Tape Art: Let Me Come Over

Here I have managed to make Buffalo Tom who were in no way at all twee, seem simperingly cute by adding speech bubbles to my rendering of the original (back) sleeve artwork. This is because I loved the Tom and not because I wished to denigrate their manly guitar playing. I think this might be my fave album of theirs (although there is ‘Birdbrain’…hmmm…). It has the lovely, lovely ‘Mineral’ which features the opening couplet ‘All spangled up, glittering on / there’s a monster in the kitchen, his light's turned on’ along with whirring, fizzing guitars that gradually build into fireworks in a summer sky and hurtling down the road at dusk, hair and eyes streaming in the wind. Ahhh, I just played it again and remembered how I ended up with a minor case of whiplash after going to see Buffalo Tom at The Underworld in 1991, such was my unrestrained joy and unfettered head-banging.

Tape Art: Daydreamin' In the Summershine

In 1988 Daydreamin' In The Summershine (nice title, cheers), was a mixtape of swoony indie jangle-pop – designed for listening to whilst lying in the grass on a summers day, obviously. Note the ancient art of wax-resist being put to good use for the Crayola-ed Flowers cover design.

The tracklisting went like this:
Sunflower – The Springfields
Moths – 14 Iced Bears
Everglades – The Sea Urchins
The Old Stone Bridge – Emily
Are We Gonna Be Alright – The Springfields
Dreamabout – The Poppyheads
Dust Remains – 14 Iced Bears
Black Star Carnival – Primal Scream
Strawberry Wine – My Bloody Valentine
The Clown – The Springfields
I’m In Love With A Girl Who Doesn’t Know I Exist – Another Sunny Day
Secret Goldfish – Baby Lemonade
Some Candy Talking - The Jesus And Mary Chain
Ocean Blue - The Primitives
Pictures You Weave - The Poppyheads
Cut - 14 Iced Bears
Turning Stone - The Soup Dragons

Listening to late eighties jangle pop led me down the spangled garden path to late sixties West Coast USA. First the jangle became more psychedelic and then the psychedelia got tinged with country. By 1992, I’d decided my Daydreamin' soundtrack needed to be updated, or maybe that should be backdated, as I taped over the jangle pop, eradicating it in favour of sunny Laurel Canyon vibes. Only Primal Scream (albeit E-ed up and unrecognisable from their previous selves) and the eternal Sea Urchins survived the regime change. Note the light dusting of proto-grunge Yank guitar stuff in there too – a sign of the times:

Gunga Din – The Byrds
Higher Than The Sun - Primal Scream
Half The Time – The Lemonheads
A Morning Odyssey – The Sea Urchins
100 Years from Now – The Byrds
Desiree – The Left Banke
Sweet Thing – The Stairs
Mineral – Buffalo Tom
Sail On Sailor – The Beach Boys
Return Of The Grievous Angel
She Comes In Colors – Love
I Am A Child – Buffalo Springfield
Cinnamon Girl – Neil Young
Hot Burrito 1# - The Flying Burrito Brothers
Jonathan Jonathan – The Rockingbirds
Happy – The Rolling Stones
Bubblegum Factory – Redd Kross

Tape Art: The Left Banke

I first heard The Left Banke when Sean Soup Dragon was playing his fave tracks on the Janice Long show ca. 1987. He included ‘I’ve Got Something On My Mind’ and noted that he loved The Left Banke’s harpsichord sound and if anyone had a spare harpsichord they wanted rid of he’d gladly take it. I was smitten and played the track (taped off the radio, obv.) often. I didn’t get to hear more Left Banke until a few year’s later on a non-descript drizzly Wednesday night, hanging out in a squat in St John’s Wood, no money, nothing much going on. My friend stuck on this tape copied from the Bam Caruso-released Left Banke LP ‘And Suddenly It’s…’ and the whole world sparkled and spiralled with baroque-psych beauty. I had to have a copy immediately, and this tape got a hammering. A year or so later I found my own copy of the Bam Caruso LP. I win!

Tape Art: Love

When I first went away to university, I played this Love tape first thing in the morning and last thing at night. I have never ever got sick of ‘Forever Changes’, and the day I do, will be the day something’s gone very wrong indeed. This tape (which also featured ‘Da Capo’ minus the very long and rambling blues-thing ‘Revelation’ which I edited out of the mix) buoyed me up for a ‘hectic’ day at art school and soothed me to sleep at night as I lay in my room trying not to think about the fact that the landlady’s cats had wee-ed all over my copy of Loop’s ‘Arc Light’. The furry gits.

