Mambo Taxi

Congratulations Mrs Internet, it's a post about early 90s riot girl combo Mambo Taxi!

Well, it would be but I can't even remember whey I bought this single or anything else about the band. The best bit of information I could find is from Stewart Mason's All Music Guide and goes like this:

"The short-lived all-female combo Mambo Taxi was born out of the U.K. garage rock scene of the early '90s, but their music mixed garage with punk, pop, and dance influences. The first-names-only group consisted of Delia (ex-Cornershop, future Family Way and Baby Birkin) on guitar and vocals, Ella on vocals and guitar, Andrea on keyboards, Lenie on bass, and Karin on drums. (Karin was later replaced by Huggy Bear's Anjali.) Mambo Taxi released three singles, 1992's "Prom Queen," 1993's four-song EP "Poems on the Underground," and 1994's "Do You Always Dress Like That?" as well as one album, 1994's In Love With Mambo Taxi, before splintering later that year."

Mambo Taxi were part of the "Riot Grrrl" movement of the early 90s, a group of shouty ladies in such illustrious bands as Huggy Bear, Bikini Kill and Babes in Toyland; all bands that were full of energy and oestrogen and who were far more interesting than the latter day Girl Power shit of the Spice Girls et al.

Well, as it's Christmas and this is a pretty crappy post, can I make it up to you by offering you an mp3 of Mambo Taxi - Prom Queen? You'd like that? Well, Merry Christmas to you then! And here's my card to you. Print it out and imagine I posted it to you. For real excitement, why not staple a five pound note to it?

The Planet Wilson

To Hull then today for The Planet Wilson who, you may or may not recall from way back in the past, were the support band for Ned's Atomic Dustbin at the Duchess of York in Leeds in 1990 at my first ever gig and were, I guess, in that case technically the first band I ever saw live. That's top indie pop knowledge that is.

Anyway, hailing from Hull and formed (it says here) from the remnants of a band called the Red Guitars, The Planet Wilson released a couple of cracking albums - 1988's In the Best of All Possible Worlds and the follow-up Not Drowning but Waving - and possibly a couple of singles.

The first album has more than a hint of the late-Talking Heads, early-solo-David Byrnes about it (as you can probably hear on this recording of The Planet Wilson - Flap The Bird) and, for some reason, really reminds me of The Bees. Neither of these things can be considered bad (or at least very bad).

Trouserpress.com has a bit more information here, but that's about it again I'm afraid. Any more background gratefully received.

S*M*A*S*H

There can't be many useful things to know about Welwyn Garden City can there? Nick Faldo started his golf career there, we know that. The city was built by Quakers, erstwhile England flapper David "Calamity" James was born there, I used to go out with a girl who lived there, isn't the bus station famous for some reason? That's all we know about Welwyn Garden City. Oh, and it's the home town of indie pop punk trio S*M*A*S*H. Officially the hardest band to Google in the world.

S*M*A*S*H were moderately famous in the early-to-mid 90s, supporting such indie luminaries as Pop Will Eat Itself and playing on the NME's "On Into 94" tour, but they never really made it big. According to Wikipedia

"The trio made a memorable appearance on Top of the Pops, singing "Shame" live to a backing track which had been recorded at a studio especially for the programme. They became the first to appear on the BBC's flagship chart show without officially releasing a single - their debut EP reaching number 26 in the album charts."

Oddly, once you get past the impossible to Google band name... and who'd have thought back in 1992 there's be idiots like me on the internet at half 10 of a Thursday night - incidentally I'm doing this now because the wife has gone to see Take That - desperate to search for information about long-forgotten indie bands; you wouldn't have called your band "Ride", the internet gurus would have told you to choose something easy to find.., but I digress, once you find the stuff, there's a few really good websites ou there devoted to the band, S*M*A*S*H.net and Self Abused to name but two.

The band made an attempted comeback early in 2006 and acording to the internet they were very good. But you have to wonder whether that's the same internet that remembers Moose as the founding fathers of shoegazing...

