STEREO SANCTITY RADIO SHOW: RESURRECTED!


Download it here!

So, after a brief hiatus brought about by the collapse of Podbean, I've decided to get my radio show going again via the simpler means of Rapid Share.

It's download only I'm afraid, but the procedure is pretty straightforward: click on the link above, click the button to download for free, type the four digits into the security box, download the .zip file, unzip it and you're home free. It's about 90mb, comes as two mp3 files, and should take only a couple of minutes to download with a regular internet connection. Any problems or fuck ups - please let me know.

This show was actually recorded back in early June when the sun was briefly shining and I was feeling kinda optimistic, so the whole thing has got a bit of a summer feeling to it, and an unusually high percentage of newly released songs too, so go on, hit the link and enjoy a whole bunch of awesome music from the likes of The Detroit Cobras, The Rangers, Helen Love, Canned Heat, The Jesus Licks, The Downliners Sect, Calvin Johnson, Boris, Soft Machine and many more... and some more of my trademark geeky banter as well. Good times!

Labels: radio show, summer

Viva 1998 # 1: CHICKS

I used to have a magic formula, probably devised around 1998, which I would use to explain / define the kind of music I liked the best. It is of course an absurd piece of reductionism given the vast range of my subsequent musical interests, but its continued relevance is evident in the fact that I am still almost certain to dig any band who follow the formula:

Simple pop tunes + loads of guitar noise + smart/funny/cool pop culture referencing lyrics = YES

Add some wide-eyed, youthful enthusiasm and it’s a combination that’s hard to beat.

And rarely has anyone embodied this formula as well as The Chicks.

I mean, yeah, Neil Young may have written a few good tunes, Ornette Coleman and his boys sure made a jolly racket when I saw them the other week, Slayer can certainly rock out a bit and John Fahey and Derek Bailey could sure play a mean guitar….. but to a certain, significant part of my brain/heart/soul, NOTHING beats The Chicks.

My copy of the band’s first 7” EP is one of my most treasured possessions, and definitely one of my most played pieces of vinyl. I’ve been dying to do a weblog post about them since forever, but it was only last month that I was given the impetus to do so by an internet forum-friend who was nice enough to send me mp3 rips of the eight songs that compose the entirety of the band’s official output. Needless to say, the records are loooong unavailable, so I shall share them with you guilt-free and leave you to spread the good word.

So, an extremely short and sketchy history:

Chicks came from Dublin and consisted of Isabel Reyes Feeney (bass / lead vox), Annie Tierney (guitar / backing vox) and Lucy Clarke (drums / backing vox).

Their debut EP “Criminales Coches Pistolas y Chicas” came out on Supremo records (REMO 001) in 1998, and is the best thing ever. I recall Steve Lamacq playing the lead track “Let Me Go” quite a bit on Radio One. The lo-fi recording quality, aided by the cheapola vinyl pressing and the youthful energy of the band, made it stand out a mile; in retrospect I think it actually has a similar sound to some great ‘60s garage obscurity. The 7” has a worryingly long gap between dropping the needle and the start of the music, and generally sounds really rough and fuzzy in a way you suspect the master tapes probably didn’t. It is luminous yellow though, so somebody's priorities were in the right place! Totally great cover art too, drawn by Isabel:


So here it is: four songs and nine minutes of everything that is brilliant about pop music. I don’t intend to explain further. If you listen and still need an explanation, maybe you should consider cultivating a different interest, like snorkelling, or Marxism.

A few things I will say though; 1) I’m not trying to sell this record on the back of any patronising Shaggs-esque amateur charm: I’d contest that these girls rock pretty damn hard in true “Rocket To Russia” style – the kick-ass drumming and vocal harmonies are particularly noteworthy. 2) If you’ve forgive me a bit of over-excited internet parlance: OMG!!! THE LYRICS!! Amazing!! – I’ve scanned the inserts from the 7” so you can see them for yourself in their original biro scrawl. For maximum impact, read them as you listen to the tunes, and marvel ye teenage geeks: Star Wars? Manga? Bladerunner? X-Men? Pinky & The Brain?? All within the same two minute pop-punk song?? Nearly a decade on, these girls are still my HEROES.

Chicks – Criminales Coches Pistolas y Chicas EP

1. Let Me Go

2. Jewels

3. This Is Gonna Be

4. A-Ok

Insert w/ Lyrics:



Chicks picked up a bit of press from the Melody Maker as part of their whole ‘brat-pop’ thing – I remember seeing a live review of them with a big photo, and even a cartoon of the band as part of feature about all-ages shows.

They released a second EP, “Little Monkeys With Lots of Money” (see below), and played a gig supporting Idlewild in Edinburgh (I think..) which was broadcast on Radio One. I recorded both sets (Idlewild still being a reasonably good band at this point) on an old C60 tape which I subsequently nearly wore out as I played it constantly through my A-level studying years.

The Chicks set is a bit shaky, with the band sounding nervous, and they do a lot of slower, quieter songs based around vocal harmonies which are….. well let’s just say that *I* like it when people who aren’t great natural singers do vocal harmonies, and the songs, some of them making their only recorded appearance, sound rather lovely. It’s a very brave performance in front of a large and potentially hostile audience, and you can hear discontent building as the set goes on.