Tape Art: Their Satanic Majesties Request

Clearly, drawing in the facial features of Mick ‘n’ Keef et al would have rendered this splendid facsimile of The Rolling Stones ‘Their Satanic Majesties Request’ laughable, so as a comment on the dead-eyed seam of pseudo-psych oblivion the band were mining on this record I’ve cleverly left their mugs blank. Nice.

Hurray For Tapes!

Before I owned actual real life records, I had a motley collection of C-60s and C-90s to keep me entertained as I did kidstuff in my bedroom. These contained top 40 tunes taped off Radio One on a Sunday Night. I just taped the whole lot, it didn’t matter if I knew or even liked the songs I just had to own the music. I remember one cassette in particular that had Godley and Crème’s ‘Under Your Thumb’ on it with added sarcastic ‘oohs’ and ‘aahs’ added ‘live’ by me as the song recorded. As Godley (or possibly Crème) intoned "I noticed something very strange indeed", I leant towards the mic and sniggered "Coo!!". I like to think it added a personal touch to the song.

Next, I owned real life records but no record player, so I had to record them onto tapes using my parents’ hi-fi. Tapes were really tedious, you spent aeons Rewinding and F.F.ing back and forth trying to find your favourite song amongst the miles of magnetic tape. The miles of magnetic tape that would decide for no good reason to unspool whilst playing and create a terrifying birds nest inside your tape player that you didn’t discover until the songs started going all woozy. Then you had to unpick the whole lot from around the innards of the player and carefully wind it back inside the cassette using a pencil. Argh!

But tapes were kind of cute, too - nice little packages you could keep in your pocket. Or if you were hard you could secretly keep fags in the cassette cases. Plus, you could stick bits of Sellotape over the hole things on the top of commercially recorded cassettes and aha ha! tape over them with better stuff. In this way my copy of Kajagoogoo’s ‘White Feathers’ album (cripes!) became an ace Sea Urchins compilation. Best of all, you could design your own covers for them, the spines of which looked fab lined up on the shelf, all colourful-like with carefully Letrasetted titles.

I’ve been having a clear-out and some of my tapes really have to be binned. I never listen to them anymore, despite my tape deck being the largest, most expensive piece of equipment in my ‘sound system’. So I thought I’d record a few of them for posterity here. Cassette tapes I salute you.

Glasgow Anorak Filth

From Sounds, 11 August 1990:

‘Long renowned as the "mad fucker" mate of archetypal Glasgow band man Stephen Pastel, Norman [Blake] once played in the original BMX Bandits with Sean Dickson and the brilliantly eccentric Duglas (who occasionally supports TFC by miming to backing tapes). Blake went onto The Boy Hairdressers with current Teen axeman Raymond McGinley, a fresh faced 26-year-old from North West Glasgow — a cultural gap bridged by some tasteful six string. The Boy Hairdressers were, however, a dead duck. "We got labeled with the post-anorak tag," notes Raymond. "The so-called dirty movement, when everybody got into the ‘sex thing’...Like it was amateur sex and I’m not into that." "The whole thing was a reaction against people calling it anorak music," adds Norman. "Which was a joke anyway, it was only people in places like Bristol that took it seriously."

The much maligned ‘Anorak’ era, which eventually became the stereotype of indie music, all started because of Stephen Pastel’s tongue-in-cheek 'rak. The piss-taking cynics on the Glasgow scene quickly picked up the garment and the joke soon got out of hand. The subsequent "dirty" movement, hosted by The Vaselines' tongue-in-cheek pop sleaze, was a reaction against the 7-inch versus 12-inch crap that most of the airheaded fanzines of the time were involved in.’ - John Robb

The Sea Urchins

The Sea Urchins wore Chelsea boots and mop-tops and sung heartbreak harmonies with melancholy melodies that flipped your stomach over. In my head they lived in a perfect pop universe filled with tree-dappled sunlight and crystal colours. Actually, they were from Birmingham.

On vinyl, The Sea Urchins left a perfect legacy of sixties tinged pop. Listening to them now they sound trapped under glass in some faraway never-existed place where swinging ‘60s Carnaby Street mod pop smooshes with gentle psychedelia and refracts into fragile 80s indie janglepop.

My friend Loz got ‘Clingfilm’ on a flexi with ‘Kvatch’ fanzine. She brought it round and we sat listening gob-smacked by its utter rightness. The song delivered a direct hit to the solar plexus; gently rolling verses splitting open to bleed crackling guitar lines that bound themselves round you and stopped your breath. We couldn’t get over the forlorn voice pleading ‘Why weren’t you special…and was I?’

