This Other Eden - Sweet Wine (12" Single, 1990)
William - Club Song (7" Single, 1984)
Billy Franks - Watershed (Saint of Contradiction EP, 1986)
Mummy Calls - Mary I Swear (7" Single, 1983)
Wednesday, May 1, 2019
Friday, March 15, 2019
Thursday, March 14, 2019
Bonk - The Smile and the Kiss
7" Single, released in 1983
Bonk - The Smile and the Kiss (A-Side)
Bonk - Big Love (B-Side)
Bonk was an early alias of Barry Flynn, who would continue to release a clutch of quality singles under The Chant of Barry Flynn, The Big Supreme, and, finally, just Flynn. A long time ago I put together a compilation called "Pot Shots" which I should probably revisit at some point.
Wednesday, March 6, 2019
Fingertips - Be Young, Be Foolish, Be Happy
Monday, March 4, 2019
Shadow Talk - People Watching People
7" Single, released in 1984
Shadow Talk - People Watching People (A-Side)
Shadow Talk - Heaven Up Here (B-Side)
Sunday, March 3, 2019
Quick, before I change my mind!
So what happened was this...
...I've been back in Guernsey for family reasons since last September, with all my music essentially in storage except the old box or two of vinyl (mainly singles) my parents had at their house and no sign of my old USB turntable either.
Back between 2010 and 2013 I digitized a lot of this stuff, and then found out later I had done it wrong (one audio channel only) due to what I assumed was some limitation of the USB turntable I had. So even though my turntable mysteriously turned up in our shed after my brother (who had borrowed it) left it there, I wasn't really motivated to do anything with it. Not to mention I had little time either between jobs and family.
Then about six weeks ago I happened to pick up a couple of vinyl selections I really wanted to hear, so one evening I cleared some space in the kitchen and fiddled around with the settings on the turntable. I finally figured out that the soundcard set up on my laptop was treating the turntable as a mono input and I had to go in and change it. Then - voila! - everything worked pretty well. So I did those, then bought a few more singles from Vinyl Tap and eBay. I've been able to leave the turntable on the kitchen table and hook up the laptop on a fairly regular basis.
So now in addition to some pretty awesome new stuff I will be posting for the first time, I'm also going back through some, maybe all of the singles that were not recorded correctly first time around. These are going to have the tag "reposted in 2019" included so you will know if I've had it up before. Plus most of my older singles have outdated links so it's a good time to refresh those. There's a few albums here too but my best ones tended to travel back to the US with me.
Life has a habit of changing on me pretty rapidly so we'll see how long this lasts.
...I've been back in Guernsey for family reasons since last September, with all my music essentially in storage except the old box or two of vinyl (mainly singles) my parents had at their house and no sign of my old USB turntable either.
Back between 2010 and 2013 I digitized a lot of this stuff, and then found out later I had done it wrong (one audio channel only) due to what I assumed was some limitation of the USB turntable I had. So even though my turntable mysteriously turned up in our shed after my brother (who had borrowed it) left it there, I wasn't really motivated to do anything with it. Not to mention I had little time either between jobs and family.
Then about six weeks ago I happened to pick up a couple of vinyl selections I really wanted to hear, so one evening I cleared some space in the kitchen and fiddled around with the settings on the turntable. I finally figured out that the soundcard set up on my laptop was treating the turntable as a mono input and I had to go in and change it. Then - voila! - everything worked pretty well. So I did those, then bought a few more singles from Vinyl Tap and eBay. I've been able to leave the turntable on the kitchen table and hook up the laptop on a fairly regular basis.
So now in addition to some pretty awesome new stuff I will be posting for the first time, I'm also going back through some, maybe all of the singles that were not recorded correctly first time around. These are going to have the tag "reposted in 2019" included so you will know if I've had it up before. Plus most of my older singles have outdated links so it's a good time to refresh those. There's a few albums here too but my best ones tended to travel back to the US with me.
Life has a habit of changing on me pretty rapidly so we'll see how long this lasts.
The Recognitions - This First Dance
Big Store - The Price of a Secret
7" Single, released in 1983
Big Store - The Price of a Secret (A-Side)
Big Store - Taking The Stage Again (B-Side)
Flip Me!
Michael Anderson and Jim McKinven, both previously with Altered Images, joined forces with vocalist Tina Winters for this one off single. Interestingly, it was co-written with Peter Capaldi before his acting career took off.
Saturday, March 2, 2019
The Big Supreme - Remind Me
7" Single, released in 1987
The Big Supreme - Remind Me (A-Side)
The Big Supreme - What Love Means (B-Side)
Friday, March 1, 2019
Tight Fit - Secret Heart
7" Single, released in 1982
Tight Fit - Secret Heart (A-Side)
Tight Fit - Just A Moment Away (B-Side)
Wednesday, June 6, 2018
Random 80's Wednesday
Part one of the great Bandcamp / Sideroom Singles linkfest:
Pel Mel - No Word From China
Pop Mechanix - Jumping Out A Window
Stephen Cummings - Speak With Frankness
Tactics - Coming In On My Coat Tails
Seven Ballerinas - Sometimes I Feel
Look Blue Go Purple - Cactus Cat
Pel Mel - No Word From China
Pop Mechanix - Jumping Out A Window
Stephen Cummings - Speak With Frankness
Tactics - Coming In On My Coat Tails
Seven Ballerinas - Sometimes I Feel
Look Blue Go Purple - Cactus Cat
Bandcamp Down Under
I've been getting a lot of downloads of my Camras In Paris single which is good, after focusing mostly on UK and US bands over the last few years I've finally gotten around to buying a few Aussie singles and so this month I've decided to try and highlight a few good bands I've come across.
