ILWTT.01 "It Wasn't All Bad": A Creation Records Compilation

Fantasy compilation album time. Some people count sheep to help them go to sleep, but we invariably tend to doze off whilst trying to divine which tracks to put on some playlist or other. This one, our Creation "best of", occupied us for quite a few winter nights, given the reach of Creation's discography.

There *is* an Official Version of the Creation story. It's called "Upside Down", a double-CD compilation spanning 34 tracks, but... the vast majority of it is really very bad indeed. For those younger readers who keep hearing us oldies bang on about Creation in almost the same nostalgic vein as we praise Subway, Sarah etc, it would be a terrible letdown to hear. Pretty much every Creation compilation released along the way managed a higher hit-rate, and "Doing It For The Kids" did so for £2.99. Only two tracks on "Upside Down" are truly amazing, and that's because they're both by the Jesus and Mary Chain (one of them being the title track, whilst the other, "Some Candy Talking", didn't even come out on Creation, so its inclusion is frankly cheating). The only pleasant surprise, track listing-wise, is probably that the Jasmine Minks' early and jolly "Think!" single gets a run out.

So we set about compiling our own, rival Creation 'best of' CD. The rules were quite simple, namely the strongest 70+ minutes that we could come up with, based on one track per band. We're conscious that we, just like the compilers of the Official Version, have ignored many of the oddities and infamies - Baby Amphetamine, Ronnie Spector, the Creation, Mishka, Kevin Rowland, Crazy Eddie and QQ, Les Zarjaz, the records by the wife, the records by Andy Bell's wife - all of which were very much part of the somewhat idiosyncratic Creation catalogue: but there simply wasn't *room*, not this time, anyway. (Also, several of them, on re-listening, proved to be really not very good at all, meaning that the public were probably right at the time not to buy them).

For the uninitiated, our own policy is simple: we won't provide podcasts or download links, not that we would know how to anyway. Music can be a pleasure to track down, is a joy to appreciate and, frankly, we still cling to the evidently stone-age belief that, within reason, it is a treat worth paying for.

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1. The Membranes "I Am Fish Eye"

2. Five Go Down To The Sea "Silk Brain Worm"

These are combos whose shortish stints on Creation have been somewhat neglected by history, but these are muscular and very enjoyable tunes from their sole releases on the label. Not only do they remind us of Creation's early links with the "Death To Trad Rock" scene, and show that Creation once had a sense of *fun* rather than concentrating only on being achingly cool, but, in retrospect you can see from these tracks (a) how much the truly great Bogshed owe to the Membranes and (b) what the more highly-prized Stump owe to their compatriots FGDTTS. If that makes Alan McGee the father, in a way, of Bogshed and Stump, then that is probably something we should give him credit for, whether he would like that or not. (Technical note: the lyrics being yelled on the Five Go Down track suggest to us that it may in fact be "Aunt Nelly" rather than "Silk Brain Worm", but for the moment we'll stick with what the Creation Soup track listing suggests).

3. Biff Bang Pow! "Love's Going Out Of Fashion"

They may have been the house band, but as we all know BBP! came up with some decent stuff now and then, and in a range of styles (much as we winced when they over-wallowed in sixties nostalgia). The appeal of this song, for us, has always been the way that there seem to be about eight melodies going on at once, guitar lines that criss-cross, intersect and dance with no little abandon. We can even forgive the harmonica that repeatedly intrudes.

4. My Bloody Valentine "You Made Me Realise"

Please don't take this relatively unimaginative choice as meaning we didn't enjoy MBV's later records or, indeed, their earlier ones: we adore "Strawberry Wine", "We're So Beautiful" and "Sunny Sundae Smile" as well as digging "Loveless", "Tremelo" etc. But "Realise" represents a neat mid-point for a pivotal Creation band (of whom there were not, let's be honest, too many), and the audacity of the bit in the middle which sounds like an aeroplane taking off still excites us to this day. In stark contrast, most other Creation bands that were flavour of the month in our school corridors around this time (the likes of Swervedriver, obviously, but even, on re-listening to them, the once-hallowed Ride and Slowdive) have really not dated too well.

5. The Jesus and Mary Chain "Upside Down"

6. Meat Whiplash "Don't Slip Up"

7. Slaughter Joe "I'll Follow You Down"

Pre-shoegaze, if you like. "Upside Down" is of course the daddy, the best song Creation ever released. It's accompanied here by two contemporary J&MC copyists. "Don't Slip Up" in particular is somewhat underrated, in our view, even if the Reid brothers' East Kilbride neighbours Meat Whiplash would then disappear from the radar, resurfacing as the disappointingly clean-sounding Motorcycle Boy and with none other than ex-Shop Assistant Alex Taylor on vocals. Slaughter Joe's "I'll Follow You Down" is a more slavish early-J&MC tribute, but perhaps the best of Joe Foster's attempts to nestle in their slipstream. (His "Pied Piper Of Feedback" CD comp has a few more - "Napalm Girl" burning fairly brightly - as well as the rather different, diffidently pretty, feedback-free and string-spun retro ballad "She's So Out Of Touch", a lost gem which feels like it could have been recorded twenty years earlier).