‘Summershine’ another fanzine-accompanying flexi-disc, was probably the track that alerted every bobhead from the planet Lucozade to The Sea Urchins existence. My copy came on a disc with The Orchids’ ‘I’ve Got A Habit’ courtesy of ‘Searching For The Young Soul Rebels’ fanzine. Guitars jangling and tumbling around each other, racing heartbeats and drumbeats, “Running fast all the way back home / Everything’s going right, yeah!” the sound of being seventeen under a summer sky full of possibilities. And always that fragile hairline fracture in James’ voice adding an edge of falling apartness to it all.

Everyone knows about ‘Pristine Christine’, Sarah Record no. 1, irresistibly chiming and jangling in all the right places. Backed by the quaveringly lovely ‘Sullen Eyes’ and ‘Everglades’. I stuck the little poster that came with the record (as was the Sarah way) on my bedroom wall, studying the little photos on it carefully. The band looked so cool, hanging about in the woods in their drainpipe trousers and suede jackets. Bridget with her sharply bobbed hair and striped blazer, brimming with mod-girl syle. The Sea Urchins came to play in Norwich not long after the record’s release –a somewhat shambolic occasion (see review below), but we were Simply Thrilled.

My favourite Sea Urchins song was/is ‘Solace’ (Sarah Record no. 8) which swan-dives from on high, plummeting gorgeously through a dizzying tune, crashing along on a humming organ undertow. The lyrics were evocative, anxious-sounding, they stuck in my existential teenage mind;
‘Trees shake they’re scared again’
‘Above the clouds just laughing down at it raining’
When the guitar solo kicks in, it squalls like a motorcycle revving before looping and tumbling through open skies, utter gorgeousness.

We wrote to The Sea Urchins asking for suggestions for a title for our fanzine. They came up with the perfect ‘Things We Said Today’ (one of my fave Beatles tracks). They also suggested ‘Wild Grass Pictures’ which eventually ended up as the title of the b-side of their last Sarah record (no.33!) ‘A Morning Odyssey’. It was a solitary, acoustically strummed piece with James’ voice vulnerably to the fore, tiny falters and wavers in the soaring delivery making it all the better.

The Sea Urchins moved to Cheree Records for the release of the choppy mod-ish ‘Please Don’t Cry’. I bought the seven inch, then had to get the twelve inch to for its sleeve artwork, which screams CSNY, Topanga ’67. In soft-focus sepia, like you’re squinting back through time at this out of place band. The B-side bears out this country rock stylishness with the indie-jangle meets Flying Burrito Brothers of ‘No Matter What’, and the close harmonies and psychedelic slide guitar of the swooning lament, ‘Time Is All I’ve Seen’.

Then that was it really. In January 1991 we saw the band play a not very busy gig (although Rob 14 Iced Bears was there - plus ca change!) at The Marquee which I have recorded as being 'Okay really. They played 'Pristine Christine' and 'Please Rain Fall'. There are only four of them now, and no Darren - sniff!'. As an encore, James and Robert squabbled over who was going to play the Rickenbacker and James made Robert sing 'Desdemona' quite untunefully.

A couple of years later I found the album ‘Stardust’ in Rough Trade, but I didn’t feel it was worth buying, I didn’t have the cash to randomly splurge on past loves, and anyway I had most of the tracks already. To me The Sea Urchins were a handful of singles and a home-made compilation tape. And they were one of my favourite bands ever.

The Sea Urchins / Friends Of The Family / The Popfish - Wednesday 13th January 1988, Norwich Arts Centre
Melody Maker came this morning and LO! The Mighty Lemon Drops are doing a tour in Feb and even LO!er they’re playing at the UEA on 7th!!!! Hooray!!! I leapt ‘bout the room for joy. M and K turned up and we went to the Arts Centre for another Goldfish Club extravaganza! Hung about in the bar next to The Sea Urchins’ table (I leaned on Jamie Urchin’s chair!! G-A-S-P!) and talked to Mike who is giving up his job and moving to Edinburgh for a ‘lark’. He went to see Primal Scream and New Order at Wembley and afterwards he was wandering about Kentish Town and ‘bumped into’ Kevin from My Bloody Valentine Yo Kev! So he asked if he could sleep on his floor, and he stayed in Kev’s squat and went to see Loop with him! (N.B. thinking about this now, Mike’s tale has a ring of nonsense to it, does it not?) He hasn’t booked owt for the Feb Goldfish Club but he might get Bubblegum Splash! And March he might have The Groove Farm but they cost £150! The Sea Urchins cost £80.