To help with this endeavor (finding Australian pop/new wave music is like looking for US made TVs in China I've decided) I have combined two of my music sources, the excellent Aussie blog - currently on hiatus perhaps - Side Room Singles which I'm sure I've mentioned before, and my current music download site of choice, Bandcamp.
If you've looked at Bandcamp at all you might notice that it's freakily difficult to find specific things unless you have the exact name. I found a private new wave release on there a few years ago, forgot to wishlist it, and could never find it again. This is because the description/search tags are provided by the artists themselves and you can only search one at a time. So I can look up "new wave", or "80's" or even "80's new wave" but I can't combine the tags to look for both together. The work around is to use multiple tags in a Google search. It also doesn't help that the release date might be the original release date or the date it became available on Bandcamp so sometimes putting in a year itself doesn't help.
Anyways, my point is there is a lot of music on the site if you dig around for it, so I will be posting a bunch of links throughout the month. My username on there is fiftypercent so you can check out what I have wishlisted or have in my collection.
Side Room (Bruce Dale) has a great collection perhaps slightly more leaning towards the indie pop/twee area and going back further than I usually do, to the late 70's even. But I've been listening to the playlists in the car and found a lot of good stuff.
Send me any recommendations chaps!
To help with this endeavor (finding Australian pop/new wave music is like looking for US made TVs in China I've decided) I have combined two of my music sources, the excellent Aussie blog - currently on hiatus perhaps - Side Room Singles which I'm sure I've mentioned before, and my current music download site of choice, Bandcamp.
If you've looked at Bandcamp at all you might notice that it's freakily difficult to find specific things unless you have the exact name. I found a private new wave release on there a few years ago, forgot to wishlist it, and could never find it again. This is because the description/search tags are provided by the artists themselves and you can only search one at a time. So I can look up "new wave", or "80's" or even "80's new wave" but I can't combine the tags to look for both together. The work around is to use multiple tags in a Google search. It also doesn't help that the release date might be the original release date or the date it became available on Bandcamp so sometimes putting in a year itself doesn't help.
Anyways, my point is there is a lot of music on the site if you dig around for it, so I will be posting a bunch of links throughout the month. My username on there is fiftypercent so you can check out what I have wishlisted or have in my collection.
Side Room (Bruce Dale) has a great collection perhaps slightly more leaning towards the indie pop/twee area and going back further than I usually do, to the late 70's even. But I've been listening to the playlists in the car and found a lot of good stuff.
Send me any recommendations chaps!
Sunday, June 3, 2018
Camras In Paris - Visions Of You
Camras In Paris - Visions Of You (A-Side)
I don't know much about Camras In Paris, an Australian new wave band that released one single on Centre Records in 1986.
Sunday, May 27, 2018
The Muzak of the Wastelands
This week I've been pondering a minor musical mystery. While digging around for Faith Brothers tracks and some Debut magazine compilations I have, I saw a track by Messengers, the touring band that supported Ultravox around the time of Quartet, and it got me thinking about Concrete Scheme by Modern Man, which is one of those (many) LP's I bought on eBay a few years ago and never paid much attention to. The history, as I understand it, is that around the time Midge Ure joined Ultravox in 1980, he discovered Modern Man playing locally in Scotland and offered to produce them. The band released the album and a couple of singles and then broke up, with the drummer Colin King and guitarist Danny Mitchell then forming a duo called Messengers which subsequently released a couple of singles through Chrysalis and supported Ultravox - most famously receiving a shout-out on the Live Ultravox LP, Monument - The Soundtrack.
When I pulled the album out of storage I was reminded that the last track on side A was "Wastelands", which would later pop up on Midge's solo album The Gift and it is this particular track that I find mysterious.
I began listening to Ultravox in 1985 - all my friends had a copy of The Collection compilation which came out at Christmas 1984 - and Midge Ure was my first musical hero, looking so cool in all the group photos and doing Live Aid. Then he released "If I Was" which I found easy to like - even if the video with Midge wielding his 'axe', 'dancing' with voluminous trousers and 'acting' like the poet, painter and sailor he was singing about seemed to be faintly ridiculous. So the album release in October 1985 was a big deal for me. The cover was great, all moody matinee idol, there was a free poster, and then I got the album and played it quite a lot. It never hit the heights of the Ultravox albums I was familiar with, but it was mostly enjoyable - if a little slight in places. For example, several of the tracks were instrumentals, there was a Jethro Tull cover, and a 'reprise' version of the title track which was a lengthy and bombastic piece in the first place. Several of the tracks were credited to Midge and Danny Mitchell, who had become his significant songwriting partner for the project. I bought the second single "That Certain Smile" and the third which came out in January 1986, which was the aforementioned "Wastelands".