Well, here you go, what you're here for. After much deliberation you can have a bit of a listen and a mosh to S*M*A*S*H - Petal Buzz; my personal favourite off the Another Love EP and also the name of their fanzine. Enjoy.

Moose

Surely you can't want more jingly jangly indie nonsense? You do? OK, here are London based indie popsters Moose.

I hate copying willy-nilly from Wikipedia, but apparently, and I have no way of verifying this either way,

"Moose have been credited by some as being the first band to be called "shoegazers" which was inspired by an early gig of theirs at which [singer and guitarist] Russell Yates read lyrics taped to the floor."

Can this be true? Surely someone like Ride would have been the first shoegazers? Moose as the first shoegazers? It's the first I've heard of it!

I've got a load of old NMEs somewhere, I'll try and check at Christmas, but in the meantime, if you can prove this bold claim then please let me know! (This bit of typing is getting very exclamation mark-heavy, for which I apologise).

So, the band were possibly instrumental in the popularity of shoegazing, produced a load of cracking tunes in the early 90s, never achieved the fame they probably deserved, disappeared, reappeared to try their luck again around the millenium and promptly disappeared again. This is a running theme for bands on here.

There's a really nice little fansite here (which, by the way, would be a leading exponent of shoegazing as a style of web design, if such a thing existed. Take a look at it and you'll see what I mean. That site is the most shoegazingest website I've seen in ages).

And to keep you going and remind you of the alleged first ever shoegazers, from 1991's Reprise EP, have a listen to Moose - Last Night I Fell Again, it's rather good.


(Right click, 'Save as...' to download)
(And now, if you can imagine me wandering off, shaking my head and muttering "first ever shoegazers, I just don't know...", the illusion is complete).

The Charlottes

Today we have some cracking early 90s East Anglian indie pop action (it's not often you'll hear that said!) from much missed band The Charlottes. Swooping in on the C86 bandwagon, The Charlottes showed the way for a lot of those who came after. There's more than a hint of Ride in there and when the drummer Simon Scott went off to form Slowdive there was a straight line drawn from one to the other.

As with many of the proper indie bands, The Charlottes were firm Peel favourites, recording two Peel Sessions, and they toured extensively; playing to the massed ranks of shoegazing fops at such places as the Duchess of York in Leeds and the Old Trout in Windsor. We knew what we wanted and we knew were to get it!

According to MusicOMH.com, a pretty bloody useful review, interview and features website I'd highly recommend:

"Lovehappy [the debut album] from The Charlottes, described by the NME's Steve Lamacq no less as "altogether more sexy than Kylie", when awarding it 9/10. Sadly for the band it sold rather fewer copies than the diminutive Antipodean."

There's a pretty comprehesive biography here and on the Cherry Red site here and here is The Charlottes - Liar, in all its characteristic ding-dinga-dinga-ding indie-tweeness-glory.

Loop

An earlier version of The Wikipedia page for Loop sums the band's music up quite nicely for me: "Loop did not fit easily into any category but have variously classified as a shoegazers or indie rock band", but this has been changed to some piffle about "psychedelic/drone rock", which doesn't mean anything and lumps the band in with Spaceman 3, when to my ears they have more than a hint of Mudhoney about them. Still, each to their own.

What we can't deny is that for 5 or so years from the end of the 80s, Loop were turning out pretty decent "alternative" rock at a steady pace, appearing with John Peel and carrying out their indie roles with some aplomb.

Again, the wikipedia page provides some good background and there's a very nice discography here.

Once more I was turned on to this particular recording as it's a giveaway flexi disk from The Catalogue magazine (November/December 1988 for the completists) and I think my love of the flexi is well documented.

Anyway, enjoy Loop - Torched, as it's a cracking bit of dirty indie rock that doesn't really fit in with the jingly-jangly stuff I'd normally put on here, but what the hell; I'll make it up to you with some Catherines stuff soon...

