aka The Vinyl Villain incorporating Sexy Loser
#034– Helen Love – ”Girl About Town (Damaged Goods ’96)
Dear friends,
to Swansea, Wales we go today, although – let’s face facts – the Welsh are a strange bunch, aren’t they? I mean, the language is pathetic, and their humor, well, it takes getting used to, let’s put it this way. But once you have achieved this, you’re up for a treat. Quite some time ago I bought myself a double album ‘Dial M For Merthyr’, which was – and still is, I suppose – a compilation of Welsh Indie bands from 1997 on Fierce Panda. The music is okay by and large, as it so often is with compilations: killers and fillers, you know what I mean. But it still blows me away each time I look at / listen to it, because:
a) the cover reads: “record hir cymraeg gorau yn byd erioed… mwy na thebyg”, which might or might not translate as “the Scots are going to come and turn our fishing village into a top secret radar establishment!”
b) all over the front cover is Johnny Owen, Welsh bantamweight boxer, in all his glory, jogging near Merthyr bridge. Now, if this weren’t a Welsh compilation, but a Jamaican one, you probably would have seen Usain Bolt on the cover and bloody Beckham if it were UK bands. Why? Because sex sells, we all know this! Now, Johnny Owen, well – and I am trying to remain polite here, I really do – is nothing like that! But I’m sure his mother loved him anyway:
And also: c) track one, side one is by Teen Anthems and it’s called “Welsh Bands Suck”. And if this weren’t funny enough, the lyrics are: ”oh no, it can’t be true/everybody’s saying Welsh bands are cool/oh no, that can’t be right/ apart from Helen Love they’re a load of shite/oh no, they sing in Welsh: chrck chrck chrck chrck chrck chrck chrck chrck chrck chrck” …. which is just priceless, I always thought!!!
Yes, I might have digressed a little bit, but to have singled out Helen Love as being not shite really offers a useful segue: Helen Love have been around forever, haven’t they (30 years definitely is ‘forever’ in my books)? From scratch on they provided us with a brilliant mix of lo-fi punk rock and bubblegum pop, which never got boring. They always only had one God, and that was Joey Ramone. This ended up in Helen working with Joey and vice versa. Not on this song though, which, regardless of that, is their finest moment in my humble opinion:
mp3: Helen Love – Girl About Town
When they go “she had her picture in Rolling Stone/she was third from the left behind Joey Ramone/you couldn’t see her face/but I’m sure she looked great anyway”, I nearly wet myself each and every time I hear it.
Years ago I read something somewhere, and I don’t feel ashamed to steal it for using it here, because it pretty much sums up everything you need to know about Helen Love: “Helen Love: sticky as a chewing-gum on the sole of a Converse!”.
Whoever thought of this, he – or she – couldn’t have been more right!
One more thought to leave you with. Some applause should be given to Mr Paul Weller for listening to this song with what must have been a smile on his face and taking the decision not to ask for a co-writing credit. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, I should ask that you give a listen to Boy About Town as recorded by The Jam for the 1980 album, Sound Affects.
Enjoy,
THE NEW VINYL VILLAIN 