...then there is going to be upset. "If I Should Die Before I Wake", of course, being probably Biggie's best posthumous tune, and also one of Beanie Siegel's greatest moments. Can't remember if we got round to telling you that we finally established last year exactly who killed Biggie, but we did (it was the same night we found out in an impromptu, rather "axe"-related lock-in at the Sutton Arms - the one on Carthusian Street, not the nearby but rubbish one a little further north, possibly on Great Sutton Street - that the landlord christened his daughter Iommi after his guitar hero, and then his punter mate nominated Billy Gibbons as his, and then we were forced to volunteer the view that David Gedge bossed both of them, at which point things became a bit fractious: we should really have said Pete Salowka). Anyway, on the Biggie murder thing, we'll tell you face to face who it was, but not here. We're still working on solving Pac's.
Aie. The point of this post was to mark our moping, in that we found out waaaay too late, as "in the loop" as ever, that none other than the truly very mighty Wake were playing at the London Popfest. Missing them is the most galling thing that's happened to us in years, frankly - the last time we got so upset was probably when Ronnie Maugé got his leg broken in the Gold Cup - but as we tried to pick up the pieces we remembered this, our 2002 attempt to cobble together all our warmth of feelings for the many incarnations of the group in one fell swoop. It didn't quite get there, but it's brought us back to some of our favourite Wake numbers again and hopefully it at least shows that we're serious in our admiration for them. Buy everything they've ever done.
* * * * *
"the wake "harmony and singles", "here comes everybody and singles", "holy heads", "assembly" (ltm)
you wait for years for a wake reissue, and then four come along at once. not that we're complaining - we've always rated them, the terminal unfashionability of the wake never having bothered (i mean, we got laughed out at school for liking mccarthy instead of thousand yard stare) nor even remotely surprised us: being ignored is a constant corollary of bands being ahead of their time. in alternative pop's accepted wisdom, the wake only seem to merit a couple of trite epithets - "that gloomy 80s factory band" and "that sarky band on sarah" - in fact, in the capacity of their stint on the latter, they suffered the double whammy of (a) losing credibility with factory-types ("wot no peter saville associates sleeves ?") for being on the same label as the poppyheads, golden dawn etc and (b) being spurned by many sarah recs fans (hello colette) despite contributing, in our hackneyed view, some of that label's greatest tunes and certainly lyrical moments ("carbrain" being a glowing example on both counts).
but as strangely befits a band who were always out of time, a slew of compact disc thingies are, in this palindromic yr 2002, brought to you by the artful james nice's les temps modernes label.the "harmony" set from 1982, their first album, mixes "movement"-era new order tributes like "heartburn" with proto-goth ("judas"), proto-sarah ("testament") and sterling early-80s alt-pop ("an immaculate conception"). history watchers observe - it's the second best lp that bobby gillespie (iffy bass duties) has ever played on (see ? even in having gillespie as a member, the wake were ahead of their time - the only band who never managed to capitalise on their association with the press darling).
top music journalist (remember them, nme ?) dave mccullough infamously described one-riff opener "favour" as better than new order and potential top 40, which although not his most eccentric pronouncement, must rank close - "favour" is insistent and dripping with promise, but lest we forget, new order had just unleashed "procession", arguably their best ever single. bonus tracks on the cd include a contemporaneous john peel session in which they joined the new wave obsession with "the drill" as song title - theirs being an affectionate eulogy to new order's "everything gone green" as if played by josef k - and two other singles, including their rather cute pre-factory debut, "on our honeymoon", which fair prickles with the bashful ingenuousness of a fledgling pop band.
