Wickford's Most Wanted

Grinder "Wickford's So Boring ?" (Wax Trax, 7" EP)



Possibly what the word "curio" was invented for, this. It's a record that I bought for 10p from the boot of a car whilst attending the seismic global event that was Basildon's Anti-Poll Tax Festival in day, an event that featured Runrig, The Man From Delmonte, the very entertaining Automatic Slim and a spectacularly low attendance. But it was worth going just for managing to acquire this record: I could never have predicted how a single ten pence coin could have given me something quite so memorable.

The 3-track EP is a release on Wax Records of Long Riding, Basildon Essex and I'm ashamed to say it is the only Wax Records release I own (indeed, the only one I'm aware of: the cat no. being WAX 2, which means at most we have only half the Wax story here). I'm guessing that it came out in '78-'79. The cover pictures, in cheapo black and white, feature the 5 band members seemingly sitting around a rubbish dump (although perhaps it's just a very untidy allotment) with one of them sportingly dressed up as the subject of the first track, "Spiderman", beside an abandoned car wreck. The sleeve tells us who these chaps are: Terry-Ball, Si-Kic, Stu-Pid, Holy-Grail and, best of all, Dav-id. Stu wears a Rocky Horror Picture Show t-shirt; Dav has a bobble hat and scarf; the back sleeve shows that Terry, away from his spider garb, sports a flat cap and shades. Sounds great already, no ? (As for what that errant question mark in the EP title signifies, I've never been sure: my best guess remains that they just got overexcited with the Letraset, and "Wickford's So Boring" really remains a statement of fact rather than a rhetorical question).

"Spiderman", the tune on the A-side, is an instant classic, a jovial punk / pub-rock hybrid mocking Spiderman for being, basically, a rubbish superhero. Basically, he's got acne, he's a wimp, and he can't pull birds: "Spiderman thinks he's cool... [dramatic pause]... He ain't" [rollicking scratchy guitar]. There are also some random "2, 3, 4"s that recall Jilted John - again, not a bad reference point to where Grinder seem to be coming from. It seems odd, and incredibly unfair, from this distance that "Jilted John" or the Sham could go top ten, and yet Grinder probably sold about ten. And did we mention that the record is pressed delightfully yet rather unnecessarily on Spidey-red vinyl ?

Flip the disc over and there are two more remarkable numbers. First is "Furry Dice", a bang-on accurate summation of their home county, the music surprisingly jangly, the chords actually tuneful a la the Cockney Rejects' "It's Over", and there's a fantastic outro where the keyboards go all excitable and Terry-Ball gets consumed by the thought of his character's beloved danglers ("And they're only two pound / Plus 50p postage and packing / And I love 'em"). It features backing vocals from "Heather Leather, Jack-Et and Kay-Ottik", natch. And then comes a change of pace with "Other People", a spooky pseudo-slowie which, in its ultimate conclusion - "I hate other people" - delivers a common enough punky sentiment, just with endearing left-field charm.

FWIW, what experience I had of Wickford confirmed that it was, indeed, a tremendously tedious place, although no more so than Billericay, its dreary near-neighbour and partner under Basildon Council's alleged yoke. What Wickford always did have in its favour (apart, of course, from Grinder's patronage) was, rather bizarrely, an excellent record shop, Adrians, which rivalled much even of what the big smoke had to offer (essential vinyl purchases made from there included such gems as 1000 Violins' "If I Were A Bullet", and 14 Iced Bears "Precision").

So. Just one record cements Grinder as one of the best Essex bands ever, right up there with the Windmills, Catapult, er... oh, and Scalplock and Flyblown. "Wickford's So Boring" is stupid, mad and brilliant: exactly the kind of record that should reminds us of the greatness which independent labels can achieve. And while we're too young to have been around then, we have it on good authority that yes, John Peel did play it. Once.

Postscript: Proving that the internet can on occasion be a lifesaver, a couple of very helpful websites fill in the blanks: punk77 reveals that Grinder were formed that very year and had, somewhat disappointingly, real names: "Terry Luckett (vocals & daft costumes); Simon Mills (bass); Graham Filby (drums); Dave Smith (guitar) and Stewart Clark, on guitar. Reasonably popular on the local (Basildon, Essex) punk circuit, renowned for almost every song having a costume for Terry to dress up in...". The page also reveals, perhaps inevitably, that when "Terry left the band in 1982... we began to write more serious 'tunes'." Oh dear. Looking at Terry on the sleeve, a man who over time has become one of our true punk heroes, we feared that would have always been the outcome.

