Safety Net

There's been a touch of c86 and mid 80s Scottish indie- pop in the breeze recently- two weeks ago Stevie at Charity Chic Music blogged about Edinburgh's The Motorcycle Boy and last week Brian at Linear Tracking Lives was writing about early Primal Scream (early Primal Scream, none of your Loaded Scream, not even your Ivy Ivy Ivy era Scream but All Fall Down Primal Scream). At the weekend Sky Arts showed Teenage Superstars,  a documentary about 'the golden age of Scottish indie', The Pastels, The Vaselines, BMX Bandits, The Jesus And Mary Chain and all he rest of it. 

As an archetype  of this sound you can't go wrong with this 1986 single by The Shop Assistants. In fact, this song on 7" might be the best song of the entire scene.

Safety Net

Cavernous but lo fi drums, the low rumble of  bassline, cheap buzzsaw guitars, handclaps, sing song female vocals, deliberately borrowing from the Reid Brothers in style and by pinching a 'trip me up' line and everything smothered in reverb, it is wilfully and brilliantly amateurish. Safety Net sounds like it exists solely to take up the two minutes twenty three seconds it takes to revolve around your stereo at 45rpm before you flip the needle back to the start and play it again. 

Sadly, it slipped out last year that Alex Taylor, singer of both The Shop Assistants and later The Motorcycle Boy, had passed away back in 2005. RIP Alex. 

Here She Comes Again

Primal Scream's 1986 B-side Velocity Girl is a perfect piece of guitar pop- bright, spindly, quickly strummed guitars rushing all over the place and Bobby Gillespie's tribute to the girl with 'vodka in her veins'. The song is short, just eighty eight seconds long, but has had a huge influence. It was a cornerstone of C86 and on hearing it John Squire went away and rethought how he played guitar and wrote songs (Made Of Stone being one obvious result).

Primal Scream are about to release another best of compilation and unlike 2003's Dirty Hits which took Loaded as the starting point the new singles album , called somewhat depressingly Maximum Rock & Roll, goes back to their roots with Velocity Girl, Gentle Tuesday, Imperial and Ivy Ivy Ivy all included this time around. Velocity Girl is to be put out as a 7" single too so if you missed out first time around, time to get down the record shop and pick a copy up. Douglas Hart has made a video for Velocity Girl, combining footage of Edie Sedgwick with Bobby miming to camera in 2019 (I think I would have been happy with more Edie and less Bobby or at least Edie and a 1986 Bobby). Velocity Girl, it goes without saying, is a fucking fantastic song.



In July 1986 Primal Scream did a session for Janice Long and recorded this version of Velocity Girl, a version which has an extra verse that just about takes it to the two minute mark.

Velocity Girl (Janice Long Session)

Slip Slide

Glossop is a small town a few miles east of Manchester, nestled into the Pennines and actually in the county of Derbyshire. It's neighbours are Padfield and Hadfield. Hadfield was the real life setting for The League Of Gentlemen, filmed on the highstreet. Padfield has been the home of Shaun Ryder and Bez in recent years. On Sunday afternoon the Tour De France will sweep by, only a mile or two away before doubling back towards Sheffield for the finish of Etape 2. I'm intending to cycle up there on Sunday morning and stake my place at the side of the road and wait for the peloton to shoot past at some ridiculous speed.

Glossop was also the home of C86 janglers the Bodines whose single Therese is acknowledged as a classic of the period. I also have a soft spot for their 1987 single Slip Slide although I think the consensus is that signing to a major label had sucked the life out of the band by this point. A shame as they had real promise.

Slip Slide

Glossop Rock

The Bodines came from Glossop, a small town nestling in the Pennines to the east of Manchester. This single, Therese, was on the legendary c86 tape (given away free with the NME), an indie disco regular, compilation tape staple and the only thing they're really known for at all. And very good it is too in that 1986-7, Smiths-influenced, pre-Roses way. They screwed it all up/got screwed up (delete as appropriate) like so many of these bands did by signing to a major label who dropped them as soon as their album didn't shift millions. Or even thousands. Or hundreds maybe. They re-recorded Therese for the album, Played, although the original Therese single came out on Creation. I've got the major label subsidiary (Magnet Records anyone? Me either)album Played on vinyl and looking at the sleeve I honestly couldn't tell you how any of the songs go, apart from Therese and a vague recollection of Slip Slide which I think a friend put on a compilation tape for me around that time.

Therese.mp3