It Won't Be Long Now - The Brights (Bitterscene Records)

Are we having a Britpop revival now? Look at The Brights with their wee mod haircuts and cups of tea - bless their little RAF target socks. Remember when there were a few months where The Bluetones seemed like an exciting pop prospect? When they first popped up with ltd. ed. seven inches of 'Slight Return' on inky blue vinyl and played gleeful gigs with jangling, shimmering 60s-toned guitars? Well that's a bit what The Brights sound like here. There's also an Undertones warble to the vocals and a Johnny Marr twangle to the guitars, which can't be bad. 'It Won't Be Long Now' is quick-stepping modboy indie-pop with exactly the right amount of jangling top-spin. 'Wear Your Art On Your Sleeve' fizzes along briskly with sparkling lemonade guitars. Both tracks on this seven inch, released by esteemed 'indiependently minded' Chelmsford types Bitterscene, are gratifyingly fresh sounding, a record to shuck off your blankets and throw open your windows to. The Brights bring us Springtime several months early and do spinny little dances on Winter's grave.

(P.S. Look out for Brushfield Street in Spitalfields on the sleeve. I used to walk down there every day. Good job I don't have to anymore, 'cos my heart breaks every time I see what's been done to the place.)

http://www.thebrights.co.uk/
http://www.bitterscene.co.uk/bitterscenerecords.htm

Club 8 / The Would-Be-Goods / The School – 10 Jan 2008, The Luminaire

It’s the first gig of the year and dress me in a dufflecoat and serve me a Ribena, if Fortuna Pop! haven’t served up the indiest gig of the year as well. The popkids are out in force, queuing up the Lumi stairs alongside the obligatory smattering of Swedes who always turn up to cheer on their countrymen when there’s Scandi-pop in the air.

First up it's Liz Love, a radiant sunbeam of girl-pop charm dressed in a blossom yellow frock, leading her ramshackle gang The School. Despite first appearances, The School are not just another jangley-twee schmindie band, and though they could possibly do with some rather more vigorous rehearsals you can’t help but note the song-craft sensibility at work here. This is twirling baroque pop that’s been lavished with 60s girl-group stylings and cute, school-orchestra instrumentation – note the frowning concentration of the glockenspiel boy. ‘Valentine’ and ‘Let It Slip’ bop and shimmy along sweetly, daydreaming of Darlene Love and dansettes. ‘All I Wanna Do’ rolls in on a ‘Be My Baby’ beat (the best kind of beat), before disconcerting all and sundry with a weird ‘Eastenders’ aping keyboard line. I like The School’s songs best when they flirt with The Beach Boys’ teenage symphonies and The Zombies’ pop odysseys, when the violin adds a burling undertow and unexpected shivers, or when the guitar glides and slides lazily, most notably on the psychedelic storybook swirl of ‘Sunshine’. The band end with the incongruously Christmassy ‘Kiss Me In The Snow’, insisting that it’s a "New Year song". Whatever the weather, The School make me smile.

The Would-Be-Goods are badly served by the sound and by singer Jessica’s cold. There are specks and sparks of life amongst the rather drear rumble of songs going by, but the band’s wit and elegance is cotton-wooled. I stop paying attention and am lured by the Sounds XP chaps entertaining me with a vodka cranberry and moustachioed dance moves. One song makes me look up in interest like a pop-fuelled meercat. Unlikely as it seems, a thumping great glitterbeat and chunky guitar elbow their way into the room. A pity that the ignition fails to catch and the sound peters out into a bleat. Even the racing-green buzz of ‘Emmanuel Beart’ is a tad limp. A pity.

