Long and complicated post alert!!!
The story of the earliest Tindersticks singles is a fascinating one, not least for the variety of labels on which they were issued.
November 1992 saw the debut, Milky Teeth/Patchwork, a double-A sided 7″ single on their own Tippy Toe label. There were two pressings, with each run providing 500 copies, both of which sold out very quickly.
March 1993 saw the release of Marbles, on 10″ vinyl via a joint venture between Tippy Toe and the London-based indie, ché . Later in the year, in September 1993, it was given an American release, this time on 7″, courtesy of the New York-based, No. 6 Records.
March 1993 was also the month when they made a contribution to the Rough Trade Singles Club, with the 7″ release of A Marriage Made In Heaven, on which Niki Sin of Huggy Bear provided a co-vocals. I wasn’t aware until doing the bit of research for this post that Stuart Staples, the band’s singer and chief songwriter, was working in the Rough Trade shop at this point in time and that the label was keen to finance the debut album.
The band went into a London-based studio in May 1993 to record the debut album, which was going to come out on This Way Up Records, an indie-imprint label that was part of the much larger Universal stable, but before the ink had dried on the contract, a further single had been recorded for release, in June 1993, on Domino, and it’s that particular 7″ which is the subject of today’s posting.
The Unwired EP contains four tracks, one on the A-side and three on the b-side. There was supposed to only be 1500 copies pressed up, all of which were hand-numbered with a stamp, but there are claims on Discogs of people owning numbers that are stamped higher than 1500. My copy just comes in under the threshold at 1401.
mp3: Tindersticks – Feeling Relatively Good
mp3: Tindersticks – Rottweilers and Mace
mp3: Tindersticks – Kooks
mp3 : Tindersticks – She
Three of the songs are Tindersticks originals, with the exception being their take on Kooks, a song originally written and recorded by David Bowie for the 1971 album, Hunky Dory. It’s a one in which Bowie tries to capture his feelings of excitement and nervousness about becoming a new dad. I’ve said before when writing about Kooks that it might not be one of his greatest compositions in the grand scheme of things, but there’s just something very touching about the lyric that, over the year, must have put smiles on the faces of many new sets of parents.
It has to be said that the four songs on Unwired are a less polished than the songs that would appear on the debut album.
A lot less polished. And that’s me being kind.
I’m not sure if there were plans to revisit all three of the original songs again in the studio under the guidance of producer Ian Caple and develop them further. In the end, it was only She that was re-recorded and in its new form, it was given the title of Her.
If, for nothing else, the EP is an artefact worth having for this very early version of what quickly became one of the most popular songs recorded by Tindersticks, one that would find itself the subject of two separate takes in BBC Radio sessions a well as being part of most live shows.
Before the year was out, Tindersticks would appear on yet another label – Clawfist – with one side of a 7″ single featuring their take on We Have All The Time In The World, the Louis Armstrong song from 1969 that had featured in the James Bond film On Her Majesty’s Secret Service. The other side of the single was taken up by Gallon Drunk, whose brass player, Terry Edwards, would make a very significant contribution to the Tindersticks debut album.
The Clawfist single came out in October 1983, a month after the single City Sickness became the first Tindersticks release for This Way Up.
By my reckoning, that was five singles across 1993, all of them on different labels. It’s worth mentioning in passing that while future singles for the rest of the decade would be on This Way Up, or Island Records, which was another part of the Universal empire, Tindersticks somehow found a way to issue a 45, with the title of The Smooth Sound Of Tindersticks, on the Sub Pop label in 1995.
THE NEW VINYL VILLAIN 
I was introduced the Tindersticks via the single Milky Teeth / Patchwork. I wasn’t with the in-crowd to be able to get an actual copy of the single. Bah! However, I was smitten.
I’m not sure if I was aware of so many singles released across one year although it may explain the gaps in my collection – not enough pennies to buy them all.
I have Unwired but don’t know the number.
The mention of Gallon Drunk recalls the gig at the QMU in 1993 with Silverfish and Therapy? (as headliners, I think?) I was there for Silverfish – many more were there for Gallon Drunk. I know I had a great night but can’t recollect too much about it.
I found information from The List (see link below). Lesley rankine refers to the tour as “Bigmoneylooza, first dahn the booza”. Apparently it was also known as “Sexdrugsandbooza ‘93” The same piece confirms Therapy? as the main band, although it had initially been planned to have a rotating line-up before Therapy? had a hit single. £7 a ticket.
http://archive.list.co.uk.s3-website.eu-west-2.amazonaws.com/the-list/1993-03-12/29/
Flimflamfan
Kooks is such a lovely, naive, bedsit strum of a track! Feeling Relatively Good is quiet and resigned, bubbles under with some urgency in a Leonard Cohen sort of way. She was the sound of things to come.