The Popguns

Well well, April again and I just realised that not only did I miss the anniversary of putting this tosh on a too-full internet, but I also missed the chance to put Kylie in as a hilarious April Fool's joke. Well, PWL were an independent label...

Ah well. Instead, why not have another of Brighton's jingly-jangly massive, yes it's The Popguns ladies and gentlemen, and here recorded from the lovely one-sided promo pictured; always the best way to hear a piece of indie pop if a flexi disk is not readily available.

The Popguns score several points on the "How Indie Are You?" Facebook application of life. Not only are they from the aforementioned Sussex seaside indie wonderland, but they had a lady singer and, get this, the ex-drummer from the Wedding Present; one Shaun Charman. Marvellous stuff.

The wikipedia page is a little sparse and their 'official' page hasn't been updated since 2003, but we do know that they banged out a load of cracking singles and albums (discography here), bashed around from 1988 to 1996 and made the Festive 50 at least once (certainly 1989 with Landslide) and certainly had a touch of the Wedding Present about them. OK, they might not have had David Gedge's angst down, but they certainly had lyrics that were deeper then you might have thought from first listen.

So this is The Popguns - waiting for the Winter; the height of twee. Lovely stuff.

You can buy The Popguns best of "Another Year Another Address: the Best of the Midnight Years" by clicking here

Jacob's Mouse

I should really draw up an indie map one day; granted most of this stuff will be Oxford, Glasgow or Manchester-based, but here's another entry for the agricultural wastelands of Suffolk.

Jacob's Mouse were a rather nice indie rock band with, and I feel this is important, identical twin brothers Jebb and Hugo Boothby playing bass and guitar. I don't think I've featured twins before; identical or otherwise.

Wikipedia says that they formed in 1991 and

"...despite some critical acclaim, and a successful UK tour supporting Babes in Toyland and Trumans Water, they failed to take the wider world by storm. Following the release of their Rubber Room LP in 1995, Jacob's Mouse split."

There's a good full biog on the Wiija site, so pop along there for more and as usual TrouserPress know all.

They seem to get tagged as "grunge" around the internet which seems rather unfair. Granted some of their stuff is more rock than the jingly jangly indie stuff we all know and love, but still. They recorded a couple of Peel Sessions and released some cracking records, so hats off to them and welcome to the blog.

This particular mp3 is a good ones as well, Jacob's Mouse - Company News, it's from the legendary Rough Trade Singles Club as well, nicely.

Oh, and you can buy Jacob's Mouse "No Fish Shop Parking" here.

Disco

Another band that was brought to my attention by an email, this time by a very nice chap called Martin. The band in question? Disco. No, me either.

They were around in about 1995, appeared at the In the City expo in Manchester, and released two singles by the look at it. I've got a scan of a cutting from the NME, it says that Stop Me and Buy One, the mp3 below is:

"a simpering, simmering cauldron of feisty, femme-tastic shenanigans... All bloody marvellous."

Well, I guess that's one way of putting it. Listen to the mp3 below; it's rough and exciting in a 'two girls shouting into a bin' way.

I managed to hunt a copy of this single down from a very helpful Dutch chap at a record shop called Distortion Records in Amsterdam (and if I'm ever in that fine city again I'm certainly popping in to see them; Amond was a great help).

Anyway, this is Disco - Stop Me and Buy One and I think you'll see why they are a long lost band. I hate being rude about people who managed to form a band, get a single out, get reviewed and get heard of by people; my respect for them is part of why I'm doing this. But, and it's a big but, I'm sorry, the NME were talking out of their hats. This really isn't that good...

Gigolo Aunts

A bit of an odd one this, the Gigolo Aunts are American, but couldn't sound more indie if they tried. Well, if they tried any harder to sound like Teenage Fanclub anyway.

It's a bit of a shame really, as a band they were pretty good and they knocked out some cracking indie pop; unfortunately they never really took off over here and were kind of swamped by all the other American bands doing bloody grunge, just as they started to make their name.

They did of course have a massive hit in "Where I Find My Heaven" which featured in "comedy" film Dumb and Dumber and in the late-but-not-really-lamented sitcom "Game On" which featured the comedy stylings of Samantha "let's just forget Eurovision, please!" Janus, the ginger chap who does the adverts and the hilarious bloke who wouldn't leave the flat.

I went to see them in a comeback gig in what must have been 1998 or 1999 at The Garage in Highbury; all the way through you just knew the audience were waiting for them to do the song. To their credit they did; they saved it for a show-stopper at the end. I remember them doing it twice, but I may be wrong.

