ILWTT.06(66) “I’m Going To Murder All The People I Don’t Like”: A Sarah Records Compilation

Scene: a messageboard, now distant in time.

 

“Q. Is Track & Field the new Sarah?”

 

“A. no, because Sarah was a PUNK label.”

 

Yep, that was us. Belated thanks to “Bella” for being the only one who backed us up.

 

Ahem. We couldn’t leave this one any longer. Yes, it feels unnecessary in so many ways, and it’s self-defeating because not only is it so hard to leave out any group or song, but there’s the constant need to check your back when you do, such is the passion felt for this label by so many people, not least of all ourselves. And we understand that passion, whether it’s love or hate: we named our first-born after the label, after all (though I think we’d been hoping for a girl).

 

What we will never understand is indifference to Sarah, or the “I quite liked the music but didn’t get the politics” line, which sets new standards in missing the point. Our ‘666’ catalogue number might be tongue-in-cheek, but it definitely reflects a view amongst many we knew (egged on at the time by certain journos in the music press) that the label was in league with Satan (rather than, as a Heavenly LP title suggested, against him).

 

AND of course there's the rather major stumbling block that Clare and Matt themselves gave us “There And Back Again Lane”, which already does for Sarah Records exactly what we've been trying to do with this series... but having spent the majority of our lives putting together one Sarah comp or another, we can hardly walk away, hardly leave her out of this year’s fantasy of confected label compilation albums.... so, for good or ill, this is what we came up with. Please be gentle with us.

 

* * * * *

 

1. Christine’s Cat “Your Love Is...”

 

Not especially representative of the Sarah sound, but a dead-on marker of Sarah’s approach: a flexi, with a fanzine, and two stolen minutes of gorgeously shambling, slightly atonal twee-fuzz from a band of whom nothing more was heard, ever again...

 

2. The Golden Dawn “My Secret World”

 

Despatches from Greece over recent years mean that I am *never* now going to be able to shift (or indeed wear) any of the dozens of Golden Dawn badges that still lie untended in my cupboard (back in the day I helped my mate with his fanzine, “My Secret World”; it came with a pink GD badge and we had loads left over, even after we'd flogged most of the 'zines). A shame that ‘our’ Golden Dawn have been overtaken by events thus, as SARAH 9 was as feral as 1-8 put together, a raggedy, rickety but infectious shambling marvel. May God forgive Clare & Matt for refusing to release “No Reason Why”, though.

 

3. Boyracer “He Gets Me So Hard”

 

We’re trying, for this selection, not to duplicate tracks from “There And Back”, but have to make an exception for this, because frankly it's one of the greatest songs the label ever released, one of my favourite singles of all time.

 

And yet I have a strong fear that the band themselves don't really rate it; a concern that the label may not cherish it as much as some of their other babies; a memory that the person responsible for recording it didn't seem to remember it when I mentioned it to him... Agh. Still, *this* is romance, the power and the pain of relationships, the fire of great music, plus a title that apparently confounded Stewart’s mum for a while. And it's the closest Sarah got, sonically at least, to the early Mary Chain's cocktail of raw emotion and unapologetic noise.

 

4. Action Painting! “Mustard Gas”

 

Our friends hated everything on Sarah, seemingly on principle. And when we pointed them to Boyracer or Action Painting! all they did was change their line of attack, from “it's all weedy and it all sounds the same” to something not too far from the lamest criticism ever levelled at music, namely “that's not music, it's just noise”. And so it was with Action Painting!

 

AP!’s previous 45 “Classical Music” was great, and had the added wow factor that it was such a shock after their janglier first 7" "These Things Happen", but it's “Mustard Gas” – with its sheer, silly 1977 riffs - that still *jars* today, in a most good and holy way. Plus, the sleeve thanks the girls of both Shampoo and Bubblegum Splash! which summed up a fair percentage of our non-Sarah listening at the time.

 

5. Blueboy “Dirty Mags”

 

The last single ever released on Sarah, and despite what some might say, it was as good as any of the earlier ones. Indeed, this fairly raucous number even stood up to Blueboy’s somewhat amazing earlier run of singles that included A-side gems like “Clearer”, “Meet Johnny Rave”, “River” and “Popkiss”. We tipped our hat to Blueboy here, but it's important to know that they - and the memory of Keith Girdler - are still cherished more than words can say.

