aka The Vinyl Villain incorporating Sexy Loser
#084: Red Lorry Yellow Lorry – ‘Hollow Eyes’ (Red Rhino Records ’84)
Hello friends,
again, a very special record today – special to me, of course: not necessarily special to you, I assume.
Growing up in the middle of nowhere on the cold and foggy plateaus of West Germany in the early 80s meant that you had to endure people at your age who listened to nothing else but late 70s Prog Rock – Heavy Metal – Hard Rock stuff. They had never heard of, say, Joy Division or The Cure – and when they had to go to the next town to see the doctor, and they would see a Goth or a Punk there in the distance, they returned with feverish eyes, as if they had experienced the pure evil, shook their long hair in disbelief … and quickly returned to their Led Zeppelin collection! And me, I was trapped in the middle of this musical hell, all alone basically.
But thankfully one day I happened to encounter Robert, the brother of a chap who I went to school with. Robert (long dead alas, by the way – drugs) probably was the prototype for an introvert, and we would constantly talk about “different” music: he totally adored Felt, for example – I still have all the Felt-album-cassettes he gave to me. One day Robert told me about a radio program he had heard about, some guy called ‘John Peel’, all in English, but perhaps we should try it out nevertheless?
So, to come to an end with all this, we did … and I was instantly hooked. Peel turned out to be my only source for non-mainstream music in those pre-internet times, so basically you can thank Robert for this series and this wonderful essay: if it weren’t for him, I would probably just sit here now and caress my new Twisted Sister-tattoo.
On November 25th 1984 Peel ended the first song he played that night with the words “Red Lorry Yellow Lorry, getting our program on the way, with ‘Hollow Eyes’” – and this was the very first of many thousand songs I taped from his BFBS show. So, this is one reason it’s special to me, another one is that back then Red Lorry Yellow Lorry (despite their stupid name) from Leeds were just terrific. I even had the chance to see them live a year later, one of the first “real” gigs I went to, with a moshpit and Goths and Punks and everything – great!!
As you know, people tend to put bands into genres, for some reason. And exactly this happened to Red Lorry Yellow Lorry – they were quickly styled as ‘Goth’, and throughout their career they never managed to get out of this corner they had been painted into. To me, they were more Wire than Bauhaus, I always thought. Then again, a) I didn’t know Wire back then and b) I’ve never been a friend of categorizing bands – I never really saw the point of that.
What counted for me was the music, and although The Lorries certainly have never been the most sophisticated band on earth, I really loved them when I was 16/17. This is their fifth single, along with ‘Spinning Round’, an absolute highlight in their back-catalogue:
mp3: Red Lorry Yellow Lorry – Hollow Eyes
You see, there is not always an urge for fragility and Dylanesque lyrics: sometimes a numbing guitar drone, a powerfully throbbing bass, a pounding drum machine and cavernous vocals is all you need.
Well, at least I do.
Enjoy,
THE NEW VINYL VILLAIN 