The Keatons

Now, I'll be honest, I can't remember when I came across The Keatons, I'm assuming it was during looking up the S*M*A*S*H stuff from before as the band are also from Welwyn Garden City (sort of, two of the band live there) and I remember an email conversation with a chap about them, but I'm buggered if I can find it, sorry if it was you!

Anyway, The Keatons. Most of what you need to know, including the recording of the spectacularly names debut LP "Ex Vide Betamaxi In Honda Cotopaxi" in the Czech Republic, the members of the band and all the history is covered in the Myspace page and on Rhodri Marsden's (who got in the band by eating an orange, writes for the Independent and the Radio Times and is in Scritti Politti!) blog.

In short, the band formed in London in 1986, recorded some great singles, got played by John Peel, toured long and hard, released the album (which is great, try and get hold of a copy), and toured even more. Read the myspace page, it's worth it and has a few other tracks on that are just as good as this: The Keatons - Gold Vane; it's track 1 on the album which would be a lazy bit of recording and mp3ing, but it captures the spirit.

I can only apologise for forgetting everything I was going to say, none of my notes to myself make any sense...

Top

Another entry in the "fuck me, that was hard to Google" stakes today with Top.

As requested by Kirtsy and Steve in Facebook group of this here page, Top were a Liverpudlian three-piece who kicked around for a couple of years at the start of the 1990s.

Clinging onto the coat-tails of Madchester and the Liverpool scene that gave us The Las and their ilk, Alan Wills, Joe Fearon and Paul Cavanagh knocked out a few cracking singles and an album (Emotion Lotion) and even recorded a Peel Session before going the way of so many other of their contemporaries.

The internet knows very little of Top - possibly due to the aforementioned Googling problems - so any more detail is again welcome.

You can listen to Top - Buzzin' here and should you wish buy a copy of "Emotion Lotion" here, for as little as 89p!

The Chesterfields

I was all ready to launch into a dreamy reminiscence about the lovely catherdral city here, then I found out The Chesterfields are from Yeovil, not the Derbyshire city with the wonky spire. Ah well, maybe next time.

Formed in Yeovil in the summer of 1984 by David Goldsworthy (guitar/vocals), Simon Barber (bass/vocals) and Dominic Manns (drums) and then supplemented by guitarist Brendan Holden in 1985, The Chesterfields were another of the great under rated indie bands that this page is all about.

The band were prolific in the late 80s and produced some pretty fine indie pop, releasing loads of really good singles and at least one album. Their debut LP was named "Kettle" as, and I'm quoting Tweenet here,

"The story goes that they chose this title for the LP after watching 'Coronation Street' and listening to the characters at frequent points during the show telling each other, in their best northern accents, to 'put kettle on luv'. "

The Tweenet entry is full and interesting, as is this Geocities page, so get it while it's hot.

On a sad note, David Goldsworthy was killed in a hit and run accident in 2004.

This is The Chesterfields - Blame. There's not enough trombone work in indie pop is there? Good brass band work at the end as well.

You can buy their best of "Electric Guitars in Their Hearts" here.

The Hollow Men

The Hollow Men were first brought to my attention by a nice lady called Mandy, who emailed me way back in March. She'd been after a copy of an EP called The Drowning Man. Sadly I can't help with that particular request, but I can help with a lovely 12" called "What To Look For In Summer".

So, The Hollow Men. Coming out of Leeds in the mid-1980s, the band were at least a six-piece and released numerous albums and singles (according to their myspace page anyway). The band were lumped in with the Madchester groups of the time, unfairly really as they do sound a bit like the Stone Roses et al, but once more there's far more depth to the music that you'd expect; compare them with Northside and you'll see how much better they were.

The Last FM page has a pretty good discography and background (and, for Mandy has The Drowning Man for you listening pleasure).

Anyway, Madchester aside, you'll like this, it's The Hollow Men - November Comes; and it features some of that great wah-wah pedal-created wacka-wacka noise that was so popular in 1990.

Oh, and according to my chum Gareth, one of their first press photos had them all brushing their teeth. Crazy!

Amazingly, Cresta, their album is available for as little as 50p on Amazon!

Hang on! Youtube comes up trumps again...

Northside

Oh God, it's Northside. I was going to write off May as a bit of a washout, it's been a long month with various crap, capped off with the laptop I use to copy the music on this page playing silly fuckers. But then I found a tune flitting in and out of my head that I guess I heard on a radio in passing and I couldn't shake it. Nor, I have to say, could I work out what it was; all I could remember was the odd snatch here and there and half a chorus. Then I found out. It was Northside. And not Shall We Take A Trip?

No, it was this; the add-it-to-the-list-of-Ian-Broudie-produced Northside - Take 5. If only it had been Dave Brubeck.

Now, Northside divide opinion like few other of the 1990s Manc-indie-dance-flare-wearing-sub-Mondays groups. I don't mind them in a "haha! I remember that! (now) way", but not everyone would be prepared to spend £1.99 on the 7" and still own it. I'm sorry.

The Wiki says, rather sterily (is that a word?):

"Northside are a band from Oldham, England that borrowed heavily from the Madchester scene of the time...Formed in 1989, they released their only (and well respected) album Chicken Rhythms on Factory Records in 1991...Northside were considered a real goup of the 1990's scene."

