The Rosehips

The Rosehips are one of your great should-have-been-bigger twee bands. Formed near Stoke in 1986, the band are another with an indie-lady singer in a line up of:

"Yoland (vocals), Glenn (guitar), Ant (bass) and Mark 1 (drums). The [band's] first release was "The Last Light" on the Subway Records compilation LP "Take The Subway To Your Suburb". Two further singles - "Room In Your Heart" and "I Shouldn't Have To Say" - were released on Subway and the band gigged alongside Talulah Gosh, The Flatmates, The Clouds and The Groove Farm."

Again, I don't want to just copy and paste too much of the already full internet, so the "official" history is here and there is, of course, a lot on the band's myspace page. Oh, and believe it or not, there's a Rosehips tribute band!

The best thing about the internet is that people record such minute details as who the band played with, including such indie legends as the Darling Buds, Mega City Four and The Wedding Present!

So, here you go, this is The Rosehips - Room in Your Heart, it's a great bit of late 80s indie pop.

The Soup Dragons

Before reinventing themselves as some sort of baggy/indie crossover stars with 1990's Lovegod album, The Soup Dragons were one more band off the indie production line that comes out of Glasgow and has produced such luminaries as the BMX Bandits and Teenage Fanclub.

In the mid- to late-1980s The Soup Dragons were knocking out Peel-friendly indie of the sort featured here - Soup Dragons - The Majestic Head (and I think I'm right in saying this is the first picture disc featured). It was only with the release of their third album that they went all I'm Free; at much the same time that Scottish chums Primal Scream were also leaving their rock roots behind and experimenting with ecstacy-fuelled indie dance.

And in the same way that the Happy Mondays "covered" Step On, I'm Free, a danced-up cover of a 1965 Rolling Stones song, brought the Soup Dragons fame and fortune.

Anyway, today's post is to celebrate the 'original' Soup Dragons, the band that recorded Peel Sessions and made it into the 1986 Festive Fifty. Twice.

For more detail, the Trouser Press biography is the page you want to read and This Is Our Art, the album of the mp3 above, was recently re-released for you to enjoy the first incarnation of the band, before digging out the flares and the hooded Inspiral Carpets tops and shuffling around the house like it was 1990 all over again..

The Prudes

For the second offering of double-request-post Wednesday, we're going to go with a band that again I'm a bit short of information about: The Prudes.

From Last.fm we know they were formed by Bradleigh Smith and Pete Ellis in 1987. They recorded 5 singles and an album (Designer Karma) on Imaginary Records and from the bit my chum Gareth remembers, Bradleigh and Terry Bickers from the House of Love covered the Velvet Underground's "I'm set free" on the early 90s compilation album "Heaven & Hell". They also may have recorded a Peel Session.

So, once more it's a call for information, know anything about The Prudes?

While you rummage through the loft of memory, have a listen to The Prudes - Glad, it's really rather good.

Salad

It's double-request-post Wednesday today. Starting off with Salad, another band with that indiest of things, an attractive lady singer.

Formed in 1992, the band consisted of Dutch vocalist/keyboardist Marijne van der Vlugt, bassist Pete Brown, drummer Rob Wakeman (not Rick Wakeman as it took me three goes to work out) and guitarist Paul Kennedy. The band were bulked up for live outings by Charley Stone (latterly of Gay Dad).

Again, I'll keep it short as there's a load of information on wikipedia and a nice little collection of rareities and B-sides on myspace which tells us that the band...

"released three full-length [albums] - 1995's Drink Me, the same year's Singles Bar, and 1997's Icecream - before breaking up in the late '90s. Despite being part of the Britpop scene in terms of sound, they never quite received the same amount of attention given to their peers."

And they certainly don't; this offering Salad - Kent is a cracking bit of swirly-waily indie pop. And it's a great addition to this place.

Mega City Four

First off, an apology, it's been a busy few weeks at Because Midway Still... towers and I've got a backlog of stuff to put on. And to be honest, I'm more than happy that I can finally get round to putting Mega City Four on; they've been a glaring omission for a long time now.