Meanwhile, Southendpunk confirms that Grinder were indeed from Wickford, "starting life as 'The Bin Liners'. Their first gig was December 14th, 1977 at Billericay school... Grinder soon gained a reputation for playing a fusion of punk rock and theatre, with Terry Luckett dressed in a different costume for almost every song... Perhaps a highlight for the band was wining the Roots Hall Battle Of The Bands competition in 1980, beating Alison "Alf" Moyets band into 2nd place... They seemed to almost be resident at Basildon's Van Gogh pub for a few years, and in fact were invited to play at the venues last ever gig. That night Grinder supported heavy metal act Samson, who unfortunately managed to empty the building!"

Hard to beat that, but finally we found a great description of the EP from Ugly Things: "Genius. It is obvious to me that Wickford wasn't boring at all as long as you hung out with the bold gents of Grinder. The songs range from primitive clunky riff-rock to DIY jangle of the highest order." A description which frankly puts it more perfectly, and far more succinctly than we were able to.

Kalibrate Me Utterly

We all know that mixtapes are pretty hit and miss. There's a tendency to cram in as much as possible, shoehorning in a formulaic panoply of styles in the hope that something might stick, either with the punter or any passing A&R man - so you get, typiquement, a club banger, a lurve song, something conscious, something old-skool, some sex rhymes, a life story cut, and *far too many* collaborations. So the story of UKHH releases has been one of the listener having to fairly carefully mine a 75-minute mush in order to extract enough nuggets of inspiration to justify the purchase. Given that we only get three score years and ten, life is simply too short. But a good couple of years after S.Kalibre's "High Kalibre Mixtape" first appeared, we find we're still returning to it. And that seems good enough reason in itself to give it the retrospective treatment we haven't yet afforded to anything else of the genre...

We first heard the Kent rhymester, we think, with his guest verse on "Envy", from Dap-C's "Character Building" album in '04. What struck us first, even amidst the novelty of a homespun Newcastle rapper's full-length, was simply how distinctive Kalibre's own accent was - south-east of england roughneck, no attempt to put on either Americanisms nor standard London patois - and at the time, that was even rarer than it is now. But there was also something refreshingly no-nonsense about the rhymes themselves, his contribution starting with a crisp "for fuck's sake...". And though he's popped up in quite a few places since - notably with his bars stealing the show on Dap-C's "The Boy Who Cried Wolf", in a trademark verse where Kalibre combines the usual brusque, don't-mess Medway straight-talking with due reverence for the higher messages of KRS One - there has not really been enough of him around. That's one of the reasons the High Kalibre mixtape was so welcome.

The mixtape is hosted by Blade, which is a pretty good sign. Blade is one of the homestyle rappers who managed to combine integrity with longevity in the game: when he made it, however fleetingly, onto Top Of The Pops, that meant far more to us than other alleged UK breakthroughs, like a tame Dizzee sell-out getting to number one. We always think of Blade in the video for "Ya Don't See The Signs", pushing the flash car and the dancing girls out of the way and sticking a metaphorical middle finger up at the major label madness all around (a afflicting, as it would turn out, his and Mark B's deal with Virgin). Returning to S.Kalibre, for what it's worth, you can see that he does the middle finger thing literally on the tape's cover: we thought for a second it might be reconstruction of the infamous photo of Johnny Cash doing the same thing. While it might not be original or endearing, it's a hint that like the man in black, he's not going to be indulging any fools gladly.

With Kalibre curt to a fault, and with beats anchored by the other half of Hard Livin', producer Mike S, this tape sustains interest over some 27 tracks. Opener "Medway Story" brings the gritty horror of the Medway towns to life: an acknowledgement there's always been much more to them than Dickensian tourist whimsy and Rochester Castle, very little of it pleasant. "S.K.A.L.I.B.R.E", is a belter, again immeasurably helped rather than hindered by the lack of sampled hooks or backing vocals as the MC simply glides across the rhythm to introduce himself. On "Real Rap" Kalibre, assisted by Genesis Elijah, has a crystal clear take on modern day rap's foothold on impressionable UK youth: "You probably only been rapping since you saw 8 mile / I bet 50's your favourite MC". "Ride On You Idiots" is another one for the haters: again, short, sweet, confident, convincing.