8. Emily "Mad Dogs"

Turning away from feedback and noise for a moment, we come to the undisputed heavyweight champions of being wrongly ignored, Emily. *Of course*, their swansong "Rub Al Khali" LP was amazing, a record that we would kill to see given a re-release. And yes, their "Stumble" 7" single on Esurient is a revelation every time, a stone-cold classic of the era that every household should own. But even their Creation EP, "Irony", deserves to be more fondly remembered than it is: not only does it re-work "The Old Stone Bridge" from their Sha-la-la flexi, but contains this lead track, "Mad Dogs": if labelmates the House of Love had recorded this breezy, cultured pop song, it would have been lauded to the skies.

9. The Pastels "Something Going On"

Continuing the somewhat Celtic flavour to our compilation so far (and there are several more Scots combos to come), this was one of the earliest Creation singles, and still our favourite song the band recorded for the label, a personal highlight from "Suck On". It captures, perfectly, the wonder of being struck by the moment. Just as we would be when we saw them 20 years later. Their latest LP isn't bad either, you know.

10. The X-Men "Do The Ghost"

The mysterious X-Men produced just the two 7"s for the label, I think, and this is the pick of the songs. Short, fast, catchy and fun, it's hard to find much wrong with McGee's antennae at this stage, as the boys explain through frazzled lo-fi rockabilly how to cut a rug and throw some groovy, ghoulish shapes. And, at the time, this was probably as close as the Creation roster had come to "dance music". Until...

11. Bass Bumpers "Can't Stop Dancing"

12. Sheer Taft "Cascades"

13. Hypnotone "Dream Beam"

OK, I admit it: I have become rather fond of much of the Creation dance stuff, even if some has dated almost as badly as the shoegaze bands. It certainly worked much better than crossover nonsense like "Screamadelica" (there, I've said it). Many of Creation's clubland-destined releases are amongst the label's better singles, and I'm still tickled by the idea that McGee decided to set up a dance label, and when asked what he would call it, simply said "how about 'Creation' ?"

The housey, in-your-face bass bounce of "Can't Stop Dancing" also features some entertaining and lyrically positive rapping, but it's probably the other two, acid house-influenced songs, that stand up best, with Sheer Taft remixed by Hypnotone, and Hypnotone remixed by Danny Rampling, whose fingermarks were all over many of Creation's dance 45s. If only Love Corporation's "Palatial" hadn't been disfigured by samples, no doubt it would have joined our list, and the (v. soulful) Sound of Shoom and Fluke 45s came very close to getting on to this compilation, too.

14. The Bodines "Therese"
 

Back to all of our comfort zones, we have Glossop's finest, the Bodines. They talked themselves up rather at the time, and then got entangled in a major label, but boy did they cut some killer songs along the way (seek out "Heard It All", "Clear" and "Skankin Queens"). "Therese" even survived its outing on C86, and still burns with vigour and janglism today, as well as sheltering a little more nervous energy than their later singles. The way Michael Ryan switches octaves with hardly a breath is pretty impressive, too. We never got to the bottom of whether or not the title was referencing Mauriac, though.

15. Jasmine Minks "Forces Network"

Having been blissfully unaware of the Jasmine Minks' early releases at the time it was only years later, when listening to those early Creation Soup volumes purchased secondhand in Replay Records, that we realised the Jasmine Minks were a far better band than so many gave them credit for. There was both humour and conviction in their lyrics, and musically they had more strings to their bow than just shambling, or throwing 60s'-tinged pouts and moves. "Forces Network" is something of a lost gem, we think: originally a B-side and now available on the "Revenge Of The Jasmine Minks" compilation, it's as spiky and belligerent as you'd hope a band from 1980s Aberdeen to sound, yet still full of surprisingly authentic C86ish charm.

We are also, whenever we mention the Minks, contractually obliged to remind you of their much later "I Heard 'I Wish It Would Rain'" single on Bus Stop, featuring Pam Berry: search it out, for it's as brilliant as it sounds.

16. Primal Scream "Velocity Girl"

Too obvious? Perhaps, but what a song (and the second track here which also features on C86). It's hard to explain just how much hearing this song appealed to me as a lonely, introverted teenager, but its brevity means that despite all the repeated plays, it simply never hangs around long enough to get old or tired. We've made our view on the Primals' wider career trajectory known before, of course.

17. BMX Bandits "Serious Drugs"

Only the band that Teenage Fanclub could have been. Er, actually, as you know, the Bandits never really set the world alight in their Creation years, or produced anything to match the raw wonder of their first EP. Notwithstanding that, this remains a sweepingly mellow, musically grown-up and rather romantic single. It also pricks dim recollections of how the "controversy" engineered by its title, as well as the wide-ish airing of their "Kylie's Got A Crush On Us" single, even delivered the Bandits a smidgeon of media coverage at the time.

18. The Loft "Up The Hill And Down The Slope"

An ever-enjoyable mix of classic rock and chiming indie-pop, with lyrical wit and confidence and an especially caustic guitar break, this a reminder of how the Loft, ultimately, outshone Pete Astor's later Creation (and Elevation) outfit, the Weather Prophets. For the record they also outshone other post-band projects, Bill Prince's Wishing Stones and Andy Strickland's Caretaker Race. It is well worth seeking the Loft's "Once Around The Fair" compilation, which has everything you need including a superior version of "Why Does The Rain", later a single for the (somewhat precipitation-obsessed) Prophets.