 

6. The Sea Urchins “Solace”

 

We spoke about the plunging depths of our adoration for “Solace” in our belated post for Marianthi, so shan’t repeat ourselves. Recently captured on Cherry Red’s “Scared To Get Happy” box set, this remains a cut-glass classic as far as we’re concerned, and is one of those songs that recaptures the optimism and fire of our youth without making us feel that we wasted all its opportunities.

 

7. Ivy “Avenge”

 

Norwich quartet Ivy have been largely written out of the Sarah story. A great shame, as the second of their two singles for Sarah, “Avenge”, has it all: sharp, cascading vocals from singer Spencer Harrison; an undisguised revenge lyric; one of the rockier guitar breaks to grace the label; a doggedly low-tech drum machine; a B-side named from a poem by Christina Rossetti. We honestly think that “Avenge” should have been on “There And Back Again Lane”, and it has survived the ravages of history intact.

 

(Point of information: Ivy suffered from being confused with the New York trio of the same name - stickered as “Ivy (NYC)” at the time, even though now it’s ‘our’ Ivy who tend to be labelled, as ”Ivy (UK)” - some of whose early tunes would not have been too out of place on Sarah. Aberdeen, for example, who cut their teeth with their own drum-machine backed singles on Sarah, ended up squarely in Ivy (er, NYC) territory by the time of songs like “Sink Or Float”).

 

8. Another Sunny Day “You Should All Be Murdered”

 

It wasn’t just our mates, come to think of it. The world and his wife kept missing the point about Sarah, often wilfully. They said it was all just soppy songs about holding hands. They ignored the songs about the poll tax, about John Major, about impending environmental catastrophe, about children = pollution (q.v.). They ignored the single about a construction worker plucking up the courage to walk into a gay bar for the first time. They ignored the song - this song - about committing mass murder, for heaven’s sake. Which was a shame, because it’s a brilliant tune, which we used to inflict on anyone who ventured within yards of our cheapo record player, and we don't quite know why it’s not unequivocally regarded as ASD’s best. The spiralling guitar parts towards the end came not long after Sarah had issued the Field Mice's “Sensitive”, with its glorious extended outro, and may have owed something to that tune's spirit.

 

9. Brighter “Killjoy"

 

We’ve not really ever tried to hide our feelings on Brighter.

 

But what Brighter song to include here? “So You Said”? “Christmas”? “Tinsel Heart”? “Hope Springs Eternal”? All are LEGEND, and we could spurt out endless paras of praise breaking each down into their component parts, or recording exactly where we were and what we were thinking when we first let them wash over us; but that must come another day, as for now it is all about “Killjoy”, the opening track on Brighter’s swansong “Disney” 10”, which is solid as a rock, as a huge hulking slab of granite; musically it feels clinical, clean-lined and disciplined yet lyrically it’s burgeoning with emotion; from the minute-long instrumental intro to the peerless bass-driven closing outro, this was Brighter writing their greatness into modernity.

 

Even the title was somehow just right, and encapsulated that frequent theme in Keris’s songs, of ‘friends’ who let you down, yet there’s a defiance and resolution to his voice here, the “this is me” that marries the personal and political as only Brighter, and in time Harper Lee, could do. Listening to “Killjoy” still makes my innards glow, my heart swell with strange pride, my eyes well up with the *happiness* that I loved this at the time and that I still love this now and it makes me want to high-five my younger self for having had, on this occasion at least, such impeccable taste.

 

10. Secret Shine “Loveblind”

 

Last time we mentioned Secret Shine was in the context of their well-worthwhile 21^st century comeback, which brought back a few memories too.

 

Looking back, Secret Shine wanted to be MBV, we suspect, and wanted to sign to Creation (probably), but at the time we saw their respectful-sounding collage of indie-pop and shoegaze as a deliberate construct, rather than an attempt to become Bristol’s official representative on a passing bandwagon, and loved it all the more for that (loved it far more than some of the lesser bands who they were, perhaps inexplicably, trying to be).

 

“Loveblind” is a typical example of Secret Shine at their finest, with the skyrocketing vocals and lyrics somehow gloriously wimpy at the same time as the guitars are tense and frothing, and the sentiment seemingly romantic (“you know I love you, always will do” – or at least that’s what we’ve always assumed they’re singing). It even got pre-John Peel evening play on Radio One, as quite a few Sarah singles began to do by this time.

