Tramway

I think I mentioned before that I had a self-imposed limit for buying this crap off ebay; and this is only the second time I've broken it, the first was The Lillies and this time it's Tramway. So, who were Tramway? Why did I feel the need to spend over a tenner of my hard-earned on a little known 7" from an even littler known band? And why did I get all excited when I heard the recorded loveliness? Well...

As a bit of background, along with shit old C86 bands, one of my great loves is the sport of cycling; which is a good indie past time. Fruitbat out of Carter is a big cycling fan, as is Nigel from Half Man Half Biscuit, so is the oft-mentioned Gideon Coe. Anyway, I happened across mention of a song called "Gianni Bugno Wheels" (Gianni Bugno was a great Italian cyclist in the mid-80s to mid-90s) on my meandering about the internet and as part of my hunt for the mp3 - which turned out to be a rather lovely instrumental number - I discovered the band who'd recorded it were called Tramway, were a bit 1991 and had also recorded a song called Tour Du Pont.

And then my interest was really piqued.

It turns out that the one time and briefly employed drummer in the band was one Jez Butler; which rang a bell but I couldn't place. Until I found his personal web page. Jez Butler had been in a band called "Cake" with not one, but two ex members of The Flatmates! Oh and the band's only two singles were released on - your favourite and mine - Sarah Records. That's got to be an indie full house! And is also why I had to dash over to ebay and waste my money on this.

right click, saves as, to download
The band released two singles, Maritime City (as above) and Sweet Chariot on Sarah and an album called 'A Brand of Lovin' (where Gianni Bugno is name checked) on the Siesta label. On 'Maritime City' the band consisted of Chris Young and Matthew and Nancy Evans, although the band variously employed the talents of the aforementioned Jez Butler and someone known only as A Henderson as well.

Oh and there's what turns out to be a Portuguese site (which I only worked out after some aimless buggering about with Google's translate thingy) which says of Maritime City it sounds a bit like Felt and "it is nothing but excite other that gives the disc a charming nonsense" and furthermore "wronged those bands that appear and vanish without leaving more records" - which I rather like the sound of.

So there you go. I'm no investigative journalist, but if that's not increased the sum of knowledge on the internet, I don't know what has.

Menswear

I wasn't too sure about putting up Menswear (or indeed Menswe@r as they appear to have variously branded themselves) as I've said that Britpop was rubbish on a number of occasions in the past, but then two things changed my mind.

One was the constant references to Wire in write ups about the song below and the other was reading that the band apparently signed a big money deal and appeared in long forgotten music mag "Select" before they'd even put a record out; apparently because they were at the forefront of the mod revival. Well, 1994's mod revival, there's a mod revival every other year pretty much; it's like the NME saying that Ska will be back this year in their "What's Going To Be Cool This Year" articles like they have every year from about 1904.

Sorry, I digress, this is Menswear's second release - Daydreamer, and excitingly it's taken from a 7" in special plastic bag:

Right click, "saves as..." to download
So, formed in London (Camden probably) in 1994 the band signed a major deal after only a few gigs and with hardly any material written. Menswear/Menswe@r were Johnny Dean, Todd Parmenter [who was replaced by Matt Everitt (who now does the music news on BBC 6Music fact fans)], Chris Gentry, Simon White and Stuart Black.

The band were briefly pretty popular in 1994/95/96 and surfed the wave of Britpop that was taking over the country; I'm pretty sure I saw them live somewhere at the end of 1995 but can't for the life of me remember whether this actually happened or it's just something I made up to sound cool. They definitely had a couple of appearances on Top of the Pops and recorded a Peel Session.

Excitingly, when Matt Everitt left at the end of the band's life, he was replaced by "Tud" the band's roadie and Chris Gentry may (or may not) be the boyfriend/husband of Donna Matthews out of Elastica.

There's a full story and some interviews on this page which is definitely worth a read and of course, there's a ubiqitous wikipedia page.

Candyskins

Back to the indie heartland of Oxford today with the Candyskins and, in recognition of my planned trip to see England v Ukraine tonight, how about their 1993 jingly-jangly belter that is "Wembley"? I don't just throw this shit together you know...