Although the guest spots tend to be pretty well chosen (only on the overlong "UK Army", which features a cast of frankly too many, does the collabo thing really get out of hand), the downside is that however competent, few of the tonsils-for-hire are as welcome as S.Kalibre's own less-than-dulcet tones, which are after all what we've paid for. The guest spots that get closest to matching him are from Stateside rappers Syndrome, Q-Unique and Sabotawj on "3 Faces of Death" and "Westside Connection", while Manage's contribution to "Freedom" sets off Kalibre's nicely.

Another mark of quality is that the tape doesn't fall off at the close: indeed, it picks up seriously renewed momentum with the penultimate tune "Words From The Kalibre", a two minute tour de force of straight rhyming style ("not even the Churchill dog gonna nod to your shit") before concluding with an equally strong outro, in which S.Kalibre turns the typical mixtape on its head by finishing (rather than starting) with an autobiographical song, a potted history of Hard Livin' that charts the ups and downs of his musical outings thus far.

Yeah, there are probably 3 or 4 tracks here we can live without. But given how mad impatient we usually are, you can take that as leaving one hell of a hit-rate. So a heartfelt big up to S.Kalibre, for proving that the well-rounded mixtape was not just an impossible dream.

"21 singles"

this is one what we wrote in 2002. sam from tasty was once kind enough to give it special mention, and as sam from tasty is a don, that made us very proud.

"well well well. as we exclusively dreamt about 18 months ago (wonder what freud would have made of that), the mary chain have a singles compilation out, which basically means they have released in cd format one of my favourite compilation tapes of all time, lovingly put together from a myriad of different formats of these tunes i grew up with. and though, as would be expected, the chronological approach means that the very pick of the crop are the first clutch of incendiary screamers, the record works really well in charting a natural evolution which never quite succumbed to temporary trends, even if ultimately they authored something rather more derivative than the initial blaze of feedback glory might ever have suggested.

it would be morally wrong to do anything other than start with the raging, rampaging early stuff. "upside down" even now induces toe tapping, head spinning joy every time a new bleat of feedback darts into the mix. if you've ever read the fantastic cavanagh tome on creation (which sparkles in part not least due to its depiction of the j&mc) you will have read the story of its recording, deep beneath waterloo station, with william reid sneaking back in to the studio to add layer upon layer of noise. listening to the record you can feel the trains charging overhead, the bass reverberating around the tiny studio, the playful anarchy of every fader being slammed up to ten and every remaining guitar track being filled with the type of wicked, wonderful white noise that best sums up the rollercoaster emotions of every true relationship. it's why, even though we are no longer the teenagers who first marvelled at their racket, the mary chain remain one of the greatest authors of love songs ever.

no sooner does "upside down" taper away than its place is taken by "never understand" - and from the moment the snare crashes in to harness the opening guitar SCREEEEOW it is just soul-affirmingly luminescent. put to one side the fact that every set of exams i ever did culminated in me going back to my bedroom, garret room, studio, bedsit or wherever to put this song on at maximum volume, feeling the stress dissipating as the neighbours swore. this was a song that ought to have gone top 5, where the melodies are hardly hidden, but which found like love's young dream that the public are fickle and had decided that stock aitken and waterman songs didn't give you instant migraine when you listened to them on your headphones, so somehow our own conviction that temporary illness was a small price to pay for such genius was a minority view. in other words, chart position: negligible. even by the time of "you trip me up" (track 3), we were beginning to realise that our na�ve fantasy of all bands sounding like the mary chain, and noisepop inevitably gatecrashing the charts and displacing the pap, was beginning to look misplaced. not that any of us cared, not least the mary chain themselves - at the third attempt they had, at last, written the perfect love song, hung on such an obvious, but so apposite metaphor, with jim reid imploring "i'd like to trip you up" - when luther or alexander would have settled for "i want to make you fall in love with me" but that just wouldn't have fitted so well with the seven shades of noise that surrounded his declaration - and the ultimate use of the greatest mary chain trick - the "additional tranche of feedback" which always came in at the moment that the listener's heart TRULY needed wrenching, and tended to pin me to the spot.

