with the help of a stellar line-up featuring Lesley McLaren (drums), Davy Irvin (bass) and Fiona Shannon (keys). “Together, they make Lola in Slacks swing like Serge Gainsbourg on a booze cruise down the Seine.” Gus Ironside – Louder than War

There’s an acute sense of mystery around this ambitious, literate gang of Francophile bohemians, who have made an instant impact with a series of heart-stopping performances around their hometown of Glasgow. Following the release of singles ‘Tramlines’ (2016) & ‘Postscript in Blue’ (2018) the debut album has arrived. Enter the dramatic world of dark, shimmering beauty. Intriguing and totally intoxicating…

mp3: Lola In Slacks – Trocchi’s Canal

One of my favourite recordings of theirs is actually a cover version of a Broken Chanter song:-

mp3: Lola In Slacks – Don’t Move To Denmark

It can be found on the LNFG compilation album Isolation Sessions, which emerged from the very first COVID-19 lockdown, when invited artists on the label made one-off home recordings of a song by a different artist attached to the label.

 

JC

 

Fictive Fridays, Various

FICTIVE FRIDAYS : #16

a guest series, courtesy of a very friendly lawyer

BLUE PERIOD

Blue Chair – Elvis Costello & The Attractions

Here we are at FF16 and Elvis and the boys have barely featured. Let’s rectify that right now, with a standout track from the last great EC&tA album, Blood and Chocolate, released 40 years ago!

Blue Meanies – Opossom

This New Zealand outfit are in the one-and-done category, having released Electric Hawaii in 2012 as their only album. Fortunately, the Nielson brothers, Kody and Ruban, reconnected and are still going strong in Unknown Mortal Orchestra.

Blue Jean – David Bowie

Tonight wasn’t much of an album, at least not by the standards of the thin white duke. At least we got this killer single off it, featuring some of Tower of Power‘s horns.

Blue Boy – Mac DeMarco

Orange Juice‘s single of the same title no doubt has seen some airplay here at JC’s place, so here’s Vernor Winfield McBriare Smith IV, aka McBriare Samuel Lanyon DeMarco. From his second album Salad Days (2014), recorded alone in his Brooklyn apartment.

Blue Orchid – White Stripes

Lead single from the duo’s fifth studio LP, 2005’s Get Behind Me Satan, when the band could do no wrong.

Blue Light – Tom Verlaine

A pretty track from Songs and Other Things. The album came out in 2006, and so did Verlaine‘s swan song, the instrumental album Around. It’s a shame that that’s all we got from the NYC legend.

Blue Beard – Band of Horses

BoH is pretty much Ben Bridwell with a rotating cast of musicians. He/they have been going since 2004 and have released 6LPs. This song is from the band’s third one, Infinite Arms. Young Sam and I saw them tour the album at Coachella 2012 and they were fantastic.

Blue Moon – Beck

When he’s not recording with everyone you ever heard of (see FF13), Beck is releasing his own interesting albums. This is from his 12th studio LP, Morning Phase, and features our man playing a charango.

Blue Flower – Mazzy Star

This tune was written by cult band Slapp Happy back in 1972. I don’t know too much about that Slap Happy, apart from the fact that Peter Blegvad was in it. Pale Saints released a nice version of this song on their 1992 EP Throwing Back the Apple, but no one tops the marvellous Hope Sandoval. From the debut album, She Hangs Brightly (1990).

Blue Monday – New Order

JC and I argue about the relative merits of New Order (him for, me against, and I usually lose). Despite that ongoing battle there’s no denying the awesomeness of the band’s 1983 single.

Bonus track: The Blues are Still Blue – Belle & Sebastian

This set is restricted to songs titled ‘Blue [something]’ and it was a job getting it down to only 10 songs. But I love you so as a bonus here’s the tremendous second single from The Life Pursuit, released 20 years ago!

 

Jonny

 

JC adds…..

That completes a full week of guest contributions and a series of posts featuring ‘various artists’, including a number across what I still refer to as mix tapes. The usual Saturday and Sunday series are scheduled over the weekend, and then it will be back to something approaching ‘normal service’, including, in my opinion, one of the very best guest ICAs ever offered.

Thanks, as always for your continued support for TVV.

 

Various

BLAME IT ON THE BADGER (Volume 1)

Last year, SWC over at No Badger Required turned 50 years of age.  As part of the milestone, he embarked on an epic series for the blog:-

200 songs in order of greatness from 200 to 1. The greatest 200 songs in the world, the only songs you will ever need in your life etc etc.

It began in January and went all the way through to September.  I took note of every one of the songs as I intended to, in the fullness of time, make use of SWC’s writing talents without actually letting him know of my plan….so if you’re reading this today, mate, a big thanks.

The plan is to have a handful of posts across 2026 here at TVV made up exclusively of songs which were part of the NBR 200. And the commentary about each song will be cut’n’pasted from NBR on the basis that the writing is, inevitably, brilliant for one reason or other.

As our dear friend Dirk would say, enjoy!

mp3: Various – Blame It On The Badger (Volume 1)

1. The Wonder Stuff – Unbearable (#181)

There is man in my village who I didn’t like very much the first I time met him, and for the record, right now, I like him even less. He’s a bully and very probably a con artist. Trust me, if you knew the person I was talking about, you’d wouldn’t like them very much if you met them either. I suspect however, that Miles Hunt disliked the person that he is singing about on their brilliant debut single, for entirely different reasons.

Between 1988 and say 1995, the Wonder Stuff were one of the best and biggest things about British music. The started out life as a noisy guitar band, their songs were rough and had an almost punky edge to them, then they took a more pop and folky direction which appealed to the a wider audience. Their second album ‘Hup’ was a huge success and was the first record I ever bought from what I used to call an ‘indie record shop’ (I was 14 and my grandad came in with me because I was scared).

2. Pixies – Debaser (#3)

The wonderous thing about the Pixies and ‘Debaser’ in particular is the way that they (and it) always seemed to be something different from everything that was going on around it. The band were outsiders, they weren’t part of the Seattle scene (although they were lumped in with it), they weren’t part of the post punk scene not the hardcore scene. You could never really tell what they were going to do next, the occasionally sung in Spanish and there songs were often about bizarre things. Additionally, Pixies didn’t look like rock stars, I mean that with the utmost respect to Frank Black, and add, hastily, apart from Kim Deal.