 

11. The Wake “Carbrain”

 

We might just have mentioned the Wake before. We love all their Sarah output, and the sheer sarkiness and narkiness of their two album outings for the label, but this pretty & poppy first single is just golden and had to be here (much as we were tempted by “Joke Shop” or “Provincial Disco”, two of the most drippingly, disconcertingly sardonic recordings ever committed to tape).

 

12. The Rosaries “Leaving”

 

Trying to find out anything at all about the Rosaries is like pulling teeth, but we are really fond of their sole Sarah 7” EP (“Forever”), the lead track of which, “Leaving” builds predictably yet engagingly from warm and soft, percussion-free chords and girl-sung sweetness through to a heady fuzz-noise denouement, co-opting male ‘answer’ vocals along the way. They also did a tune about the Rainbow II on a Sunday Records comp; but as far as we can tell, that was pretty much it. 

 

We don’t even know where the Rosaries hailed from: at the time we were hearing south Wales / Cardiff, which would have made them local-ish to the Garden Flat, and been consistent with the lyrical reference to Bristol Temple Meads, on the line running down through to south Wales; mind you, the fount of indiepop knowledge that is Tweenet has them down as coming from Coventry instead, which would put them in the top four bands from that city ever, some way behind Bolt-Thrower and the Specials but snapping at the heels of the Primitives.

 

13. Heavenly “Our Love Is Heavenly”

 

We’ve still only seen the Fall and Napalm Death more times than Heavenly, we reckon (and those bands have both had plenty of years to stream ahead, given that Heavenly only graced this unforgiving earth between 1989 and 1996). Back in those days, we were hamstrung by the fact that Heavenly’s records never sounded as iridescent, as fluorescent, as the same songs did at their joyous gigs; but as time passes, we realise that actually, their records still sound pretty damn amazing, especially this one, which over time has overtaken even “Atta Girl”, “Shallow”, “Trophy Girlfriend” or “C Is The Heavenly Option” to sit pretty at the peak of our (very real) affection for the band.

 

14. The Field Mice “Missing The Moon”

 

Yes, it should really be “Sensitive”, a song that changed our world (see here again, for example).

 

But it's not, partly because we don't want to recycle “There And Back…” too much, but also because “Missing The Moon” still works, and still means a lot. It was bold and brave and it stands up better than pretty much any other meld of alt-pop and acid house influences of the time (including the Creation dance imprint we mentioned a few posts ago) and better than some of the Field Mice’s other sonic experimentation (cough *chocolate love sex* cough). Perhaps the most courageous thing of all was not so much that the Field Mice went all sequencer-led and dancey (after all, the beauteous “A Wrong Turn And Raindrops” on the other side showed how they could still slay in a more traditionally fey way) but the fact that Sarah capitulated and put this out as a… TWELVE INCH SINGLE. At the time, that was possibly the most controversial thing that had ever happened, in the history of the world, ever.

 

15. Shelley “Reproduction Is Pollution”

 

Shelley were Tim, Dickon and Steve.

 

Tim was known to us in the early 1990s, before this EP came out, as “Mr. Indie” (I think this was probably because he wore indie cool, indie fringes, and indie fashions 100x better than we ever managed to) and it was very rare indeed for us to go to a Sarah gig anywhere in the south-east of England at which he wasn’t present. We seem to remember him having cut his musical teeth in Waccamole and Timbertoes, not that we ever managed to hear anything by either combo; our friends in and around the London “scene” at the time claimed to be attempting to purloin him to produce my band’s flexi, but sadly nothing came of that.

 

Dickon, last seen helming the chic and glamorous Fosca, first became known to us by virtue of a fanzine handed out at a Sarah Thekla gig (dotted with quotes from Half Man Half Biscuit lyrics, bizarrely), and was always precociously talented. Tim and Dickon would of course go on to form Orlando, get on the cover of Gay Times (the first copy I ever bought) and be the only good Romo band: Orlando, with heavyweight production, full arrangements, disco sensibilities and Tim’s incredible (“blimey, where did that come from?”) singing voice, were an excellent outfit, as songs like “Just For A Second”, “Don’t Kill My Rage” and “Nature’s Hated” still bear out. They should have been massive, but unaccountably weren’t.

