The Lillies

One of the genuine joys of doing this is that every now and again someone emails and says "have you heard of so-and-so? They were great!"; The Anyways were one of these, The Nilon Bombers were another. This particular record though is probably my favourite so far. It's a flexi disk (yay!), it's a football crossover and, more importantly, it's by a painfully cool indie supergroup consisting of Simon Raymonde from the Cocteau Twins, Chris Acland and Miki Berenyi from Lush and Kevin Mckillop and Russell Yates from Moose. You just know it's going to be good.

So this is it. A supergroup called The Lillies and a swooping, spacey bit of indie memorabilia called "And David Seaman will be very disappointed with that..." recorded to commemorate Tottenham Hotspur beating their arch-rivals Arsenal in the 1991 FA Cup semi-final on 14 April 1991 helped by a wonderful free-kick by Paul Gascoigne at the very height of his genius. I remember watching the game, my Spurs-supporting mates still talk of the game and Gazza's goal in hushed tones. And, more importantly, it led to this fantastically rare bit of plastic tht you could only get by buying The Spur, a Tottenham fanzine/magazine of some reknown.

To say I was excited when this came up on eBay would be to commit the greatest understatement in years. I was agape, my mouth could have caught a double-decker bus, my eyes were that particular wide, stary look that only 6-year-olds get on Christmas day when they get their first BMX; God I was in awe. So much so that I hastily put in a bid that was far, far above my self-imposed five pounds limit (including p&p) that I've set for buying these old records. I don't think I've HAD to have anything quite so much in years, probably not since I first saw a ZX Spectrum in action. I'm actually shaking just thinking about it, that's how badly this bloody blog has affected me.

The only thing that made it even better was that the seller was called Stuart. Stuart Mutler in fact. Only the bloody editor of The Spur and the man whose idea the whole thing was in the first place. The man who told me

"The flexi disc was my idea (I was the editor of 'Spur') and I got the artists together all those summers ago. Simon did most of the work. The others came in for one day. We all thoroughly enjoyed ourselves. Although with the attention the recording got on release, I think Miki may have regretted her involvement. She kept getting badgered by supporters, and it detracted some people from her work with Lush."

And really very kindly included scans from the NME and Melody Maker reviewing the thing in the first place.

I really can't do justice to how owning this thing is the best thing ever and I can't copy out all the wonderful words about it, so there are two links here and here to read and the mp3 here The Lillies - And David Seaman will be very disappointed with that.

It's a great bit of swooping indie pop, just as you'd imagine the Cocteau Twin, Lush and Moose would make if they had free rein to do whatever the hell they wanted together.

Oh, and here is "that" goal...


"Mabbutt has gone forward, with Stewart to the right. Lineker and Howells to the left. Is Gascoigne going to have a crack? He is you know! Oh I say! Brilliant!"

PS, Stuart says there's a few more of the mag/flexi combinations going up on the old eBay soon, so keep your eyes open!