We’ve been wondering if Club 8 are going to be any good live. There are only two of them aren’t there? Will they use backing tracks or what? Happily, core Club 8-ers Karolina and Johan are joined by a band of fellow beautiful people (even the bloke with shaggy hair, vest and a flat cap looks cool – that’s how icily elegant Swedes are) – the line up swelled to three boys and three girls – pleasing symmetry and a nice surprise. No half measures with tapes here, and despite the still slightly dodgy sound Club 8 end up surpassing our expectations. Light from the glitterball shimmers off them as ‘Jesus Walk With Me’ shivers into the room. Karolina’s voice is a cool glass of water – fresh, simple, pure. The set is short and sweet, mixing new album tracks with old, the indie-pop kids twisting gently in the bittersweet breeze blown up by the drifting valium disco of ‘Whatever You Want’ and the brittle, delicate ‘Love In December’. The band ends with the gently grooving bongo-mongo driven ‘Heaven’ with Johan busting out some actual bongos and the song bursting into bloom all blossom bright for the chorus.

And for an encore we get Club 8’s lollopingly cheery hit of yore ‘Saturday Night Engine’ which generates what’s going to have to pass for a rock ‘n’ roll riot tonight with an out-break of enthusiastic audience wiggling and singing-along. Altogether now, "Hey! You ! Stop that singing cause the Club 8 is all there needs to be"

Belated 2007 Round-up

Ah, just got time for a spot of self-indulgent looking back at 2007...

Albums:
Tio Bitar - Dungen
Hey Venus! - Super Furry Animals
Take Time To Wonder In A Whirling World - Soft Hearted Scientists
New Magnetic Wonder - The Apples In Stereo
Strawberry Jam - Animal Collective
Night Falls Over Kortedala - Jens Lekman
Sarabeth Tucek - Sarabeth Tucek
Famous Problems - The Butterflies Of Love
Candylion - Gruff Rhys
Holy Mountain - Wooden Shjips

Gigs:
The Radio Dept / Great Lakes / I Was A King - Water Rats

...And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead - Koko

The Black Angels / Flowers Of Hell - Sonic Cathedral

The Butterflies Of Love - 100 Club

The Beep Seals / Congregation /The See See - The Spitz

Espers / Voice Of The Seven Woods - Dingwalls

The Apples In Stereo - Bush Hall

Circulus - The Museum of Garden History

The Hot Puppies / Chrome Hoof - Tapestry Goes West

Super Furry Animals - The Roundhouse / Royal Festival Hall

Things:

Dari Meya clothes - Owls! Cats! Toadstools! Yes!

Dr Stuarts teas - Especially Echinacea Flavour and Apple and Ginger flavour. And fab illustrations by Brett Ryder on the packets.

The End Of Mr Y - A new Scarlett Thomas book! With bewildering physics! And time travel.

Dressing like a Biba Robin Hood for two days - At Tapestry Goes West. Why can't I always carry a sword around? My nephew does.

Russell Brand on BBC Radio 2 - don't go out on Saturday nights no more.

Grapefruit Absolut - a delightfully refreshing way to enjoy neat vodka.

Places:

Sydney - Zillions of big old bats in the Botanic Gardens. Sailing into the harbour on the Manley Ferry - the skyline looking like a shiney comic book drawing. Going to a Dollyrocker Movement gig in the middle of Mardi Gras with chronic jetlag. Hoping to secretly live in our friends' pool-house forever.

New Zealand - Driving round the South Island - I am queen of the road (no one else on it). Seeing our lovely friends again - we miss them. Marvelling at glaciers - they're pale blue you know. Delicious breakfasts that you never get in England. Never wanting to come home.

Stockholm - Hermans veggie help-yourself restaurant - like being at a suburban '70s hippie party. Some excellent sleeps cocooned in the top bunk in a cabin on the Malardrottiningen hotelboat. Klubb Sockerdricka with The Sweptaways acapella, al fresco on a balmy Swedish summer evening. Pet Sounds record shop. And bar.

Limni Keriou, Zakynthos - Kittens are our friends! Free ouzo. Balancing on a lilo. Discovering the secret path over the mountain. Getting lost in an olive grove (again).