 

Steve, lest we forget him, is also represented elsewhere in our record collection: he went on to feature for Shinkansen mainstays Cody, put out solo electronic outings (as Cathode) on labels including 555 and Static Caravan, and is now one half of Warm Digits.

 

But none of what happened later should detract or distract from Shelley’s sole EP. This lead track is a minor classic, and one of the few Sarah releases that is probably overlooked because it was on the label (late on – as SARAH 98), rather than the usual claim that bands got more attention than they would otherwise merit by virtue of appearing on a Sarah 7”. Dickon explains, in a reasoned matter-of-fact way, why we shouldn’t have children, and a lovely (if slightly muddily-recorded) weave of guitars encircle him. It’s quite a unique, almost inspirational, record.

 

16. The Harvest Ministers “If It Kills Me And It Will”

 

Really not completely sure that maudlin Irish tunesters the Harvest Ministers were all that great, despite eagerly purchasing all their Sarah stuff and their later LP on Vinyl Japan at the time, but their tenure on Sarah was well worth it just for this catchy and rollicking piano-driven popsong, a spritely if lyrically downcast wave that rolls, crashes and pirouettes as the band wrestle with, bemoan, but end up basically just having to come to terms with, ‘a Catholic education’.

 

17. East River Pipe "She's A Real Good Time"

 

A, and, for, good, I, know, me, real, she's, time, you, we.

 

That’s it. 12 words. What could you do with just 12 words? Well, East River Pipe can construct a complete and beautiful pop song with them, a perfect example of how adept FM Cornog was/is at using lyrical minimalism to the fullest effect.

 

There are not many Sarah artists whose very finest work was actually for a different label, but we still have the “Mel” LP and “Miracleland” single (both for Matt Haynes’ post-Sarah “solo project”, Shinkansen) down as East River Pipe’s absolute peak; although that's really not to say that we haven't found things to adore on every subsequent Merge album down the years, nor to suggest that we're not fond of the vast majority of FM Cornog's Sarah output, because we *so* are.

 

Just like “Miracleland” (which has 18 different words in its entire lyric), far from feeling cheated by the lack of variation and vocabulary in “She’s A Good Time”, you instead feel you are in the presence of rare majesty. Good slow songs, as we have said before, are perhaps the hardest thing for any artist to pull off. Good slow songs with repetitive lyrics evidence, in our view, something bordering on true genius.

 

18. The Orchids “Thaumaturgy”

 

The Orchids. We got their back here. This was the delayed 7" with the dubtastic outro, the swooning comedown after the dancier entanglements of the album that preceded it. It encapsulates their art, and their contradictions. It’s a gem. That is all.

 

19. The Sugargliders “Top 40 Sculpture”

 

Have we ever mentioned the Sugargliders before? Oh, yes we just might have. If you can’t be bothered to scroll down a few miles to read it, this is what we said regarding this tune (apologies in advance that most of it is a typical ILWTTISOTT digression):

 

“We vividly recall the first time we heard "Top 40 Sculpture", in our student room over Emden quad, and thinking how - somehow - the Sugargliders had managed to ascend to another level. And how, after singing "Saturdays can still provide some comfort..." they sang something that sounded like "lately Allison/carry along my goal", and *that* got us in a further tizzy because we wondered whether they were following Tramway's example andshoehorning-in a Bristol Rovers reference (yes, it sounds barking mad now, butbear in mind that Sarah Records were from Bristol, [Malcolm] Allison was Rovers' boss around that time, the Sugargliders were sports fans, and we were young and stupid...) and only when "There And Back Again Lane" came out did the sleevenotes proclaim the actual words: "Laidley - Allison - Carey - Longmire - goal!" and that was even better, a shout to North Melbourne and to another code, and that line especially makes us smile every single time, even more than the beautiful overlapping vocals, the tremendous lyrics, the *divine* trumpet sound. And though we'd have *hated* to think it then, it was right that "Top 40 Sculpture" was the last Sugargliders single, because it was probably unstoppable.”