19. Razorcuts "Flowers For Abigail"

You knew they were coming at some point, didn't you? At one stage, around 1989, Luton's Razorcuts were just about my favourite band, a fact I'm rather proud of my younger self for (not many groups have ascended over the decades to the giddy height of being my "very favourite band", which went from being Bucks Fizz to Japan to New Order to the Wedding Present to Razorcuts to the Field Mice to Brighter to Hood and thence, in a back to the future kind of way, to Sportique and Harper Lee).

Having said that, from this distance the Razorcuts' two long-players for Creation may be the band's ropiest works: there are some great tunes therein, but also some fairly formulaic Byrdsian things and a few over-saccharin ballads (we used to love "Brighter Now", for example, largely because its mere existence was a big V-sign to much of the NME's trend-led, 'scene'-obsessed nonsense; but now, it would put it kindly to call it cloying). Nevertheless, even after those peerless Subway and Flying Nun singles, there was *always* much to admire. And "Abigail" may not be their very best song from this era ("Steps To The Sea" would be our current shout), but its upbeat, almost boisterous feel, and the driving John Rivers organ solo make it fit well on a compilation designed to show the variety that Creation was capable of.

20. Felt "Rain Of Crystal Spires"

Definitely one of the better and most consistent bands on Creation, notwithstanding their fondness for random instrumentals, and even if there's an eminently arguable position that their earlier work on Cherry Red was better. Of Felt's five albums' worth of Creation fare, we hold a candle for "Pictorial Jackson Review", which had some lovely, flowing pop tunes even if it didn't break any moulds, but the earlier and superb "Forever Breathes The Lonely Word" was even finer, and is justly feted by the cognoscenti. This was the single from it, I believe, and it flows by sumptuously.

21. Pacific "Shrift"

Nobody seems to know anything about Pacific at all, and their somewhat generic name doesn't make googling for mention of them easy. But we're rather fond of their two EPs, their weaving-in of strings and brass and the singer's somewhat despairing drawl, especially "Barnoon Hill" from the first 45 and this, the New Order-ish title track from the second. The 12" is worth getting for the extended A-side, backed with two plaintive, delicate instrumentals, but we've plumped for the 7" edit here: the 7" single was, I think, one-sided, as part of Creation's "99p single" campaign of the time.

22. The Legend! "73 in 83"

Let's finish with the first song from the first Creation record. An extraordinary record, too: yes, mostly for how bad it is, but it's still of real historical interest as just the first, somewhat wobbly, stepping stone on a long journey. At a minute long, the Legend! half-rapping over McGee on drumkit, it practically defines the word "curio", but not only is there a certain cuteness at play: there's an element of truth in what lyrics there are, capturing the disappointment and lethargy of *something* - an infiltrated scene, a broken dream - and working more effectively than the man's later, more "refined" (relatively speaking) work. (Mind you, "Everything's Coming Up Roses" on "Ideal Guest House" was *ace*). Having read the biogs again, we can't shake the feeling that when Creation and Jerry Thackray finally parted ways, that was when Creation started to lose its vision.

By coincidence (we think), Creation would later move to offices at number 83, Clerkenwell Road. We strolled by there the other day: the building still seems to be there, west of the new Farringdon station complex, just on the edge of Hatton Garden. It's called "Griffin House" now. We wonder if anyone who works in that building today ever reflects on some of the musicians who would have dropped in there, on how Alan McGee would have listened to new records there, of some of the wild parties that were hosted there...

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We know there is so much else that we could have put on. We would be very grateful for any suggestions and recommendations as to Creation songs that we should try and listen to next!
 

Various Artists "Scared To Get Happy: A Story Of Indie-Pop 1980-1989" (Cherry Red)

It always seems a little... bizarre to me that us Brits seems to be so adept in complaining about the fact that it's raining. It's not like rain’s a new thing to us northern Europeans: indeed, it’s the bread and butter of our daily lives. It's like the Inuit complaining about snow, or Saharan nomads moaning about the heat.

We detect the same mentality, the same “glass half-empty”, in the lukewarm reception given to this box set in certain circles. The typical reaction has been along the lines of: “It's OK, but it's hardly Nuggets. Also, Prefab Sprout aren't indie-pop. 6/10”. Or, “yes there are loads of good songs, but mainly on discs three and four, and I've got them all already". There are elements of truth in both of those viewpoints, but disingenuousness too. If you’re going to have a collection of 134 tracks from the 1980s that tells the story of indie-pop's evolution, covering as many bases as possible, then of course there will be some surprises and disappointments, some overlaps with what you already own, and plenty of room for disagreement as to what might have been there instead. The reality is that it would have been a waste of opportunity to stick to the narrow path, not to take any risks. This is a rare opportunity to appraise a genre that, just for a while, went hand in hand with daily life here: like the rain, this collection is British to the core.

What really counts, for us, is this: not only do we enjoy listening to (the vast majority of) this collection, but we've also learned from it. Indeed, some of that education has come at the hands of the tracks we like the least. And as the sleevenotes themselves acknowledge, the box set should be seen as a companion piece: not just to our extant record collections, but to CD86, to Rough Trade Indiepop, even to the um, extraordinary Sound of Leamington Spa series. And, no doubt, to next summer’s promised / threatened C86 triple-CD extravaganza.