Anyway, they deserved better, they produced some lovely indie pop and if they'd made it big(gish) 3 years earlier we'd still be talking about them.

Here for your listening pleasure, copied from the coloured vinyl 7", here's Gigolo Aunts - Mrs Washington, complete with scratches and a skip or two. just so you can see that they had more than one song.

You can buy the Gigolo Aunts "Best of"here.

And ok, here's THE SONG. Sorry lads. Still, that's some mighty fine indie hair.

The Lillies

One of the genuine joys of doing this is that every now and again someone emails and says "have you heard of so-and-so? They were great!"; The Anyways were one of these, The Nilon Bombers were another. This particular record though is probably my favourite so far. It's a flexi disk (yay!), it's a football crossover and, more importantly, it's by a painfully cool indie supergroup consisting of Simon Raymonde from the Cocteau Twins, Chris Acland and Miki Berenyi from Lush and Kevin Mckillop and Russell Yates from Moose. You just know it's going to be good.

So this is it. A supergroup called The Lillies and a swooping, spacey bit of indie memorabilia called "And David Seaman will be very disappointed with that..." recorded to commemorate Tottenham Hotspur beating their arch-rivals Arsenal in the 1991 FA Cup semi-final on 14 April 1991 helped by a wonderful free-kick by Paul Gascoigne at the very height of his genius. I remember watching the game, my Spurs-supporting mates still talk of the game and Gazza's goal in hushed tones. And, more importantly, it led to this fantastically rare bit of plastic tht you could only get by buying The Spur, a Tottenham fanzine/magazine of some reknown.

To say I was excited when this came up on eBay would be to commit the greatest understatement in years. I was agape, my mouth could have caught a double-decker bus, my eyes were that particular wide, stary look that only 6-year-olds get on Christmas day when they get their first BMX; God I was in awe. So much so that I hastily put in a bid that was far, far above my self-imposed five pounds limit (including p&p) that I've set for buying these old records. I don't think I've HAD to have anything quite so much in years, probably not since I first saw a ZX Spectrum in action. I'm actually shaking just thinking about it, that's how badly this bloody blog has affected me.

The only thing that made it even better was that the seller was called Stuart. Stuart Mutler in fact. Only the bloody editor of The Spur and the man whose idea the whole thing was in the first place. The man who told me

"The flexi disc was my idea (I was the editor of 'Spur') and I got the artists together all those summers ago. Simon did most of the work. The others came in for one day. We all thoroughly enjoyed ourselves. Although with the attention the recording got on release, I think Miki may have regretted her involvement. She kept getting badgered by supporters, and it detracted some people from her work with Lush."

And really very kindly included scans from the NME and Melody Maker reviewing the thing in the first place.

I really can't do justice to how owning this thing is the best thing ever and I can't copy out all the wonderful words about it, so there are two links here and here to read and the mp3 here The Lillies - And David Seaman will be very disappointed with that.

It's a great bit of swooping indie pop, just as you'd imagine the Cocteau Twin, Lush and Moose would make if they had free rein to do whatever the hell they wanted together.

Oh, and here is "that" goal...


"Mabbutt has gone forward, with Stewart to the right. Lineker and Howells to the left. Is Gascoigne going to have a crack? He is you know! Oh I say! Brilliant!"

PS, Stuart says there's a few more of the mag/flexi combinations going up on the old eBay soon, so keep your eyes open!

The Orchids

The Orchids are an odd band. Sarah Records stalwarts and creators of swooping melodies and electronica-influenced pop.

Formed in Glasgow in the mid 1980s and lasting until around 1993/1994 the band were moderately popular and certainly had fans at the NME (when that still counted for something); but they never made it really, really big. There we reissues of all the old material in 2004 and they've reformed recently.

Check out the official site for all you Orchids needs and, again, the wiki has a lot of the information you need and this: The Orchids - Striving for Lazy Perfection is a lovely bit of cool, relaxed indie pop. Enjoy.

Oh, and again, you can buy loads of their stuff here.

Edsel Auctioneer

Edsel Auctioneer (or possibly The Edsel Auctioneer I can never remember) have been on my list of bands for here for a while now, but I'd been umming and ahhing around and not getting round to it for various reasons. Then this week I finally got round to copying the 12" I had to hand and, well I'll be honest here, I can't believe I'd forgotten how much I liked them.

There's a nice little history here and once again the wiki page is a great help so avail yourself there for now. But basically the band were from Leeds, formed in 1988, banged out half a dozen cracking EPs and a couple of albums, played some Peel Sessions and split.