And yet despite all that, not belonging, they went and made one of the greatest indie rock records of all time in the form of ‘Debaser’. ‘Debaser’ is essentially a two and a half minute blast set around lyrics about some surrealist film from the twenties, which pretty much sums the band up, but the fact remains, that every inch of it is utterly tremendous, from that opening bass rumble to Frank Blacks iconic yelp.

3. Jonathan Fire*Eater – Give Me Daughters (#138)

Personally, I think more bands should have unneeded asterisks in their names. How much better would Jesus Jones be if they were called Jesus*Jones. Much better that’s how much. Jesus*Jones would be a kick arse punk band not some sort of poor mans EMF. Or EM*F as they should now be known. In fact, I’ll say it right now, there has never been a bad band who have an asterisk in their name. Necessary or unnecessary.

The asterisk in Jonathan Fire*Eater may be unnecessary but their music, in particular the wonderful ‘Tremble Under Boom Lights’ EP (from which ‘Give Me Daughters’ is taken) is anything but. It is urgently brilliant stuff.

4. The Sundays – Here Where The Story Ends (#169)

More than 30 years ago when Madchester was all the rage, a band who were if anything, the anti Madchester, almost become the biggest band in the country. That band was The Sundays, a quiet and unassuming four piece from London and when they released their debut album, ‘Reading, Writing and Arithmetic’, they received almost unanimously euphoric reviews for it and suddenly everybody wanted a piece of them.

The most talked about thing about The Sundays was the voice of their singer Harriet Wheeler, which was distinctive, longing and at times achingly beautiful. The way her voice combined with that melancholy but terrifically jangly guitar gave them something very special indeed. Wheeler, you see had this ability to go from a near whisper to an impassioned shriek in the bat of an eyelid. In fact, you could argue that The Sundays set the route for bands like Echobelly, Sleeper, Tiny Monroe and all those other female fronted four pieces that emerged in the next few years.

5. Television – Marquee Moon (#122)

When I was about seventeen my favourite song in the entire world was ‘Tom Verlaine’ by Stoke Newington via Cornwall (and Plymouth and Southampton) indie guitar band The Family Cat. I remember being overjoyed when at Christmas 1992, OPG handed me a bag of presents and the twelve inch of ‘Tom Verlaine’ could be seen peeking out of the top. She paid £1 for it from Parrott Records in Canterbury and I told her it was the best pound she would ever spend. Of course, we all know now that she paid a pound for it because despite how great I thought The Family Cat were, no one ever bought their records, and they were always destined to be perennial bargain bin attendees.

Tom Verlaine is of course the singer in the band Television, who were a band that my friend Martin recommended to me after seeing that same £1 copy of the Family Cat single lying on my bedroom floor. “You should check out Tom’s band Television” he said to me, pointing at the record and telling me that I would probably love them.

So I did.

I borrowed a copy of ‘Marquee Moon’ from Martin and that was pretty much that because ‘Marquee Moon’ (the album that is) is incredible, a hailstorm of psychedelia and gritty rock and roll underpinned by excellent lyrics and some of the best uses of a guitar ever recorded.

It is however the title track from that album that sticks in my mind. A ten minute masterpiece of electric poetry full of guitars that seemingly burst out of nowhere and physically fight with Tom Verlaine’s sneering vocals for primacy. Verlaine’s voice by the way, is despite its seeming awkwardness is absolute perfection given the chaos that is happening behind it.

6. The Wedding Present – Kennedy (#30)

The Top Thirty is ushered in by the recently crowned winners* of the Rock’s Greatest W contest, The Wedding Present, and their stone cold indie classic ‘Kennedy’. Or as my daughter calls it (or did back in 2020 when she was eight), “The Apple Pie Song”. Largely because at No Badger Towers we always listen to the Wedding Present whenever we have apple pie for dessert. I wouldn’t read much into that, we also listen to Bananarama whenever we have banana milkshakes and ‘Carrot Rope’ by Pavement whenever we have carrot soup. In fact, when I retire I intend to open the world’s first restaurant where all the food is musically themed. I digress.

I was fifteen when I first heard ‘Kennedy’ it would have been in the summer of 1990 when I was carefully taking my first footsteps into the murky world of indie guitar music. Back in the summer of 1990 I thought that Ride and James were the best bands on the planet. For my 15th birthday my dad got me a James Tshirt and I barely ever wanted to take it off.

Enter, Dominic, mate of my brothers, and the lad who is singlehandedly responsible for turning my brother into a Goth, Dominic used to come to our house after school. It was largely known that at our house you could smoke and listen to loud music without being lectured by your parents, so for a bit it was the place where we all hung out. My brother and his mates, used to congregate in the lounge, because it had the telly and the big stereo, where they would listen largely to awful rock music like Guns N Roses and Skid Row.

Upstairs, out of the way was where me and my mates hung out, largely because we feared getting a Chinese burn if we dared congregate on the sofa (actually it was pretty good natured, we hung out upstairs because we didn’t want to listen to the awful rock music). The one person who crossed the sterile corridor in between was Dominic – well technically once Dominic’s girlfriend, Dawn did, she walked into my room thinking it might be the bathroom, and caused five 14 and 15 year old boys to suddenly lose the power of speech – Dominic was allowed in because before he went full on Goth, he listened to decent music and was responsible for I think eighty percent of the music that I played back then. It was on a tape that Dominic lent me that I first heard ‘Kennedy’.

Anyway, ‘Kennedy’ blew me away. I loved the way the guitar crashed in, I loved the way the bass rumbled and wobbled away near the end, I loved the way the drums sounded like they were being physically thumped and I loved the way that David Gedge sung and of all the ‘new’ bands that I first heard via Dominic’s tapes, The Wedding Present were the ones that stuck around. Two days after almost wearing out the tape by constantly rewinding it so I could relisten to ‘Kennedy’ all over again so that I could throw myself around my room as pretended to play the guitar to it, I walked into the local Our Price store clutching a crisp ten pound note and walked out with a copy of ‘Bizarro’ and I’ve never looked back.