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By way of full disclosure, 1986 is where we came in (disc three, basically). I was 13 years old, and it was the year I discovered the music papers, the John Peel show, and this whole new world of ‘alternative’ music. At the time, that made it my “year zero”: music from before that date always had to work that much harder to get my attention. And I was reluctant to believe that my new music was a synthesis of past influences: the past was a different country, one that I didn't want to visit, and I remained doggedly true to my conviction that anything played on *my* turntable was creatively completely pure, and derivative of *nothing*.

After years of my primary musical education being based on the make-up, dancers and studio lights of Top Of The Pops once a week, I was also impressed (I would say ‘starstruck’, if that didn't sound so ridiculous in this context) by the down-to-earth nature of the scene: excited by my new heroes being bands who just wore their own clothes, who looked like normal people, who seemed to be putting music several miles before spectacle. It wasn't about dressing as a punk, or a goth, about outward displays of fashion at all. Gosh, it was as if the New Romantics had died in vain.

So what many people saw as the fatal flaw in bands like the Wedding Present - an overarching ‘ordinariness’ - became, for me, a great part of their attraction. Self-deprecating, at times almost designedly mundane lyrics (“I didn’t go / was it a good film?” or “I always meet you / the day before I wash my hair”) that we could relate to, that helped convey wider, more believable emotions than the bands that were getting the daytime play. And we all started groups of our own, because other people that looked like us were doing just that, and were doing it playing chord shapes that were not too tricky to ape. Yes, for my half-generation, born a decade too late for punk, and not becoming teenagers until the Pistols’ legacy had pretty much been swept away from the popular music landscape, the indie-pop fanzines became our “Sniffin’ Glue”. I gleefully lapped up - no, *mined* - C86 and “Indie Top 20 Volume 1” (both, of course, were cassettes, back in that age when music first became portable).

And even more than a decade later, when I'd started working for a living, and spent reclusive evenings recoiling from the horror of office work in my Stockwell bedsit, I spent a few nights putting together a compilation tape of my favourite moments from my youth. I christened it “In Love With These Times, In Spite Of These Times (Crucial Fashions 1985-1988)”. The subtitle aside, that then became the name of my little fanzine. It was how I felt about that music then, and still feel about ‘our’ music now: songs, words, a scene, that are all about valuing inspiration in the face of an uninspiring world, about *rising above* the free-market dreck, but above all about staying true to ourselves.

Still, it's probably time to get back to the programme, and to try and explain where “Scared To Get Happy” might fit in.

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The first couple of discs are a direct attack on the young me’s dreams that the shambling scene & the Sarah scene were the start of something completely new, were beholden to nothing more than Thatcher’s generation waking up one morning in early 1986 and deciding to D.I.Y. pop music to the max. The songs on these serve as a bridge between C81 and C86, a journey starting in the midst of post-punk and taking us to the uncertain middle of the decade, by which time it seemed that punk truly was dead, the spirit of post-punk had been co-opted by sinister forces and mainstream music had become an opulent, onanistic, self-celebrating sludgefest, un-coyly celebrating the neo-capitalistic excesses of Thatcherite and Reaganite economics at the time.

The songs on these discs are also, however, keys which unlock the door to the bands that directly influenced the ones we now cradle, now *cherish* the most. These are the groups that our heroes (when we were 13) were listening to when they were newly teenage. To our shame, and much as we’d spent time delving into pop history when it suited us (exhuming British punk, post-punk and new wave), we'd never really listened to the groups that were the immediate precursors of our C86 heroes. “Scared To Get Happy” has given us the springboard to do that.

The first couple of discs thus show an independent scene which is either spread out, or disjointed, depending on your prejudice: some bands are sonorous; some have the high-in-mix, doomy vocals of early goth or the art-school side of new wave; some hark back to before prog or punk altogether, with ‘classic’ songwriting struggling to escape the confines of low production budgets. It's a parade of the earnest, the overblown, on occasion the ephemeral. But there certainly can’t be any denying of its relevance. It’s a lyric to Hurrah!’s bristling “The Sun Shines Here” that gives this box set its title, but more fundamentally it proved the inspiration for Matt Haynes’ original “Are You Scared To Get Happy?” fanzine, which - even as youthful self-righteousness and anger dripped from its every page - found constant time to tell us of the greatness of Hurrah!, at least before they went through Arista’s mangle.

In stark contrast to bands like Hurrah! - that promised everything, yet ultimately fell from view - there are plenty of names on these first two discs that would be familiar to “normal people”, not just us indie-pop obsessives; from Del Amitri, Aztec Camera, Lloyd Cole, Everything But The Girl or the Prefabs through to Pulp, whose “Everybody’s Problem” is almost unrecognisable but actually not bad at all (similarly, Black’s “Human Features” shows that they really weren’t only about “Wonderful Life”). And we don't see any point in airbrushing such names from this collective history - Prefab Sprout might always have been aiming for higher planes but when the notion of “independent pop” was forming, their “Lions In My Own Garden” fell squarely within its parameters at the time. Whilst at one point, Roddy Frame seemed to be cited by every other up and coming indie popster, even when he was ‘all grown up’. You also get to see EBTG here through the prism of the Marine Girls, as the compilation shows how some individual artists (not just the wider ‘scene’) were developing.