I don't think I'd be alone in saying that I loved Mega City Four. They were a fantstic band and part of indie royalty. They released huge amounts of music and toured extensively and continuously with Midway Still, Ned's, Carter, Senseless Things and countless other indie bands that we all know and love.

Part of the reason I do this is to link together all the bands that, although they may not have had massive financial and popular success in the hit parade and on Radio 1, they really did influence so many of us to grow our hair stupidly and wear ridiculous shorts. Oh, and to really, really love music.

For a biography I'm once again lifting lock, stock from the All Music Guide:

"The long-running alternative rock band the Mega City Four had been together for over a decade when they broke up in early 1996. Formed in the mid-'80s in Farmborough, England, the band consisted of guitarist/vocalist Wiz, bassist/vocalist Gerry Bryant, rhythm guitarist/vocalist Danny Brown, and drummer Chris Jones. Aside from the studio LPs Tranzophobia (1989), Who Cares Wins (1990), Terribly Sorry Bob (1991), Sebastopol Rd. (1992), Magic Bullets (1994), and Soulscraper (1996), the band also tallied a live LP, a Peel Sessions disc, and an impressive number of singles"

Of course, we know that Wiz sadly died in December 2006; the official Mega City Four page, although not as up to date as some fan pages, will keep you abreast of any news and there's a good myspace page for the band and as a tribute to Wiz as well.

For the mp3, why not enjoy 1988's second single Mega City Four - Clear Blue Sky, it's a cracking bit of early indie rock and roll and should hopefully more than make up for leaving them out until now.

You can still buy loads of their stuff, I'd forgotten how good Sebastopol Road was...

Intastella

Back to early 1990s Manchester again today with Intastella, a great band that produced some really good, swooping, atmospheric pop and were unfairly lumped in with the Madchester crap that was kicking about at the time.

Another one with not much about unfortunately, but we do know that the band were formed in 1991, consisted of members Stella Grundy, Martin Wright, Martin Mittler, Spencer Birtwistle and Lil' Anthony (Anthony Green), released a load of great singles and three albums and live on in myspace. As they say themselves, they

"made music we liked and created music we had not heard before. Although we were inspired by some Manchester bands, we never tryed to sound like any of them. We wanted to make pop music."

The bit of music we're going to have today is this, Intastella - Point Hope, a magic bit of indie pop.

There's an interview on the BBC Manchester bit of the internet here and if you've got more money than sense, you can buy their best of here.

McCarthy

McCarthy are another band that came up in conversation on the Facebook group and are can be added to the list of top notch Essex-based indie bands. Formed in 1985 and active until about 1990, the band released a good few singles and three albums as well as recording three Peel Sessions and appearing in the Festive 50 twice; the sign of a good band in anybody's book.

There's a number of very good histories available on the old internet; this one particularly details their history and influences and tells us that:

"[the band were] named for the infamous US Senator Joseph McCarthy, who led the Communist witch hunt [in the USA] in the 1950's, McCarthy were ironic to say the least. Due to their chosen name and politically charged lyrics, as often satirically far right as they were sincerely far left, as well as their rumored association with the Revolutionary Communist Party in England, most critics were quick to label McCarthy as "Marxist" or "anarchist" rock and roll. The band, for their part, didn't take themselves quite as seriously. from left to right: Gary, Malcolm, Tim, and John Malcolm's lyrics are filled to bursting with irony, humor, and contradiction."

They really were a great band and this mp3, McCarthy - Keep an open mind or else, captures them in essence (it was released as one of 600,000 copies according to the insert!).

The Tweenet page is also very good and so is the wikipedia page.

The Band split in about 1990; you can still buy "That's All Very Well But...", their Best Of album.