Feel The Beat And Do It Anyway - Sparky's Magic Piano

I’m not quite sure where this record has come from, but I’m sure glad it’s here! What an unexpected pop jewel, winking coyly in the sunlight. This album is short and sweet, it’ll take up just 36.36 minutes of your time ladies and gentlemen, but that’s 36.36 minutes jolly well spent, especially if you’re in the market for some cute but not cloying, witty but not clever-clever, sassy electro-indie-pop. What you get are what could be deemed weally wather twee songs (vocalist Marion’s prime instrument here is a glockenspiel) if it weren’t for the fact that they’re beefed up with a cornucopia of bedroom boffin sounds. This is a whirligig of noise: deeply squidgy electronica, feather-light synths, plinking, twinkling, soary, squeezy, - sounds poured in and stirred round and round to create electro-pop wonders.

‘Like Falling In Lo*e’ opens the album with an esoteric fizzing and humming that makes it sound like all kinds of experimental shenanigans are about to commence, but no! Sparky’s Magic Piano shower us with ba ba bas, jangling and buzzing gloriously. This is indie-pop!

‘Mend’ cranks and huffs, rumbles, squeaks and fuzzes behind Marion and Oliver’s girl/boy harmonising – a pop factory run amock. ‘Coffee Song’ is Tender Trap put in the wash with The Projects – kitchen sink indie-girl pop pepped up with diminutive motorik beeps. ‘Something Somewhere’ is oddly reminiscent of Apples In Stereo, a busy, buzzy clockwork toy of a tune, although it sounds thoroughly English thanks to Marion’s icing sugar vocals. Her sweet voice sounds like the smell of Lush Candy Fluff powder.

‘Sparky’ and ‘You Like Her’ are acoustically strummed and unadorned proving that the band have the tunes to throw off their gleeful, bleep-full layers of sound and go sonically naked save for a strategically placed glockenspiel. The second half of the album sees Sparky’s Magic Piano coming over all wistful with a sweetly rueful run of songs. ‘Kaleidoscope’ is a shy anthem-in-waiting, sighing and aching. ‘You Are The Star’ is a bit Trembling Blue Stars; slowly filling with brittle beats, ghostly merry-go-rounds twirling and rain splashing on shining streets. ‘Home Improvement’ has the wintery dreaminess of The Radio Dept with its delicious catch-in-the-voice sinking feeling.

We all know there’s nothing new under the big old Crayola-ed indie-pop sun, but ‘Feel The Beat And Do It Anyway’ is cheerily refreshing. An instantly endearing sunbeam.

www.myspace.com/sparkysmagicpiano

www.melodyfactory.com/shop

SFA Hurray! December 31 2007, Royal Festival Hall

What would be an enjoyable way to spend Neu Years Eve, hmm? How about with your favourite band in one of your favourite venues? And so it came to pass that we attended Super Furry Animals ‘Best New Years Eve Party…Ever’ at the Royal Festival Hall.

In 2007, SFA regained their rightful place as my tip-top-most favest band, thanks to their mighty pop odyssey ‘Hey Venus!’ and some fearsome live action at the Roundhouse. Tonight I am on my thirty-fourth Super Furry gig. I loves 'em.

And the Royal Festival Hall I also love; its optimistic ‘yay! we won the war and Britain be ace innit’ 1950s architecture and ‘we are the mods’ interior design. I love the idea that the ‘ball and net’ pattern for the carpet was completed by mistake when an apple was casually rested on the blueprints. Or the fact that when the RFH was refurbished last year the architects drew a little fox on their drawing up in the rafters ‘cos a family of foxes moved in during the renovation work (it’s true, I’ve seen the plans). I love the way I can roam around, up and down the stairs onto all the levels, gazing out the windows or leaning off the balconies marvelling at the (quite choppy and dangerous-looking) river and my city expanding enticingly in either direction. Don’t even get me started on the wonderousness of the main auditorium. Anyway, that's closed tonight, and the bands play downstairs in the more knees-up-friendly Ballroom. You have to celebrate New Year in the Ballroom really, don’t you?