So a few of these artists went on to hit it big: your Jarvis, your Tracey, your Paddy. Fair enough. “Commercial success” remains an irritating bugbear for all of us who’d secretly like ‘our’ music to stay underground, but again this compilation is seeking to disentangle us from what bands would go on to: the point is that, in the moment, it wasn't always easy to tell who would go on to a career and who would not. Commercial success is not a ground for airbrushing those bands from their erstwhile roles, or disqualifying them from track listings. On the other hand, “commercial” sounding songs that are a bit rubbish (the Cherry Boys and In Embrace, we're looking at you) are a fail whatever label they were released on.

Most important of all, though, there are just no end of great songs on these discs: as well as those we knew about already (Josef K, Girls At Our Best, Fire Engines, June Brides, the Loft) there are the Art Objects (instantly recognisable from Gerard Langley’s voice as the band who would become the Blue Aeroplanes), the Higsons, and the Nightingales… the latter’s “Paraffin Brain” (a song we first came across when it was covered by lovable Dutch masters Eton Crop) is, as you'd expect, fairly amazing…

Although in truth the second disc pales a little in the shadow of the first, with bands seemingly unable to decide which way to go, until everything coalesces at the end as the likes of the Mary Chain, June Brides and the Loft turn up.

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We’ve already hinted (more than hinted) our love for the ‘85-‘88 (ish) era covered intimately by discs three and four. So the first big tick for “Scared To Get Happy” is the fact that discs three and four, the ones that most closely document are own obsessions, are brilliant. The box set would be failing in its duty if it didn't reflect our halcyon memories of those years. And there are simply fabulous songs here from the Shop Assistants, the Flatmates, the Wedding Present, This Poison!, McCarthy, the Chesterf!elds, the Rosehips, the Siddeleys, Wolfhounds, Razorcuts, 14 Iced Bears, the Clouds, BMX Bandits, the Primals, Mighty Mighty, the Brilliant Corners and, of course, the ever-constant Bubblegum Splash! (our original mini-site on them was generously taken over by indie-mp3.co.uk, and can still be seen here…)

Our prime duty, though, is perhaps to dwell on those acts that we haven’t really focused on before. The Waltones sound better than we remembered any Medium Cool bands being: there's a touch of the Windmills to “She Looks Right Through Me”, with some mighty fine Wedding Present-like guitar work creeping in too. We’d also managed to completely overlook Apple Boutique before now, but now we can't work out how their “Love Resistance” could have managed to evade us for so long. Similarly, we'd totally missed the Hepburns, but “The World Is Cherry Red” is redolent of the skilful pop anarchy of the Higsons; confident, crashing, and unhinged in a good way (Jamie Wednesday’s “Vote For Love”, on the other hand, is unhinged in a bad way, and by the end it's all too easy to recognise the first stirrings of Carter USM, the poor man’s I Ludicrous). The Heartthrobs’ “Toy” is well ahead of its time, too: effectively, a template for when Lush went ‘poppy’ with the likes of “Single Girl”. And after several concerted attempts in the past to fall for Jesse Garon and the Desperadoes, we think that “The Rain Fell Down” has finally got us there.

And don’t Rosemary's Children sound like Revolving Paint Dream?

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But then - ook - we come to disc five. It would be fair to say that it’s the weakest, and uses up a little of the goodwill engendered by the first four. Mind you, again we’d posit that it’s simply reflecting the decline and fall in its subject-matter, and that it’s entirely appropriate for this set, as a historical document, to record the fact that people were starting to lose the plot a bit. The upsides first: there are splendid contributions from the Would-be-Goods, the Claim (on the first hearing of which we realised that the earlier track we thought must be by them was, of course, the Dentists’ contribution), Sea Urchins, East Village, the Orchids and the Charlottes as well as a splendidly unhinged one from Bad Dream Fancy Dress (unlike the Jamie Wednesday track, it’s not really possible to tell whether it is good or bad). There's also an intriguingly good contribution from post-Chameleons outfit the Sun and the Moon, much more accessible and attractive than I’d expected. However, there is some pretty dire stuff here, especially as the CD and the decade progress: the once-wonderful 1,000 Violins are hardly represented at their best by “All Aboard The Lovemobile”, and the Milltown Brothers’ perfectly competent but dreadfully uninspiring schlock has nothing in common with the more amateurish excitements of the preceding discs. Even the Telescopes and Boo Radleys tracks, received well enough at the time, feel muddy and uninspired from the vantage point of 2013.

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So let’s move on. For there are a number of further plus points to bring out as we step back and survey these five CDs as a whole. Firstly, this compilation really does pick up so many of the key labels. Not just Sarah and Subway and 53rd & 3rd and Narodnik (for kids like us) or Factory and Creation (for slightly cooler / older kids) or Esurient or the Pink Label (for really *really* cool kids) but the early beating heart imprints of Zoo, Fast Product, Kitchenware and Whaaam! (There is a respectable argument that had the box set come out on another label, there might have been *slightly* fewer Cherry Red contributions, but to be fair they don’t take the nepotism to extremes). And even labels that we've always been cool on but were clearly part of the superstructure (el and Medium Cool are two that come to mind, but between them, they deliver three or four songs here we really enjoyed). The compilation would be a lesser experience without such a full sweep of labels.