as you'll have guessed, we could probably wax lyrical-ish about the whole cd, but we hope the above gives you an idea of what the mary chain meant - no, mean - to us, and this includes not only their early peel sessions but also the whole of "psychocandy", which fleshed out the twin themes of romance and unadulterated clamour. we do mean it when we say that every one's a winner. we can pick personal highlights that punctuated certain stages of growing up - "april skies" which struck a blow for us laughed-at, messed-up kids in school by reaching the top 10, however much people decried it as "sell out" when perhaps it was just evolution; first hearing the delicious "sometimes, always" on the radio in northern ireland, in the car, and that warmth in knowing that even though hope sandoval's sultry vocal was a novel departure, the whole song still oozed mary-chainness (as well as the solace of hearing jim's voice come in to accompany her);... then at college, "reverence" - comedically banned by the bbc, with its only vaguely-dancey stylings meaning that uniquely amongst tunes from 1992 it hasn't dated - that went into the top 10 the same week the wedding present went into the top 20; "cracking up", the fabulous and wrongly-overlooked comeback on creation which soundtracked our own halycon summer of 1998, watching the world cup and wasting warm afternoons on clapham common... there are no bad tracks on here, just a journey from feedback ballads through almost-chart mellow to true americana to nineties pop noise, with the odd near-acoustic deviation.

some might say that they should have split up in 1987, left their legend for the future to rediscover, gone out in a haze of glory; but more than most bands, they retained the capacity to inspire, even when there were signs they were treading water they always seemed to re-emerge with top notch tunes and a new twist. we remember listening to "i love rock and roll" (and they did), the last song here and contrarian companion to tune 19, "i hate rock and roll" (and they did) - dumbfoundedly staring at each other as the horns came in, until one of the crew broke the silence by saying "i'm going to let them have that". they really could do anything."

sarah christmas party 1993

i also found this in the boxes. as ever, this is verbatim and unimproved - please bear in mind that i was 20 at the time and the "beat poet" (whose generally negative comments are italicised) was 18...

"HEAVENLY + copious support

at the Thekla in Bristol, 22/12/93

The proceedings for this Sarah Records extravaganza were opened by the messy haze of arcane raucous post-glam punk popsters Action Painting! whose eminently unoriginal brand of spiky thrash tunes-by-numbers was nevertheless both entertaining and exhilarating; six songs, including the whirlwind singles "Classical Music" and current yob anthem "Mustard Gas".

Sort of begged the question, why ? If you're going to be rubbish, then why not just quit ?

Next up, Secret Shine. Any band who boast 5 guitarists have to be reckoned with, and a sterling set opening with their crossover indie hit "Loveblind" proved that they're still full of potential despite the occasional monochromatics of the last LP.

You had an idea of what you wanted from Secret Shine, and they fulfilled it, really. Best of the rest, after Heavenly.

Wetherby three-piece Boyracer are already veterans of the live scene, and they warmed the cockles of their ever-faithful Yorkshire posse by a no-frills, exuberant set full of the staccato punch of guitar and pained shouting that has come to epitomise their records. "Doorframe" was followed by competent renderings of "Black Fantastic Splitting", "David Byrne", "Cog" and, most extraordinarily, Even As We Speak's "One Step Forward". Boyracer still aren't as good as they think they are, but I can't really fault their enthusiasm.

Fairly rubbish. There's not much more to be said - you get a good impression from those two words.

Fourth band on, back from their Japanese tour, were Blueboy, who broke out from their normal understated pop timbre to brush off a few cobwebs and give us a brighter, brasher sound. "Meet Johnny Rave" was followed by an off-kilter "Candy Bracelet" and then a bunch of newies, including one ("Self-Portrait" ?) which was redolent of every manic pop thrill you could imagine. I've seen better from them, though.

Fair to middling... None of their songs stuck in my mind.

Second support came from the Orchids, who all took the stage wearing their coats and treated us to an almost exclusively original set of songs that start slowly but manage to weave their way into your affections so much that you can't help applauding at the end. They always manage to sound commercial without ever being obvious, which in these times is a sadly rare gift. On this evidence, no doubt the 'difficult' third album will be polished and a real grower. The middle aged bassist however dispelled their self-created "hard men of Glasgow" image by liberally sipping fruit juice between songs.

