Category: Bachelor Pad

Last week in this long-running series saw the appearance of a song which was on one side of a 1987 flexi disc issued by Sha La La Records.  It turns out, quite fortuitously, that the song on the other side of the same flexi disc is on offer today!

The one previous occasion when The Bachelor Pad got a mention on this little corner of t’internet was in May 2015 as part of a series looking at all the tunes on the CD86: 48 Songs From The Birth Of Indie Pop (Castle Music/Sanctuary 2006).

By rights, they should have featured in this particular series just a few weeks later, but having, at the time, just the one song by the band, I felt that I would have been short-changing everyone by offering a repeat so soon after the event.

I’ve picked up four more songs in the intervening period, all through their inclusion on compilations or box sets, one of which is the superlative Big Gold Dreams : A Story of Scottish Independent Music 1977-1989 (Cherry Red Records, 2019).

mp3: The Bachelor Pad – Girl Of Your Dreams

The blurb in the BGD boolet advises that The Bachelor Pad emerged out of the ruins of The Wee Cherubs (as featured previously in this series last September) with the same songwriters, Tommy Cherry and Martin Cotter in charge.

I’m delighted to say that this song is a lot better than the two that I posted back in 2015 when I was less than complimentary to the band!

JC

I pride myself on having at least an awareness of just about every singer or band who has been involved in indie music over the past 35 years or so and so I was astonished when I did a bit of research into today’s CD86 combo to learn that they were from Glasgow.

The Bachelor Pad were a completely new name to me.  Turns out they were a five piece consisting of Tommy Cherry (vocals/ guitar), Martin Cotter (guitar/vocals), Dave Harris (keyboards), Willie Bain (bass) and Graham Adam (drums).

Their first recording came in early 1987 via one side of a free flexidisc given away with a fanzine before three singles in a twelve month period for Warhola Records.  It would be a further two years before the release of a debut LP on Imaginary Records and then finally three singles on Egg Records before they called it a day in 1991.

One critic has described them as fusing quickfire retro-punk, retro-Pysche and retro-Swinging Sixties, all of which make it difficult to accurately describe what they sound like.  The song that was included on CD86 is, to my ears, more miss than hit and is thankfully over in a little more than two minutes:-

mp3 : The Bachelor Pad – Jack and Julian

It was actually the b-side of a single released in July 1987 and I have managed to track it down for you – it’s been described as a cross between Syd Barrett and Buzzcocks.  I’m not all that enamoured by it.

mp3 : The Bachelor Pad – The Albums Of Jack

Enjoy