7. The Prodigy – Firestarter (#65)

JC interjects…..there’s no commentary on the actual song as this part of the rundown was in the middle of what I hope was an imaginary tale of the debauchary at a 50th birthday party……

If scenes of after party devastation are not really your thing, then you don’t even want to think about venturing upstairs in the house that hosted my pretend 50th birthday party. There are four bedrooms up here and I have seen naked rock stars in all of them. I shall spare their blushes for now but will say that I had no idea that the guitarist from Cud had a tattoo there.

8. Kings Of Leon – Molly’s Chambers (#136)

I’ve seen the Kings of Leon twice in my life, both at festivals. The second time isn’t important because they were awful. The first time, however, was Glastonbury around a month or so before their debut album, ‘Youth and Young Manhood’ had been released.

It was inside the New Bands Tent on a damp Saturday afternoon and they were superb. Utterly brilliant. Four brothers who decided to turn their backs on their religious roots and give the world dirty country garage rock songs that talked of sex, drugs and rock n roll instead. On that stage in 2003, the brothers Followill didn’t just sing about lusty desires, the oozed it out of every possible pore. If the Kings of Leon of 2003 had been around 40 years earlier, Mick Jagger and co would have looked like Flannagan and Allen in comparison. Literally every single person who witnessed that show in that tent came out absolutely obsessed with the Kings of Leon.

On that day, ‘Molly’s Chambers’ was delivered with a blast of good old fashioned seedy punk rock. Caleb looking the audience directly in the eye before telling us all that “You’ll plead, you’ll get down on your knees/For just another taste,” before the drums crash in and guitars add to the general filthiness of it all.

The chants of “LEON, LEON” continued well after the band had finished, left the stage and sat backstage drinking whiskey and then about two years later it all went horribly wrong as the Kings of Leon turned into REO Speedwagon.

9. Aretha Frankin – Respect (#195)

Of course, Otis Redding wrote and first recorded ‘Respect’ back in 1965 (the original appears on his brilliant ‘Otis Blue’ album) but the version that we all know, love and cherish is the Queen of Soul’s 1967 rearrangement. Aretha utterly owns this song and is synonymous with it.

Franklin changed a few of lyrics and the song fast became one of biggest hits as well as being one of her most recognised tracks. The way that Franklin sang the song changed the narrative entirely, and what was originally a song about Redding wanting his tea ready when he got home from a hard days singing, became a song about female dignity, gender roles and fast became a feminist anthem.

And, yeah, it should be so much higher than number 195. I’m not sure what I was thinking.

10. Happy Mondays – Wrote For Luck (#140)

Sometimes the brilliance of music is all down to risk taking. Take ‘Wrote For Luck’ for instance. That was recorded in the dull east Yorkshire town of Duffield. Tony Wilson sent the Happy Mondays there deliberately because he thought that the band were taking too many drugs in Manchester and he wanted them to record a new record. That itself wasn’t the risk. The risk was having Martin Hannett on production duties and Shaun Ryder’s ability to have drugs delivered to him wherever he was. Wilson’s view was either there would be brilliance or there would be carnage. Or both. Or neither I suppose. But to Wilson it was definitely worth the risk and he was proved right.

Hannett and the Mondays apparently (according to Shaun Ryder) bonded over an appreciation of house music and ecstasy and an apparent wanting to create something incredible. To be honest a lot of that incredibleness came from Hannett’s production. The way that he stretched their sound and filled the gaps with reverb and spacey echoes. The brilliance of it was that way it pitched itself squarely in the clubs because the band itself deliberately made it sound like they were all on one when they recorded it (which they might well have been).

11. Soup Dragons – I’m Free (#160)

We have the small matter of the next tracks from the No Badger 200 to talk about which starts, like all good Monday mornings should, with a cover version.

Actually, it’s sort of two cover versions rolled into one, as the Soup Dragons version also contains elements of Donovan’s ‘Barabajagal’ as well – but I didn’t know that back then when this first came out. I only knew that ‘I’m Free’ was a Rolling Stones song because after hearing the Soup Dragons version blaring out of my stereo when I was fifteen or so, my dad came into my bedroom and plonked his rather battered vinyl copy of ‘Out of Our Heads’ on the table and said “At least play the original, boy” and then went back to what ever he was doing in the lounge (which was probably watching the cricket).

The Soup Dragons were one of those bands that awoke something inside me. Their success arrived at exactly the right moment in my life, baggy was happening, from here the door opened to bands like the Inspiral Carpets, The La’s the Roses, the Mondays and I barely looked back at my abandoned Fine Young Cannibal’s cassette as they laid no longer loved in my drawer.

Whilst ‘I’m Free’ will always remain my favourite Soup Dragons moment, because of basically where it took me, nowadays I find myself listening more to their earlier, more scuzzy, rockier records, from before they embraced a more dance element.

12. Petula Clark – Downtown (#73)

I’m 50 years old today. I’m not quite sure how I feel about that. Still, its only a number, right?

Right…..?

When I started compiling this nonsense the plan was to reveal the number one today but that all went to rats when I decided that what we really needed to do was to argue about Rocks Greatest R and do a month about protesting. So instead today its all about the number 73 and a little bit about number 72.

Number 73 is a very special number in that it is a prime number and also the name of a formerly anarchic children’s TV show that was filmed in Maidstone that was a staple part of my Saturday mornings when I was much younger than I am now.

Talking of being much younger, this is the only song that I can remember my dad singing to me when I was nipper and its kind of nice that this has appeared today of all days. I was about four when this happened and had an awful nasty cough and couldn’t sleep and so my dad sat me downstairs on the sofa with blankets and a warm lemon and honey drink and sung to me – his voice was surprisingly soft and tuneful. Not bad for a fella who was smoking 20 a day at the time.

13. Arctic Monkeys – Cornerstone (#60)

JC interjects…..there’s no commentary on the actual song as this part of the rundown was near the end of what I hope was an imaginary tale of the debauchary at a 50th birthday party……we’d reached the part where there were court proceedings!

14. Doves – There Goes The Fear (#164)

Some questions in life are difficult to answer.