But I guess the important thing for me is that at the height of the floppy-fringed twattery of "Madchester", bands from our side of the Pennines were producing really good "rock" music, for want of a better name. A lot of the reviews liken the band's music to Dinosaur Jr and you can see why, there's a lot of swooping, screaming guitar and good old-fashioned (well, old-fashioned now but not quite so popular in late 1989) wailing and gnashing vocals.

Oh, and from the first linked site here a lovely bit of indie/football cross over that I'm hoping to bring you an extra special post about in a week or so:

"the [band's] instrumental track [on their second LP The Good Time Music Of...] named "11th September 94" more than likely refers to Leeds beating Man Utd 2-1 on that day (a Sunday). The Leeds goals were apparently scored by Brian Deane and David Wetherall."

This here then is Edsel Auctioneer - Unbroken Line from 1990's Gutted EP; this post is brought to you by the need to record the fact that it's 29th February and if I'm still doing this in four years time, the wife will have divorced me!

Also, you might have noticed I've started including links to buy some of the music featured on here, I noticed that Amazon has a lot of this stuff and if, like me, you want to spend a few bob here and there I'm going to try and put them in to help (and, as it's affiliate linked, help me out as well). So here you can buy the aforementioned album on CDor on vinyl.

The Telescopes

More spacey 1991-based indie today with Burton-on-Trent's only* famous sons The Telescopes and once more into the white label promo versions of EPs with Celeste, as featured here.

There's a very good site here with all your information, so again I won't wade too much into the background and Wikipedia is again a mine of useful information; although, one question is asked by the Wiki: is Jo Doran, the erstwhile backing singer and guitar-botherer related to Sara Doran out of Blessed Ethel?

The Telescopes were much-loved by the music press of the time, Steve Lamacq who was working at the NME at the time loved them and so did the Melody Maker. It's cheating a bit putting them on here as they reformed in 2004 and are still touring around the place, but let's remember them where they belong, as part of the early 1990s indie/shoegazing pantheon.

So this: The Telescopes - Celeste, is the title track from the EP.

* Yes, yes, apart from Freddie Starr

Buy music by The Telescopes

The Anyways

Another dip into Oxford-indie-obscurity today with The Anyways.

Find anything about this lot is nigh on impossible, I know they're from Oxford, there's a very good chance they were about from 1987 to 1994 and they released at least one album called Older Than Yesterday and at least two EPs: Sunshine Down and Confession (from the ever-reliable twee.net).

I did find a rather interesting article from Nightshift magazine that suggests that

"Oxford pop legends The Anyways, undoubtedly one of the greatest bands this city has ever produced and the band who inspired Ride’s Andy Bell to play guitar"

Although this might be in the "Moose were the first ever shoegazing band" category. It's nice to think that it's true, but I'm not sure it can be right.

That bit seems to lead onto this bit. The band members were:
· Alan Buckley (Bass; probably not sometime manager of Grimsby and West Brom)
· Pete Lock (Drums)
· Mark Price (Guitar)
· Richard Ramage (Vocals and Guitars)

Again, I'd never heard of the band, but they've started cropping up on some of the other blogs I read about the place, so I reckon they should also get a mention here. Let's start the "Anyways Comeback Tour" bandwagon right here!

This is The Anyways - Wish Away from the aforementioned Sunshine Down EP, released on Brighton's Marineville label.

Talulah Gosh

Well, if nothing else, Talulah Gosh push back my earliest featured single by a year and expand the Oxford-based twee database by another entry.

I'd kind of written off Talulah Gosh as too early for here, but then I heard Gideon Coe play them on 6music (incidentally, George Lamb? Why?) and decided that they were pretty much bang on for posting; let's face it, what do you remember about the band?

Well, we'll wiki them and see shall we?

Talulah Gosh were a guitar-pop group from Oxford, England and one of the leading bands of the twee pop movement, taking their name from the headline of an NME interview with Clare Grogan.

Ooh, Clare Grogan, that should be enough to raise the pulse of most people reading this...

So basically they lasted from 1986 until 1988, released a few decent jingly jangly singles and played a Peel session or two along the way and split; then most of the members went off to form Heavenly, another band that I'll get around to doing at some point.

I won't put too much here again as there's some pretty good fan pages here and here for example and a quick Google brings up more than enough background for even the most dedicated Gosher (I wonder if that's what the fans were called).

You'll like this mp3, it's a cracking bit of indie pop and if there's one thing I like almost as much as a flexi-disk it's a self-referential song name this this: Talulah Gosh - Talulah Gosh. Enjoy.