sarah christmas party 1993

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

"HEAVENLY + copious support

at the Thekla in Bristol, 22/12/93

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

a 'goodbye brighter' piece

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

discovering sarah (part one)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

*group hug*.

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

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

- Clare, from SARAH 4

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

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

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

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

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

"thrilled skinny are the best band ever"

that phrase, this man once told us at a sarah gig in oxford, would be a great name for a fanzine. given that t.s were, loosely speaking, where indie-pop met discharge, we would go further and suggest that it would also be a not-too controversial statement of FACT.

when we were first alerted to shambling pop-drama "so happy to be alive" by the john peel show late one midweek evening it was one of those moments - like hearing "sensitive" or even "kik off" - where we just had to jump on the first train to the smoke that weekend and scour every 7" rack until we found it. in fact, "so happy" was one of their poppier numbers: as evidenced by the sadly underproduced blur that was their 22 track lp debut "they said they wouldn't but we did", their real raison d'etre was insanely fast, punky numbers with decidedly non-leafy and usually gloriously disjointed lyrics. they were also very big on household appliances and references to the everyday and the mundane - "another song about carpets and floorboards" was one title, in an indie scene that was indubitably fab but not always renowned for its self-deprecating humour, that epitomised their approach.

there is a good bit on their blog on how they mercilessly stickered parts of london - we can confirm that as wide-eyed teenagers venturing from the home counties to londres in the late 80s, we spotted those same stickers at seemingly every central tube station and genuinely concluded that t.s. were either (1) very popular amongst the capital's cognoscenti or at least (2) had the benefit of an astutely managed proto-guerrilla marketing campaign from some kind of indie street team. on both counts we were, of course, spectacularly incorrect.

some other fond t.s. memories include seeing them support the wedding present ("good evening, we're the stylistics and this is "i can't give you anything but my love"), picking up one of their absurdist lo-fi own-label comps with brilliantly funny sleeve notes (one of the best £1s we've ever spent), and arriving at university and chatting with a fellow fresher to find she had actually played violin on simon goalpost's extraordinarily wonderful solo 7" "off shopping trolley". very rarely have i been so impressed. also, we still proudly possess a postcard on which simon goalpost had scrawled a quick hello after we'd sent off for their later "teenage dream" 7"...

anyway, what brings our usual cock-eyed reverie to mind is that it is now possible to download four tunes from back in the (hey)day via their mysp. listen to the chugga proto-hardcore bassline on "psp" and at the same time marvel at the chaos this sort of thing caused when their tunes were cunningly sandwiched between the driscolls and strawberry story on pretty much any compilation tape you might care to mention. more good stuff here.

in dub with these times in spite of these times all time thrilled skinny top ten: 1. so happy to be alive 2. it's a good doss 3. let there be shelving 4. biscuits in the tin 5. common ground 6. teenage dream 7. love rut 8. media music part two 9. insecurity 10. quicker than the blinking eye

the wedding present. 1996.

this is the only other thing i found in that notepad - having obviously been inspired to prose by possibly the band i've seen the, um fourth most number of times (and who are still slowly accruing). it's not exactly incisive critique, but it's mine. all sorts of other interesting memories are enmeshed around this gig, but all that you are going to know is that i drank at least twice as much alcohol that night as i could even begin to dream of managing at a show nowadays.

wedding present / cable
top of o'reilly's, nottingham 27/2/96.

First off, Cable. They opened with "the colder climate", a brave move given how it descends into several minutes of wilful contemplative quiet strumming, but one of their best songs. The set was full of quiet / loud tricks and forays into appropriately taut, wiry instrumental bits before they go all semi-grunge again. Actually not bad, better than on record & worth keeping an eye on.

Within seconds of the wedding present started, I knew it was up to all expectation & the near 7-year wait. "Sucker" seemed over before it had started, but there were so many songs & all so good. new (female) bass player too providing the odd backing vocal. The whole of "Mini" was rightly aired, even Mercury with its brilliant slow burn lyric & clanging guitars, "Dare" was launched ferociously into, the 2 Island singles were wheeled out just to show how the new stuff's better. Top of it all, "My Favourite Dress", about 13th song in. I mean... fantastic. Finished with "flying saucer" & left me speechless.

notts at night photo by mark thornton

heavenly. 1996.

the text below is verbatim what i wrote in my notepad when i got home from this gig in nottingham in 1996. you can tell it's verbatim not least because the support band, bis, were entirely new to me then (i do remember amelia saying sthg along the lines of "i can't believe we're being supported by our favourite band") and for some reason i thought they were irish not scotch (and yes, they were on top of the pops within the year). you may also detect a downer already on my part re that particular city, which was basically because when i left my house to go to this gig, i had to dive down a side street to avoid a couple of kids that had marched me to a cashpoint and threatened to kill me two weeks earlier. er, anyway, heavenly were always an astonishingly good live band, and with the exception of napalm death and the fall, possibly still the band i've seen the most times. and it's a gig that matters to me because it was a pick-me-up, and in those pre-internet days it was pure fluke i ever knew about it - i'd literally been on a bus on alfreton road when i'd spotted a poster in the window of a shop with what looked like heavenly's logo, and on closer inspection later in the week, it turned out that it was, indeed, a plug for this:

Heavenly / bis / sugar & lust
Narrowboat, Nottingham 19/1/96

The bands appeared in ascending order of merit, but descending order of self-importance.

S&L are local kids, they started well then tailed off into general TFC-pastiche. An ill advised stab at Happy Days was the low spot.

Bis took the stage, 3 young-ish, fashionable looking irishpeople (they are Heavenly's favourite band). They were flawless, but very hard to pin down - imagine a Riot Grrrl band, except who can play their instruments, especially guitars, with a degree of Big Flame-ish panache, who can service shouted slogans with staccato rhythms, who've been listening to Pulp and the undertones. If you remember late 80s Dutch japester rhythmeisters Buy off the Bar (yes I do, just about) you'll like Bis. I certainly wouldn't rule out buying the single.

Now Heavenly never get stale & they're always slightly better than I was expecting. I suppose having released absolutely nil during 1995, what with helping out Nick Heyward etc & trying to find a new record label, it would have been greedy of me to expect just the back catalogue, but having been blitzed by an opening "modestic" several times more vital than the LP version, I was a tad disappointed that the next 7 songs were newies, though the absolutely brilliant one with the tambourine that sounded a bit like Tramway's 1991 Thekla christmas treat is indeed the new single and already the best song of 1996. Also it was good to hear a lyric about Nick Hornby. Anyway, the set rounded off with "Me & my madness" and in the atmospheric, Jericho Tavern-meets-Camden falcon-esque upstairs room, the smile on my face just stubbornly refused to subside.

And then came the encore. "Atta girl", & I dissolved into a dizzy smiling mess as galaxies collided and comets flew into black holes & Nottingham was all lit up & attractive and welcoming just for a few minutes.

the "new single", of course, was "trophy girlfriend". no idea why i thought bis sounded anything like pulp, though.