So, the featured track reminds me of something that I've featured on here before so much that I had to go through everything I've done to make sure I'd not already done the band. I just can't put my finger on it and having been back through most of the old posts I just can't think what it is. Have a listen and see if you can help me out, it's going to annoy me.

Candyskins - Wembley (right click, "save as" to download)

Basically, the band were formed in 1989 in Oxford by brothers Nick and Mark Cope, Karl Shale (who was replaced by a chap called Brett Gordon on bass-bothering duties towards the end of the band's career) and John Holliday. They released some great early 90s indie before being buggered over by major label Geffen; apparently due to money shenanigans as so often happens, and subsequently didn't quite catch the brit-pop-proper wave, although their 1997 single "Monday Morning" did sneak into the charts. The band split in or about 1997 with their best years sadly behind them and just a posthumous album ("Death of a Minor TV Celeb") left.

I don't want to repeat too much of what's on this rather nice little fan site, so let's have a look at the wiki page instead.

Hang on, "regarded by the music press as one of the founders of Brit Pop"? That one has got to be up there with Moose as the first shoegazers? I had to go back to check my big boys book of indie music (well, Martin Strong's excellent "Great Indie Discography") to see if that could possible be true. As you can imagine, it's sort of true. According to Mr Strong's* hefty tome - Christmas money well spent that was! - they're a "seminal brit pop act"; so close but not quite, I've go fannied around with wikipedia so you'll have to check the history if you don't believe that's what it said...

Well there you go, not quite brit pop stalwarts, not quite proper indie legends, not quite major label players. Shame, the track above is ace. Now, I just need to work out what it sounds like.

* insert "and you'd have to be Mr Strong to lift it etc etc!" style joke here

Denim

I only just realised that I missed the 2nd Birthday of this place; I'd not expected it to last this long so it was a bit of an odd feeling, especially as more and more stuff keeps appearing in the Facebook group and in my email. So, to celebrate my belated birthday, have another band that I've been meaning to put up for ages and were promised back in July last year, yes, it's finally Denim!

Denim - Middle of the Road (right click, "save as..." to download)
Most of what I can say about the marvellous Lawrence Hayward - his supposedly OCD behaviour, his supposed eccentricity - is back in the Felt post from before, so I'll not go over old ground too much.

Suffice to say that after ten years of putting out Felt records, Lawrence split the band up, took a couple of years off and came back with Denim, a three piece with a far more polished and professional sound, unfortunately a couple of years before Brit Pop would break (and where the band would no doubt fit quite nicely), and we can only assume he was aiming at a whole new generation of indie kids; the first album "Back in Denim" was followed rapidly by the "Middle of the Road" single above; the follow-up album "Denim on Ice" was released four years later when Brit Pop had really taken hold. Blur and Oasis had already committed chart murder with their bloody Country House versus Roll With It shenanigans and we were seriously thinking of getting a new government.

Unfortunately, Denim on Ice didn't get the press coverage it deserved, it's a fantastic album and really should have made more of an impact - if you can face spending a fortune on ebay it really is worth getting hold of. Sadly for us and the face of indie, Laurence gave up with Denim and went off to do his own thing again with his newest band Go Kart Mozart.

So there you go, finally Denim get in. The Trouserpress page is very good and there's a wiki page needless to say.

Happy birthday!

Oh, and the first of Lawrence's new band's albums "Back in Denim"has recently been re-released.

Fat Tulips

We're covering two of my favourite musicky things today with the Fat Tulips; this one is a flexi disk and a cover. Two for the price of one! If only it was on Sarah Records it would be pretty much perfect...

So, Peterborough or Nottingham's (depending who you believe) Fat Tulips were formed around 1987 by artist Mark D (properly Mark Randall) and singer "Sarah C", who quickly left - if Wikipedia is to be believed - to study crop cirles in Peru. She was eventually replaced with the finalish line up of Sheggi Clarkson, Matt Johnson (not the one out of The The) and Paulie H; I couldn't tell you what the fascination with singularly letter-surnamed members is...

So, the band went about being populatr the old-fashioned way. They released a flexi disk before setting up their own label - Heaven - and getting a bit of Peel airplay and meandering about the early 90s twee scene for a few years, before splitting in about 1994.

