But, particularly as the Organization (a tongue-in-cheek name for an imprint run from the back room of a house) often gets lost amongst the praise (rightly) doled out to its city sister Sarah Records, it's proper to highlight that Subway was responsible for some cracking releases all the same, and equally to point out that it shouldn't be remembered only as the city seat of the Flatmates, or as the early home of Scots supernovae the Soup Dragons and Shop Assistants. So, rather than the louche, wide-ranging brief of our previous label compilations, treat this one instead as a short sharp shock of sheer sherbet joy.
1. Shop Assistants "All Day Long"
"This Is Subway One". The Shop Assistants' "Shopping Parade" four-track 7" was both the band and the label's first single, and "All Day Long", later re-recorded for their Chrysalis-backed album, was its lead and probably best track, mixing lyrical wistfulness about dead-end life with sprightly indie-pop jangling full of nervous energy. We're still rather fond of the way it suddenly peters out, as if they sensed the two-minute mark approaching and just decided to stop playing their instruments, rather than work out any kind of fade-out or finale. At this point the Shop Assistants were still a five-piece, seemingly with two drummers: as for the label, these earliest of days pre-dated the familiar Subway logo, whilst the sleeve gave a typewritten postal address in BS9 instead of the later "c/o Revolver" tag.
2. Soup Dragons "Pleasantly Surprised"
Over the summer of 1987, we spent some considerable time looking forward to two albums: one was “George Best”, still revolving proudly decades later. The other was the Dragons’ debut LP, which a pop-up on Channel 4’s Chart Show had informed us was in the works, being produced by Pete 'Bogbrush' Brown. Well, that LP never appeared – only in 1988 did the half-formed, vision lost, “This Is Our Art” slip out. However, if you’re ever lucky enough to track down the band’s Sire compilation “Hang Ten!” – basically, all the tracks form their first 3 singles – you can approximate just how good a 1987 Soup Dragons album might have been.
This natty tune is one of them. It would appear on side one of C86, but was originally just one of three mighty fine tracks on the band's "Whole Wide World" 12", a demonstration of how the group perfected their infectious, buzzsaw sound early on before being waylaid by major label shenanigans and compromised by some serious genre-bandwagoning. (It was exciting to hear an even earlier Dragons track – the perhaps unsurprisingly BMX Bandits-ish“Quite Content” - from their first, scrapped Subway EP, on Cherry Red’s “Scared To Get Happy” compilation: we’d love to get hold of the rest of the tracks too, one day!)
3. Rosehips "Room In Your Heart"
Twas oh-so-hard to select just the one Rosehips track, but this first single A-side is still joyous, featuring at least three different hooks in its dinky two-minute span and perfectly showcasing how Yo's laconic vocal worked magic amidst the powered-up post-Ramones pop being played by her bandmates, whose record collections featured plenty more fast and noisy stuff than yer average indie-kid of the time.
4. Bubblegum Splash! "The 18.10 To Yeovil Junction"
They only ever recorded seven songs, six of them for Subway, and we love them all. As many of you will recall, their 4-track "Splashdown!" single, for a host of reasons, is probably our favourite EP ever. This tune, our title track, did not feature on that but on the second Subway v/a compilation. It gets the nod for inclusion here simply because it's their longest work, clocking in at three whole minutes. As a side-note, this wasn't even the only song a Subway band would record involving the Somerset railway station: cf. the Chesterf!elds' "Last Train To Yeovil".
5. The Groove Farm "Surfin' Into Your Heart"
Given all the great music that Andrew Jarrett has been responsible for with the Beatnik Filmstars and Kyoko, as well as in various solo guises, it seems a little odd to us that some still rate the Groove Farm highest of all. They had their moments - indeed, some great moments - but at their worst they could knock out some fairly sketchy surf-singalong stuff. This energetic Subway A-side, however, just about treads the right line, a rehearsal perhaps for his later (Nervous) Rex project. There’s a version of it on the excellent recent Groove Farm ‘best of’, "It's Only Indiepop... But I Like It", on Big Pink Cake, as well as the rewardingly rumbustious live take on their first greatest hits compilation, Mobstar's "The Best Parts".
6. The Clouds "Village Green"
One of the great lost bands, who seemingly had everything and were darlings of many a fanzine, but then simply vanished, vaporised. Like their compatriots the Soup Dragons, the Clouds channelled the Buzzcocks as much as the new breed of indie strummers, but as well as rampant gems like this they could knock out humdingers like the more thoughtful "Tranquil" (later covered, perhaps a little over-faithfully, by the Springfields on a single for Seminal Twang).
7. The Charlottes "Are You Happy Now?"
Despite the fact that there would be plenty of room on this compilation CD for any of their longer songs, the Charlottes' piece-de-resistanceremains this one-minute version of their first single, a song which even in 'extended' form barely rattled the two minute barrier. Oddly, amongst fanzine writers of the time there was a view, which we shared back then, that its exceedingly pretty B-side, "How Can You Say You Really Feel?" was better: but it wasn't really, it was just quieter, and didn't scare the horses in the way that the exhilarating "Happy" did, and still does. See also SARAH 9 vs. SARAHs 1-8.
8. The Chesterf!elds "Two Girls And A Treehouse"
Again, one is fairly spoilt for choice with the Chesterf!elds, but rather than go for either of the excellent singles "Completely And Utterly" and "Ask Johnny Dee", or the tracks we usually pluck for playlists from their "Kettle" set (the redoubtable "Pop Anarchy", or the jingling mastery of "Nose Out Of Joint"), we thought we'd pick out the album opener, previewed we think on their Janice Long session for Radio One and a song which, with its dinky blasts of brass, hints a little at the June Brides.
