Another new, likely to be occasional, feature. It’s an excuse to just reach back to that period in history where I sort of got a second wind, just after my 40th birthday, fully believing that a fresh wave of guitar and indie bands were not only going to get me really excited but that they were about to defy the norm by being part of the musical landscape for many years to come.
I’m not going to use the series to post long and flowing (or otherwise) pieces about any band or particular song. I’d prefer just to offer up a few salient facts and let the music speak for itself.
I’m opening things up with a song that actually cracked the charts on two separate occasions just twelve months apart.
It was July 2005 when Blood became the third single released by Editors, a band that had come together a couple of years earlier from meeting up while studying Music Technology at Staffordshire University in the English midlands. Editors wasn’t their first choice of name….it wasn’t even their second or third name under which they recorded and performed. But it was the one which they settled on after signing to Kitchenware Records in the autumn of 2004.
The single reached #18 on its release. The poor state of the sale of singles at the time can be illustrated by the fact that Blood spent just four weeks in the Top 75, and sold less than 6000 copies in its first week of release, and this at a time before the debut album was in the shops. The re-release came in June 2006, as a limited edition offering with previously unreleased b-sides (including cover versions) and was very much as a ploy to get radio airplay to boost sales of said debut album, The Back Room, which had just dropped out of the Top 100 after a long stint. The ploy worked in that Blood came back into the charts at #39 and the album re-entered the Top 100 for another 12-week run while the band played the summer festivals.
I didn’t buy either version of the single at the time, but I have since picked up the 7″ release from the first time around, It seemingly had a pressing of just 3000 copies.
mp3: Editors – Blood
mp3: Editors – Forest Fire
Much to my disappointment, the b-side isn’t a cover of a Lloyd Cole & the Commotions number.
THE NEW VINYL VILLAIN 
Editors are one of those bands that I kind of forget about (despite having the first four albums) until I have arummage or a reminder like this. Then I listen and remember why I bought the albums. Great stuff.
Like you, I felt the guitar revival in this period was like CPR for my love of music. Looking forward to further posts in this series.
Wasn’t it a great time musically – Franz Ferdinand, Bloc Party, Futureheads, Kaiser Chiefs, The Editors, like you both it revitalised my music heart rate and brought excitement back to gig going.
The first Editors track I ever heard was All Sparks, I was so blown away by, what I heard as a update of the sounds of Post Punk from 80/81, that I immediately back tracked to get my hands on anything/everything released to that point. I was immediately hooked.
When I got to Blood, memories of the first time I heard Adrian Borland and The Sound came rushing at me.
Of that “Class of ’05” – Editors are the band that I have stuck with now for 16 years.