Today's featured poptacular is this: a cover of Spandau Ballet's firsr release. The flexi in question is a split double-sided effort with Confetti, Mark D's side project.

Fat Tulips - To Cut A Long Story Short (right click & "save as" to download.
Of course, there is a wiki page as well.

14 Iced Bears

...or possibly Fourteen Iced Bears depending on who you believe (I'm going with the numbers, I like a good number in pop) are another Sarah Records band and this time they're from Brighton.

Formed in 1985 by Rob Sekula, Nick Emery and Alan White, the line-up was pretty fluid over the years and featured, amongst others the fantastically named Dominic Minques, Kevin Canham, Will Taylor and Rob Colley. I've got a page of a book called "The Great Indie Discography" in front of me and, while they might not quite be up there with The Fall, there's certainly a few names on the page...

Anyhow, the band started off with some cracking jingly-jangly-Sarah-twee (I'd thoroughly recommend getting hold of "Come Get Me") before moving on to what the book calls "a more focused retro sound", which to my ears means going a bit rock, but hey! The featured track today is 14 Iced Bears - The World I love in the natty embedded player below (if only I'd realised what everyone else did 5 years ago you'd have had it more already!), and is from the latter stages of the career and is a bit more 'focused and retro' but still a cracking bit of very late 80s indie.

(right click and 'save as' to download)
The band released a good lot of singles (see Tweenet) including one on Sarah (which is why they're here, I'm finally doing a sweep of the label), recorded a couple of Peel Sessions, were on the semi-legendary Alvin Lives in Leeds compilation, belatedly released an album and split in 1991; not a bad half dozen years by anyone's reckoning.

There is of course a wiki page and a myspace. Happy Friday the 13th!

Oh, and you can buy the best of here: 14 Iced Bears - "In the Beginning"or 'Come Get Me' as a new-fangled mp3here

The Sea Urchins

As we roll headlong towards the second anniversary of this internet nonsense, I'm clearing still the backlog of stuff I wrote down ages ago and never got round to putting on here; so let's keep clearing the metaphorical decks with The Sea Urchins.

Formed in West Bromwich in 1986, the band were intially signed to the legendary Sarah label after being launched onto the C86 scene with a couple of split flexi disks which brought them to the attention of the label. Were flexi disks the 1980/1990s equivalent of Myspace? Discuss. There's a question for my newly thought of BA (hons) in Indie Pop, I'll probably run it out of one of the crapper ex-Polys.

Anyway, I digress. Formed by James Roberts, Patrick Roberts, Simon Woodcock, Robert Cooksey, Bridget Duffy and Mark Bevin (who was replaced by the time the first "proper" single came out), the band were flexible in membership over their life and had split due to contractual shenanigans before Sarah released an album of all their recordings in 1992. Latterly the band have reformed on and off for gigs and an album 2000; in the meantime, several members of the band had continued to play as Delta.

If you want some train of thought ramblings, try the myspace page and if you want a brief overview, the band are on wikipedia.

So, for your Midlands listening delight today, here is The Sea Urchins - Please Don't Cry, and it might just be me but didn't Oasis steal this lock, stock and barrel for whatever that dirge with Rhys Ifans in the video was?

And this is a test of a nice embedded mp3 thingy, let me know if you like it.

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.

Land of Barbara

When I was clearing up the mess of notes I've got for this place, I remembered that I'd been pointed towards Land of Barbara by Mark from The Nilon Bombers way back when and I'd forgotten that they're rather good; there's a sort of Flowered Up vibe about the keyboards and cowbells, coupled with something I can't quite put my finger on, but still makes for a nice bit of indie-dance-rock.

We're a bit sparse on information about the band unfortunately, but some good internetting provides us with the knowledge that the band released at least three singles; "Silence is the Virtue" in 1992, "Alcohol" in 1993 and the featured-below "Kid Whiskey/Limited" double A-side in 1994 and I had a brief email conversation with Martin from the band last year - it's taken a while to get round to doing this - where he suggested they had loads of unreleased stuff, recorded at Toe Rag Studios, that he'd like to get released at some point.

