Foo Fighters – THE NEW VINYL VILLAIN

BURNING BADGER’S VINYL – THE (NEARLY) A-Z OF INDIEPOP (Part 3, D, E and F)

D is for DAISY CHAINSAW

Daisy Chainsaw – Love Your Money (Taken from Love Sick Pleasure EP, Deva Records, 1991)

Hands up if any of you can remember a single song by Daisy Chainsaw that isn’t their Top 30 denting surprise hit ‘Love Your Money’….I’ll wait….Nope, me neither. I mean they definitely had other songs, their debut album went into the Top 75, which back in 1991, before Britpop and well before bands could release an album on the Soundcloud before being signed, that was quite an achievement.

For a short period in 1991, Daisy Chainsaw were pretty much everywhere. Largely because of ‘Love Your Money’ which became something of an albatross for the band. The band were lead by Katie Jane Garside whose on stage performances gained the band far more attention than their music did.

Katie would wander onto stage often drinking from a baby’s bottle, she would be dressed in an old gown which would be dirty and ripped and she would spend most of the gig throwing herself either into the crowd or rolling around on the stage floor, she occasionally cut herself on stage aswell. She would also quite often talk nonsense in interviews. So it wasn’t long before mental illness rumours started.

The media loved them however, (the NME, as ever, invented a genre for them, ‘Banshee Pop’ and PJ Harvey was also very briefly lumped in that genre with them), and ‘Love Your Money’ propelled the band into the spotlight, a spotlight that perhaps they weren’t ready for. They appeared on The Word, at the height of its granny snogging, controversy baiting, Mary Whitehouse annoying brilliance and their performance it an absolute riot (you can watch it on YouTube – it might have even been the week after Nirvana almost destroyed the set ).

Superstardom was beckoning with its bony finger as Katie Jane twists and contorts herself in front of the camera like a deranged rag doll (which was definitely the look she was going for) but then….well if Daisy Chainsaw’s career was a line graph and ‘Love Your Money’ was the high pointy bit then the rest of it is the steep downhill bit.

It’s weird how Daisy Chainsaw never quite matched the raucous, shambolic brilliance of ‘Love Your Money’ and its even weirder how their singer Katie Jane Garside was never a far bigger star than she (briefly) was. Although it has to be said mental illness probably paid as much a part of that than anything else. In 1993, two years after the success of ‘Love Your Money’ – which saw the band spent nearly all that time on the road touring with the likes of Mudhoney, Hole and {shudder} Sheep on Drugs, Katie Jane walked away from the band – and pretty much vanished from sight. She was barely seen for six years.

Then in 2000 a new band called queenadreena appeared and the singer wore a ripped dirty gown and liked to stage dive….

There were one other D in the box – not as good as Daisy Chainsaw though.

Depeche Mode – It’s No Good

which does pretty much what it says on the tin

E is for EMF

EMF – Unbelievable (1990, Parlophone)

This is probably the most battered 12” in Badger’s collection. The vinyl is scratched, and it jumps around two minutes in as well. It doesn’t really matter to be honest because I already own it, but its such a great record that I can’t ignore it.

‘Unbelievable’ reached the Top 5 in the UK (and Number 1 in the USA) when it was released way back in 1990, making the record more than 30 years old now. If that doesn’t make you feel old then I have no idea what will. I was 15 when this came out, and for a while I genuinely thought it was one of the greatest things I had ever heard.

Then again, when I was 15 I was infatuated with the girl who sat next me in GCSE physics. Instead of listening to my teacher Mr Watson drone on about whatever it was he was droning on about (I can literally remember not a single thing from GCSE physics) I used to write little notes to this girl, lets call her Lindsay, who used to write ‘Shut Up’ or ‘I’m trying to Listen’ underneath them. I must have asked her out four or five times in about a month, and she always said no. At a party towards the end of the year, I tried and failed again and was told that ‘I wasn’t her type’.

Anyway, I looked her up on social media the other day. Found out that she went on to go to Trinity College, Cambridge, has stood for election for the Conservative Party (beaten by a Liberal Democrat, ha ha ha) and is now married to a millionaire hedge fund manager. He may have a million quid spare, but I bet that he doesn’t own two copies of ‘Unbelieveable’ by EMF on 12”.

There were two other records from bands starting with E that were worthy of your attention:-

Echobelly – Great Things (Taken from ‘On’)
Echo and the Bunnymen – Bring on the Dancing Horses (Taken from ‘Songs to Learn and Sing’)

F is for Foo Fighters

Foo Fighters – This Is A Call (1995, Capitol Records)

Another great record that evokes wonderful memories. In this case Saturday Night at the 1995 Reading Festival. One of those nights where you really had to be there – I was there, but I wasn’t ‘there’ there. If that makes sense.

I mean, I tried to be ‘there’ there. I’d got ‘there’ early. I stood near the back and watched Echobelly (see above) play to a slightly more than half full tent. As brilliant as Echobelly were they were never a second on the bill at Reading type of band. Besides they were on at the same time as Paul Weller who was even more popular than ever due to the incredible success of his ‘Stanley Road’ album, so they stood no chance.

I was there early of course for the debut UK gig by Dave Grohl’s Foo Fighters who had already laid the groundworks for world domination by going Top Ten with their first two UK singles, and frankly they were the most talked about band of the weekend.

About three minutes before the end of Echobelly’ set people start to drift in. Then a few more and then a load more. There is about a 30-minute wait before the Foo Fighters. It looks like everyone had the same idea – get there early.

15 minutes to go, you can just about move. My position at the near the back had become slightly squashed against a pillar right at the back. To my left a girl has just started to climb another pillar. To my right a couple of hairy arsed blokes start pushing their way to through, beer is being thrown across the tent.