 

20. 14 Iced Bears "Sure To See"

 

I'm getting shivers from listening to all these songs in a row, bringing back flashbacks of a boy who really was far too callow for his own good…

 

Yes, we’ve mentioned 14 Iced Bears before, indeed, not so long ago, but you need to understand that this song was the one that really set us on the road with them, made us realise that they were not *just* another “good band" you heard on Peel, but one who we would end up standing up for when our mates slagged them off, that we’d be on the ends of taunts for liking, that we would defend against some of the atrocious rubbish preferred by our school contemporaries (My Jealous God, ffs!)

 

“Sure To See” is the most delicate, quivering thing, like a shy animal being slowly awoken, and the first minute of dainty guitar lines slowly hoving into view is, to this day, absolutely magical.

 

21. Tramway “Technical College”

 

Something you may have noticed about this comp is that it starts with noisier, faster stuff and ends with some extremely laid-back ballads. We’re not sure why that happened, but on reflection we rather like the way it turned out.

 

This song seems to break so many rules. There’s the rather strange title, which bears no obvious resemblance to the lyric, and it’s a serenely slow, gliding, barely-punctuated piece that draws out swathes of keyboards and breathy, high-in-mix vocals. (You would not guess in a million years from this track that the one time we saw Tramway live, at the Thekla, they were rumbustious and in-yer-face wonderful, with the singer in his England top, swigging lager with a Britpop-predicting "no-one likes us, we don't care" swagger!) We’d accept it may be an acquired taste, but every word of this song is indelibly marked on my brain, and we would follow this song to the ends of the Weston sands.

 

* * * * *

 

We’ve no doubt by now that some of you will be, at best, apoplectic about the bands and songs we’ve missed out: we dearly wanted to include a number of other treasured favourites, not limited to the Hit Parade’s “Autobiography”, Even As We Speak’s “Beautiful Day”, the Sweetest Ache’s “Selfish”, the Poppyheads’ “Dreamabout”, Gentle Despite rocking out (sort of) with “Torment To Me”, Aberdeen’s “Fireworks” and St. Christopher’s “All Of A Tremble”… Perhaps we’ll treat ourselves to a volume two before the year is out.

Discovering Sarah, part two

For Kate

This one's all about Brighter. At times, everything was (for an earlier example, see here): anyway, this was all prompted by listening to "Tinsel Heart" again the other day.

Apart from seeing the existence of Brighter tantalisingly trailed on the Sarah inserts, which always listed forthcoming releases (Cloudberry Recordings pays homage to these, and if you look back at them now they give you some intriguing insights, such as the fact that Another Sunny Day's "Horseriding" was originally going to be an A-side but presumably he then sent them "You Should All Be Murdered" and that was the end of that), the first word I had of this new label signing was distinctly unpromising: when my mate P. got hold of their "Around The World in Eighty Days" 7" and said it wasn't too hot, it was just a band who "sounded like they were trying to be a Sarah band". So I wasn't inspired to send off it for then, certainly. After that, well, I always get the chronology of my discovering Brighter a bit mixed up. It was a long time ago.

There were several in fifth year and sixth form who were actively buying Sarah records at the time (at least one of whom, the guy who lent me "Shadow Factory", was soon to be expelled, albeit for unrelated reasons) and lots of cassettes flying back and forth. I remember J. lending me a tape of "Laurel" before I actually bought it, and later getting me a T-shirt screenprint of the sleeve as a birthday present (worn to more than one Sarah gig, this even once got a sort-of-approving nod from Mr Haynes at the merchandise stall in the dingy back of the Jericho Tavern: later on, I would finally acquire the OFFICIAL MERCHANDISE Brighter T-shirt based on the "Disney" sleeve, which I wore at *every* available opportunity, but without anyone in the draughty college corridors EVER responding with the look of recognition that I always prayed for: as always, "are they a band ?" was as close to revelation as it came).

Anyway, getting ahead of myself here. I suspect the first time I *heard* a Brighter song was on a lend from W. of "Temple Cloud", from which the shimmering, beatless "Inside Out" (such gentle delivery of such withering insults: "and she told me / to act my age") gradually emerged as a turntable favourite. Before too long the feistier "I Don't Think It Matters" from follow-up single "Noah's Ark" made it onto a *heavily* Sarah-biased tape (Thrilled Skinny's "Good Doss" aside) I brought with me to go youth-hostelling in the Lakes at the start of the 90s, meaning I associate that song even now with bright north-west sunshine, dandelion & burdock and a ropey mini-golf course.