9. Pop Will Eat Itself "Like An Angel"
PWEI were only on the label long enough to contribute two compilation tracks, both covers: while the cheeky "Orgone Accumulator" hinted at the fun they would soon have with the likes of "Love Missile F1-11", we've gone for their surprisingly sincere (if less self-important) version of the Mighty Lemon Drops' "Like An Angel", the Black Country taking on the big city of Birmingham.
NB the original versh of “Like An Angel”can be found on the new Cherry Red compilation of the Mighty Lemon Drops’ earliest moments – a neat document of their Dreamworld days.
10. Razorcuts "Sorry To Embarrass You"
There's a world between the shouty naivety of the Razorcuts' enthralling first single, "Big Pink Cake" and this, its more artful follow-up, decorated in beautifully chiming guitars. Both are ace, obviously, but by virtue of spending most of 1987 listening to "Indie Top 20 Volume 1" we have had a long courtship with "Sorry To Embarrass You", which manages, despite being endearingly soppy and hackneyed, to remain rather moving, and musically quite uplifting.
11. The Flatmates "Heaven Knows"
The 'house' band, something that Creation may have had, but that Factory and Earache never did. Far from simple to select one Flatmates track, not least with all six single A-sides (including the final, unreleased "Trust Me") being so top-notch. "Heaven Knows", their fifth 45, was their glossiest and most ambitious (after all, if the Primitives and Darling Buds could make the real charts...) and if it perhaps lacks the charm of its predecessors, it also deserves to have been heard by a far wider audience than it was, and isn’t cowed by its relatively pristine production and slick arrangements. The story of its recording is well worth reading, too: ultimately, it seems that the money lost on it was what finally killed off Subway. Oddly, an inferior "Tranquilliser" mix appears on the Cherry Red "Pot-Pourri" 'best of': the definitive version appears on the earlier "Love And Death" comp, which was later reissued by Clairecords. Oh, and did you know that they are BACK?
12. Korova Milkbar "Something Missing"
Powering, keyboard-smattered, New Order-ish lead track from their otherwise merely OK LP "Talking's Boring": we think that "Something Missing" captures Scousers Korova Milkbar somewhere around their best. It's also worth tracking down their lone Subway A-side, "Do It Again", which only narrowly missed the cut.
13. Choo Choo Train "High"
And so we move westwards across the water, to the United States chapter of the Subway Organization. "High" is perhaps the moment when Menck and Chastain coalesced their impressive pop vision mostcompletely, and despite their prolific discography, it's perhaps the only song of theirs you reallyneed (disciples of the Springfields' "Sunflower" will even now be marching towards our door, with pitchforks and flaming torches).
14. Sex Clark Five "Streamers"
15. Cowboy and Spingirl "White Lies"
16. The Fastbacks "In The Winter"
Three more of Subway's U.S.-based roster. The Five had the best band name in the world, but despite this we're not convinced that they are one of Subway's better signings, having only hung around for the 20-track LP "Strum + Drum" anyway. To be honest, we've picked "Streamers" largely because it's pretty much the shortest (at circa one minute) of the many short songs on that album.
Three more of Subway's U.S.-based roster. The Five had the best band name in the world, but despite this we're not convinced that they are one of Subway's better signings, having only hung around for the 20-track LP "Strum + Drum" anyway. To be honest, we've picked "Streamers" largely because it's pretty much the shortest (at circa one minute) of the many short songs on that album.
Similarly, Cowboy and Spingirl's LP has failed to convince us since we shelled out for it on vinyl many years after the event (yes, even with side two having apparently been produced by Mitch Easter). "White Lies", the album opener, is a highlight, starting out a bit like the Vaselines' "Son Of A Gun", but it flatters to deceive a little and, by the end, nothing is set on fire.
The Fastbacks, on the other hand, are much better than I remember: at the time I was probably a bit snobby about them not coming from Glasgow and wearing anoraks or something, but "In The Winter" (a single, but also on their "And His Orchestra" LP) suggests that not only were they the most musically accomplished act on the label, but they had a bit of bite to them, too.
17. Rodney Allen "Glastonbury"
Last, but really really notleast. Slightly to our surprise, we really enjoyed catching up with Rodney Allen's solo songs again: his heart-on-sleeve troubadoring has stood up to the ravages of time far better than we feared. As songs like "Circle Line" and "Cupid's Bow" (both available on Subway compilations) demonstrate, Rodney was essentially a Billy Bragg tribute act, albeit a less overtly political one, but this was around the time Billy Bragg was perfectly livable, to be honest. We've chosen "Glastonbury" though, the one time that Rodney sounds not so much like Billy Bragg as - wielding piano rather than six-string - he basically pre-empts Harvey Williams' two solo albums. It's a naked, stirringly emotional, yet uniquely mellow way to close this otherwise rather exhaustingly fast compilation.
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By way of postscript, Sam Knee’s excellent “A Scene In Between: Tripping Through The Fashions of UK Indie Music 1980-1988” – a beautifully-shot coffee-table book full of mid-80s snaps of Stephen Pastel and other anorak fashion icons, and as decadently great as that sounds – has an interview with Amelia Fletcher which reveals how Talulah Gosh originally accepted an offer by Subway to put out their first single, before being gazumped by Stephen’s own 53rd & 3rd. We’re sure there were other bands of the time that were so near and so far for Martin Whitehead. It’s also worth pointing out that the book includes some great shots by Whitehead from the time he interviewed the Smiths, no less, in their very earliest touring days, for his fanzine.