"have you heard the good news / everybody works so hard"
next set, "here comes everybody" received a poor reception when it came out in 1985. a reception which effectively stalled the wake at the time when their star had seemed to be in the ascendant. sadly, it's not too difficult to see why, as it is an album which is horribly cleanly produced, all eight songs being drowned in unsubtle new musik-style keyboards and spluttering in their sameness - despite some obviously affecting lyrics and attractive melodies struggling to get out, the effect is of eight rather lesser versions of the preceding singles ("talk about the past" - a treasured 12" here at in love with these times in spite of these times towers and a worthy companion piece in 1984 to new order's similarly melodic, electronic and sprawling "thieves like us": and "of the matter", a much more pint-sized pseudo-pop creation - both bonus tracks on this cd reissue) messily coagulating. so "here comes everybody" itself, "world of her own" and "sail through", for example, all sound lame compared to their incarnations in radio one session form.
oddly, however, the main historical import of the album - apart from it being the soundtrack to the denouement of the wake's critical acclaim - seems to be the fact that it is a record without which the field mice circa "for keeps" simply could not have existed. in their normal prescient way, the whole album, especially the basslines later purloined by michael hiscock, sounds like mid to late period - i.e. post-peak - 'mice, or early northern picture library. "melancholy man" in particular is a frighteningly accurate premonition of field mice '91.
this cd also features four other tracks - the "something that no-one else could bring" ep - later famously referred to on their sarah records cut "joke shop" ("when we released our 4 track EP / it could not be found in the Megastore"). one is tempted to say, especially after hearing "plastic flowers", that must be because all the copies had been bought up by a young and obviously hugely impressionable bobby wratten. nevertheless, the ep - their factory recs swansong - was a real step up, leading with the swoonsome "gruesome castle" (can it really be 15 years since we first heard it, courtesy of the usual source, one j. peel, esq, of peel acres ?) on the evidence of which you can see why sarah records would have had no obvious qualms about in saving the wake from their increasingly loveless relationship with tony wilson et al.
"and he's so proud of the club, but it's just a glorified pub"
the sarah days were great days because the wake appeared to have been freed from the shackles of caring any more. and the "holyheads" cd combines the wake's third and fourth albums, both issued to critical whimper. no. 3 was the "make it loud" mini-lp: 8 tracks of offhand sniping, including "joke shop" and the commuter portrait "henry's work" ("you're the kind of person who used to be a laugh / now you're the kind who reads the daily telegraph"). no. 4, their last recorded work, was "tidal wave of hype", built upon the orchids' rhythm section and belting out to a grotesquely uninterested world great songs like "i told you so", in which caesar rails about ex-labelmate mike pickering (of quando quango non-fame and later m people notoriety, though he may also require a ceremonial kicking for introducing the happy mondays to tony w's attention) and no-one should ever even think of doing a sarah compilation tape to try and impress a beau - come on, we all have - without putting on "provincial disco": "i know everyone has to have an interest / but i draw the line at white soul". even if you then find out (s)he's a level 42 fan and that's the last time you get to walk them home, at least you've done yourself a favour in the long run. oh, and "crasher", which is adorable as its subject, er, isn't.
"of all the crashing bores i've had the pleasure to know, he takes first prize"
finally, the body of the "assembly" cd is a live set from ayr in 1983 which flames into life with the unreleased tune "recovery" and the definitive version of "uniform" (from the peel session), which respectively ooze the anger and the sadness that new order were also trying to achieve at that time. the bills the two bands shared that year must have been towering indie face-offs. the cd also includes a surprisingly poppy 1984 kid jensen session (the first three tracks of which, including a truncated first go at "talk about the past" and 2 of those songs that later got smothered by the production of "here comes everybody" are excellent): best of all though, because they didn't quite fit on "holyheads", you get the two sarah 45s. first is the impeccable sarah debut, the bittersweet duet "crush the flowers" c/w "carbrain", an adorable pop rumble which apart from anything else knowingly incorporated the previous sarah fanzine titles "cold" / "lemonade" into its wonderful lyric. the second sarah single, released between the albums that make up "holyheads", saw two musical variations on "henry's work": "major john" for once was not ahead of its time, over-optimistically celebrating the imminent departure from office of a certain prime minister (as we know from 1992, that didn't actually happen and in fact, he actually outlasted them): on the flip, "lousy pop group", whilst musically indistinguishable from the a-side, continued the sequence of music industry hate songs which the wake are, frankly, as entitled as anyone to market.
2 conclude. we would have to say that if you've ever had a soft spot for new order or the field mice, it would be a crime not to reserve one for the wake. especially when you now have, at last, the perfect opportunity."
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