But I mainly link my ultimately succumbing to Brighter with my university interview, in day. I was very callow, very shy, very quiet, very nervy. (Not just at the interview, but generally). The interview involved staying in Oxford for a couple of nights, and funnily enough was at the college that I'd applied to simply because I'd been to an open day there, and I'd only been to the open day because my mate who was actually properly applying to Oxbridge had double-booked, and I read the alternative freshers' guide of the time, which happened to mention that it was the college where Talulah Gosh formed, and so I took this as a sign and went to the open day posing as my mate, but I was really a tourist at least as much as a prospective student.

Anyway, some months later, having applied there after all (in a kinda "what the hell" way), I was sitting in the common room, knowing no-one and stressed about the interview. Around me were plenty of confident types, acting as if they did this every day, none of my fish-out-of-water fears. But despite their obvious ease with themselves, they wouldn't engage with me (although one guy did ask me if I went to "day school", obviously considering that an exotic thought: I genuinely had *no idea* what he was getting at. Similarly, it also transpired that both his father and grandfather had been to the same college, and he couldn't get his head round the fact mine hadn't, indeed hadn't been to university at all). But to be fair, I probably gave out a pretty standoffish vibe.

Then a girl came in. We'll call her Kate. She was no doubt nervous herself, because like me you could tell this wasn't her usual milieu. But she immediately spotted me and my discomfort and came over and started chatting with me. Double metaphor time: I came out of my shell as she took me under her wing. We wandered out to the Westgate, did a bit of shopping, she introduced me to another lovely, soft-spoken guy she'd met earlier on and we relaxed with a few cans that evening.

By the sound of it Kate's interview the next day had gone better than mine did. I was pretty low afterwards, feeling I'd been a bit exposed as shellshocked and state school, but for solace I wandered down to the Our Price on Cornmarket where I saw (and bought) Brighter's "Around The World In Eighty Days" 7". Incidentally, I also saw (and bought) Bubblegum Splash!'s "Splashdown" EP at the same time, which I'd literally been hunting down for years - as time goes by, the more amazed I am that it had sat happily on a high street store singles rack in Oxford for 3 or 4 years unmolested, but others' loss was my *definite* gain. In fact, if you can name me a better single-day double-7" purchase *ever* than "Around The World" and "Splashdown", I'm gonna be pretty impressed.

Back at home in subsequent weeks, I grew to *truly* love the EP (the title track - even with the skip my copy did *every single time* - smooching up against "Inside Out", "Tinsel Heart" and "Things Will Get Better", which a similarly-rapt friend's band later covered). But it was "Tinsel Heart" that hit me the hardest, and always made me think of this fantastic friend I'd met and who'd helped me survive those few days. Especially when the letter came through saying that somehow they were making me an offer after all, and it turned out that Kate wouldn't be joining me there. We kept in touch with a few phone calls and as often happened in those pre-internet days that friendship soon petered out, but the lyrics always make me think of her: Keris imploring, "Don't you ever let them win", followed by those perfect, jangling, yet half-jarring instrumental bars of gnarled indiepop melodiousness. It was this girl's irrepressible spirit, and her generosity in reaching out to the lonely youthful me, that I *never* wanted to think of as being snuffed out.

Which made "Tinsel Heart" one of the very few songs that had ever made me cry, admittedly mostly because I was a right old fotherington-tomas and weedy weakling, but also because I've always loved those songs that link the personal and political, and it's never been hard to empathise with lines like "in this stinking little country / that's drowning within". It was a deep shame a few years later when Richard Waaah! told me that "Tinsel Heart" was really a sex song, more scatological than political, all the stuff about "touching" meaning "fucking" and "country" just a euphemism for something else. (And it's not too hard to imagine that the swear-happier Harper Lee, for example, might have re-recorded it leaving all the expletives in). But I was way too innocent for that, and even now I'm determined to rise above it, and instead to think of "Tinsel Heart" as a tribute to Kate and all the people like her who simply put being friendly and engaging above being aloof or cool; one of the 'quiet many' who, just like Brighter, make this life feel so great.

(discovering sarah, part one)

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*.