Like the one about where babies come from when it comes out of the mouth of a five year old on a bus. Or the one that comes from Dave’s wife at midnight asking you where Dave is, because Dave has told his wife that he is with you and you have frankly no idea where Dave is. Both of those questions are normally met with a stutter, an ‘Erm’ and in the latter case, a ludicrous attempt at deflection, (“Oh, I’m glad you phoned Sally because I need to talk to you about, well anything other than where Dave is, because Dave is probably, almost certainly, with Molly the barmaid from the Dog & Duck and he has dropped me right in it”).

But some questions in life are very easy to answer. Like the one I got asked by a so-called friend yesterday

“Do you want to come and see Jesus Jones in Bristol with me?”

To which the only possible answer you can give is, No. I don’t. Unless Jesus Jones are being publicly flogged in middle of Bristol City Centre with massively thorned brambles, then yes, I’d love to.

Having ended another lifelong friendship and reflected on the tough conditions I set upon being sociable, it’s probably time to continue our countdown with a song that is also in a reflective kind of mood.

Doves, of course, have recently released new material, which was kind of ace. Whilst it is good to have them back, their new material doesn’t quite take you to the same sort of places that ‘The Last Broadcast’ did but I don’t think anyone expected it too, music has changed too much for Doves to achieve that sort of success. But when ‘There Goes The Fear’ was released back in 2002, it went straight into the Top Three. The cynical amongst us, would argue that was mainly due to some rather sneaky pricing tactics, but all the same it would be a brave soul who would argue that ‘There Goes The Fear’ didn’t deserve the success it got.

‘There Goes The Fear’ was one of those songs that took the listener on a journey. It was always more than just a song. It starts brilliantly with that sparkling intro riff before turning into a seven minute dance music inspired trip that tells a tale of a man who has woken up to the fact that his life has passed him by and from there a melancholy masterpiece unfolds and then a few years later they very nearly did all over again, when their atmospheric single ‘Black and White Town’, a single about growing up on council estates rocketed into the Top Ten.

 

JC/SWC

Various

SONGS OF PROTESTING AND SURVIVING…

A guest posting by Mopyfop

mp3: Various – Songs of Protesting and Surviving

A mix of tracks about drink, drugs, the availability of handguns, the threat of conventional & nuclear war, industrial & city decline and racism.  It sounds depressing, but it really is a good listen, and at 132mb great for your mp3 player or phone.

I don’t like Mondays – the Boomtown Rats
The revolution will not be televised – Gil Scot Herron
Born in the USA – Bruce Springsteen
Allentown – Billy Joel
Shipbuilding – Robert Wyatt
Good technology – The red guitars
Radioactivity (live) – Kraftwerk
After the Goldrush – Neil Young
Black Hole Sun – Soundgarden
King of the World – Steely Dan
Breathing – Kate Bush
The eve of destruction – Barry McGuire
Blowing in the wind – Bob Dylan and friends at Live Aid
Ghost town – The Specials
Sense of belonging – The TV personalities
Swimming pools drank – Kendrick Lamar
I’m waiting for my man – The Velvet Underground
Under the bridge – The Red hot chilli peppers
The Unforgettable Fire – U2
Sign of the times – Prince
Living for the City – Stevie Wonder

 

Mobyfop

 

Various

CHARDONNAY OR SHOULD I GO…..

A guest posting by sk

JC writes…….

It was back in December 2024 that sk, another of the regular readers, contributed his first guest posting.  It was a superbly curated mix of sixteen tunes consisting entirely of performers who hadn’t featured previously on TVV….and I’m delighted to say that he’s back and that I’m able to offer up, for the second successive day, a posting from Germany.

– – – – – – –

A little over a year ago, I had the opportunity to present a mix here featuring songs that hadn’t yet appeared on this blog, but which, in my opinion, should or could have. Since then, I’ve put such songs aside. Recently, I realized that I’d reached the critical mass for another mix. It’s mostly punk and post-punk from USA, but luckily there were also a few pop songs to round things out harmoniously. To check if a song has already been played on this blog, I use the excellent search function. With Terry, I’m relying on luck.

Since everything I know about the English language came from a special edition of Calvin & Hobbes that I once found in the recycling bin, I usually don’t pay much attention to the lyrics (You didn’t find that funny? Then you’re right. I once used it in a job interview, and they didn’t laugh either). Since all the songs come from trusted sources — I’m certain, for example, that Marie Davidson‘s song is from Khayem‘s blog, Dubhed — I assume that none of the lyrics offend anyone. At least not in a negative way.

mp3: Various – Chardonnay or Should I Go?

Operator Music Band – Bebop Radiohaus
Terry – Bureau
Lithics – Hands
Snooper – Worldwide
PAL – Live Laugh Wine
CLAMM  – Something New
Osees – Funeral Solution
Alan Vega – Ghost Rider
Marie Davidson – Work It (Soulwax Remix)
Kool Moe Dee – I Go To Work (single edit)
Water From Your Eyes – Playing Classics
Hannah Cohen – Summer Sweat
Tennis – Runner
The Crystal Furs – California Misses You
Bernthøler – My Suitor
The Caravelles – Don’t Blow Your Cool

Enjoy

sk

 

Various

THE RESPLENDENT RETURN OF LITTLE LOSER’S LOTTERY : #8

aka The Vinyl Villain incorporating Sexy Loser

‘GIGS FROM YESTERYEAR, WHEN I WAS YOUNG + PRETTY AS A PICTURE’

# 08 Bizarre Festival, Waldstadion Gießen (June 1991)

Prior to sharing Dirk‘s latest offering (which he sent over early last week before his trip to Scotland), I wanted to thank everyone for their best wishes via the comments section in respect of the post which announced said visit.  I won’t go into any detail about what the day we spent together, along with Mrs Loser and two other friends from his home village in Germany, but it did involve twelve hours all told, taking in a number of sites in Edinburgh (23,000 steps!, stopping off in ten pubs along the way, and all the while chatting about life, love, the universe and music. It was wonderful……and here now is the man himself to regale you with a tale of a festival he went to in 1991.

Dear friends,

I won’t brag too much today, promised:

a) you know all the bands anyway, at least you should. So finding some good tunes by them is more worthwhile, I’d reckon.

b) I still got some work to do before I head for Scotland tomorrow morning – the boss called me in, the mighty Vinyl Villain himself, so let’s hope it’s the promotion I’ve been looking for!