Noel played in Steve’s group The Pop Fish as the first support and they were really good ‘n’ psychedelic although the final song was a bit too Cure-yfied I’m afraid. Then Mike put his tape on (none of that ‘D.J.ing’ malarkey in them days) including such ‘gems’ as The Clouds, Loop, Mighty Lemon Drops, The Motorcycle Boy and The Groove Farm. Then Friends Of The Family were on and they were pretty good with a funny girlie singer. The last song was groovy, the girl singing all soft and sweet and just single notes on the organ, then a pause and then the drummer (who had a Big Black t-shirt on – aces!) would bash a cow bell and it would go all thrashy and the girl would sort of talk on and on over the row. They tried to pull off the old walking off leaving the song in mid-air trick like Loop and Primal Scream did but it didn’t come off so well!

The Sea Urchins then took aaages to get going and sorted out and then in the second song the bass was all out of tune ‘cos at the beginning James had been twiddling it as Darren played trying to get it in tune. James then cracked up and stood there giggling while the rest played on. Then they did it again properly. They did all three tracks off the single (Pristine Christine), but not ‘Summershine’ or ‘Clingfilm’, so those were the only three I knew. At the end they did one psychedelicky one and Darren kept trying to sing with James, so when James had finished he let Darren sing. Darren kept going on and on, so Patrick drums and Robert guitar kept on with him and he wouldn’t get off, even though Bridget and James were chucking things at him and had left the stage altogether. He finished in the end, but not without having a quick bash on the organ, too.

Anoraking: The Dream Turns Sour

Oh dear, the old build 'em up, knock 'em down response kicks in...

The Primitives in Melody Maker, November 8 1986:
"Yeah, we really have got an anorak and we're gonna BURN it. On stage. We're waiting for the right moment. A lot of people have been trying to bash this scene on the head recently. It's about time this 'Nice-little-anorak-band-can't-quite-play-very-well' music scene came to an end'".
Ooer!

Simon Reynolds (hurrah!) interviews Jesse Garon and The Desperadoes in Melody Maker, February 7 1987:
'Why do they loathe the anorak thing?

Andrew: "I can see it had its good points...before it became a defined cult. Like the way it was a reaction against Goth and the return of the hippy. And the way there's a lot more girls in bands, not just as window dressing, but as drummers and bassists."

Margarita: "But I hate the new rules and uniforms that solidify, the way that what was once a joke is taken seriuosly, so that people slavishly start wearing what Stephen Pastel has been wearing for years. And I hate this whole aura of tweeness and cute childishness that hangs over the scene."

What's "Splashing Along" all about?

Andrew: "Oh dear this is going to sound terribly anorak! It's about going to a club called Splash 1 which was this pivotal anorak club, in the pouring rain, to see this girl I was in love with...At the moment I'm considering writing a song called 'Fuck Off And Die' in order to change our image!"'

Mr Reynolds, as is his want, muses carefully on the nature of anoraked-up 'pure pop', leading to a most entertaining conclusion:

'As the second and third waves of shambling bands immitate their predecessors, we get a kind of logic of inbreeding (like pedigree dogs, the aim is for new levels of 'purity'), leading to more and more grotesque breeds. Can you imagine what the progeny of The BMX Bandits will look like?!?'

Melody Maker, September 26 1987:
'Everybody, from that scene, is crappy nowadays. How we can laugh at people's gullibility, how we can snicker over those with a copy of "C-86", amazed at their naivety. A bunch of Anorexic Krankies playing at pop; showcasing the nadir of shambling, heralding a brief new age of more fulsome student pop. So The Shop Assistants crumbled, so The Mighty Lemon Drops pegged their noses over such shoddy suggestions, stalked off and are still pegging out. What a wasteful scene, with its hollow premise and shallow promises.'

Wow, such vitirol! And for what? Why, an article on the brilliance of The Soup Dragons of course! Written by Goth King Mick Mercer in which he apparently 'finds where they left their anoraks and why they lost their innocence'. Oh the humanity!

Even Talulah Gosh put the boot into the 'scene' in Melody Maker, June 13 1987:
‘…there was no surprise that these gentle urchins were placed at the centre of the minute indie "cutie" scene. Maybe there was only them there.
Matthew, a decidedly untwee figure, has an answer, " All that is such a contrived style, and there are all these terrible fanzines with recipes for sweety sweety yumyum cake who suggest going for picnics with ginger beer and playing Buzzcocks tapes."

What can they mean? Incidentally, pictured above are a few pages from cutester indiepop fanzine 'Troutfishing In Leytonstone', ca.1987.

