We’ve Got a Fuzzbox and We’re Gonna Use It!! came together in Birmingham in 1985. The four-piece all-female band stuck around until 1990, and then reformed briefly from 2010-11 and again in 2015. The debut release in March 1986 was the Rules and Regulations EP, issued on Vindaloo Records, a label founded by Birmingham-icon Robert Lloyd who played with The Nightingales. It was picked up by all sorts of radio stations and before long it reached #41 in the ‘proper’ singles chart as well as #1 on the Indie Chart. They certainly were in the ascendancy when the C86 cassette was released in May 1986:-
mp3: Console Me – We’ve Got A Fuzzbox…And We’re Gonna Used It
Track 8 on side 2 of the C86 cassette; Track 19, Disc One of C86 The Deluxe 3CD Edition.
Their next single, Love Is The Slug, also on Vindaloo Records, hit the Top 30 in November 1986, with debut album Boostin’ Steve Austin being released (but not charting) before the end of the year. The album included a re-recording of Console Me.
A tie-up with major label WEA soon followed, but it took until 1989 before any new material emerged, and when it did, the band name had been shortened to Fuzzbox and the music was now that of a dance-pop group with fuzzboxes nowhere to be seen. But it worked as three singles went Top 30 (the best-performing being International Rescue at #11 in February 1989) and a Top Ten album, Big Bang, in August 1989.
The much-used ‘musical differences’ saw the band break up in 1990. The first reformation in 2010 saw three of the members, plus two additional musicians, undertake a tour and perform at a number of festivals that year and in 2011.
Original guitarist Jo Dunne, at the age of 43, died from cancer in October 2012. The still musically active two original members – Vix and Maggie Dunne – recruited three new members to reform again in 2015. That line-up has released two new singles and continues to be part of the pop-based nostalgia circuit.
The Jasmine Minks formed in 1983 in Aberdeen. Technically, they have been together ever since, albeit there have extended periods of absences when they weren’t recording or touring, but at no time did they ever announce a break-up. They were one of the first bands to be signed by Alan McGee to Creation Records, and this involved the band relocating en masse to London in 1984.
mp3: Cut Me Deep – The Jasmine Minks
Track 21, Disc 1 of CD86.
This was a song recorded for the album Another Age, issued by Creation in 1988. By this time, they had already released four singles and an EP, and Another Age was their third album. There would be one further album for Creation in 1990 before the first hiatus, reappearing briefly in 2000/01 on Poptones, the label launched by Alan McGee after Creation had folded. Another long hiatus then ended with a new EP and live shows in 2010, before it all went quiet again after 2012.
In 2017, The Jasmine Minks started playing live and recording again. There have been a couple of new singles while 2023 saw a new album, their first in twenty-two years, with We Make Our Own History being issued by Last Night From Glasgow.
The Railway Children were a four-piece band from Wigan and were initially active from 1984 to 1991, before reforming between 2016 and 2019. They were signed by Factory Records on which they released two singles and one album in 1987/88 before making the jump to a major label in the shape of Virgin Records.
mp3: Darkness & Colour – The Railway Children
Track 25, Disc Two of C86 The Deluxe 3CD Edition.
Reunion Wilderness had been the debut album on Factory, but Virgin Records used it as the band’s calling card in the USA by re-releasing it with four additional songs, including Darkness & Colour. By 1988, the band were being fast-tracked to the big time, and their new album Recurrence was partly-promoted through support slots for R.E.M. in Europe and Sugarcubes in the USA. The hoped-for hit single continued to evade until 1990 when, at the sixth attempt, Every Beat Of The Heart reached #24.
Later singles didn’t break into the Top 50, likewise with their albums for Virgin Records. They left the label in 1992, but lead singer Gary Newby continued to perform solo and would release two albums under the moniker of The Railway Children in 1997 and 2002.
In 2016, the original line up decided to get together purely for a series of live dates. They went on to play several times over the following two years, with the final gig being at the Borderline, London in December 2018.
THE NEW VINYL VILLAIN 