Unlike some others, we reckon the box set strikes a pretty good balance between obvious and obscure track selections. For the harder-to-find bands, it often picks out one of their singles. For those bands with existing retrospectives, it’s more likely to pick up on an early track or a contribution to a flexi-disc (an important structural part of indiepop back then). It's great, for example, that the Soup Dragons are represented by a song from their impossible-to-locate first shelved single, the Bluebells by a rare flexi, or the Close Lobsters by an early song that sounds them feeling their way. The Orchids’ “I've Got A Habit”, too, is a great tune that would have sold out early on, and that isn’t on all the Sarah compilations (or, possibly, the Elefant reissues). And there have been mutterings about the inclusion of the demo version of “Just Like Honey” to represent the Mary Chain, but to be honest it's just a good version of a great song: no beef from me.

It's interesting seeing which bands wear others’ influence on their sleeves: some links between bands on the different discs are already known (e.g. the Wedding Present covering the GAOB track here, “Getting Nowhere Fast”), but there are definitely traces of both the Marine Girls and Dolly Mixture in Talulah Gosh. And the Farmers’ Boys had obviously, um, drunk a lot of Orange Juice. We also find it strangely comforting to find out that the Shamen were always pretty bad, the Wonder Stuff were always very annoying, the band that became Ocean Colour Scene weren't much better than OCS were, and that we’re as untickled by the early Stone Roses (despite their more danceable take on the “Sonic Flower Groove” style) as by their later, more famous works.

There are maybe a few songs that, on “stylistic” grounds, shouldn't be here. bIG*fLAME’s "Debra" and Age of Chance’s“Motor City” are indubitably terrific, but stick out like sore thumbs: a case could be made that they build on the legacy of first-discers the Nightingales or the Fire Engines, but their inclusion here also suggests that Cherry Red, wrongly, aren't planning a separate box set for all the “awkward squad” bands (the "post-post punk" bands, as John Robb had it in his enterprising history of that scene).

And Jane’s “It's a Fine Day” is really rather lovely, but the absence of any guitars (indeed, the absence of any instruments at all) makes it hard to work out exactly where it fits in. Still, it’s nice to be confounded once in a while.

The compilers acknowledge that they couldn't get everyone they wanted. But the key omissions - Orange Juice, the Pastels, Felt, the Field Mice and that band at the flaming core of 80s independent pop, the Smiths - are at least not hard to track down, nor likely to be absent from the collections of most who buy this box set.

* * * * *

Our suggestions, should there ever be a volume 2? Let's start with the best stuff that you can't currently get, unless you're prepared to pay small fortunes on e-Bay. Buba and the Shop Assistants’ “Something To Do” seriously needs a wider audience. Ditto the singles of James Dean Driving Experience. And the ‘lost’ MBV EPs (“The New Record By” and “Sunny Sundae Smile”). Emily, perhaps – “Stumble” is a minor masterpiece if ever there was one. More from that first Soup Dragons EP? Five Year Plan (although there's a low key re-issue of their stuff in the offing). The Sinister Cleaners’ “Longing For Next Year”. Something by the Wildhouse. Or the Mayfields. The Nivens’ radiant "Yesterday". Or are we stumbling back into “Sound of Leamington Spa” territory?

Right. To sum up. If you’ve ever glanced at our blog before, chances are that you know that 1986 was our year zero. The line we used to hold was simply that no good music was made immediately before them, at all: from pure fallow sprang new music; everything kicked off, with no debt to the past. This box set has proved us wrong, and we’re grateful for the toil that’s clearly gone into it.

in love with these times, in spite of these times DJs @ The House, Canonbury, 9 and 10 February 2013

If you were in a certain Islington gastropub last Sunday enjoying some brunch with the family, or hoping to rock back in the comfy chairs to watch the r*gby, you may have thought "I'm sure they don't normally play Public Enemy or the Field Mice in here". Or maybe you were walking down Canonbury Road, wondering why the speakers in the garden were blaring out Chas and Dave and the Mary Chain. Or perhaps you were at the private party at the same venue the day before, thinking "hmmm, why are they spinning Bubblegum Splash! alongside Take That and George Michael...?"

 

As you'll have surmised by now, yes it was us, doing our "pop / R&B" set (luckily, Bubblegum Splash! count as both). You might think that lots of this playlist is too 'commercial' for us, but we did have an audience to try and please, and in any case there are very few records here that we don't rate *very highly indeed*: it's only the odd Britpop track and, er, the Will Young one (we took a couple of requests) that really hang heavy on our hearts. It got especially random for the last hour or so, as we'd assumed we would be chucked out long before then...

 

En Vogue "Hold On"

SWV "Right Here" (Human Nature mix)

TLC "Creep"

Beyoncé "Crazy In Love" (version without Jay-Z)

Jennifer Lopez "Love Don't Cost A Thing"

Christina Aguilera featuring Lil' Kim "Can't Hold Us Down"

Destiny's Child "Independent Women (Part 1)"

Mis-Teeq "Scandalous"

Justin Timberlake "Rock Your Body"

Mark Morrison "Who's The Mack?"