And then there was

'Searching For The Young Soul Rebels: a hatebomb' a brilliantly written rantzine by a rather bitter and twisted Peter - previously known as 'Pete Honey' of Baby Honey fanzine. This fanzine dripped sneering vitriol at pretty much everyone - the NME for being:

'basically SCUM, just a bunch of white do-gooder voyeurs'

fanzine writers for being:

'sycophantic paedophiles eagerly discussing Marigold's new haircut...Fucking hippies.'

the 'Take The Subway To Your Suburb' compilation;

'...when I bought it my immediate intention was to put a knife mark through the grooves of every song on the lp except 'Get Out Of My Dream...'

'Searching For The Young Soul Rebels' was compelling writing from someone thoroughly disillusioned by a micro-scopic music scene:

'All these enthusiastic sixteen year olds going on twenty-five, wearing their hearts all too painfully on their stripey sleeves, shambling as in 'a shambles', given credibility by jerks like The Legend! twittering on and dull fanzine-types without one single fucking original thought between them, who'll tell me how their summer began when they bought the Desperadoes single ("but they're not pressed in red/ so they buy the Soupies instead") all of it perpetrated by inane and smalltown attitudes and the sheer MEDIOCRITY of the likes of The Chesterfields...'

Looking at it now, it's amusing how worked up the poor love got over such irrelevant minutiae, especially when the fanzine's denouement reveals the not very mind-blowing news:

'Emily and The Clouds are two of the four greatest bands on the planet right now, along with Primal Scream and The Jesus and Mary Chain. THAT is a fact. Take that knowledge, and make your own contribution to the new soul vision. Oh and for God's sake...BURN IT DOWN'

It's still a good read though.

See Eighty Six

1986 and at least the first half of 1987 were a heady whirl of indie pop sunshine yummy fun jangly goodness. Through the 'marvel' of the Royal Mail, I plugged into the mysterious world of fanzines...blimey! there were people out there getting candy coloured pop kicks the same as me. The Legend! raving about The Soup Dragons and Beat Happening and The Primitives, Troutfishing In Leytonstone getting all over-excited and suggesting:


'...the BMX Bandits DESERVE murdering for daring to release e102/sad 12" two months after the 7"'

or going twee-mental over Talulah Gosh:

'oooooh Talulah Gosh this flexi-disc IS the WONDERFULLEST thing all summer...just like that RUSH of excitement when you were six and it was time for the jelly and ice-cream at your birthday party'

Then there was Jump Away! written by Simon Williams who ended up writing for the NME and setting up Fierce Panda records. We met him at an Avons gig in the wee tiny Suffolk market town where we used to spend Saturday nights getting our teenage kicks. Quite odd that he was there as it really was (is) in the middle of nowhere. This is what happened:

'28th March 1987
We all hit swinging Bungay and went in The Fleece for our first half. Then hit The Tuns for a second, it was a bit swirly in there though (‘swirlies’ probably best translates as ‘townies’). So into Charlies where the support band The Sick Shirts (or something???) were playing with Baz on guitar or bass or whatever wearing a v. silly wig. They were ace and rather shambly. When they’d finished we were hanging about outside and found a bloke with bleached hair selling a fanzine called ‘Jump Away’ so bought a copy each ‘cos it had the Mighty Lemon Drops and JAMC and things.

Then, then, The Avons played and we wigged on down. They were marvy, grooving with all the old faves and some kind of countryfied new ones. Yeah, yeah! ‘Is Billy There?’ twangle twangle aceness.
The Avons are hip to the beat in this sorry town, daddio. After they’d finished, we spoke to the fanzine bloke who was called Simon Williams. He lives in London and goes all over the bleedin’ place to see gigs. He’d been to see The Wolfhounds and McCarthy in Norwich last night. He had Soup Dragons badges like mine and a fab Bodines badge. He’s seen Primal Scream only they weren’t that good, so he thinks they should retire ‘cos ‘Velocity Girl’, ‘Crystal Crescent’ and ‘All Fall Down’ were ace but they’ve nowhere left to go (perhaps a little premature with your judgement there, Mr Williams?) We all talked for ages about gigs ‘n’ stuff, although Simon said he’s more interesting when he’s happy, ‘cos tonight he was sad. He didn’t know why, but he could feel the sadness overwhelming him. That’s what happens when you visit Bungay, you know.'

