Category: June Brides

A couple of weeks back I found myself, very willingly, at the very first Glas-Goes Pop Festival.  It took place on Friday 5 and Saturday 6 August within the Glasgow University Union in the leafy west end of the city.  (Regular readers will hopefully recall that, thanks to flimflamfan, I was able to offer one lucky reader the opportunity of a free ticket….the winner was Sarah and I was able to introduce myself to her during the course of the event).

As it turned out, I only managed to get along on the Friday.  I always had plans for the Saturday involving the match day announcing duties at the football on the Saturday, but had hoped to make it along for much of the evening, but alas the fates conspired against me thanks to a combination of Rachel feeling very poorly (food poisoning) and public transport woes between the east coast of Scotland and my home city.

The Friday was worth the ticket price on its own given that four absolutely wonderful acts took to the stage – Davey Woodward and The Winter Orphans, The Catenary Wires, The Orchids, and The June Brides.  I also saw Close Lobsters, but they proved to be a major disappointment, primarily because lead singer Andrew was as drunk as I’ve ever seen anyone on a stage.

The thing was, Close Lobsters, as headliners, were always going to struggle to top the performance that had been delivered by The June Brides, a band I hadn’t ever managed to catch before and who were the one I was most looking forward to in advance of the festival.

They played for maybe 50 minutes or so, rattling through many memorable tunes from their back catalogue, with an energy and vigour that belied the fact that all six musicians are well into their 60s (not that any of them looked anything like their ages). They were a ridiculously tight outfit, making it nigh-on impossible to believe it had been six years since they had last played live, with the really sad thing being when Phil Wilson said that there was a real possibility that this could be their final gig.

I know that The June Brides never achieved any sort of commercial success when they were active back in the early 80s, and maybe the reformation back in 2012, with two new singles released subsequently on Slumberland Records, didn’t quite reach the expectations that those involved had hoped for, but on the basis of the Glas-Goes Pop performance, they certainly are more than capable of bringing down the ceiling at an indie music venue in towns and cities across the UK, and further afield.

It’s got to be hoped that the ‘last gig’ comment was simply a throwaway remark, and that perhaps reflecting afterwards on the huge reception they received from the appreciative audience, there’s a view that playing together again would be well worth it.  I know it’s nigh on impossible to put together any sort of tour, but the promoters behind the various established festivals akin to what was on in Glasgow the other week could do an awful lot worse than getting in touch with The June Brides.

I’ve dug out a 12″ single from the cupboard, issued on The Pink Label in 1986., which brought together all the tracks that could be found on the band’s first two singles, also on The Pink Label, from 84/85.

mp3: The June Brides – In The Rain
mp3: The June Brides – Sunday to Saturday
mp3: The June Brides – Every Conversation
mp3: The June Brides – Disneyland

There was a rather brilliant 41-track 2 x CD compilation issued by Cherry Red Records back in 2005, but it has long been hard to come by.  The time for reissuing it, or some variant on it, is very long overdue.

JC

The June Brides were featured as part of the 2015 series that looked back at all the songs on the compilation CD86 : 48 Songs From The Birth of Indiepop. At the time I wrote:-

“There’s a case to be made that this lot had no right to be part of CD86. They had formed in London back in 1983 and the following year saw two cracking singles released on Pink Records. Twelve months later the debut LP (albeit it only had 8 tracks including the two old songs and a cover version) came out, again on Pink Records, and went to the top of the indie charts and was one of the best-selling and most popular of the genre in 1985.

Come 1986, the year that saw the birth of indie-pop according to one OTT statement on the sleeve of CD 86, The June Brides had moved to a new label called In-Tape on which there were two further singles as well as the honour of opening for The Smiths on their tour of Ireland. However, before the year was out the band had decided to call it a day with lead singer and songwriter Phil Wilson shortly afterwards embarking on a solo career.”

My big book of indie music reveals that absolutely everything The June Brides wrote and recorded, with the exception of their final single, pre-dated 1986. They were a band who never hid the fact of who their biggest influences were, and in the same way as Jonathan Richman had paid tribute to his beloved Velvet Underground by writing a song about them, so too did Phil Wilson pen a tribute to Josef K, and in particular what he felt was the tragedy of them breaking up:-

mp3 : The June Brides – Josef’s Gone

The song was stuck away as one of the two additional tracks made available on the 12″ release of their third single and their first release for new label In Tape.

mp3 : The June Brides – No Place Called Home

It’s a fine little tune that sold in decent enough numbers to hit #3 on the Indie Charts in December 1985 but by this time the main singer and songwriter was getting disillusioned with things and the band called it a day some six months later.

Here’s the b-side of the single and the other extra track on the 12″:-

mp3 : The June Brides – We Belong
mp3 : The June Brides – On The Rocks

The use of the trumpet and viola gave the band a unique sound. They really deserved to have enjoyed far more success than they experienced. Maybe just a wee bit too ahead of their time as their sort of sound became more fashionable in the early 90s by which time Phil Wilson was working as a tax inspector.

As I’ve said before, there really is no justice in the world of pop music.

JC

So here are about to finish off a series that I think has been well received.

CD86 has given us an excuse to look back at all sorts of bands, some far better-known than others, some who had no right to be lumped into a so-called movement and some who probably hadn’t been thought of by any of you in decades until prompted by a particular posting. What is for sure is that with the 30th Anniversary now just a few weeks away, you can count on many of the bands that have been in this series, along with many other contemporaries, getting more airings than normal.

I’ve left two of the best and most enduring till the last, starting off with The June Brides.