In hindsight there was always something about that song which seemed out of place. The lyrics seemed at least pseudo-autobiographical - 'The boy is listening to the records from the past, he wants to make them last, for they make him feel alive'. The tone is angry, even political - 'a martyr's blood is nourishing the wastelands'. Also, the turns of phrase are striking, odd even - 'For them he'd take the test'. What test? A test of loyalty perhaps, maybe a gang initiation. Midge's version credits the track to himself and Danny Mitchell, just the same as the other singles from the album. In fact, in an interview on the Old Grey Whistle Test, he specifically mentions that Danny co-wrote the song with him. So far, so what?
Here's the mystery. The original version of the track makes much more sense to me. The arrangement is sparse, with heavy guitar patterns, and the Modern Man vocalist (Jim Cook) attacks the song in a plaintive, unadorned fashion. It's the sound of young Scottish punks, in other words, not a warm, indulgent mid-career release by an established star. And like all the tracks on the Modern Man LP, Danny Mitchell receives sole songwriting credit. So is Midge's version a cover version in the truest sense? Why change the credits five years later when it's obviously the same song in terms of lyrics and structure? After so much time, do I really want to believe that Midge took a co-writing credit on a song that had never been his at all? Or is it fairer to say that potentially he co-wrote at least some of the Modern Man material, but could not take any credit on the album due to contractual issues with the record labels (Midge was with Chrysalis in 1980, and Concrete Scheme came out on the more obscure MAM Records).
At the very least it suggests to me that Danny Mitchell's involvement with Midge's solo career should not be underestimated. Midge would go on to develop into a thoughtful and communicative songwriter on his own terms - that's for certain. Which makes this earlier spell all the more fascinating and just a little bit mysterious, at least to me.
And here's the Modern Man version by way of comparison:
Modern Man - Wastelands
When I pulled the album out of storage I was reminded that the last track on side A was "Wastelands", which would later pop up on Midge's solo album The Gift and it is this particular track that I find mysterious.
I began listening to Ultravox in 1985 - all my friends had a copy of The Collection compilation which came out at Christmas 1984 - and Midge Ure was my first musical hero, looking so cool in all the group photos and doing Live Aid. Then he released "If I Was" which I found easy to like - even if the video with Midge wielding his 'axe', 'dancing' with voluminous trousers and 'acting' like the poet, painter and sailor he was singing about seemed to be faintly ridiculous. So the album release in October 1985 was a big deal for me. The cover was great, all moody matinee idol, there was a free poster, and then I got the album and played it quite a lot. It never hit the heights of the Ultravox albums I was familiar with, but it was mostly enjoyable - if a little slight in places. For example, several of the tracks were instrumentals, there was a Jethro Tull cover, and a 'reprise' version of the title track which was a lengthy and bombastic piece in the first place. Several of the tracks were credited to Midge and Danny Mitchell, who had become his significant songwriting partner for the project. I bought the second single "That Certain Smile" and the third which came out in January 1986, which was the aforementioned "Wastelands".
In hindsight there was always something about that song which seemed out of place. The lyrics seemed at least pseudo-autobiographical - 'The boy is listening to the records from the past, he wants to make them last, for they make him feel alive'. The tone is angry, even political - 'a martyr's blood is nourishing the wastelands'. Also, the turns of phrase are striking, odd even - 'For them he'd take the test'. What test? A test of loyalty perhaps, maybe a gang initiation. Midge's version credits the track to himself and Danny Mitchell, just the same as the other singles from the album. In fact, in an interview on the Old Grey Whistle Test, he specifically mentions that Danny co-wrote the song with him. So far, so what?
Here's the mystery. The original version of the track makes much more sense to me. The arrangement is sparse, with heavy guitar patterns, and the Modern Man vocalist (Jim Cook) attacks the song in a plaintive, unadorned fashion. It's the sound of young Scottish punks, in other words, not a warm, indulgent mid-career release by an established star. And like all the tracks on the Modern Man LP, Danny Mitchell receives sole songwriting credit. So is Midge's version a cover version in the truest sense? Why change the credits five years later when it's obviously the same song in terms of lyrics and structure? After so much time, do I really want to believe that Midge took a co-writing credit on a song that had never been his at all? Or is it fairer to say that potentially he co-wrote at least some of the Modern Man material, but could not take any credit on the album due to contractual issues with the record labels (Midge was with Chrysalis in 1980, and Concrete Scheme came out on the more obscure MAM Records).
At the very least it suggests to me that Danny Mitchell's involvement with Midge's solo career should not be underestimated. Midge would go on to develop into a thoughtful and communicative songwriter on his own terms - that's for certain. Which makes this earlier spell all the more fascinating and just a little bit mysterious, at least to me.
And here's the Modern Man version by way of comparison:
Modern Man - Wastelands
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