The band played the Phoenix Festival in 1994 and had previously been scheduled to record a session of Mark Radcliffe's legendary Radio 5 programme "Hit the North" in 1993 but "their van broke down on the way to the session and they couldn't make it so Wonky Alice came in at very short notice and did a session instead".

But that's about it. The band members listed on the 7" are Martin Yelswel (vocals, guitar, flageolet), Tom King (guitar and backing vocals), Jon Skin (bass), Dr NJ Tudman (organs, grunts) and John Clube (drums); so there we go and here you go, it's Land of Barbara - Kid Whiskey. Enjoy.

The Weeds

So, for a long time I had a note in my little indie notebook that said "The Weeds - 1986, one single, too early?"; which to be honest, when I was reading through in November to check I'd not missed anything important, I was still thinking it was. Granted pretty much everything on here is a direct descendent of the NME's C86 tape - and some bands were even featured on it - but I wasn't sure whether to plumb the depths of the early 80s, after all, I'd started doing this page to feature early 90s stuff.

I was still umming and ahhing as the only thing a quick google found was pretty much taken direct from Barry Lazell's "Indie Hits: The Complete UK Singles and Album Independent Charts, 1980-89" book (which I've used every now and again for background) and tells us that the band were a "Manchester trio fronted by Andrew Berry, whose career was notably short - 'China Doll' was their debut single and they had split up before it had even been released". So I'd shelved the idea.

Then a few weeks back I was flicking through Dave Simpson's book "The Fallen" - which is a great read - and there, in black and white on page 218 was the line "Simon Wolstencroft was playing in a band called The Weeds and they'd supported The Fall...Smith recruited him [after checking out the opening act]".

Wait, hang on, Simon Wolstencroft, one of The Fall's longest serving drummers, was in The Weeds? The same The Weeds? Surely not..?

Well, a quick bit of investigative journalism later there it was; on the genuine "official" Fall website: "Simon Wolstencroft: Jun 1986-Aug 1997 drums: Member of The Patrol which became The Stone Roses. Also in The Colourfield for a short while and was the drummer in a band called The Weeds (which included Andrew Berry on vocals). Considered joining an early version of The Smiths but wasn't impressed by Morrissey. After leaving The Fall, played with Ian Brown on the Golden Greats album". Fuck me.

So what of Andrew Berry then? The 'Indie Hits' book seems to think he's the only band member who warrants a mention and he gets a name check on The Fall site. Now I had a couple of names and a bit more guff to look for, it only bloody turns out that Berry is Manchester royalty. He was only Johnny Marr's "best mate" and shared a flat with with the soon-to-be Smiths guitar botherer. That link is from an Uncut magazine article and is well worth a read if you can get past the lack of formatting. Oh, and even better, the Cerysmatic Factory site - home to everything you'll ever want to know about Factory Records, tells us that Berry was "a resident DJ at the pre-house Haçienda [and] set up a Factory Records hairdressing salon - Swing (FAC 98) - in the Haçienda's dressing room". That's right, one of the most influential record labels ever had a hairdresser. Oh, and the band supported the Happy Mondays.

So, finally, apart from the obvious fourth lady member you'll see on the cover above and hear doing backing vocals and "woohoo"s on the link below - goodness knows who she is, (anyone?), the writing credit on the 7" is Berry/Arrojo. Who is Arrojo?

Cerysmatic Factory provides another hint: "Vidal hairdressers were no strangers to certain nights at The Hacienda, but regulars may recall one in particular: Nick Arrojo was a popular attendee and would occasionally turn DJ alongside Pickering and Sasha". Wait, what the fuck?

Now, I've no idea whether that's the same "Arrojo", but he's a Haçienda regular and knows a bit about a short back and sides, it's got to be him surely?

So enough of investigative journalism (although if I ever write a book about this place, then this stuff is going in Chapter 1), this is The Weeds - China Doll, what a bit of history! Oh, and just to complete the Manchester-royalty of it all, the 7" was released on Marc Riley's In Tape label. Also latterly home to Frank Sidebottom. You know it is, it really is...



Oh and if you'd like me to go back in time, let me know.