Quite impressed with the coats. Rather musical, in fact. I don't think anyone could say 'no'. A bit quieter than the other bands.

The bill, then, was topped by Heavenly, who I've seen somewhere between 6 and 10 times now, and who've never disappointed. "PUNK Girl" and "Atta Girl" were wheeled out alongside an especially barnstorming "Our Love Is Heavenly", the irresistible (if so muted on vinyl) "Sort of Mine", and their most successful attempt yet at the wordy joke duet "C Is The Heavenly Option", with Thekla soundman Dick doing a particularly impressive cameo in the Calvin Johnson role. Then it got a bit weird - well, it was Christmas after all. A medley of Cole Porter, the Smurfs and Lenny Kravitz was followed by drummer Matthew dressing as a vicar and massacring some sixties-type tune with a vigour worthy of his tacky heroes the Cramps. And that wes our lot.

It was fairly clear that everyone had come along to see Heavenly. I thought they were quite impressive, really."

sadly, most people now associate the thekla with a rather different heavenly. but not me... *sigh*.

a 'goodbye brighter' piece

found this, to my great surprise, in the boxes from the move - dates from early 1994, i guess. note no editing out of all the embarrassing bits, including the wrong words, the wrong adjectives, the cringeworthy opening, and attributing entirely the wrong song title to one of my favourite songs. i was quite intrigued to find that a number of these memories were just as vivid when writing brighter reissue reviews many yrs later...

"I was talking to Tim Chippington (Orlando, Waccamole, Timbertoes, namedrop, namedrop) about Brighter's last EP, 1992's piquant "Disney"; we were lamenting the fact how it sounded like an epitaph. The closing tracks were "Never Ever" (chorus: "Goodbye, goodbye...") and the gorgeous "End", in which the melodies scuttle obliquely behind Keris Howard's evocative singing: "Maybe this could be the end..."

Brighter were hardly the longest lived or highest profile band, but every little thing they did was... well, magical. Consisting of a series of drum machines, plus Keris (words and guitars), Alison (guitar and Eric Cantona T-shirt) and Alex (bass and boyish features), they emerged from Sussex with "Around The World In Eighty Days", a lush, slow, deeply dreamy EP compared in the press to the Mary Chain and the Cocteaus, but probably baring closer comparison at the time to the gentler moods of labelmates the Field Mice or St. Christopher.

But with Brighter, there was such a sense of personal politics, of justified world weariness... a thread running through thier early torch song "Tinsel Heart", with its evocation of, "this stinking little country", the beautiful "Christmas", still my favourite ever song, and the overpowering "Poppy day", which mourned the passing over of purity ("she used to have a soul. but you get a good price for those"). And all the time the band were musically maturing.

"Noah's Ark" was "Around The World" part two, a similarly flawless guitar-strewn exercise in soft whispers and melancholy. Not until 1991's "Laurel" did the music start to breathe, freed by slight arrangements, an almost total absence of percussion, and touches of keyboard on "Frostbite" and "Summer Becomes Winter". The lyrics remained simplistic metaphors on both love and life, and this set up the brilliant final EP. Opening with "Killjoy", a typically bitter, winding guitar-picking anthem, it peaked with "Hope Springs Eternal", which will forever to me ring with the disappointment of the last election. "Has our fight just gone ?" - another song about giving in.

I saw them first in May 1991, supporting the Orchids and the Hit Parade at the Islington Powerhaus. They were awesome, in an unassuming, self-absorbed kind of way: even a version of Depeche Mode's "I Just Can't Get Enough" seemed to fit perfectly into their gossamer-gentle scheme of things. It was, pathetically and frighteningly, like love at first sight. Subsequent gigs in Oxford and Bristol demonstrated an alarming inability to break out from their on-stage insularity, but my correspondents from the South East assured me that they tore the house down in a bizarre appearance in front of the assorted hooded tops at Writtle Agricultural College.