We are treated to not one, not two, but three sets from the Super Furries, interspersed with two charming riots courtesy of Deerhoof and a spot of wandering about the Festy Hall visiting the ‘VIP Starf*ckers Blah’ (complete with red carpeted entrance and fake paparazzi flashing in yer face), the Old Man Pub, spotting olde Furries memorabilia (horses from the ‘Phantom Power’ stage set, a model of that teddy bear with it’s head in a vice, an ancient banner ca. the first album) and peering at Pete Fowler doing a drawing (‘Can you guess what it is yet?’ ‘Er, a Prog-rock Viking yeti monster with skull effects-pedals?’)

9pm: The first Furry set takes us on a journey of ‘ooh! they haven’t played this in years’ oldies and oddities, including 'Ymaelodi A'r Ymylon', 'Torra Fy Ngwallt Yn Hir' (personal faves for various insane reasons) a dreamy ‘Demons’ - with the crowd joining Gruff in happy ‘ba ba bas’ in lieu of the brass solo, ‘Hometown Unicorn’, a fab new song – the name and gist of which has been lost to vodka consumption, and ending with oh joy! ‘Ice Hocky Hair’.

10.30pm: A set similar to the one played to great effect on the Furries recent tour. I’ve been listening to ‘Hey Venus!’ a lot, and so it is with great glee that we greet the opening ‘Gateway Song’ and its swooning slide into ‘Run Away’. I frolic about merrily to the stuttering electro funk-up of ‘Baby Ate My Eightball’ and the multi-armed Eastern waveathon ‘Into The Night’. Hurrah! What a fantastic time we’re all having. Ending on an optimistic note to last us 'til midnight we get ‘Keep The Cosmic Trigger Happy’ with Bunf waving a placard that reads ‘Keep It Real’. With his crazy hermit hair and beard combo, he doesn’t look at all like a crazy old street preacher, oh no.

The countdown to midnight sees us watching a film projected onto the back of the stage. In it, SFA are riding around en route to the RFH in a golf cart. Then, as the clock hits twelve, here they are trundling triumphantly onto the stage in the self-same golf cart and cranking into 'Slow Life'. Gruff dons his Transformers helmet and hands out ‘party favours’ to the front row. He plonks into my hand one of those little kaleidoscope thingies that make you see the world in lots of refracted sections – like a fly’s eye. (side note: I once gave my friend K one of these for Christmas – she showed it to Bobby Gillespie who peered through it and announced, ‘It’s like being on Ecstasy!’ Doh!)

Midnight: This is the big old party, dance and holler set packed with the biggest, most rampagingest Furry songs for the happy crowd to bellow along to (not that they haven’t been doing this before), e.g. '(Drawing) Rings Around The World', ‘Golden Retriever’, ‘God! Show Me Magic’, ‘Hello Sunshine’ (how sweet to hear a room full of folk angelically chorusing ‘I’m a minger. You’re a minger too.’) and many more that are now lost in a haze of Grapefruit Absolut.

During ‘Receptacle For The Respectable’ Gruff favours Doritos as his crunchy percussion instrument (past percussion choices have included chewing on celery or carrots). I know they are Doritos as I am showered with the things when Gruff flings the left-overs into the crowd. Not the politest way to pass round nibbles. Or the most effective, as the tasty corn-based snax are instantly crushed to minute crumbs by our feet joyously stomping to the booming death-techno bit kicking in.

Of course the final song has to be ‘The Man Don’t Give A Fuck’ which, surprisingly, seems a tad underplayed. No matter though as we’ve had a huge dose of Super Furry goodness to inoculate us against the woes of coming back to earth on a chilly January morn, and look! here is an assortment of aliens, golden retrievers, pandas, etc lining up on stage as wobbling techno beats our cheery ears. Happy New Year!

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 indiepop 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 indiepop-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 indiepop-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 indiepop 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.

Why Can't We Just All Get Along? and Fortuna POP! present The Christmas Covers Party! 15th December 2007, 93 Feet East

Tonight’s premise: Nottingham promoters Whycan'twejustallgetalong? and the lovely Fortuna Pop! have invited a motley collection of their musical chums to come and play a festive bash. There are lots of bands on the bill (seventy-five ‘artistes’ altogether!) so to save us getting bored, their remit is to provide us with three songs apiece – each of which must be a cover. It’s a Christmas Covers Party!

