Bang Bang Machine

I was reminded of Bang Bang Machine when I was doing the Catherine Wheel post down there, so had to rush off to ebay and spend some hard earned (well, adsense-earned) cash on this particular 12". Partially because it turns out it was one of the last records the band released, partially because it was released in 1995 and that's the first missing year from the 90s in this blog so far, but mostly because it's an absolute cracker of a record.

So who were Bang Bang Machine? Well, they were only Worcestershire's finest purveyors of the indie-pop, jingly-jangly, shoe-gazing type of music that we all know and love. Actually, that's a bit unfair; the band experimented with various musical styles from proper indie pop to grunge to, well, goth really and towards the end of their existence firmly fell into the Brit Pop category.

The band's indie pop pedigree can't be denied of course, a Peel session and number 1 in the 1992 Festive 50 above such lumiaries as Pavement, Jesus and Mary Chain, The Wedding Present, Sonic Youth and The Fall attest to that, and if you've got a copy of Geek Love (said number 1) on CD, then that's worth about £20 on ebay to you guv!

There's a nice unoffical site here and for your listening pleasure, here is Bang Bang Machine - Breathless.

I think this post is going to be one of those where everyone remebers far more about the band than I do. This is probably due to an excess of snakebite in the early 1990s than anything, so please fill in the gaps!

BMX Bandits

If ever there was a Scottish indie-pop super group, then it's these chaps, the BMX Bandits. Containing, in no particular order or time frame, members of Teenage Fanclub, The Soup Dragons, Arab Strap and Eugene Kelly out of Captain America/Eugenius, not only do the group give me loads more names that I'd forgotten to include, but it also provides a collection of some of the most talented musicians of the generation - and all are from a little bit of Scotland near Glasgow.

The problem of course with putting up such a well-regarded, if not particularly commecially-successful band is that there are lots of places around the web for them, probably the best being The unoffical tribute to the BMX Bandits.

A quick delve into Wikipedia shows just how influential the band were:

"Oasis did their first UK tour dates supporting the Bandits as a favour from Stewart to Creation label boss Alan McGee. BMX Bandits admirers include Kurt Cobain who was famously photographed wearing a BMX Bandits T shirt as he had been wearing T shirts of Daniel Johnston and Captain America (later renamed Eugenius) and Cobain claimed on a New York radio show that if he could be in any other band it would be BMX Bandits."

So, rather than go over too much old ground, here's BMX Bandits - Little Hands and a picture of Nicole Kidman (see also this page) in the Australian film of the same name...


Oh yes, and needless to say the bit of vinyl pictures above is a promo only copy retrieved from some record fair bargain bin in the mid-90s in the vain hope it would be worth something...

Anastasia Screamed

We're cheating a bit here, I'm afraid. Not really cheating, but pushing the borders of what I'm doing here, for no other reason than because Anastasia Screamed are Americans and came "out of the same late-'80s post-punk Boston music scene that produced the Lemonheads, Dinosaur Jr., and the Pixies".

But they don't really sound like the Pixies or Dinosaur Jr (well, no one does I guess), this particular song sounds almost like an angry James, but with some really top notch jingly-jangly guitars - as all good Fire Records bands could turn out.

There are some pretty good biographies around the internet, not least the above and also here and here so I won't bother you too much with the details.

Instead, have a listen to Anastasia Screamed - Tornado and make up your own minds. Better than the Pixies? Probably not. Just about obscure enough to fit in to these pages? Probably.

I'm at a bit of a loss again I'm afraid. Even though I'm only putting this stuff up here so people can stumble across it and be reminded of the indie vinyl they've got kicking about in the loft, every time I do one of these and I'm not really 100% sure about the band I'm doing I feel like I'm cheating.

If it's any consolation there's a good BMX Bandits one coming...

The Pooh Sticks

More jingly jangly Welsh indie pop today with The Pooh Sticks. Although they keep cropping up on blogs lumped in with twee and shoe-gazing music, we all know they were far more pop than that, and if there'd been any spirit of humour and irony in music in 1991 they'd have been far more successful than they were.

Let's face it, if Blur can drive the country wild by knocking out shit like Country House, then such pop-comedy-classics "Indie-pop ain't Noise Pollution" and "I Know Someone who Knows Someone who knows Alan McGee Quite Well" deserved more than a brief mention in the NME's indie charts.