Jump Away!' was less 'ooh spangly popfun!' and more 'here is a semi-political rant piece about the state of indie music', with added photo-stories featuring a shop dummy. There's an entertaining piece in issue 3 entitled 'Flying The Fashionable Flag? The Independent Investigation' that rambles on for several pages randomly ranting about chart pop, indie bands selling out and 'the derisory term of shambling'. Poking a stick at what he described as 'the Subway Sector', Simon summed up the scene thus:

'Puerility! Youth! Vitality! Shortbackandsides blackplimsoles Creation LemonDrops FireStationTowers Subutteo Polkadots Ladybird campvocals SoupDragons brightcolours cuteshirts bashfulsmiles simplisticlyrics Woodentops Trumpton HeadmastersRitual satchels CamberwickGreen love Truck beguile Train brighteyes Tractor escapefromtheharshworld stripeyteeshirts childrenoftheunderworlduniteinsmilinginnocence'

And then we discovered a fellow local Pop Kid when we were sold 'So Naive!' at a gig (possibly The Rosehips??) at Norwich Arts Centre. This was exciting, as indie-pop-kids were almost like mythical beings to us, not people we'd actually run into unless we maybe attended one of those iconic gigs we'd heard happened in magical-sounding London venues called things like Chalk Farm Enterprise, Bay 63, Room At The Top. But here was Mike in his stripey tee shirt and chelsea boots (and black jeans, obviously) proffering this indie-pop-tastic paper celebration of all the things we loved.

There were only two issues of 'So Naive', the second one possibly even twee-er than the first, e.g:

'Mary Day by The Razorcuts still makes me cry sometimes even after all the times I've heard it. And 'I Heard You The First Time' was simply so so sad and Gregory's voice is just so perfect that The Razorcuts have to be the most ace fabby band in the whole wide world'.

Lordy! No wonder people wanted to throttle the tweesters. Part of the fun of being a pop kid was the fact that it really annoyed people though. Just when we were supposed to be grown up, when our peers were swanning around with perms and stillettoes and discussing diets (and that was just the boys - ho ho), we revelled in growing our fringes into our eyes, wearing anoraks, shaking tamborines, eating Smarties. Not that subversive, but amusing nonetheless. God bless indie-pop and the fanzine nation.

Soup-Oop-A-Doop

Ah, The Soup Dragons! Much maligned Scottish scamps of eighties indie pop. And yet for a while there, I loved 'em. The itchy excitement of their first single 'Whole Wide World', or the chaotic splurge of 'Too Shy To Say' with it's super cute opening lines: 'I've fallen in love with the daffodil that sits upon your window sill. It gives me an excuse anyway, 'cos in truth it's you but I'm too shy to say'. 3 minute rushes that captured the adrenalised buzz of, just, y'know, being young and feeling like you could get up to any old nonsense, mess about, have some larks, sing effervescent, shouty, buzzsaw guitarred-up pop songs.


When I discovered a contact address on the back of second single 'Hang Ten' I sent The Soupies a letter. And they, or rather guitarist Jim, sent one back! This missive from Motherwell in Scotland arrived one Christmas Eve (see spiffy Soup Dragons 'notepaper', right). It was so exciting, it made my Christmas. These days I guess ver kidz are forever Facebooking and Myspacing and generally electronically galivanting with the 'stars', but in 1986 to make actual contact with someone in one of my fave indie-pop bands was a twinkly miracle.

We swapped letters some more. Jim told me about the band's plans, about new songs they'd recorded, including the sweet-hearted 'Soft As your Face':

"It's a bit of a departure for us, 'cos it's basically all acoustic guitars, sort of Freddie and The Dreamers meet The Cure (- who mentioned the bloody Buzzcocks?!), with Burt Bacharach thrown in for good measure".

There were details of gigs they'd played, and planned on playing:

"I don't know if you'll be able to go or not, but we'll be supporting The Mary Chain this Saturday at Brixton Academy, so that should be a laugh, what with the fact that there'll be over five thousand drunken people dressed in black throwing up all over the place, as usually happens at Mary Chain gigs."

I got sent badges and a couple of ridiculous photos of Jim and drummer Ross (right). The photos were all kind of raggedy at the sides. In the letter was an explanation:


"Sorry about the state of the photos but I don't own a pair of scissors."

Eventually, the letter writing petered out. The Soup Dragons went a bit wrong ('Backwards Dog') and then very wrong (the Baggy bandwagon jumping years), but I was always impressed that Jim had bothered to make the effort to write.

Anoraking

Like any good researcher, I have gone back to the source material to investigate the persistent, dewy-eyed concept of C86 as a genuine 'pop movement'. The 'source material' being some old music press cuttings and fanzines I have kept carefully archived for an occassion such as this. I knew they'd come in handy eventually.
Here we see a frankly embarrassing attempt by late, not very lamented music rag 'Record Mirror' to capture the essence of 'Cutie', basically suggesting that it involves taking on the behaviour of a toddler: chocolate buttons, Winnie the Pooh books, colouring books and crayons, Snoopy sunglasses. Still at least it's grasped the basic premise behind the 'scene' - a d.i.y. , eschewing the mainstream, punk rock attitude. Buzzcocks and The Undertones are suggested as the holy grail of Shambling bands. In order to be a Shambler, the article urges you to tape stuff off John Peel, search for snake belts and paisley ties in charity shops, carry around a Penguin Modern Classic and 'perfect the coy under-the-fringe glance'. Honorary Anorak Wearers include John Noakes, Christopher Robin, Kevin Turvey and Percy Thrower (!!)