So, without further ado, the Bizarre Festival: contrary to ‘Rock am Ring’ and other smaller festivals, the Bizarre Festival has always been Germany’s No. 1 festival when it comes to independent and/or gothic. It started in 1987 and for fours years it was held at a most fantastic venue, an open air amphitheatre at the top of the Loreley, a 130-meter-hill right at the banks of the river Rhine:

But the event got bigger and bigger and in 1991 the organisers had to go elsewhere, and they chose Gießen’s football stadium, the Waldbühne. Obviously the location was not comparable, but on the plus side they added an additional day. I can’t remember which band I was there with, it was either Cassandra Complex or The Dubrovniks, but no matter – fun was had, believe me, as well in the backstage area as with this awesome line up:

Alarm, A Witness, Bad Religion, Cassandra Complex, Danzig, Dubrovniks, Freaky Fukin Weirdos, Goodies, House Of Love, Iggy Pop, Immaculate Fools, Jesus Jones, Lush, New Model Army, 999, Pixies, Plan B, Rausch, Ride, Stereo MC’s, Stiff Little Fingers, Throw That Beat In The Garbagecan!

I wish I could tell you that The Pixies and/or Iggy were the highlight, but to my great dismay: no. It was – and i get goosebumps even some 35 years later by the sheer thought of it – seeing Lush’s Miki Berenyi in all of her stunning beauty:

Ah, well: one of the finer moments in my life, this, to be sure!

But I digress, I tried to find some tunes that you probably don’t hear all that often: I mean, it would not make much sense to provide you with ‘Lust For Life’ or ‘Where Is My Mind’ again, right? Instead:

A Witness – ‘Lucky In London’ (’85)
Bad Religion – ‘Sorrow’ (’01)
House Of Love – ‘Love In A Car’ (’88)
Iggy Pop & Underworld – ‘Bells & Circles’ (’18)
Jesus Jones – ‘International Bright Young Thing’ (’91)
Lush – ‘Outdoor Miner’ (’91)
Pixies – ‘Monkey Gone To Heaven’ (Mark Goodier Session ’90)
Ride – ‘Taste’ (’90)
Stiff Little Fingers – ‘Doesn’t Make It Alright’ (’79)

Enjoy,

 

Dirk

 

 

#edwyncollins45s

THE TESTIMONIAL TOUR OF 45s (aka The Singular Adventures of Edwyn Collins)

#33: Do It Again : Edwyn Collins (Heavenly Records, HVN 211, 2010)

I made mention last week of just how many folk came forward with offers to help Edwyn write and record songs for his seventh studio album, Losing Sleep.

Two of those were Alex Kapranos and Nick McCarthy of Franz Ferdinand. Back in 2010, their band was possibly at the height of their popularity, with three albums (all of which went to either #1 or #2) and nine Top 20 singles to their name.  The song they co-wrote with Edwyn for the album was catchy enough. It starts off as if it’s a typically upbeat Edwyn song and then the chorus, in which the FF boys come in on lead vocals, sounds like one of theirs.

mp3: Edwyn Collins – Do It Again

If there’s a criticism to be offered, it’s that the joins are very obvious and visible, and in some ways this detracts from the end result, but there’s no doubt that the EC/FF collaboration did draw some welcome attention to the new album.  It also spawned a fabulous video  – check out the 70s porn star moustache above Alex’s top lip, and also Paul Cook, at the age of 54 (as he was at the time) looking neat and sharp in his suit as he pounded the drums.

The b-side was an exclusive track. Written solely by Edwyn, it is one of his real hidden treasures. It’s a fairly lengthy number, coming in at well over five minutes, and the music has that sound and mood of a piece of music that would fit perfectly on some sort of film or TV programme soundtrack. I’m not entirely sure, but it may well be a song that was written and recorded some years previously, before Edwyn was struck down, as his voice sounds much stronger than on the Losing Sleep tracks, and the impressive, 60’s-style guitar work and production values are very familiar to those of us who had been keeping up with his career at all times.

mp3: Edwyn Collins – You’re Gonna Love This One

Released only on 7″ vinyl and housed in a plain brown cardboard sleeve, this time with a green label and the jukebox-style middle.

 

 

JC

Life Model

SATURDAY’S SCOTTISH SONG : #504: LIFE MODEL

As was said on the previous occasion they were mentioned on the blog, Life Model have been making music for quite a while, having been named as ‘one to watch’ in 2018 by BBC Radio Scotland. But it took till 2021 for the debut album to come out, on Last Night From Glasgow, whose website provides as good a summary as you could ask for:-

Life Model are a 5-piece dream pop band from Glasgow, made up of Sophie Evans (vocals and guitar), Chris Smith (guitar), Helen Farrow-Thoms (keys and backing vocals), Cameron McDougall (bass) and Michael McDonald (drums). The band mixes classic indie and pop of the likes of The Sundays and Belle and Sebastian with the noisier leanings of bands like Sonic Youth.

I’ve been hoping for something new to emerge over the past five years, but with nothing having been posted on Facebook since 31 December 2021, it does, rather sadly, feel as if their time has come and gone.

mp3: Life Model – Lucky

One not from their debut (and only) album, Lost On Weekdays, Lonely By Sunday, but instead was released as part of the Indietracks Compilation back in 2018.

 

JC

 

Grandaddy

NINE YEARS ON…..

Thursday 4 – Sunday 7 May 2017

The First Big Bloggers Weekend in Glasgow.  Attended at various times by quite a few locals, along with Walter, Dirk, Brian and Adam, who came over from Germany, Germany, USA and England respectively.  So many wonderful memories.

Today will see me catch up again with Dirk for the first time since then.  Plans to do so a couple of years back were thwarted when a trip to Germany by myself and Rachel, where we could see both Dirk and Walter, had to be postponed when the flights were cancelled at 48 hours notice. There’s been a couple of other attempts that have, for one reason or another, fallen by the wayside, but finally it all comes together today.

