The Mighty Lemon Drops formed in Wolverhampton and were active from 1985 to 1992, releasing twelve singles (three of which reached the Top 75) and five albums (two of which went Top 60), having been picked up quickly by a major label impressed by a self-recorded cassette and a debut single. Their ascent was rapid, but they never quite delivered on the hopes or expectations of their label executives.
The cassette had initially been sold at gigs and then made available via mail order. By the end of 1985, and after just a few months playing together, recorded a single for Dreamworld Records, the new name of the former Whaam! Records that had been set up back in 1981 by Dan Treacy of The Television Personalities.
Said single, Like An Angel, led to an offer from Geoff Travis, head of Rough Trade Records, to sign for the label Blue Guitar, an offshoot of Chrysalis Records, and which was supposed to operate like an indie. At the same time, the band was asked to sign for Sire Records for the USA market. While all this was going on, they recorded this:-
mp3: Happy Head – Mighty Lemon Drops
Track 2 on side 1 of the C86 cassette; Track 2, Disc One of C86 The Deluxe 3CD Edition.
The song would later be re-recorded for the debut album, also called Happy Head, and which reached #58 on its release in October 1986.
The rest of the Mighty Lemon Drops story will be told when they next appear in this series,
The Raw Herbs were from London, and they released four singles between 1986 and 1988, the first three of which were on Medium Cool Records, a London-based label that was home to quite a number of bands associated with the C86 movement. Their final single, The Second Time, was issued on Rooster Records, which must have been their own label, as there was never anything else released on that imprint:-
mp3: He Blows In – The Raw Herbs
Track 12, Disc 1 of CD86.
He Blows In was actually the b-side of that final single.
I suppose that if you only release one single in your existence and years later one of its two songs makes it onto a 3CD compilation which sells in decent numbers, then that’s got to be considered a decent outcome:-
mp3: Heartache – Lawrence & The Comfortable Society
Track 14, Disc Three of C86 The Deluxe 3CD Edition.
A self-released single, not even on any sort of recognised label, back in 1986. Heartache was actually the b-side of the single. There’s not much about Lawrence & The Comfortable Society out there, but the info on the back of the sleeve gives the names of the five musicians as well as a contact telephone number.
Pigbros, from Birmingham, formed in 1984 and broke up in 1988. Their debut release, The Blubberhouses EP, came out in 1985 on the Blackpool-based Vinyl Drip Records, that had been founded by John Robb of The Membranes (who were featured a little earlier on in this series).
Track 14, Disc Two of C86 The Deluxe 3CD Edition.
This was the lead track on The Blubberhouses EP. Pigbros would later release three more singles and one album on the little-known and short-lived Cake Records, as well as recording two sessions for John Peel.
The fact that I’m reduced to using the image for the C86 boxset should be a good indication of how little there is out there on this lot:-
mp3: Hep Clothes – The Love Act
Track 24, Disc Three of C86 The Deluxe 3CD Edition.
There are no singles or albums by The Love Act on Discogs. Their only other appearance other than the boxset is on a live compilation album called Communicate!!! Live At Thames Poly, which was released on the Thames Poly Students Union label in 1985. Their contribution was Hep Clothes.
However, one of the band members was Nicholas Wroe, who later became a journalist. In 2014, when the boxset was released, he penned a piece in The Guardian in which he explained that, out of the blue, he was contacted and asked if he has been a member of The Love Act. It turned out that Neil Taylor, the ex-NME journalist who was helping to oversee the boxset on Cherry Red Records, remembered the band from back in the day and wanted to include them.
In all honesty, I don’t know why he bothered, as it’s absolute rubbish. But at least it’s over in less than 100 seconds.
THE NEW VINYL VILLAIN 
This is quite a chastening tale of the steep decline in quality and creativity on the grassroots British indie scene between the peerless C81 cassette and the patchy (to be generous) crop in ’86. Back then I think I was mostly listening to US and Australian bands (plus Prefab/JAMC/early James/late Smiths).