World of Leather

The only thing the internet knows about the best band ever named after a sofa shop, World of Leather seems to be on the once more invaluable Trouserpress site; which says:

"British power pop auteur Tot Taylor is the man behind the throne in the World of Leather, a merry band floating around Liverpool singer/guitarist Mark Chase...[the band] were a bizarre glam-pop extravaganza that credits a couple of drummers and as many as eight (!) guitarists on a single track."

And it's true I've got their first two singles here, and World of Leather (below) has six guitarists, five vocals and three violins credited; the second Future Ex-Pop Star has eight guitarists and, wonderfully, two drummers; a quick Google brings up a couple of ex-members around: Ray Weston, drums and Paul Cuddeford, guitar.

They came to my notice care of a drunken weekend in that indiest of cities, Oxford, via my friend Paul who was at one point either their manager or PR man or similar. He also had something to do with The Gigolo Aunts back in the day. He told me a story about how he'd got them a gig somewhere in Kilburn and the band had paid a couple of my other chums £5 each and all they could drink in exchange for working the smoke machine.

Of course, they took "all you can drink" as a challenge, so when it came to doing the smoke they just left it blowing full blast and filled the whole place with a thick smog. People walking through kilburn that night tell of vast clouds drifting down the road, obscuring the pavements, causing busses to crash and bringing back memories of the famous London pea-soupers.

Anyway, this offering World of Leather - World of Leather is a bloody marvellous bit of indie/power/glam/rock pop and more than deserves a mention here.

I'll admit that I'm breaking my own rules a bit and it's from a CD, not a bit of vinyl so I hope you'll forgive me. But as a) it's so good it needs remembering, b) WoL don't seem to have released anything on vinyl and c) they're my rules to break so nuts, I'm going to put it on.

Do bands still use smoke machines? They were very indie...

PS, I forgot to say, the song is off a limited 500 run of the CD and there's still loads of WoL stuff on Amazon, much for as little as 1 pence.

Felt

Felt inspire something of a dedicated following; with uni-monickered Lawrence, the man behind the band (and latterly Denim - of who more to come at some point) being regarded as something of a stereotypical English "eccentric genius" type in the true wacky genius-cum-scatterbrained old professor sort of way. There are numerous stories, some probably true, some probably apocryphal about his compulsive cleanliness (of the "he wouldn't let anyone else use the loo in his house" type) and Mark E Smith recruitment policies for the band (sacking the drummer for having curly hair).

There's no denying that Felt were great, a band who developed and grew through their ten years of existence into a genuinely briliant new wave/indie pop band who were capable of producing some fantastic records.

I don't want to cover too much ground as there are several sites that will tell you the story in more detail than I can fit here; the Perfect Sound Forever, Felt Tribute Site and Adrian Denning's site especially. You can also see what's what from wikipedia.

For today, content yourself with listening to Felt - Get Out of My Mirror, taken from a flexi (yay!) sampler of the band's 1989 album Me And A Monkey On The Moon. It is bloody excellent, I'd forgotten just how good the band could be.

There's loads of Felt CDs and stuff available, and you really should look into the band.

The Flatmates

A while back now someone mentioned The Flatmates to me as a band that should really go up on here and I'd dutifully noted the name down and gone about my business.

Then, at some point last week I was using the 6music "listen again" thing to listen to Gideon Coe during the day at work rather than that moron Lamb, and he played a song (as is usual on the radio I understand) that blew me away before I even knew who it was; it was just perfect indie pop.

It turned out that it was this: The Flatmates - Shimmer and for the first time in ages I was speechless. How the hell had I missed them? Why, when I was writing their name down didn't I bother to listen to them on their myspace page?

Suffice to say The Flatmates are fantastic. They have an information page here and a Wikipedia page.

Anyway, formed in, or around, 1985 in Bristol, the band released half a dozen cracking indie-pop singles and a couple of albums, recorded a Peel Session and as is the way, split up, reformed and split up again. This site has all the story you need in far more detail than I can fit in here and the mp3 above, although scratchy is great. It's in better quality on the myspace page too.

And lo and hehold there's a 'Best of' to buy, worth £8 of anyone's money.