Po!

Ok, so more cleaning up of the notes and forgotten bits today with Po!, a lovely jingly-jangly band who plied their trade around Leicester in the late 80s and early 90s; prime indie pop!

It's also time for "Return of the Flexi Disk". Hurray!

So, formed in 1987 by American artist Ruth Miller and featuring Julian Glover (latterly Mary Mills) on bass and Mark Fuccio (later replaced by Jan Frazer) on drums, the band were an opportunity for Miller to write and record songs that would, apparently, drive away and abusive boyfriend.

Initially the band were a threepiece that later in their career swapped between being all female and part male, then expanded to a five- or six-piece towards the end of their career.

The band deatured heavily on what appears to be called the "Leicestershire fanzine scene", which is where the 'Hop-Scotch in the Snow EP' featured here saw its release - on long forgotten fanzine Samantha which made a special feature of finding new bands' demos and releasing them as cover flexis.

The band released a good lot of singles and albums, recorded a Peel Session and toured extensively; releasing and playing some pretty good indie that I'm glad I stumbled upon when looking for something else!

There's a really nice site here that will tell you everything you need to know, the wiki page as all the bits and bobs as usual, and your TweeNet page will give you the full discography.

This is Po! - Appleseed Alley, which is track 2 on the EP. Remember kids, if you swallow an apple pip, a tree will grow out of your mouth.

Pop Will Eat Itself

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.