Dirk, along with his wife and a couple of their friends are visiting Edinburgh this weekend.  They will have arrived yesterday and, with the help of Aldo, have been given a few suggestions as to where to go in and around the vicinity of their temporary abode on their first evening.  Today, I’ll be heading through to meet up with them and give them a slightly wider tour of the city, taking in Leith, Stockbridge and the New Town….they have also been given some suggestions as to how best occupy themselves on Saturday and Sunday.

The catch-up will certainly take my mind off the outcome of the election results (the count in Scotland gets underway later today), and I’m incredibly excited to be meeting up with my great friend after such a long time.

mp3: Grandaddy – Everything Beautiful Is Faraway

Today’s song is from Grandaddy‘s debut album, Under The Western Freeway.   It was one of 21 songs picked out by Dirk for inclusion on his Contrast Podcast Compilation CD back in 2009.  The Contrast Podcast was a brilliant exercise in worldwide friendship, organised by Tim Young (living in Switzerland) and often assisted by Fil Hemming (living in Canada) which began in 2006 (waaaaay before these things became popular and trendy) involving numerous contributors, giving a spoken introduction to a song of their choice on a particular theme.

There were a couple of occasions when we all had to burn a CD of songs and post it overseas to one of the other contributors. On one such occasion, I was lucky enough to be the recipient of Dirk’s CD which, as instructed by Tim, had to consist entirely of singers/bands with a particular letter of the alphabet, in this instance ‘G’.

I do miss those days and often wonder what the various contributors are up to, albeit I know some do occasionally pop into TVV.

We’ll certainly be offering a toast to absent friends at some point today.

 

JC

Chumbawamba, Heaven 17

IT’S ELECTION DAY IN THE UK

 

It’s not a General Election to bring in a Westminster government, but will see voters in Scotland and Wales electing politicians to the Scottish Parliament and Senedd Cymru respectively, while many voters in England will be electing local councillors and/or mayors.

The polls are predicting massive gains for the right-wing in the shape of Reform UK.  We are living in distressing and dangerous times.

mp3: Chumbawamba – Bella Ciao
mp3: Heaven 17 – (We Don’t Need This) Fascist Groove Thang

I suspect I’m not the only one posting these tunes today.  If you do have a vote today, please go out there and use it sensibly and effectively.

JC

Stereolab

FOUR TRACK MIND : A RANDOM SERIES OF EXTENDED PLAY SINGLES

A guest series by Fraser Pettigrew (aka our New Zealand correspondent)

#17: Stereolab – The Free Design (1999)

A beneficial by-product of writing this series on EPs has been the pleasant rediscovery of records that I hadn’t listened to in quite a while. And in the case of The Free Design by Stereolab, seemingly not ever listened to properly and realising how much better it was than I remembered.

The Free Design was the lead single from Stereolab’s sixth full-length studio album Cobra And Phases Group Play Voltage In The Milky Night. Not only did the band’s penchant for absurd album titles reach new heights, the music also further extended the rhythmic sophistication and multi-instrumental arrangements from preceding album Dots And Loops.

Like Dots And Loops and Emperor Tomato Ketchup before that, Cobra And Phases was produced by Tortoise drummer John McEntire, this time with the additional assistance of alternative-guitarist-at-large Jim O’Rourke. Emperor Tomato Ketchup was apparently also the first time Stereolab used loops rather than drones as compositional starters, although the overall effect on the music isn’t as marked as the shift that occurred on Dots And Loops, where more complex rhythms including some synthetic percussion (even flirting with drum’n’bass styles), brass arrangements, and a slicker studio sound stood out.

Cobra And Phases continued that movement with repeated use of somewhat staccato Latin-jazz rhythms and modal vocal melodies that led some critics to bemoan a lack of variety across the album. Without having read any such criticism I nevertheless leapt to a similar conclusion myself, feeling that the hitherto felicitous blend of 60s French pop and German avant-garde had skewed towards too much easy listening and not enough Krautrock for my liking.

Given that barely two or three weeks would have passed between my purchase of The Free Design and the arrival of the album, I suspect that the EP never got many spins before my disappointment with the LP tainted it by association. Imagine my surprise and delight, therefore, when I slapped it on again for the first time in many years, at rather higher than intended volume, and thought cor blimey, what a ripper, or whatever it is that young people say these days.

Granted, the title track is practically the archetype of the pseudo-samba style that was overused on the album and through subsequent years, but it is one of the catchiest iterations of the template, definite single material, embellished with almost Dexys-like brass parts. Straight after that, however, we plunge into a delightfully squelchy synth-heavy romp on Escape Pod (From The World of Medical Observations) which really popped at volume, reminding me that I tend to listen to music too much in the background instead of up at 11 on the amp so it flays the skin off your face. Plays havoc with my hearing aids but fuck it, yer a lang time deef, to coin a Scots phrase.

The B-side tracks are both well along the pop tune spectrum but in a more relaxed tempo than the lead track. With Friends Like These is a quaint little diatribe, showing extreme intolerance for the intolerant, hating on the haters, all beneath the jauntiest little tune and sweet arrangement. Les Aimies Des Mêmes is a bit more downbeat, built around a bass line that could have been lifted from a Blaxploitation soundtrack, and concluding with a distinctly jazzy muted trumpet solo.

The Free Design, in case you aren’t already aware of the title reference, was a family vocal group in the late 1960s and early 70s that had little commercial success but enjoyed a renaissance in recent years thanks to artists such as Stereolab, Beck and Sean O’Hagan namechecking them. They were probably too musically complex to have made the mainstream breakthrough at the time but their sophisticated arrangements and time signatures – think The Beach Boys and Swingle filtered through Benjamin Britten and modern jazz – made them ripe for retro rediscovery. Needless to say, the lyrics of the song have absolutely nothing to do with them.

As with Miss Modular, the lead single from Dots And Loops, The Free Design EP came in 12” format rather than the 10” EPs that preceded Emperor Tomato Ketchup (Cybele’s Reverie), Mars Audiac Quintet (Ping Pong) and Transient Random-Noise Bursts (Jenny Ondioline). Like those previous two lead singles you could get the 12” of The Free Design in any colour of vinyl so long as it was black. Cobra and Phases was also only issued in black vinyl, limited to 7000, unlike the spangly yellow Emperor Tomato Ketchup and the minty green and white Dots and Loops. In 1999, Vinyl was approaching its near-extinction and the modern fetish for colour was a long way off.