Buy "A Gilded Eternity" by Loop

Eugenius

Another of your legendary Scottish indie bands today (Glasgow and Berkshire, the hotbeds of indie, you wouldn't bet on that would you?); with the wonderful and latterly-renamed Eugenius (due apparently to Marvel Comics being a tad miffed that the band were originally called "Captain America".

There's a really good Eugenius fansite here (again, it's Geocities, so get it while it's hot!) that gives us a really nice history of the band.

In 1987 Eugene along with Frances McKee joined to form the Vaselines in Edinburgh. The band also consisted of Eugene's brother, Charles, on drums and James Seenan on bass. The Vaselines dissolved in 1989 with the release of their first LP. In 1990, Eugene formed Captain America but was forced to change the name due to a possible copyright infringement suit by Marvel comics. Thereafter the band would become known as Eugenius. In Addition to Raymond Boyle and Roy Lawrence, Kelly borrowed Gordon Keen from the Bmx Bandits and Francis MacDonald from Teenage Fanclub to form the Eugenius line up. In 1994 Eugenius released their second album, Mary Queen of Scots. Following the Eugenius releases Eugene co-wrote "If I Could Talk I'd Tell You" with Evan Dando and has appeared on several compilations and other collaborations. Eugene has now completed a solo album tentatively scheduled for release sometime in 2003.

So there's not much point in me going over old ground again, but suffice to say, the band were one of the great unfancied indie bands that, despite Kurt Cobain - out of Nirvana (you never hear about them any more do you!) - being a fan, they never really lived up to the expectations of the indie kids.

Still, Eugene Kelly was still banging out the tunes until pretty recently so at least some good came of it all. And here you are, the crux of the matter (well done for getting to the bottom of this) Eugenius - Easter Bunny. Enjoy. I did, I'd forgotten how good the band were.

Buy Oomalama by Eugenius

Carter USM

I have a confession to make. I fucking love Carter the Unstoppable Sex Machine. More than any other indie pop band, Carter are my absolute favourite. Don't get me wrong, The Family Cat and all the rest are the soundtrack to my jingly jangly youth, but Carter are my favourite by a long, long way.

So, it's taken me a long time to put them up here, not because they don't count, but because I wanted to wait and see how those rose-tinted memories stood up to the gigs that were played in Glasgow and London this year. I also wanted to make sure I could decide on an mp3 to put up here. Carter were my introduction to the world of indie pop. I remember vividly that I was on a coach back from a school trip somewhere and we stopped at a motorway service station. Being a bit of a sad bastard I didn't rush into the newsagents and buy a copy of Razzle like the hard kids did, I bought an NME. It had a review for 101 Damnations in it and it sounded to me like the greatest album ever produced. Of course, when I finally got to a shop to buy it and got it home, it was.

I'd hate to say that Carter changed my life, because that would be over-egging the pudding somewhat, but from then on I was hooked. I even grew a fringe like Jimbob - thank God there aren't any photos of that.

Over the next couple of years I saw them whenever I could. At least twice at the Poly in Huddersfield (I hope you've been paying attention, there's a quiz later on the support bands) and at the 1991 Reading Festival where, apart from the Sister's of Mercy and some no hopers called Nirvana, they were the best thing ever.

It's just a shame they weren't more fashionable. All the cool indie girls in their black and purple hoopy tights (you know you loved them!) went to Cud. Teenage Fanclub were the kings. Carter were my favourites. I don't care if I'm wrong.

Anyway, I decided. Much as Sheriff Fatman is the crowd pleaser and Only living Boy in New Cross is the big hit and After the Watershed is the one the Rolling Stones tried to ban and Bloodsport for All wasn't played on Radio 1 "because of the Iraq war", I had to go for Carter USM - Shopper's Paradise because when they played it at Brixton I had a smile a foot wide. This isn't the original Christmas special edition I'm afraid, just the one from 30 Something (admittedly a white label version :), but do you care? I don't. And I care even less that the photos have fucked the formatting on this.

Tell your kids, Carter the Unstoppable Sex Machine. Best indie band ever.

Perfume

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.

Resque

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!