Should you want more, and I'll understand if you don't, there's a Myspace page and a Facebook group (what sort of knob has one of those..?) Ahem.

Anyway, probably most famous for Shall We Take A Trip? the band actually released three singles, the above being the last, and an album. Hands up who owns that!

Sod, it, enjoy the Dave Brubeck jazz-lite number as well.

Oh, and you can buy the "Best" of Northside here.

Paris Angels

Paris Angels were part of the great Manchester indie/dance crossover explosion of 1990 and were well up there with the best of them. Although sadly nowhere near popular and remembered as some of their contemporaries, the Paris Angels were just as good, if not better.

The seven piece band featured, amongst others, Paul Wagstaff (latterly of The Mondays) on guitar and were regulars in the Hacienda scene that made "Madchester" the terrifying behemoth of dance and bad trousers that it became.

The Wikipedia amd 24 hour party people pages have what you need to know.

This is Paris Angels - Perfume, the band's first single from 1990, number 6 in the 1990 Festive Fifty, which beat such luminaries as The Happy Mondays, The Orb and the mighty New FADS. The 1990 Festive Fifty, as an aside, is a list of probably the 50 most indie songs ever put together; how many have you got in your collection?

And the video, thank you youtube.

Eat

Eat were a cracking band; formed in London in the mid-1980s by indie genius Ange Dolittle (latterly of criminally over looked band Dolittle). Splitting in 1990 due to "musical differences", not least Ange's heroin addiction, the original bluesy-folky-cajun inspired Eat reformed with a new line-up in 1992 as the seminal indie pop band we now know and love; something we should all be glad for.

Big in the UK, but never breaking the big time in the States, Ange and Eat gave it all up in 1995; playing to empty rooms in an abortive tour being the final straw.

There's a good Wikipedia entry and the biography at Forgotten Band Planet is particularly good, so we won't cover too much old ground. Instead, enjoy Eat - Mr and Mrs Smack from the Plastic Bag EP, it's a lovely bit of swooping indie pop; one more reason to be glad for Eat.

You can buy Eat's second album "Epicure" here. You should

Circus Circus Circus

We're going with another request for this month's first entry. Circus Circus Circus (also more conveniently for the typer known as Circus X3) were brought to my attention by my mate Dan who'd been digitising his collection of bloody terrible goth singles when this little gem popped up in the middle.

I have to admit here that the only thing that seems to exist anywhere is a MySpace page for the band, but that tells us what we need to know.

The band were formed in Beckhenham, South London in the mid-80s and comprised Doug Hart on vocals, Ric Clark and Mark Shaw on guitars, Richard Bentley on bass and Rich Spicer on drums. From the press cuttings available the band seem to have been a well-produced, slick and stylish five-piece who could belt out a cracking tune. I never saw them live, but they sound a bit like The Shadows.

Still, they obviously toured extensively and released a number of singles and at least one album so someone reading this will know more about them to fill in the gaps.

So, in the meantime feel free to enjoy the (unfortunately crackly) musical stylings of Circus Circus Circus - Inside the Inside Out Man. I rather like it, it's a nice bit of jingly-jangly indie pop and one more added to the list of obscurities.

The Sedgwicks

A more than mysterious band here; The Sedgwicks were, as far as I can tell, from Kent, released two singles in 1992 or possibly 1993 and disappeared without trace. Having said that of course, I can only find any trace of the Stolen Smiles EP that this track, the eponymous The Sedgwicks - Stolen Smiles comes from.

It's a cracking bit of jingly-jangly and I'd love to know more about the band, so sorry this is a bit short, i'm kind of hoping anyone who stumbles across this knows more than the internet does; plus it's been a hectic month and I've not had the time to sit down and do anything that passes for research!

The Bodines

Not much comes out of Glossop (except for Stuart Hall and Shaun Ryder of course), so it's nice that we can visit there today with The Bodines.

For reasons I can't remember now I'd crossed this lot off my list of bands to put up, goodness knows why, they're as indie as they come. Again, I'm not going to repeat stuff that's easy to find on the internet, but the biography from here sums up what we need to know:

"The Bodines emerged from Glossop in Derbyshire. Fronted by the floppy-fringed Michael Ryan, they became one of the better-known outfits from a crop of jangly indie bands that sprang up around that time... The group's debut album, 'Played' (produced by Ian Broudie, later to enjoy success as a recording artist as the Lightning Seeds) was a fine jangly pop artifact, but it only scraped in to no. 94 in the album charts, in the summer of 1987. "

And there's Ian Broudie again. He gets everywhere. The wiki page and Indie mp3 page have loads more stuff, so go and enjoy there. This particular mp3, The Bodines - William Shatner is taken from a Canadian live bootleg 7" single, which is worth a mention alone.

I'm a fan of the band, they really did produce some cracking indie pop and were much better than their lack of success would lead you to believe. I'm glad I put them back on the list, they certainly deserve to be remembered, not least because Therese, their second single was considered such a yardstick for their genre that it was on the NME's legendary C86 tape; which is always worth getting hold of if you can (or you can buy the updated CD86 version here, which is still as good.)