Having found the EP more to my liking than I had remembered, I went back and replayed the album, motivated also by the discovery in an interview that Tim Gane regarded it as the Stereolab work he was most proud of. With all this encouragement, I wasn’t surprised to find that the album held more pleasures than my memory had allowed, including the long avant-garde track Blue Milk, a succession of monorythmic variations throbbing on for over 11 minutes. Mrs P pleaded with me to make it stop after about 5, but she was out of luck. Our marriage endures in spite of it all.

The Free Design

Escape Pod (From The World of Medical Observations)

With Friends Like These

Les Aimies Des Mêmes

 

 

Fraser

Age Of Chance, Clouds, Happy Mondays, McCarthy, St Christopher

C86 : THE ULTIMATE SERIES (Parts 29, 30, 31, 32 and 33 of 114)

The backstory of McCarthy was told a short time ago in the post that covered Parts 15-17 of the series, thanks to Celestial City being part of the C86 cassette.

I mentioned how their earliest recordings were on The Pink Label.

mp3: Frans Hals – McCarthy

Track 21, Disc 2 of CD 86

This, in March 1987, was the band’s second and final single for The Pink Label, and it reached #4 on the Indie Singles Chart. It had the catalogue number of PINKY 17.  There would only be two further releases on the label before owner Simon Down closed it down, with spend having far outweighed income.

Yup….Cherry Red Records managed to get a Happy Mondays track licensed for inclusion on the 2014 boxset.

mp3: Freaky Dancin’ – Happy Mondays

Track 11, Disc Three of C86 The Deluxe 3CD Edition.

The band, of course, shot to fame via what was known to all and sundry as Madchester, but just a few years previously, they had been regarded as a good fit for the C86 scene, particularly the shambolic element.

Signed to Factory Records in 1985, Freaky Dancin’/The Egg was their second single for the label, hitting the shops in June 1986.  The catalogue number was FAC 142. It sold in such dismal numbers that it didn’t even make the Top 30 of the Indie Singles Chart.   Even today, second-hand copies of both the 7″ and 12″ releases can be had for reasonable amounts.

The backstory of Age of Chance was told a short time ago in the post that covered Parts 7-10 of the series, thanks to Bible of The Beats being included on the CD86 release compiled and curated by Bob Stanley in 2006. I did, in that previous post, mention that the band were one of those who had contributed to the C86 cassette:-

mp3: From Now On, This Will Be Your God – Age of Chance

Track 11 on side 1 of the C86 cassette; Track 11, Disc One of C86 The Deluxe 3CD Edition.

As far as I’m aware, not released on any of the band’s subsequent singles or studio albums.

The Clouds, from Glasgow, were a short-lived band whose recording legacy was just one half of a flexidisc and three songs on a single issued by the Bristol-based The Subway Organisation in January 1988.

mp3: Get Out Of My Dream – The Clouds

Track 9, Disc 1 of CD 86

It’s actually one of the two songs on the b-side, with the a-side being Tranquil. Released in February 1984, it was also just the second single to be released by Subway, a label that would continue through to 1990.  Four of the compilation albums/boxsets I have covering this period/or the indie genre contain Get Out Of My Dream.

St. Christopher are from York, an historical Cathedral City in the north of England. They formed in 1984, with their first three singles coming out on their own Bluegrass label:-

mp3 : Go Ahead Cry – St. Christopher

Track 16, Disc Three of C86 The Deluxe 3CD Edition.

This was their third single, and came out in 1986.  The band would later sign with Sarah Records, releasing the 7″ singles You Deserve More Than A Maybe (SARAH 15) and All Of A Tremble (SARAH 20) in 1989, followed by the 7″ single Antoinette (SARAH 34) and the 10″ mini-EP, Bacharach (SARAH 403) in 1990, and finally the 7″ single Say Yes To Everything (SARAH 46) in 1991.

They would later record for a number of other famous indie-labels including Slumberland, Cloudberry, Vinyl Japan and Elefant.

The most recent album, Of Angels and Kings, was self-released in 2021. Like almost all bands who have been active for such a long time, the membership has changed a few times, but the one constant has been singer and main songwriter, Glenn Melia.

 

JC

Various

WHAT I LISTENED TO WHEN I WAS 17….

A guest posting by Mopyfop

mp3: Various – What Mobyfof listened to when he was 17

Prince – 1999
The Psychedelic Furs – Love my way
The Human League – the things that dreams are made of
Simple Minds – I travel
Thomas Dolby – Flying North
Blancmange – Living on the ceiling
Adam Ant – Stand and deliver
The Undertones – You’ve got my number, why don’t you use it?
The Damned – Love song
Motorhead – Ace of spades
Echo & the Bunnymen – The Back of Love
Associates – Party fears two
Public Image Ltd. – Public image
The Clash – London calling
Elvis Costello & the Attractions – Pump it up
The Cure – A forest
David Bowie – Rock n’ roll Suicide

 

Mobyfop

 

#edwyncollins45s

THE TESTIMONIAL TOUR OF 45s (aka The Singular Adventures of Edwyn Collins)

#32: Losing Sleep : Edwyn Collins (Heavenly Records, HVN 205, 2010)

13 September 2010 would see the release of Losing Sleep, the seventh studio album by Edwyn Collins. It was the first completely new album after his illnesses, and such was the love, affection and esteem that he was held in that many musicians went out of their way to contribute to the record, either by helping to write the songs and/or turning up to West Heath Studio, the facility owned and run by Edwyn, to participate in the recording.

A few names…..ex-Sex Pistol Paul Cook on drums, and when he wasn’t banging away, you’d find Dave Ruffy (The Ruts and Aztec Camera among others.Alex Kapranos and Nick McCarthy (Franz Ferdinand), Johnny Marr, Ryan Jarman (The Cribs), Romeo Stoddart (The Magic Numbers), Barrie Cadogan (at the time part of Primal Scream) and Jacob Graham, Connor Hanwick and Jonathan Pierce, all members of The Drums.  Then there was Carwyn Ellis, Sean Read and Andy Hackett, who to this day remain involved with Edwyn in the studio and on the road.