If you want a good biography, visit The Pooh Sticks fan page (it's on Tripod, so get it while it's hot!) For the meantime, take this from the same site:

Perpetual teenagers and perennial losers, The Pooh Sticks are the best-kept secret of the British indie scene. This is a band that swears eternal allegiance to the unholy trinity of the MC5 ("Back in the USA" era), 60s bubblegum music and mid-70s big pop. Girls are 'groovy' and, for the men, slouching and smoking in the boys' room are compulsory, as the sweet dreams of sussed but cute adolescence burn long and deep.

Formed by Hue Williams (vocals) in late 1987, the line-up was completed by Trudi Tangerine (tambourine/piano), Paul (guitar), Alison (bass) and Stephanie (drums) - they are loath to reveal their surnames. The early sound was a bizarre genre-hopping hybrid of two-minute jangle pop, 'enthusiastic' harmonizing, three-chord punk, girl-group cuteness and, beneath it all, a sharp wit aimed squarely at the po-faced indie scene of the time.

In the best spirit of marketing disasters ... early Pooh Sticks singles were released in a boxed set, prior to being transferred on to the debut album, Pooh Sticks (1988). Japery occasionally lapsed into tweeness ('Goody goody gumdrops, my heart is doing flip flops'), but generally The Pooh Sticks sidestepped smugness in favour of genuine charm and enthusiasm.

So here you go, some cracking early 90s Monkees-style indie pop to listen to: The Pooh Sticks - The World Is Turning On in all it's 'less than two minutes long' glory. Bloody lovely stuff it is too.

Oh yeah, and this particular mp3 is copied from a really fantastically warped blue vinyl 7" single. Don't let anyone tell you that digital downloads are the best way of listening to music. Oh, don't get me wrong, you can use the above to capture the overall essence, but I've got a wobbly 7" that you need to put a weight on so it plays; and even then it's 50:50 whether you'll get the whole thing. That's music. The kids of today just don't understand. Wankers.

Oh, and you can have the video too if you like:

The High

Formed in Manchester, the Stone Roses would go on to change the face of indie pop with their seminal 1989 debut album (called "The Stone Roses", oddly enough). However, while still young and unknown in 1984, the band had a guitarist called Andy Couzens. Unfortunately for young Mr Couzens, in 1986 a disagreement with the band's the manager ended with him leaving the soon to be massive Roses.

Fortunately for us though, the departed guitarist went off and set up his own band with three former member of another local group called Flag of Convenience*. This new band was called The High.

The band played their first gig in 1989 at the Ritz Ballroom in Manchester - a fantastic venue with a rather springy dancefloor - and were signed straight after to London Records, who they chose over local label Factory amongst others.

Anyway, the usual story follows, hotly-tipped Manchester band, release well-received singles and critically-approved debut album then fail to live up to expectations, hang around for a few years but never recapture the hey-day and split up. They did release a new album in 2004 though. No, me either.

I feel I'm doing the band a disservice, but I'm a bit sketchy on all the details. I was requested (for want of a better word) to put them up and I just can't remember that much about them, so apologies if I've misrepresented.

So this is The High - Box Set Go; the original version of this record was produced by legendary Madchester producers Martin Hannett and John Pennington. Unfortunately this recording is of the 1991 version. The vinyl is in a gatefold sleeve though!

* The fourth member of the band, one Steve Diggle, would soon re-form his original band, The Buzzcocks, you might have heard of them

Kitchens of Distinction

I get a lot of google searches for Kitchens of Distinction coming in to this page from an earlier mention, so it's about time I got about to doing them properly.

Looking about, you get a nice little quote about the band here:

Formed Amsterdam, The Netherlands, 1987; Cult band Kitchens of Distinction like to shroud their origins in multiple myths. Sometimes they say that they met in a Turkish sauna; sometimes in a satanist temple in Amsterdam; sometimes - most credibly - at a Dutch gig by the reggae legend Burning Spear.

The band are/were another of the early 90s swooping guitar, wailing feedback, muffled vocals bands that we all love so much.

There's loads about the band around on the internet in places like the One Little Indian site, so I feel a bit like I'm cheating putting them up here, but at the very least I've posted one of these for September and let you have a listen to a nicely scratchy post-vinyl mp3 of one of my favourite recordings.

I've actually got a white label of this: Kitchens of Distinction - Breathing Fear, but it appears that there are more of them out there than actual bought versions, so I'm not going to retire on the profits just yet...

On a side note, there's a shop just up the road from where I used to live that advertises Kitchens of Distinction; it always raised a smile when I wallked past.

Catherine Wheel

You don't get much in the way of rock and roll from Great Yarmouth; it's not your hot bed of music like Manchester or Liverpool. Granted that bloke out of sub-van Halen cover band The Darkness was from that neck of the woods, but apart from him, the only real contributers to music - and certainly the only ones we're interested in, were Catherine Wheel.

