Time for some spring cleaning of the indie notebook I carry around in my dapper manbag. I've been meaning to put Pop Will Eat Itself on here for ages, but keep getting side-tracked by obscurities and bands I'm only just discovering; so it's nice to finally get round to putting on a band I really used to like. I do keep forgetting that some of these bands, although they're "famous" to me and most of the people that read this page, there are still people that have never heard of them. Poor people.
So, another bunch of West Midlands scamps, cut from the same cloth as Ned's Atomic Dustbin, The Wonderstuff and the Senseless things to name but a few, PWEI were probably one of the most prolific and well known of the early 1990s indie bands; they knocked out singles and albums at an incredible rate and, along with CUD and Carter, were probably one of the most recognisable and critically acclaimed bands of the time.
You knew where you stood with PWEI, if one of their records came on in a club then everyone would be up and dancing and you knew that when the NME had a photo of Cint Mansell on you were going to get a good story. You knew that you were going to get a good show if you went to see them live and by crikey you knew a single was going to be a good shouty sing-a-long of a bit of vinyl.
Of course, the Wikipedia Page covers most of what you need to know and this Pop Will Eat Itself - Bulletproof; is a taster of what we're missing. Although, of course, they did play a comeback tour in 2005...
You can buy Pop Will Eat Itself's best of "PWEI Product 1986-1994: The Pop Will Eat Itself Anthology" by clicking here. You really should.
Friday, 4 April 2008
Pop Will Eat Itself
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And blimmin' marvellous they were and still are!
ReplyDelete*raises glass to this and all your bloggage*
unfortunately "Bulletproof" was their worst single, with moronic lyrics, and what could charitably be described as a slight and uninteresting backing. Almost everything else they did was 100 times better.
ReplyDeleteI was a sucker for all their "limited edition" releases... I am sitting here looking lovingly at my 12" Bulletproof picturedisk!
ReplyDeleteTrue, it's in perfect condition mostly because the single wasn't worth playing more than once...
The Poppies are Crap!
ReplyDeleteand those comeback gigs were corking, i can't see how they made any moeny off their either, unless they had that giant LED back screen in a shed somewhere, it must have cost a bomb.
ReplyDeleteYeah worst single alert, and PWEI were possibly one of the worst modern day multiformat offenders. If I recall their Very Metal Noise Pollution came out in about a thousand different versions. PWEIzation was a cracking song though.
ReplyDeleteActually, I changed my mind. "Get the Girl, Kill The Baddies" was the worst Poppies release - but I'll let them off because it was towards the end of their RCA relationship and I got the impression they were being shafted by their label good and proper by that point (RCA took some very interesting indie risks in the late 80s cf. The Wedding Present must've had a bizarre contract considering they convinced RCA to release one 7" each month during 1992).
ReplyDeleteThat's funny, as Get The Girl, Kill The Baddies and Bulletproof are among my favourite PWEI tracks. Sorry folks, does this mean there is no love between us any more?
ReplyDeleteBrilliant website.
ReplyDeleteIndie as it used to be (before Kate Moss pretended to be into indie music - doubtless she was listening to her R'n'B back in the day).
Before the dreaded sterility of Britpop - when bands weren't afraid to at least try and create something different, rather than just rehash 1970s punk.
Long live the likes of PWEI, EMF, Jesus Jones, Carter USM et al.
Ciao