They played their last ever show at the Bull and Gate, Kentish Town, in front of an encouraging and appreciative hardcore audience. They broke free at last from the confines of shyness to the tune of a fine, swashbuckling set and two encores. They may not be missed by the music press, but that's why those of us who've thrilled to and been lulled by them have to put the record straight."

i listened to brighter again this morning. now, at least as much as in 1994, they are still of the utmost importance. what is so pleasing, in 2008, is not being remotely alone in this.

discovering sarah (part one)

i can't pretend to have been there at the start of sarah. i had a friend who was lending me lots of fanzines, and i even sent off for some myself, so i was kind of aware of the label and the names of the bands and had read interviews with some of them and there were glimpses on compilation tapes, too: but i hadn't bought the sha-la-las or the kvatches at the time, just read them secondhand, in a spot we had on the edge of the school field, just around the corner from the playground.

i even remember borrowing "the shadow factory" lp when it came out, but i only taped (i.e. really rated) three tunes off it at the time: "fabulous friend", "i'm in love with a girl who doesn't know i exist" and "sure to see". and although the latter, in particular, hit me like a sledgehammer, it wasn't until i borrowed the lp again a few months later that i started to really understand - perhaps struck by that phrase on the sleeve, "full of wrong notes and wrong chords but crammed with right everything else's" - and bought my own copy soon after.

as far as the singles were concerned, meanwhile, sarah 7"s (and that was all the sarah product there was for a while) circulated at school: they were lent, loaned and loved or loathed just as much as wedding present records, as metallica records, as anything else that did the rounds back then. the 1st sarah 45 that really struck me was the second sea urchins' single: and while "please rain fall", the one that all the fanzines were mad for, seemed ok, it was "solace" (the one that wasn't on "shadow factory") that kind of blew me away. still does, especially when i dig out my original tape of it, where the vinyl crackles brilliantly as the song begins, flickering it into life.

yet sarah only became a proper obsession from 1989, and i recall the crucial moment perfectly because it was john peel playing "sensitive". he introduced it by reading from a note that clare & matt had given him which suggested in their usual understated way that it was one of the best records ever. i listened, and i wasn't initially sure it was - yet something in that last two minutes, the instrumental section that bobby wratten later admitted he loved so much, suddenly made me sit upright and stare at my radio, and think "i must buy that record". and so the next opportunity i had, i was up to london on the train and grabbed it at rough trade in covent garden.

this, along with playing the record incessantly, was the start of an avalanche, and apart from the single-number sarah singles (including, sadly, "solace") it was still possible in those days to catch up on other bits of the back catalogue without too much trouble. "emma's house" was bought in rhythm records in camden: many others required only a visit to basildon "our price". and we must remember, however much we now see matinee or cloudberry as "the new sarah", that amongst the many differences between sarah and other is a crucial, consumerist one - availability. for while many preferred to send off postal orders to clare and matt, who would usually send the records out from 'the garden flat' with little handwritten notes full of "...um..."s, it was usually the case that you really could go, not only to any local independent record store worth its salt, but to quite a few chain stores in unfashionable towns, and buy sarah 7"s.

which, of course, would not have mattered save for the one other thing that is really important. go back to the sleevenotes of "shadow factory" again, and what should be a template for any label:

"POLITICS, not as some distant unreal end... no sanctimonious 'socialist' pose hawked popstarry-eyed with a thatcherist gleam when it comes to THE SELL, but something that's basic and pure..."

and, as such, from then on there are a million sarah memories, many of which yes, we have bored you with before. but hey, i'm on a nostalgia tip, and with no more brighter records to review there's no other theatre for such reminiscence anymore, so here's a starter 10:

* sitting at the ostrich pub in bristol's waterside before a sarah summer party at the thekla and commenting in passing that i had bought ivy's "avenge" on cd single (which included the two tunes from their initial 7" "wish you were") and receiving out of the blue an absolute broadside from a girl i'd never met before shrieking "you can't do that!" and going genuinely apoplectic that i hadn't bought the two 7"s instead. i never found out her name, but i think i love her;

* not having a ticket to get in to said party, but being shepherded in anyway by a kindly bouncer who spotted as i loitered with intent at the quayside that i was wearing a bristol rovers t-shirt: if i'd just been wearing my regulation horizontal-striped shirt, or the famous sarah cherries, i'd never have got in;

* the bloke at revolver records in bristol who always "tsk"'d at me when i bought sarah records and suggested i broaden my mind. he often cited gallon drunk, in particular, in this regard;

