So what do we know about Perfume? Well, after being made aware of their existence in the Blab Happy post back in the mists of time, what we know is summed up in the Wikipedia page dedicated to them:
When Blab Happy split up, singer/guitarist Mick McCarthy and bassist Tony Owen recruited John "Johnny Wadd" Waddington to form Perfume, initially releasing records on their own "Aromasound" label.
Their first releases was "Yoga" in December 1993. Second single "Young" (which was perfume-scented) appeared in April 1994. Third single "Lover" was picked up on by BBC Radio One DJ's Steve Lamacq and Jo Whiley (the latter getting the band in to record a session for her show), and they toured with Gene, the band's profile rising as a result, leading to a minor (UK Top 75) hit in January 1996 with the single "Haven't Seen You".
That year's success saw them sign to Big Star Records, who reissued "Lover", to be followed by the debut album One in 1997. Perfume performed at the Glastonbury Festival in 1997. The band split later that year, with a posthumous "best of" compilation Yesterday Rising released in 1998.
And now thanks to our old friend Mr eBay, of course, we also know that this tune Perfume - Lover is a bang on bit of indie pop, very much in the Big Star label's vein of Teenage-Fanclubbery.
Now we're talking. For the first of this month's posts we have those excitable Reading based scamps Resque. Previously known to one and all as International Resque, the band dropped the first word sometime prior to this little offering: Resque - She Drives My Train.
There must be something in the water in Berkshire. Reading and Oxford seem to feature heavily in any list of indie pop home towns.
Resque toured extensively with Carter USM, which of course is where I was first introduced to them (specifically at a gig at Huddersfield Poly in probably 1991. It was in the Great Hall mind - ask your dads kids!); and it only took the first 30 seconds of this to remind me of their lovely jingly-jangly Beatlesesque pop offerings.
And of course, in 1993 or so after the band split, Wez, the Resque drummer was latterly recruited to the by-then slightly past it Carter to bolster the duo into a 'proper' band. It wasn't his fault...
There's a nice little fan site here for more information, but there's not much to be found about the band around the internet so I'm a bit at a loss I'm afraid. All stories welcome!
You may not believe me, but I do have a kind of plan for where this page is going and what order I'm going to do stuff in. I've got a little notebook and everything (very reasonably priced, 79p from Sainsbury's). But then something comes along that makes me stop and shove something in that I'd forgotten about or was saving for later.
This is one of those times.
Partially because a chap called "cambridgemartin" linked to this blog from something called the Panic Club board and said it was great except for the upcoming band and partly because I'd forgotten that the featured mp3 is of one of my favourite football-metaphors-for-life records (right up there with Mathematically Safe by Half Man Half Biscuit). So ladies and gentlemen, please be upstanding for Thousand Yard Stare!
Hailing from the much-maligned industrial wastelands of Slough, Thousand Yard Stare banged out a succession of pure jingly-jangly indie pop EPs of the finest quality for four years or so in the early 1990s and were right up there in the pantheon of the country's finest exponents of energetic dancey sing-a-long music that we love so much.
This particular football-metaphor-driven ditty, Thousand Yard Stare - 0-0 AET featured the talents of Martin Bell of The Wonder Stuff on fiddle, topped the Indie music charts and even made its way onto the UK top 40 singles chart.
I'd forgotten just how good Thousand Yard Stare were and I'm sorry it took so long to get them in here; but it was all part of the masterplan. Promise.
I guess it should be pretty obvious that I'm a big fan of scratchy old indie records by now. What is probably less obvious is jus thow much I love flexi disks. A couple have snuck in already from The Family Cat and A House, and these are absolutely my favouritest things so far. It's pretty fair to say that if I had a load of money and nothing better to do then I'd get completely obsessed with them. Just take a look on ebay and see how much cool stuff there is.
Anyway, suffice to say when I found this combination of Galaxie 500 and top notch 'free off of a magazine' flexi disk I was as happy as happy can be. This particular flexi was given away with a magazine called "The Catalogue" which I have to admit I'm not familiar with and comes with another tune from a New Zealand band called "Straitjacket Fits".
Anyway, I digress. Galaxie 500 were part of the late 80s American shoegazing invasion and owe more than a nod (in this recording at least) to bands like Spaceman 3. For a couple of years the band swirled around the UK, banged out a Peel Session and made a lot of friends, not least Liz Phair who cited them as an influence. Unfortunately Rough Trade, their label, went bust in 1991 and that rather spelled the end of the band in the UK at least.
There's some really good stuff available here and an mp3 of the flexi here in all it's scratchy plasticky wonderousness - Galaxie 500 - Victory Garden.
Ok, so this is going to be slightly different as it's more of a treasure hunt for information from anyone that can help.
What we have here is a a 1-sided 7" in a natty brown carboard sleeve with an insert promoting a few gigs, but that's it really. According to the only bits and bobs I can find about the internet it may well be a freebie sent out to fanclub members and is probably called "Mouse in a Hole", although during the warm up bit of the track the chap (presumably the aforementioned Gem) calls it "Tell Your Ma". The various copies on eBay seem to be being sold by people who don't know either.
I do know that Heavy Stereo were the stepping stone band for Gem Archer, current guitarist with the Oasis boys. I'm not too worried that this is edging into Brit Pop territory (shudder), as we've already had Ride and Andy Bell.
What I'd like to know is this: What is the bit of vinyl is pictured? Is it Mouse in a Hole? How did the fanclub get it? Is it a 5000-only limited run or similar? Did you see the band play?
I picked it up in a charity shop as it was right next to the first Sleeper EP (of which more later) and for a pound it seemed like a proper bargain. It's nice late-indie with a smattering of rock and more than a hint of the Oasis sound.
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!
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!
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...
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...
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.
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
...is about indie bands. Proper indie bands from the late 1980s and early 1990s. When indie band were real indie bands, and when they released their music on big lumps of vinyl; like God intended.
This page, blog, whatever is dedicated to remembering the unremembered bands, the ones that almost made it, the ones that noone has ever heard of and the ones who put out loads of records and faded from view; because for every Pixies, there's a Bob; for every Stone Roses, there's a Family Cat.
I've been collecting old vinyl for as long as I can remember, any mp3 on here is copied (using science and magic) from the original vinyl. Music like it should be.
As much as possible is rare, some is practically unique, most of it will only be remembered by 35 year-old ex-indie kids who spent too much time at indie clubs in the early 1990s and reading the NME from cover to cover.
By the way, any good stories, extra details, bits of stuff you want to hear and other comments, then please feel free to get in touch.
So what do we know about Perfume? Well, after being made aware of their existence in the Blab Happy post back in the mists of time, what we know is summed up in the Wikipedia page dedicated to them:
