You should know the drill by now. I dip into the 1000+ pages of my big red indie songs bible (big thanks to author Martin Strong) and look to see what flop* but fantastic singles were released in August 1984
*didn’t reach the Top 75 of the UK singles charts.
Here’s a few words I previously typed out about the first song up this month:-
“Let’s get a misconception about this one right out of the way. C.R.E.E.P. is not about recently departed band member, Marc Riley.
Brix Smith‘s book, The Rise, The Fall, and The Rise (2016) devotes a few paragraphs to the song, saying that she was excited by it, not least as she provides ‘bratty backing vocals that contested well with the darkness of The Fall’, and firmly believed it had a chance of cracking the singles chart. She also explains that the lyrics were aimed at another of the many hundreds of individuals who had upset Mark E Smith somewhere along the way, a German tour manager by the name of Scumech, whose name was turned into scum-egg as part of the lyric.
A bit of investigatory work by fans of the band later unearthed that the man in question was most likely Scumeck Sabottka, who would later make a fortune as the founder of one of the biggest online ticketing agencies in Germany – and looking at some of the photos of the man that can be found online, he does look something of a peace-loving, trendy wretch who was fond of ABC. It would appear therefore that MES never gave him the look of love….”
The Jasmine Minks, from Aberdeen, released their second single of the year, again on the newly emerging label of Creation Records. This one has the catalogue number of CRE 008:-
mp3: The Jasmine Minks – Where The Traffic Goes
I’ll admit that I missed this completely back in the day, finally getting it onto the hard drive via a second-hand copy of the album Sunset many years later.
mp3: The Replacements – I Will Dare
I’ve never taken to The Replacements, but given the paucity of singles this month (did indie labels close down for the month??), I thought I best add them.
mp3: This Mortal Coil – Kangaroo
The collective had enjoyed a minor hit some twelve months earlier when Elizabeth Fraser & Robin Guthrie of Cocteau Twins released a majestic cover of Song To The Siren. Neither were involved this time around. The vocals are courtesy of Gordon Sharp, who has had a few mentions elsewhere on the blog as a member of The Freeze and Cindytalk.
And that’s it for this month. Sorry.
The good news is that having very slowly gone through the big book and come up next to nothing for August, I noticed along the way that September will be a bumper month.
THE NEW VINYL VILLAIN 