* harvey williams going up to keris howard at the bull and gate circa 1992: "how are you, keris ? inside, i mean ?" - don't know why, just tickled us;

* there were frequently sarah gigs at bristol's fleece and firkin but my abiding high and low are probably (1) going up to amelia fletcher after a typically amazing heavenly show - the first time i'd ever plucked up the courage to say a timid "hello" to a pop star; and (2) the sweetest ache playing once when, for whatever reason, the crowd had decided not to clap or cheer between songs, so when they got to the end of each one, there was just a kind of awkward silence that we were all too shy to break. still makes me cringe slightly even now;

* surfing on a friend's back (you probably had to be there) at an even as we speak gig in oxford, while the meadows brothers (the sugargliders had just supported) did the same right next to us;

* sarah band people on tv: not so much the well-documented stardom of cathy rogers, more that we swear we can remember the guitarist out of action painting! helping out shampoo on top of the pops, and amelia assisting huggy bear on that amazing "the word" appearance;

* being so keen to get to the islington powerhaus in time to see brighter open up that me and my mate - zoooming straight from school - arrived before the place even opened and clare had to shoo us politely away as we unwittingly wandered in the "stage door";

* john peel reading out forthcoming gigs and inadvertently describing gentle despite as "genital desperate" (which at the time would not have been a surprising name for a band feted by j.p);

* tramway live at the thekla - britpop attitude and swagger before it got trendy.

and these memories may not seem all that, but the point is, if we all have 1,000,000 of our own (and i fear many more of mine will follow), when you add them all together that's a highbury fieldsful of ace memories.

*group hug*.

shalawambe, amayenge, the four brothers and the bhundu boys - zimbabwean and zambian bands of the old school

"I saw the Bhundu Boys at Glastonbury and they solved the world's problems. They knew the answers and they related them to us. It was that simple. They collected us together, muddy and exhausted and we danced. I had nowhere to sleep and nowhere to go; I was tired and alone and downright fucking lonely. But for the time the Bhundus played nothing mattered."

- Clare, from SARAH 4

if you are a fan of the greatness of c86 the record - and let's face it, anyone still passing thru this moribund fanzine probably is - these are the kind of songs you should be super-interested in, you know, if you don't have them already. when you consider that all these guys, despite differences in styles, somehow mix the guitar sound of mighty mighty with the trebly jangle you might expect from the chesterf!elds and the kind of roving, random basslines and complex percussion manouvres that turned up on ron johnson records or the mbira-style guitars that decorate some of the shrubs' tunes, for example, it is really not that great a leap. it's only the vocal style, and of course the language barrier, that might seem truly unfamiliar.

and of course all four of these bands, just as much as mccarthy and the shrubs to name but two, were responsible for reasonably ace peel sessions (including versions of "rugare" and "rudo chete"). listen to the early bhundu boys stuff, before they became world music posterboys, and it's like hearing those tentative yet beautiful early mccarthy intros - the first b.b. 7" has all the nervous, muted but electrifying glory of "red sleeping beauty". or check out the "falling and laughing" style strumming or the joyful "felicity"-style whistles of all bands. best of all, because it's getting so hard to find this stuff, it makes it all the more rewarding when you find any (ooh, on a similar theme, the first wolfhounds comp - parading fab tunes like "cruelty" and "stars on the tarmac" - is now on i-tunes, if like us you never managed to track it in yr local secondhand shop).

also, how fab is this, but shalawambe's day job was actually being farmers. can you imagine farmers from the uk being in a band making such a fabulous noise ? no, of course not - a band of farmers from this country would sound like hard-fi. so come on - do you need any more encouragement than the fact that any band with a "sha-la" in their name are gonna make you smile ? go for it, and believe us we are serious (when are we ever not): there is so much more where these came from.

best places to start:
the bhundu boys: "the shed sessions" (2xCD of early singles and recordings)
four brothers: "the hits of the four brothers volume 2"
shalawambe have a couple of tracks on the "zambiance!" compilation
amayenge feature both on "zambiance!" and also "zambush volume 1: zambian hits of the 80s". the songs are better than the puns!

as you can tell, we're struggling to track down shalawambe and amayenge stuff in particular, so any suggestions always welcome...