Formed in 1990, the band had Bruce (off of Iron Maiden) Dickinson's cousin on guitar; Fortunately for all of us however, he was far more interested in swooping shoegaze feedback and vocals than cod-metal.

In true indie style, the band split in the mid-90s, then reformed to chance their arms in the indie-revival of 2000, before finally calling it a day and going their separate ways.

The official website now redirects to newer bands, but this list of their gigs suggests that they toured extensively. And I've a nasty feeling I saw them at the Boardwalk in Manchester being supported by Bang Bang Machine; but I can't be 100% as they appear to have played the city a lot in the years I was there so it might have been upstairs at the Hop & Grape with someone even less famous...

Check wikipedia for more information and listen to Catherine Wheel - Crank. It's very good and true to form, I've got a "not for resale" 12" version of the single. Of course, "not for resale" these days means "cheap off of ebay".

The Popinjays

Just for the sake of it, open this mp3 (The Popinjays - Monster Mouth) and take a guess at who produced it? Which influential indie legend was heavily involved in the career of the Popinjays?

Anyone who didn't answer "Why, Ian Broudie off of the Lightning Seeds" should probably leave now.

The problem now of course is that I remember nothing about the band other than they were a twee little band on the semi-mythical One Little Indians label. Oh, and if the sticker is anything to go by, my 7" version of the attached single apparently cost me 99p.

The entire wikipedia entry is:

Popinjays were a pop band from the late 1980s and early 1990s on One Little Indian Records. Members included Wendy Robinson and Polly Hancock.

Anyone able to help?

In the meantime, enjoy the top notch jingly jangly pop of the Popinjays; it's rather lovely and catchy. It makes me remember just how much fun being young and stupid in the early 1990s was.

Milltown Brothers

I don't know why, but I had in my mind that the Milltown Brothers were from Ireland; they're not of course, they're from a little town in Lancashire called Colne - which I discovered as soon as I opened up Wikipedia.

And do you know what only just occurred to me? The band are called the Milltown Brothers; we know that. We also know that the band contains two brothers, Matt and Simon Nelson, so far, so Columbo. But, hang on, Colne is a Lancashire mill town. So, hold your horses here... You mean they're brothers, from a mill town? Christ I must be thick, it's taken me the best part of 20 years to work that out...

I shan't bore you with all the details of the bands history, that's well documented on their myspace page, which is well worth a visit. But suffice to say that the band can be added to the long list of "indie bands that were far better than you remember and should have been far bigger than they were, if only the record company had spent some money and nobody had invented Nirvana".

The Milltown Brothers are, almost inevitably, still pottering along; they released a new album in 2004, but for a perfect slice of 1991 indie pop, have this here mp3: Milltown Brothers - Which Way Should I Jump?, it's got the standard "ding-ding-ding-dinga-dinga-ding-ding" jingly-jangly indie guitar riff in it, so that rates an 8/10 on the Carter Scale of indieness and frankly, dear reader, that's all you need to know. Get the fringe flicking and have a dance round the lounge. You won't regret it.

Thrum

The internet is an amazing thing. You can find all kinds of long lost and barely needed information (and photos) about Headmen gigs, but try and find out when the mighty Thrum were formed and you'll be searching in vain.

What we do know is that they were Glaswegian (probably), had a female lead singer called Monica Queen who, as you'll hear on the attached mp3, has a haunting voice that deserved greater success and that courtesy of the Ready Steady Go website, that if you

...imagine a band with Tammy Wynette on vocals and Neil Young on guitar. That’s the deal with Glasgow’s country rockers, Thrum.

All I can remember about Thrum is that I saw them in early 1994 - and I've pinned this down courtesy of a Manchester Academy website and a bit of good, honest, hard thinking.

I remember that me and a bunch of friends won two pairs of tickets to any gig at the Manchester University Student Union or Academy; a big prize in those days. I went to see Thrum support somebody - and there's a good chance it was the Sultans of Ping - with my mate Daisy, and my other mate Stu went to a Megadog (proto-rave-hippy-bollocks club nights, you took loads of cheap speed and danced to Transglobal Underground and the like; they were great).

The only other thing I've managed to glean about the band is that Hugh Grant and Liz Hurley were big fans. I have this on good authority; specifically a genuine sighting of Ms Hurley and Mr Grant standing at the side of the stage as the band played at the 1994 Phoenix festival (now, whatever happened to that festival?)

So here you go, the wonderful Thrum - So Glad for your delight and delectation.

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm off to buy some cheap amphetamines and dig out my Drum Club - "Live in Iceland" CD.