R. Kelly "Ignition (remix)"

Warren G featuring Nate Dogg "Regulate"

The Notorious B.I.G. "Hypnotize"

Ice Cube "It Was A Good Day" (remix from "NWA Legacy Vol. 1")

Ice-T "You Played Yourself"

Gang Starr "You Know My Steez"

Eric B. & Rakim "Don't Sweat The Technique"

Public Enemy "Harder Than You Think"

EPMD "The Big Payback"

NWA "Express Yourself"

Estelle "1980" 

The Contours "Just a Little Misunderstanding"

The Isley Brothers "This Old Heart Of Mine (Is Weak For You)"

Cat Stevens "The First Cut Is The Deepest"

R. Dean Taylor "There's a Ghost In My House"

The Ronettes "You Came, You Saw, You Conquered"

The Velvelettes "A Bird In The Hand (Is Worth Two In The Bush)"

The Supremes "Stoned Love"

Gloria Jones "Tainted Love" 

Marcel King "Reach For Love"

52nd Street "Can't Afford To Let You Go" (12" mix)

The Field Mice "Missing The Moon"

The Orchids "Peaches"

Heavenly "Our Love Is Heavenly"

Wendy James "London's Brilliant"

Sandie Shaw "Hand In Glove"

Kirsty MacColl "You Just Haven't Earned It Yet Baby"

Morrissey "First Of The Gang To Die"

A.R. Kane "Honey Be (For Stella)"

Gabrielle "Forget About The World"

Massive Attack "Unfinished Sympathy" (Nellee Hooper 7'' mix)

George Michael "Fastlove"

Take That "Sure"

Will Young "Love Is A Matter Of Distance"

Rachel Stevens "Negotiate With Love"

Daniel Bedingfield "Gotta Get Thru This"

Jamelia "Superstar"

Anastacia "Not That Kind"

Amy Winehouse "Tears Dry On Their Own"

Mark Owen "Makin' Out"

The Lightning Seeds "Pure"

The Jesus and Mary Chain "Darklands" (with strings)

Echo & The Bunnymen "Silver"

Orange Juice "Rip it Up"

Orlando "Just For A Second"

Marc Almond "Tears Run Rings"

Altered Images "Bring Me Closer"

Dexy's Midnight Runners "There There My Dear"

Chas & Dave "Ain't No Pleasing You"

The Redskins "Keep On Keepin' On!"

The Style Council "Walls Come Tumbling Down"

The Blow Monkeys featuring Curtis Mayfield "Celebrate (The Day After You)"

Matumbi "Bluebeat & Ska"

Junior Murvin "I Was Appointed"

King Tubby "Executioner Dub"

Sugar Minott "Good Thing Going"

Keith Hudson "Turn The Heater On"

Aswad "Ways Of The Lord"

Siouxsie & The Banshees "Hong Kong Garden"

The Slits "I Heard It Through The Grapevine"

Bronski Beat with Marc Almond "I Feel Love (Medley)"

Erasure "Stop!"

Pet Shop Boys "Love Comes Quickly"

Tears for Fears "Pale Shelter"

Depeche Mode "New Life"

Japan "Quiet Life"

Dead or Alive "You Spin Me Round (Like a Record)"

Heaven 17 "Temptation"

The Smiths "Barbarism Begins At Home"

Pulp "Lipgloss"

The House Of Love "Shine On"

The Fall "Hey! Luciani"

The Wedding Present featuring Amelia Fletcher "Getting Better"

The Flatmates "Happy All The Time"

The Pastels "Classic Line-Up"

Stiff Little Fingers "Silver Lining"

The Undertones "Male Model"

Napalm Death "You Suffer (Pt.2)"

Pepsi & Shirlie "Heartache"

White Town "Your Woman"

Cornershop "Brimful Of Asha" (Fatboy Slim-free original version)

Alexander O'Neal "Criticize"

The Sea Urchins "Pristine Christine"

Manic Street Preachers "Red Sleeping Beauty"

The Damned "Eloise"

Prince "Kiss"

Primal Scream "Velocity Girl"

Milky Wimpshake "Dialling Tone"

Tullycraft "Lost in Light Rotation"

Beatnik Filmstars "I Can Tame Lions"

All Saints "Pure Shores"

Melanie C "Suddenly Monday"

Bubblegum Splash! "The 18:10 To Yeovil Junction"

McCarthy "Governing Takes Brains"

Blueboy "Marco Polo"

Felt "Sunlight Bathed The Golden Glow"

BMX Bandits "Serious Drugs"

The Bluetones "Slight Return"

Brighter "Poppy Day"

The Primitives "Crash"

Cocteau Twins "Iceblink Luck"

The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart "Higher Than The Stars"

Strawberry Switchblade "Since Yesterday"

Joy Division "Transmission"

[redacted]

New Order "Fine Time"

JoBoxers "Just Got Lucky"

The Lotus Eaters "The First Picture of You"

Fats Domino "Blue Monday"

[redacted]

 

Thanks to all those that enjoyed it, or made us feel better by pretending to.

