I bought some great vinyl in Denver over my birthday - mainly thanks to Andy at Albums On The Hill in Boulder and Black And Read in Arvada. Here's some tasters.
I've wanting to post something about the Ward Brothers for a few months now. I'm not sure why their album The Madness of It All is not available digitally, but to be fair there are a lot of releases on the Siren label (a Virgin Records sub-label) that have gone AWOL. Here's a nice introduction - their first single - coupled with a B-Side that was exclusive to this release. More from the Ward boys soon.
Another single that was much better than I anticipated. Credits mention the Bucherri brothers and New England Records seem to have been based in London - which leads me to suspect that the Syracuse reference was symbolic rather than literal. Good stuff.
Empire was a project featuring talented songwriter, the late John Uriel, and Mark Lee Kemp. They released three singles, all very listenable, in 1988 and put together an album which was never released. The group continued to demo songs for a second album before calling it quits.
Martini Ranch was a short lived collaborative project featuring songwriter and performer Andrew Todd and actor Bill Paxton. Apart from two singles, the duo released an album, Holy Cow. This single featured three exclusive tracks unavailable elsewhere.
I posted the other Soundtrack single, Ghosts of Love, a few years back. This one popped up on eBay while I was looking for records by the new wave band Freeze Frame. As is often the case I don't know much about the band. They recorded for Rialto Records and I think the two singles were everything they did.
I don't know much about Fontana Mix, who recorded for the Compact Organization and released a couple of singles and an album. Although several Compact artists have seen their work reissued, nothing as yet has surfaced from these guys.
"Jamie" is a terrific little song which I couldn't wait to post. I found the album by scanning through 1984 albums for sale on Discogs, and a quick google search led me to a YouTube post. I knew right away I needed this record, unoriginal it may be for sure, but I'm a sucker for this kind of sound - to me very reminiscent of Jimmy Jimmy and their bright young pop.
Singles like these are why I remain a vinyl obsessive and music aficionado after many years of collecting and poring over websites and eBay listings. A one off privately released single, here is a catchy, pretty tune with all the hallmarks of a classic Deacon Blue or Prefab Sprout offering. The most I could glean from the internet was that the lead singer - of some talent - gave up the band to run his family's music shop in London, and that the drummer Phil Morgan was previously in All Sons Of Allison and hailed from Tyne And Wear. It's interesting that the B-side was a live version of an otherwise unavailable track - not many debut releases did that.
I have just noticed that there are a bunch of S&G tunes on Phil Morgan's YouTube channel - God bless Google - so I'm off to check them out!
I don't know much about Tim Cody except that the sleeve art reminded me of Woodhead Monroe and it's quite a good little pop tune. This was his second and final single release, I think, and nearly the last one on the Towerbell label which ended not long after. As always, I would welcome further information and enlightenment.
I previously mentioned this very briefly here, but I have to confess I never heard it or knew much about before a few days ago. Vaughn was the charismatic singer with Department S - early '80s one hit almost-wonders and a bit before my time. He was also from Jersey so as a fellow Channel Islander I happened to like that. Sadly he died in 1991 without releasing anything else. From the title and mod-ish sleeve I was expecting something akin to jazzy crooning with a retro feel but I was quite wrong. Actually these are a couple of very contemporary, breezy and poppy concoctions that I feel a bit sad not to have heard before. Nice sleeve notes on the back, also.
This is a terrific little synthpop single, and although quite obscure, is a ditty that has been associated with several bands on the fringes of the New Wave scene. "Germaine" was written by Ian Goral for his band Pozer from the Guildford area, and it originally had a much more power pop style to it. Rema was apparently also known as Rema Cadiz, based in Croydon, and several of their recordings are available on YouTube, such as an earlier version of Germaine.
The three members of Rema are listed as Samma (Simon Clothier) who is still active as a songwriter, Ian Penman on keyboards, and Dave Manlow on drums. I have to say the keyboard work on the single elevates the song into a different dimension, so Ian Penman deserves a lot of credit for his arrangement. I'm not sure if he performed on anything else.
