Category: Salad

One of the things I do to support the daily outpourings on the blog is scour the racks of a few second-hand record stores in the hope of turning up something different or unusual. I’ll often buy up to 20 cheap bits of vinyl, usually made up of 7″ and 12″ singles and look to see if any b-sides prove to be something worth hearing. I’ve a very bad habit of picking out two or three from a day’s particular purchases and discarding the rest until another day which could be as far as a year or more down the line.

This is why, in a posting about Salad back in June (click here for link), I had no recollection that I had some time previously bought their 12″ debut single for £1 on the basis that I quite knew and liked the a-side from its inclusion on a compilation CD.

This is a vinyl based blog, so I’ve now deleted the track ripped from CD back in June and instead offer the three songs from the vinyl:-

mp3 : Salad – Diminished Clothes
mp3 : Salad – Clear My Name
mp3 : Salad – Come Back Tomorrow

The b-sides?  One is passable and the other is distinctly ordinary.

Enjoy

Hands up if you can name the band in the picture above…..

OK….some of you may have cheated in that you’ve alerts to the mp3 and were able say with some confidence that it is Salad.

But how many of you can name the four members who made up the band???????????

That’s a bit more tricky isn’t it……………….

Formed in 1992 by vocalist Marijne van der Vlugy, (a Dutch-born model and one time VJ on MTV), guitarist Paul Kennedy, bassist Pete Brown and drummer Rob Wakeman, two singles released on their own Waldorf label in the latter half of 1993 got a few London-based meeja folk awfully excited and the band were touted by some as the next big thing as so often happens when a good-looking female singer backed by three nondescript and interchangeable blokes form a band….especially when they form a band in London.

An indie offshoot of Island Records threw a shedload of money at them and bosses watched on aghast as subsequent singles failed to crack the Top 40. I’m guessing though that a bit of touring, either as support to high-profile acts or via the small venue UK circuit that became so popular at the height of Britpop, got Salad a bit of a following as the debut LP, Drink Me, reached #16 in the charts upon its release in May 1995. But still the hit single proved elusive.

Two years on, a follow-up LP was released to complete disinterest – #127 for one week only would probably have meant sales in the hundreds. The band was dropped and split almost immediately.

According to wiki:-

Van der Vlugt now writes and sings with Cowboy Racer, whose song “Yellow Horse” featured on the U.S. television show, Grey’s Anatomy. Pete Brown and Rob Wakeman established the popular entertainment site, BoreMe, which Pete Brown now runs on his own. Charley Stone played guitar with Spy51, but their website has not been updated since 2001. She also performed some live dates with Fosca in Sweden in March 2008. Rob Wakeman released a few Tech House and Techno singles between 1999 and 2002, including Legs With Wings on City Rockers (2002). Rob Wakeman, together with Jo Addison, formed the band Lapwing in 1999, appearing on various compilation albums from labels including Mind Horizon Recordings and Dishy.

All I knew of them before looking all this up was that I have one of their early songs on an Indie Top 20 compilation CD from the day. Turns out it was the second 45 on their own label – the sort of thing that I found interesting to listen to maybe three or four times all told before I decided it was merely so-so. I just played it again for the first time in nearly 20 years. It’s still so-so, but given that A&R men of the time have long desired to discover arty-sounding bands who will crossover into the lifestyle sections of the weekend newspaper supplements nobody should be really surprised that this did stir a bit of interest:-

mp3 : Salad – Diminished Clothes

Enjoy