Record Mirror's pitiful band-wagon-jumping is nothing compared to the old bollocks dreamt up by i-D magazine, however. Glance, if you dare, at their 'Cuties' fashion spread. What is going on there?! According to the styling blurb, these crazy kids are dressed head to toe in clobber from Next and American Classics. It's all distressingly wrong. The accompanying blurb reads as follows:

'Also known as Shamblers or Shabbies (????!). Cuties like indie bands such as The Soup Dragons, The Pastels, BMX Bandits, Talulah Gosh, The Smiths, The Shop Assistant, Half Man Half Biscuit and even the Housemartins. Childlike innocence and assumed naivety permeate the Cutie scene - their clothes are asexual, their haircuts are fringes, their colours are pastel. Cuties like Penguin Modern Classics, sweets, ginger beer, vegetables and anoraks. Heroes include Christopher Robin, John Noakes, Buzzcocks and The Undertones. This is the bubblegum brigade.'

Note the alarming similarities to the Record Mirror piece. It's almost like i-D trawled through an old pop mag that was lying around and nicked some 'style ideas' from it.

They're MY Bloody Valentine, Not Yours

Score! Somehow, we've managed to get hold of tickets to next year's feverishly anticipated My Bloody Valentine Roundhouse knees-up/ ear bleed-athon. As far as I can work out, this will be my eleventh MBV ear-battering.
Here is a poster from the first time I beheld the majesty of MBV, at The Goldfish Club, held at Norwich Arts Centre on February 3rd 1988.
See here for more. Scroll down even further and there's the bit about MBV playing the Creation alldayer, the moment 'You Made Me Realise' was first unveiled to our gleeful (painful) ears. Hip hip!

Oh yeah, and how about here for the two sweaty nights of bliss at ULU. Everybody was there.

Christmas 1991 was extra special. It was cold and foggy, I wore my favest new charity shop purchases - a gold lurex shirt under a pink suede mini-dress (hey, we all looked fly in them days) and tottered along for two nights of humungous building-destroying festive NOISE at the Town and Country Club (aka The Forum). During 'You Made Me Realise' I jammed my fingers in my ears and timed the churning white-out of sound in the middle. It lasted 12 minutes. I never understood how Colm kept drumming like that. It was genius. And the way Debbie attacked her bass, driving it into the ground with her whole body. That was genius. At the end we were all handed these fliers that slagged off the T&C for charging excessive commission on merch, with instructions to buy our MBV tee-shirts by mail-order. Sticking it to the man. Oh yeah.

My final date with the Valentines was 7th April 1992 at Brixton Academy, the last of three nights of the Rollercoaster tour (we attended every night, obviously). It was MBV's turn to be bottom of bill followed by Blur, Dinosaur Jnr and The Jesus And Mary Chain. I got in on a guestie, thanks to my pals, hardcore MBV followers K and M. Even so, we had to smuggle in booze. This involved huddling in one of the Academy's side-doorways in the pouring rain whilst a litre bottle of vodka was decanted into two empty half bottles that K had enterprisingly brought along. K and I then each fitted a half bottle doon the front of our troosers. Classy times!

Print Workers

Here is a cutting from Melody Maker, circa 1987, by some unnamed writer, which gives quite a sharp overview of the indie fanzine culture of the time. Can you imagine a piece in today’s NME using words like ‘acculturation”? Images are of my ancient school folder, I apparently went beserk with the old graffiti-writing during English lessons. I especially like the random mention of 'Heroin' amidst the biro-based indie-pop explosion.

‘The fate of fanzines is intertwined with the music for which they evangelise. Media attention for the whole C86 chimera (a lumping together of jangly feypop, Creation’s nouveau rockism and sub-Beefheartian shamble-thrash) peaked between 1985 and ’86 and, since then, bands and ‘zine writers have faced the same dilemma – crossover or exile. The “best” writers have entered the music press, just as the “best” bands have signed to majors.