Again, there’s a case to be made that this lot had no right to be part of CD86. They had formed in London back in 1983 and the following year saw two cracking singles released on Pink Records. Twelve months later the debut LP (albeit it only had 8 tracks including the two old songs and a cover version) came out, again on Pink Records, and went to the top of the indie charts and was one of the best-selling and most popular of the genre in 1985.

Come 1986, the year that saw the birth of indie-pop according to one OTT statement on the sleeve of CD 86, The June Brides had moved to a new label called In-Tape on which there were two further singles as well as the honour of opening for The Smiths on their tour of Ireland. However, before the year was out the band had decided to call it a day with lead singer and songwriter Phil Wilson shortly afterwards embarking on a solo career.

The June Brides had an unusual and distinctive sound, making use of viola and trumpet as well as the usual guitars, bass and drums, and in Wilson they had a very talented songwriter albeit his vocal delivery was a bit of an acquired taste.

There’s this readily available compilation double CD out there, released in 2006 on Cherry Red Records which not only brings together all the June Brides tracks ever recorded, including the Peel Sessions and other material recorded for the BBC plus the solo work from Phil Wilson which followed the break up of the band, together with detailed sleeve-notes, rare pictures and a complete discography. No serious record collection is complete without it.

The song on CD 86 was one half of the double-A debut single:-

mp3 : The June Brides – Sunday to Saturday

While this equally unique number was on the other side:-

mp3 : The June Brides – In The Rain

Oh and for those of you with good memories…..you’re right to say that I did write about the band and this single back in February 2014.  Click here if you dare.

This is a last-minute change of cult classic.  I had something else lined-up but it’s now going to have to wait a few weeks.  Blame it on the demands of the customer base…and specifically that of Jacke from Stockholm who just 48 hours ago asked for some June Brides in the next post.

I’ll confess that I initially missed out on The June Brides.  They formed in 1983 and by the following year had released two singles on The Pink Label.  This was an era when I was listening to a lot of music and I can only guess that the reason that TJB passed me by was that I was too busy getting lost in the music of The Smiths, New Order, Lloyd Cole & The Commotions, Friends Again,  Orange Juice, Go-Betweens,  etc to pick up on everything.  It wasn’t till the early 90s, some five years after TJB had broken-up, that I became aware of some of the songs they had recorded and released in their all too brief a career.

More fool me.

I think it’s best therefore, to allow someone who did fall in love with them right away to express what it is that makes this band so special.  I’m pinching the following words from a great piece put together by Andy Wood in a piece he posted on the great blog Manic Pop Thrills:-

I was still at school, struggling along and trying to find some kind of identity for myself. A friend gave me a cassette of sessions that he’d taped recently from the John Peel show and there was a session by The June Brides which really struck a chord with me and that was it, I was hooked. The four songs on that session really stuck out for me, there was a sense of beauty and lovely melodies, there was the mix between that loveliness and a sense of regret, even worldly-weariness but also a sense of the possibility of change and a defiance that things could be better, no matter how small the change. The words and music became very special to me. I began to get quite interested in the sounds being produced by independent bands and labels and discovered a whole world which influenced me and this got me into playing, putting on live gigs and producing fanzines as part of a D.I.Y. culture that seemed so vibrant and interesting and diametrically opposed to the world of the polished, dull mainstream.

I tracked down everything I could find by the band and looked forward to new records and the possibility of seeing them live. Alas, although they played Dundee once I had no chance of being admitted to a strictly over 18’s only show in Fat Sams. I hated being young, I couldn’t wait to grow up, I was impatient to taste this world of gigs and music, to be free from the strictures of school and my parents but I was stuck, as The June Brides suggested, simply waiting for a change.

Fate is a cruel thing. Despite having seemed to have been on an unstoppable rise, releasing an album and several great singles and touring incessantly – including with The Smiths (on an Irish tour) – the band called it a day.  Those who added the lush viola and trumpet to the June Brides sound would go on to play sessions with a number of bands including while frontman Phil Wilson signed to Creation as a solo artist.

The influence of the band remained though, at times noticeable and at other points less so. I think it can be heard in the music of a number of bands, not necessarily in an obvious way but it’s there. Belle and Sebastian would be one band I’d say shared my love for The June Brides. Their Peel session was issued in 1987 which finally allowed me to replace my hissy second generation cassette. A best of followed a few years later then there was an album of covers put out.  Cherry Red issued the double CD “Every Conversation. The Story of The June Brides and Phil Wilson” which collected everything the band and Wilson had ever recorded. It’s an essential album for anyone I think…..

And it’s thanks to that Cherry Red compilation that I really discovered just how  good the June Brides had been and indeed how equally rich the Phil Wilson solo material was in quality.  It is, without question, as Andy says, an essential compilation. It also led me to get a hold of a vinyl copy of their one proper studio LP, There Are Eight Million Stories…. which was scheduled for a posting on this blog in a couple of weeks time, but Jacke’s prompting has brought things forward.

With this being the cult singles series, I’m going back to 1984 to the earliest material. I really couldn’t make my mind up which of the two singles from that year to select, so I’m cheating and featuring both.

mp3 : The June Brides – In The Rain
mp3 : The June Brides – Sunday To Saturday

(catalogue # Pinky1, released March 1984)

mp3 : The June Brides – Every Conversation
mp3 : The June Brides – Disneyland

(catalogue # Pinky 2, released September 1984)

The b-sides are also from the top drawer.

30 years on and the band have reformed and are playing live. They came to Glasgow in late November 2013, but alas I was out of the country on holiday. I hope they come back again soon….

Everything you want to know can be found at www.junebridesmusic.com

Enjoy!!!!