5 minutes to go, the crowd is stretching back outside the tent and into the field behind it. I’ve been pushed back again and now find myself about fifteen feet from the tent and unable to see a bloody thing, Chris the bloke I was with has long since vanished (he later told me he went to watch Bjork) and I turn round as the cheers and yelling start, people next me push forward. Its looks seriously dangerous in there now. I shrug, it’s only a band I tell the bloke next to me as he pushes forward and I decide to leave, eventually I end up in the comedy tent having a right old chortle to Gerry Sadowitz.

There was one other record by a band starting with F in the box, tucked away right at the back. It’s a belter too:-

Fatboy Slim – The Rockerfeller Skank

SWC

Foo Fighters

CHARGED PARTICLES (V2) : Part 3

Pleasant Surprise

I can’t stand the Foo Fighters. No, that’s not exactly right. It’s more correct to say that I like everything about the Foo Fighters except their music, which I find to be boringly ordinary emo. Fake anthems.

By all accounts, though, Dave Grohl is a great guy that’s nice to everyone. My friend’s daughter saw him at the mall and told him she was a drummer and he grabbed her phone and took a selfie with her. He organized and performed at a tribute to Bob Mould of Husker Du. He plays benefits all the time. Yeah, he’s a good guy and a monster drummer, I just never liked his kind of music.

So anyway, I’m at the gym where there’s a kid called Chris I’m friendly with who really knows his music. No matter what comes on the radio he knows it. We quiz each other about songs in a good natured way. When I told him I was going on tour in England last year (where I met JC!) and would be traveling around in a van, he laughed and said, “Have fun. I know what that’s like.”

Really?

Chris looks like he’s about 20 years old but, come to think of it, he’s pretty heavily tattooed.

“Dude, you tour around in vans?”

“Well, not that much anymore. Sometimes if I’m doing solo stuff.”

Not anymore? Solo stuff? Who was this guy? Turns out he’s Chris Sheflett, Foo Fighters’ lead guitarist. I’m still not crazy about the band’s music but I like when internationally successful musicians, selling out stadiums of 80,000 people, turn about to be regular folks that are fun to talk to.

Congregation – from the band’s 2014 LP Sonic Highways

JTFL

Foo Fighters, Lizard Music, Skyscraper

FROM THE SOUTH-WEST CORRESPONDENT

With thanks to S-WC for being so patient………he sent this up to me weeks ago but has had to stand on the sidelines as I did the Friends Electric series:-

The Return of the Box (5)

Rock Special!!

Foo Fighters – For All The Cows

Lizard Music – Fashionably Lame – ‘Jacko’s Book’

Skyscraper – Never Again

I’m really not going to bang about the Foo Fighters, I think you all know who they are and know what records they have done and who is in them. What I will say is that at Reading 1995 I was at the first Foo Fighters Gig in the UK when about 50000 people tried to cram inside a tent that held 15000 to see Dave Grohl march around a stage singing songs about winnebagos. It was an incredible gig, one of the best I have ever seen, weird then that I never really got into the Foo Fighters after that, I own three of their singles (it was four, but I saw that the 7” of ‘This Is A Call’ was selling for daft money on Ebay so I flogged it), and this is one of them.

mp3 : Foo Fighters – For All The Cows

For All The Cows was the third release off their eponymous debut album and includes as a B Side a live version at that very show at Reading, which is probably why I bought it. It reached the lower regions of the Top 30 back in 1995. As a Foo Fighters song its not one of their best, but you know it’s the Foo Fighters, so its better than most of the rock that was on offer in 1995.

So let’s move on to Lizard Music, a band who will probably appear on my own blog When You Can’t Remember Anything soon as they have an animal in their name (this week is animal musician is Panda Bear – don’t miss that – shameless plug, sorry). I distinctly remember receiving this in the post as it came with two promotional presents, firstly a bottle of tequila, which was labelled ‘Lizard’s Breath’ and I drunk it with two Indian chaps I know outside a brothel in Dalston – I stress the outside bit on that sentence. Secondly it came with a lollipop and frozen or gelled inside that lollipop was a real dead lizard. Which I thought was gross at the time. In fact I still do. I remember very little about the album itself, so I’ve played it again and found my old notes – I said this back in 1995, listen to this album three times to fully get it – six out of ten. Stand out track ‘jacko’s Book’because of the funkier sound. Listening to it now it is exactly as I remember it, thireteen tracks of punky power pop with a rocky edge, not that bad, not that good either. One for the charity bin at the end of the road.

mp3 : Lizard Music – Jacko’s Book

Finally Skyscraper, back in 1993 a mate of mine Martin started a club night in Gillingham, Kent. He was 18 and wanted to break into the industry. The first night he booked a band, that band were Elastica and using a contact he had through his postman (seriously) he got the NME down to review it. The headline next week read ‘This Charmless Twang’ and history was made. The next club night was the most anticipated thing to happen in Gillingham since Barry from the Butchers Arms said he was having a Bingo Night. Martin booked Skyscraper. He booked them solely on the basis that they contained an ex member of Swervedriver and an ex member of long forgotten Camdenites Milk. They were also favourites of the NME and they promised to come down again to review the band. Musically they were basically a grunge band with what the press would have called an inventive edge. The night came and it was packed, I mean rammed beyond capacity. Martin stood there grinning. The owners of the bar, despite taking record profits that night banned the club night, and that was that. Gillingham reverted back to being a town full of knuckle dragging racists instead of a cool hip happening kind of place. Martin, well he works in the industry, of course he does.

mp3 : Skyscraper – Never Again