I’ve used the reverse of the sleeve of the only single ever released by The Boy Hairdressers so that, if you zoom in on the names of the band members, you can see how it came to be that they were the forerunners of one of the biggest indie bands of the 90s.
mp3: Golden Shower – The Boy Hairdressers
Track 10, Disc 1 of CD86.
It was released, on 12″ vinyl, in 1987 on 53rd & 3rd Records. I mentioned before on the blog that most of the musicians who were in The Boy Hairdressers would become Teenage Fanclub, and that all three of the songs on their single were written by Norman Blake. I’ve since learned, from reading the backstory in Grant McPhee‘s epic book Postcards From Scotland : Scottish Independent Music 1983-1985, that many of the songs on the TFC long-playing debut A Catholic Education, released in 1990, were initially worked up by The Boy Hairdressers before the various members split up to pursue other projects.
The members of Janitors came from the cities of Newcastle and Sunderland in the north-east of England. The band was active between 1984 and 1989, with their first two singles and debut album being issued by the Sale-based In Tape Records in 1985 and 1986, while their final four singles and second album came out on the London-based Abstract Sounds.
mp3 : Good To Be The King – Janitors
Track 20, Disc Three of C86 The Deluxe 3CD Edition.
A tad more punky and noisy than most bands who found their way onto the 2014 Cherry Red Records compilation, Good To Be King was their second single for In Tape and reached #14 on the Indie Singles chart.
Claim formed in the small town of Cliffe, in Kent, in the early 80s, and would go on to release five singles, one EP and one album between 1985 and 1992.
mp3: Gullible’s Travels – Claim
Track 21, Disc Three of C86 The Deluxe 3CD Edition.
This was taken from their debut album, Armstrong’s Revenge & Eleven Other Short Stories, which was released on their own label, Trick Bag Records, in 1986. The band would release a 12″ mini-album via their own label later in 1988 before signing to Essurient Communications, a short-lived London label that, between 1987 and 1990, would issue a total of ten records (seven singles and three albums) of which four ere by The Claim (two singles and two albums). Their next port of call was the Caff Corporation, a label run by Bob Stanley, for a one-off single in 1990, and finally to the German-based A Turntable Friend for a final single in 1992.
Wiki describes their sound as being influenced by classic acts such as The Kinks and The Jam (and others), and certainly on the basis of Gullible’s Travels, that can’t be denied.
Benny Profane, the third of the four bands today making a debut appearance on TVV, were from Liverpool and were active between 1985 and 1990. They partly-emerged from the ashes of The Room, a post-punk band who had released three albums in the first half of the 80s, along with a handful of singles.
The band’s first release in October 1986 was a four-track 12″ EP called Where Is Pig?. It was released on a label called Sub Pop UK, which was in no way connected to the Sub Pop label that was founded in Seattle around the same time as the Benny Profane debut, which actually turned out to be the only ever release on Sub Pop UK. The lead track was this:-
mp3: Hang Fire – Benny Profane
Track 18, Disc Three of C86 The Deluxe 3CD Edition.
Their next home was Ediesta Records, a small label based in York. There would be three singles in 1987/88 before a switch to Manchester-based Play Hard Records in 1989 for one single and one album, and finally to Imaginary Records, which was based in Heywood, a town in the Greater Manchester conurbation, for a final single and album in 1990. Despite all the shifts between labels working at times with uber-producer and talented musician Ian Broudie, the band never enjoyed any real commercial success.
THE NEW VINYL VILLAIN 