Confusingly, the normal schimndie suspects who usually make up the audience at such events are in short supply, and the hall is filled with extraordinarily up-for-it posh people, dancing to ‘lowest common denominator crowd pleasers’. These ‘crowd pleasers’ range from the mildy irritating (‘Stuck In The Middle With You’) to the teeth-grittingly hideous (pop pap from the 80s – the stuff that drove me into the arms of indie in the first place, seeking an alternative to the crap that spewed from the charts and the radio and everywhere. We hated that music with a passion – it represented the evil Thatcherite leaching of society of any noble values. But hey, it’s alright now, we’ll just listen to it ironically. Or something). The general ambience tonight, helped along by the dodgy old music, is spookily reminiscent of the Official 6th Form Christmas Disco I attended in 1987 (there was also an unofficial 6th Form Christmas Disco where everyone wore pyjamas and there was a bar and a band and a drunk pulling over the Christmas tree, but that’s a whole ‘nother story). It’s weirding me out a tad.

Every now and then a snow-machine expectorates great clouds of erm ‘snow’ (foamy stuff that lodges on your eyelashes, rather like the real thing but more painful) over those of us haplessly standing near the front. It’s all frightfully festive with the bands gleefully knocking out some entertaining/appalling (often in the space of one song) musical moments.

Moments of genius include My Sad Captain’s sweet and breezy rendering of The Flaming Lips’ ‘Race For The Prize’. They are sparkly and jangly and cheer me up no end. Father Christmas (Oli and Clive) is in good form, entertaining us all with Christmas songs livened up with a spot of saw-playing. He’s also learned a modern pop song in order to bond with the young people – it’s Pixies’ ‘Here Comes Your Man’ sounding heart-warmingly jolly as a ukelele-riddled Country singalong.

The Jingle Belles are members of Not in This Town and Saint Joan, along with Emily Chemistry Experiment. They are pious girls, coming on angelically shrouded and halo-ed, eyes cast to heaven, the skies filled with bells pealing…until their heavenly sheets are cast asunder to reveal that The Jingle Belles have actually gone for a sort of S&M/Gothic take on the Christmas theme. Oh, hang on, they're being Madonna (not THE Madonna). They raucously knock out ‘Like A Prayer’ and brilliantly take on hoary old spook-rock number ‘Come To The Sabbat’ by Black Widow. This basically involves plinking out the song’s hippy-skippy pixie riff on a cranky guitar and alternating it with chants of ‘Come, come, come to the Sabbat, come to the Sabbat, Satan’s there’ in ever more histrionic shrieks. It is obviously unutterable genius.

More genius occurs in the form of Keytarded. Their name alone deserves some kind of prize, now add to that the fact that Keytarded are the three Bearsuit ladies dressed in ‘rollergear’ (tiny shorts), each armed with, yes, a keytar. They play a fabulously rinky-dink cover of ‘Love Will Tear Us Apart’ that almost tops (as it were) Frank Sidebottom’s version, especially when the last chorus is rendered in "miaows" rather than, you know, boring old words.

Keytarded are joined by a duo of fabulous ‘backing dancer’ boys (out of Bearsuit), one of whom looks like a living Simpsons character and does some brilliant expressive facial work, really capturing the sensation of horror incurred when going ‘down, down, down into a burning ring of fire’. The three song rule is broken, but it doesn’t matter as everyone’s having glorious fun, especially during ‘Livin’ On A Prayer’ which we all bellow along to, shamelessly. Again the ghost of Christmas past raises its head: at the Official 6th Form Christmas Disco, Fiona Riches brought along her copy of ‘Livin’ On A Prayer’ and with much fanfare insisted on playing it, much to our indie-minded abject disgust. It’s good to exorcise these horrors. Isn't that what Christmas is all about?

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.