The horns of the dilemma are peculiarly painful because, just as indiepop defines itself against chartpop, so fanzines define themselves against the music press, which they see as senile/corrupt/lazy/trendhopping/careerist/out-of-touch-because-metropolitan. Like the groups who seek to regenerate a lost “pure pop”, fanzines espouse “pure” writing – a gush of naked enthusiasm/vitriol unmediated by theory, speculation, or indeed any of the protocols of criticism (objectivity, balance).

Just as anti-pop needs the charts to dramatise itself against, so fanzines need the music press to lambaste for its “deficiencies” (of passion, responsiveness). Fanzines are hooked on the heady mindset of paranoia/martyrdom/in-the-know one-upmanship/exile. But as the media actually gets more and more comprehensive, to sustain that feeling of superiority means evangelising for ever more uncorrupted, virgin, frankly unlistenable musics – zines like THE ROX and RUMBLEDYTHUMP celebrate the sub-sub-Beefheartian scramble of Ron Johnson type bands, while THE LEGEND!, TROUTFISHING IN LEYTONSTONE and ADVENTURES IN BERESNIK rave about the hyper-fey romanticism of the post-post-Postcard groups.

The supreme dead end to this acculturation, this post-modern constructed “innocence”, comes with the flexi-zines. Starting with their anger at Creation for bringing out 12-inch singles (when all their band’s songs are two minutes long), fanzines like ARE YOU SCARED TO GET HAPPY? moved towards the idea of the seven inch flexi as a statement – the idea being both that cutiepop’s flimsy, tiny rush sounds best on flexis played on jumble sale mono Dansettes, and that lo-fi is a Luddite gesture against the yupwardly mobile CD-conscious sound of chartpop. What a vainglorious retreat from the future!’

C86 Bollocks

I keep getting suckered into reading online articles about ye olde so-called 'C86 movement'. The reason I get suckered is that I get a nostalgic glow at the mention of The Shop Assistants, The Soup Dragons, The Razorcuts, Talulah Gosh et al. These were the bands that sound-tracked my teenage popkid years. They're the reason I still can't resist the sound of a jangly guitar and get all excited at the sight of a stripy t-shirt and an overgrown fringe. So I click on the link, browse through the blog, see what folks have got to say about those times.

Generally these articles are written by starry eyed kids who're looking back through pink lemonade tinted glasses to plumb what to them is probably fairly ancient history. I'm all for the kids being wistful and idealistic, but jeez they don't half get hold of the wrong end of the stick sometimes. Like the idea that 'C86' was some kind of pop 'movement' when it was actually just a dodgy NME cassette featuring the kind of songs you taped off John Peel. Sadly, Bobby Gillespie didn't share lollipops (ooer!) with Amelia Fletcher. Gregory Fletcher didn't take tea with an anoraked Stephen Pastel. Do a bit of research, the kidz! Ask Uncle Alistair Fitchett. http://www.tangents.co.uk/tangents/main/2002/nov/c86.html

There were some good bands and some gorgeously pristine pop moments (The Bodines 'Therese', Primal Scream's 'Crystal Crescent', The Shop Assistants' 'Safety Net', The Sea Urchins' anything, The Primitives' 'Laughing Up My Sleeve', My Bloody Valentine's 'Another Rainy Saturday'...) And then a bit later there were some less good bands who took the sound and watered it down. The kind of bands whose flexis were attached to the later wave of indie pop fanzines that emerged at the tail end of the 1980s. The market got kind of saturated and I got bored with it and moved on.

It's still fun to reminisce though, so with the aim of providing some utterly subjective background info for the kids, I'm going to make the odd post about what indie pop meant to me in the late eighties (Prior to then I was busy being, first, a Durannie and then a mini-goth) ...

...Okay then, how about the track 'Paint A Rainbow' by My Bloody Valentine, b-side of 'Sunny Sundae Smile'. This single was a perfect package of pop goodness - both tracks sublime hits of mainlined fuzzpop. Plus if you bought the 12" you got the equally fab 'Sylvie's Head' and wonderfully titled 'Kiss The Eclipse' I didn't buy the 12" 'cos there was this rule at the time that it wasn't indie-pop to buy 12-ers - they were a rip off and a waste and some kind of indeterminate tool of the Man's oppression. Plus I couldn't afford them.

Anyway, 'Paint A Rainbow' - how we loved singing along to this simple, cutely-named tune, shaking our fringes, turning up the treble so the feedback hissed (our favourite pop music always involved hissing feedback, the fizzier the better). At the time, MBV looked like adorable butter-wouldn't-melt, shaggy, mop-tops. Then I read (somewhere?) that the song was about necrophilia. We listened to the lyrics more carefully...Ewwwww! But also, ha ha! Fantastic! The best kind of pop song is one that sneakily subverts the form. And this one certainly did that. In your face pop kids!