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)

Mayflower

In the summer of 1990 I had the good fortune to spend a day with Tim Alborn, editor of the rather excellent "Incite!" fanzine, who was over in the UK at the time. Back then, his Harriet Records label was a fledgling, a mere three releases old: even now I still have - and treasure - the 7"s by High Risk Group, Fertile Virgin and Linda Smith that I got from Tim that day.

Being a green English boy half way through his A-levels who had never even met a real life American before, I was very impressed not only by these accomplishments but that he had been to school with the likes of Galaxie 500 and Big Dipper; that while in England he'd met the Field Mice and the Carousel; that he liked the Darling Buds, too; that he shared my deep suspicion of what was then the burgeoning "Madchester" scene (believe me, at the time that was teenage heresy). My diary also records rather sweetly that, recently married, he was very much in love.

Anyway, back then none of us could have truly known of the quality that Harriet would continue to deliver over forty-plus releases, and some of the bands it would help introduce to the world (the Magnetic Fields, Tullycraft, the Cannanes, Hulaboy, the Extra Glenns, Crayon, Wimp Factor 14, My Favorite and so many others were to put out singles on Harriet in the 1990s).

Nor could we have dreamed that one day, we would be able to access every single issue of the fabulous Incite! at the click of a button. But technology has *achieved*, meaning that if you scoot over here you can, like us, rediscover and re-read a host of stuff about bands great and good from both sides of the Atlantic, and reflect on the heyday of a nearly-lost art.

Catching up with Tim's current profile, I note that he's had two books published on commerce in nineteenth-century England. I could have done with his impressive knowledge of the Victorian era when it came to those A-levels...

And one day, I fully intend to say more about Harriet Records' greatest hits. But given the speed at which I get round to things (of which Tim is all-too aware), you may well want to start with a summary from the venerable pages of Incite! itself.

Saucer

Some bands are just unsung. Wrongly, criminally so. 555 had many such bands, but over the years we’ve tried at least to tell you how much a few of them meant to us (and still do): not only the justly celebrated Boyracer and the sainted Hood but also the likes of Downpour, Halkyn, Empress, Famous Boyfriend... we reserve the right to come back to all of them. But Saucer are a combo that we never got round to praising, possibly even mentioning. In this, we were severely remiss.

Their album, 555CD25, then. "Saucer" by Saucer. A completely overlooked but v. rewarding 2001 outing from the mysterious and muchly-instrumental quiet-fi trio. Think stretched-out Empress or Halkyn, with a touch of the Wedding Present at their very quietest: they could have been the north’s answer to Kyoko. Seven tracks, none with titles: they can be identified only by song length (Empress did something similar). It's a work of understated brilliance.

The first minute and a half consists of nothing more than looped birdsong, before the 'signature' Saucer sound - a lone electric guitar, but played *quietly* - gradually intrudes. Not unlike Halkyn's wisping string-scapes, but drawn out. No other elements are added: no bass, no percussion, no keyboards, no voice. Six minutes of atmosphere. The second song "builds" - gently - and a vocal appears for the first time. A little boy lost. The electric guitar, still played quietly, delicately frames the shapes it needs to. There's the tiniest hint of the Wedding Present's most fragile new-century moments: but whereas those oases of near-silence invariably explode into noise, these sounds stay warm, intimate, tender. The third song, by Saucer standards, almost feels like "full orchestra": there are drums! And a female backing vocal! But then, through it all, there are those crystalline electric guitars again, weaving away, never in danger of rocking out.

The fourth song recognises that things got a bit overblown: we are back to a single sound, an electric guitar, picked not strummed, plucking a certain sadness from the night air. The fifth song goes back to still, clipped pulses, wantaway vocals and girl backing vocals - "this makes me nervous", they sing - as if Empress specialised in six minute songs rather than one minute ones. Eventually, the drums intrude once more. As for ‘song six’, it's a breakthrough: the guitars finally rise up and strum, as they’d been threatening too all album, a Gedgetastic-ish wall of noise that subsides, then rises again one long verse later.

Oh, and then there’s… track seven. But we’ll save that for another day.

There are a couple of Saucer tracks on 555 compilations, too (another reason that label was frankly so ace) although, disappointingly, they seem to have titles. "Barney" is an instrumental that, like that sixth track on the LP, flares occasionally into distracting, errant guitar noise: it's great, but the trouble with the noisy parts is that they distract you from the fact you're listening to tremblingly beauteous songs, and make you half-feel you're listening to Weddoes instrumentals. And then there’s “I Miss You So”, a tiny nugget of melancholy on “555CD55”, sadness cut and pasted from the blinking and the teardrops of “Saucer” the album.

So what do we know about Saucer ? We would have sworn they were a solo project, given that most of the songs are laced so sparsely with instrumentation, and the virtual impossibility when you get any number of musicians in a room together that they won't instantly try and drown each other out, but apparently they were a trio (from - of course - West Yorkshire, which hardly rules out links with other 555 alumni). At our local Ladbrokes, the smart money is that Darren Belk (once of the Wedding Present) might have been involved.

The irony is that there are probably other records we raved about in 2001, but that which we've hardly listened to since. Yet "Saucer" is something that we're still loving, still feeling, more than a decade on. Hopefully all of the happy few who own this record feel just the same.