Category: Wild Indians

Just over a week ago, the second 45 by The Wild Indians featured on the regular Saturday series.

That very same morning, I received a very pleasant e-mail from regular reader and occasional contributor, Leon MacDuff:-

Hello there!

Noting your regret at having no other tracks by The Wild Indians to share… happy to help! There’s nothing else to threaten the status of “Penniless” as their magnum opus but here are the three tracks from their previous single (and of course you may share them!).

I downloaded and listened to the three songs, and to my complete amazement, I immediately recognised Maybe, one of the tracks on the b-side of what was a 12″ only release.   But I had never heard the a-side before……….

Was it one that Jacques the Kipper had included it on what is now a long-lost C90 tape?  The thing is, I was more fairly sure that I knew a slightly different version of it.  Has someone I know covered it on record or played it live?   I certainly don’t seem to have any other version of it among almost 50,000 bits of music on the hard drive, so it’s something of a mystery.

It’s a wonderful wee tune, as indeed are the other two tracks kindly sent over by Leon.

mp3: The Wild Indians – Love Of My Life
mp3: The Wild Indians – The Biggest Man
mp3: The Wild Indians – Maybe

I hope it all helps to make your day the way that Leon did for me last week.

JC

mp3: The Wild Indians – Penniless

The Wild Indians featured previously back on 5 March 2020 thanks to me loving the song of theirs that had been included on the Big Gold Dreams boxset.   Here’s the blurb for the booklet within the boxset.

The duo of vocalist Fiona Carlin and guitarist Kevin Low made two singles as The Wild Indians, on which Pop Wallpaper’s rhythm section of bassist Myles Raymond and drummer Les Cook played. The second, a 12” made up of three tracks of designer pop, was produced by John McVay of Visitors and engineered by Chic Medley of Perth-based electro-pop band Fiction Factory, with whom Carlin would sing with on their second album track, Victor Victorious. As a designer, Low’s work went on to grace many a record sleeve, including ones for The Delmontes and The Blue Nile. Low worked as a theatre photographer for many years, and is now a painter of note.

I added these thoughts back then.

“Beyond this, it is quite hard to track down any further info – they are one of the few Scottish bands from the era who don’t get listed in The Great Scots Musicography by Martin C Strong, published in 2002, and to which I have turned on many an occasion to fact-check/confirm or indeed get the basics!

Looking at Discogs, it seems that Penniless was the band’s second and final single,  on 12″ only, released in 1986 on Rosebud Records.   The only other single seemingly released on the label was Strawberry Letter 23 by Pop Wallpaper, which featured as Part 249 of this series back in March 2021.

The debut single by The Wild Indians was Love Of My Life, again as a 12″ only and released on the Hullabaloo! label in 1984.  As this appears to be the only single from that label on Discogs, it may well have been set up specifically for the purposes of that particular single.

Short of paying a minimum of £20 for either single on Discogs, I’ve not been able to find any way of getting more Wild Indians songs to share with you.  Sorry.

JC

From the notes that come with the Big Gold Dreams boxset:-

The duo of vocalist Fiona Carlin and guitarist Kevin Low made two singles as The Wild Indians, on which Pop Wallpaper’s rhythm section of bassist Myles Raymond and drummer Les Cook played. The second, a 12” made up of three tracks of designer pop, was produced by John McVay of Visitors and engineered by Chic Medley of Perth-based electro-pop band Fiction Factory, with whom Carlin would sing with on their second album track, Victor Victorious. As a designer, Low’s work went on to grace many a record sleeve, including ones for The Delmontes and The Blue Nile. Low worked as a theatre photographer for many years, and is now a painter of note.

Beyond this, it is quite hard to track down any further info – they are one of the few Scottish bands from the era who don’t get listed in The Great Scots Musicography by Martin C Strong, published in 2002, and to which I havce turned on many an occasion to fact-check/confirm or indeed get the basics!

The lead track from the second single is included on BGD and has proven to be one of my favourites of those I didn’t previously know:-

mp3 : The Wild Indians – Penniless

Turns out that Kevin Low has also posted up, on you tube, a rarely-seen promo for the single:-

I turned to Discogs and found info on the band’s first single. There were different personnel involved judging by the credits list:-

Fiona – Vocals & sax
Kevin – Guitar
Kay – Bass
Bo – Drums

As such, it would appear the rhythm section of Pop Wallpaper stepped in as replacements for Kay and Bo.

Sorry about the lack of info, but it’s the best I can do.

I do have some info on Pop Wallpaper, and indeed have a 12″ single of theirs in the collection, but that’s a story for a later installment in the long-running Saturday Songs from Scotland series

JC