The title track from the album was released as the advance single in mid-August.  An upbeat foot-stomper with a nod to Northern Soul complete with a great backbeat and brass courtesy of a trumpet and saxophone, with the lyric referring to the troubles of recent years, but without an iota of self-pity.

mp3: Edwyn Collins – Losing Sleep

Released only on 7″ vinyl and housed in a plain brown cardboard sleeve with a yellow label and a jukebox-style middle.  The design would prove to be common to the next two singles, both of which were lifted from the album.

The b-side contained an instrumental version of the song

mp3: Edwyn Collins – Losing Sleep (instrumental)

CDs were still the way that most folk bought singles in 2010, and so his decision to go with a vinyl only release may well have cost Edwyn the chance to have a hit single as there really was a lot of interest in what he was doing and who he was working with at this point in time.

 

JC

Lichen Slow

SATURDAY’S SCOTTISH SONG : #503: LICHEN SLOW

Here’s a short bio lifted from All Music, that was written by Marcy Donelsen:-

Lichen Slow’s sombre atmospheres and ruminations are the creation of members of Arab Strap and Team Leader. The U.K. duo presented their self-produced full-length debut, Rest Lurks, in 2023.

With backgrounds in styles spanning sadcore, instrumental noise, and folktronica, Scotland’s Malcolm Middleton (Arab Strap) and England’s Joel Harries (Team Leader, 72%) formed Lichen Slow in the early 2020s and quickly went to work on their debut album. Shaping acoustic and electronic instrumentation into a reflective indie rock that complemented their calmly disconsolate lyrics, Rest Lurks arrived on the Rock Action label in March 2023. It was produced and mixed by Harries.

It’s an album on which both musicians often address their many bouts with mental health issues, which means it isn’t the cheeriest of albums that I’ve ever bought, but many of the songs are rather lovely in the way they have been produced and recorded.

mp3: Lichen Slow – Hobbies 

 

JC

 

Fictive Fridays, Various

FICTIVE FRIDAYS : #15

a guest series, courtesy of a very friendly lawyer

Today’s set was all queued up to start off with ‘Do The Du” by A Certain Ratio. Then the New Zealand correspondent served up a solid post featuring that EP in his excellent Four Track Mind series. So just imagine you heard the ACR tune before all of the following ones.

WHAT TO DO

Do The Strand – Roxy Music.

Lead off track and only single from Roxy’s second album, For Your Pleasure. Everything about it is awesome, including the great bass line by John Porter. It’s a shame Porter didn’t become a permanent band member, but he went on to a lot of success as a producer for the Smiths, Billy Bragg, Killing Joke, and then a load of blues legends (BB King, John Lee Hooker, Taj Mahal, Buddy Guy & co.).

Do The Dog – Specials.

Second track on the eponymous debut album, produced by Elvis Costello. It’s credited to “Rufus Thomas, arrangement by Jerry Dammers.” Not sure why—the Coventry ska merchants’ song bears no resemblance to Thomas’s 1963 Stax single.

Do The European – JJ Burnel.

The Stranglers bassist was the first of the band to release a solo record, Euroman Cometh (1979). It was a concept album of sorts, about the possibilities of a united Europe. The not-the-subtlest-guy-ever wrote in the liner notes: “A Europe riddled with american values and soviet subversion is a diseased sycophantic old whore: a Europe strong, united and independent is a child of the future.” Okay, JJ.

Do The Evolution – Pearl Jam.

Some kinda half-baked screed about technology. Or something. Hard to ever really say what Eddie Vedder is going on about, but he’s all in on the vocals. A raucous number from 1998’s Yield.

Do The Panic – Phantom Planet.

This song has a tricky little history. It was written by PP frontman Alex Greenwald and drummer Jason Schwartzman (the actor) for a 2001 black and white indie film, Don’s Plum, starring Leonardo DiCaprio. Then the band included it on their fanclub-only release Negatives in 2004. Then they recorded new lyrics and put it on their 2008 album Raise The Dead, which is the version in this set.

Do The Q – Welcome Back.

Can’t tell you much about Welcome Back. They’re apparently a trio from Denver, Colorado. Tinder in the Ashtray (2024) is their only album to date. Despite their relative obscurity they’ve got a super laid back, pretty sound reminiscent of, say, Real Estate, and Los Angeles’s dearly missed Acetone.

Do The Reggay – The Maytals.

Let’s go WAY back to 1968 for this single, purportedly the first popular song to use a variation of the word “reggae.” Toots Hibbert wrote it and hinted that the word equates to “raggedy” and was Jamaican slang for a scruffy person.

Do The Trick – Dr. Dog.

This under-the-radar Philly band is hard to categorize. Or maybe easy to categorize since they’ve been called psychedelic, indie, bluegrass, lo-fi, alt-country, pop, and lots of other descriptors. Whatever—they’re a solid act that have been together for 25 years and have released a boatload of records. They must have a great agent because their songs constantly show up in movies and on TV shows. From their sixth studio LP, Be the Void (2012).

Do The Vampire – Superdrag.

Sort of what grunge sounds like if you come from Tennessee. For their second LP, Head Trips in Every Key (1998), Superdrag enlisted doomed pop-punk producer Jerry Finn, who’d go on to produce for Green Day, Blink-182 and their ilk. Not sure what the song is about, but vampires were popular in the 90’s.

Do The Whirlwind – Architecture in Helsinki.

From the band’s second album, In Case We Die (2005). At this point in their too-short career, AiH were an octet with a full horn section, in addition to other non-rock instruments like glockenspiel, flute, and clarinet. The Australian band arrived at their name by cutting up and rearranging newspaper headlines.

Bonus track: Do The Astral Plane – Flying Lotus.

Haven’t heard a lot from FlyLo for a minute. His last studio release was 2019’s Flamagra. But I have a soft spot in my heart for the guy for two reasons. First, he CRUSHED it at Coachella in 2012 and was a highlight of the festival. Then, six months later, he personally intervened to get underage and possibly high on ecstasy Sam into a show at the Congress Theater in Chicago, where Sam had just moved to go to art school. An album side from 2010’s critically acclaimed Cosmogramma.

 

Jonny