I read in the press the next week that the band were actually booed / forced off stage, which I recall made me SO ANGRY. Those fucking rock-boy idiots! I mean, even if they didn’t like the band, or they wanted to hear more loud songs, or whatever, what kind of bastards does it take to stand there and boo these teenage girls who are singing their hearts out for half an hour, trying to make it in a band? How could people who liked the same music I did act like that?? If I was in Idlewild, I remember thinking, I’d have refused to play, or at least given the audience hell about it. Idlewild, perhaps already planning their descent into a cut price REM for dreary-souled louts, evidently thought otherwise.

Pure conjecture on my part here, but the world heard nothing more from Chicks after this point, so it would make a good ending to the story to suggest that maybe it was the disillusionment of that ugly experience that made them decide to go home and finish their own A-levels rather than becoming pop stars.

What did they do next? Did they get proper jobs? Have any of them played in any other bands? – I have no idea, but again, any shreds of info are gratefully received.

But anyway, on to “Little Monkeys With Lots Of Money”, which I don’t own in its original vinyl form and actually only acquired a few weeks ago via mp3. Sadly, it’s a slightly disappointing listen in comparison to the first EP, lacking the great lyrics and a certain amount of the cool spirit. “Daria” is quite a fun little number, and was a bit of radio hit, also appearing as the lead track on a “bands of the future!” style Melody Maker cover CD, but aside from that; “Jackie Chan” is pretty cool, but the playing is a bit unremarkable and I can’t make out the lyrics; I’m not sure precisely what point they’re trying to make on “Feminist”, but let’s be generous and assume it’s a good one; “Rocha Rocka” is pretty throwaway, and features an alarmingly ham-fisted Chuck Berry style solo which makes me suspect the interfering hand of a male session muso, cos I'm sure the girls could have come up with something better - yikes.

It’s generally pretty cool though, and worth posting for the sake of completeness:

Chicks – Little Monkeys With Lots of Money EP

1. Daria

2. Jackie Chan

3. Feminist

4. Rocha Rocka

------

UPDATE:

A helpful commenter has pointed me in the direction of the Chicks Myspace, with a bunch of bizarre/fabulous new info, and four unreleased songs.

It seems that, far from calling it a day after the Idlewild gig, Chicks picked up Geoff Travis as a manager, signed a deal with super-big label Dreamworks and went to America to record an album, produced by Royal Trux!

It seems they didn't exactly see eye to eye (hey, fuck you Hagerty, I'd be positively DISAPPOINTED if The Chicks knew The 'Dead! Jeez..), and for whatever reason the album never got released and the band split up in 2000. Hopefully after squandering a whole load of record label cash on cool stuff. And hopefully without picking up a taste for the Trux favoured variety of 'stuff'.

The pro-tooling/sampling sounds rather horrible, but, by means fair or foul, that album has gotta be heard.

Labels: 1998, Chicks, pop, punk

My first 1998 Girl Band post will be coming up in the next couple of days - honest. Apologies for the sadly predictable delay.

In the meantime, a brief announcement;

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ME

Thought I'd repost the email below here, just on the off-chance that I have any London-based readers whom I don't know personally, or else forgot about or don't have a current address for - in which case, please consider yourself invited to pop in and say hello!

That said, I have removed the actual location of proceedings, just in case you're actually some right bloody weirdo who stumbled upon this page whilst looking for santified hi-fi equipment or somesuch, but if you're a geniune nice-person type reader, just drop me an email and I'll fill you in on the details.

Dear London dwelling folk,

On July 30th this year, it will be exactly one quarter of a century since the dawn of my existence on earth.

Unfortunately though, that's on a Monday, so the proceeding weekend is probably the best opportunity to put some time aside to celebrate my mother's decision to go through with the whole business all those years ago.

So for that general purpose, myself and others will probably be found in [.....] from about early afternoon to early evening on Saturday July 28th, and yourselves, plus your friends, partners and any interesting strangers you meet along the way, are hereby invited to drop in and raise a glass / share a bottle.

Later on I suppose there will be food of some sort, and then I'm quite tempted to head off to the Luminaire in Kilburn to see ace '50s rock n' roll singer Wanda Jackson. Tickets are a hefty £17.50 though, (available from here: http://www.wegottickets.com/event/18015 ), so if anybody wants to go, let me know soonish and I'll pick one up for you.

She'll be hitting THREE quarters of a century before too long, but if she's still a fraction as good as when she recorded tunes like "Fujiyama Mama", the ticket price will be small beans. And spending the evening with a bunch of good-natured rockabilly types is sure to be a bunch of fun whatever happens, let's face it.

Alternatively, I/we might do something different. Or nothing at all. Who can say.

I hate RSVPs, but you'll notice there are a lot of "hopefully"s and "maybe"s and so on in this email, and no solid times etc., so probably best drop me a line to confirm if you're thinking of coming along to any aspect of the above.

Best wishes!

Ben

Viva 1998: An Introduction

A few months back, David McNamee, perhaps still best known to this weblog for his scathing criticism of my particular brand of punk rock dancing, wrote a great feature for Plan B, reminiscing about a certain underappreciated strain of British pop culture that briefly exploded during the otherwise ignoble year that was 1997. The movement that McNamee seeks to retrospectively define took Kenickie and Bis as its figureheads, and could broadly be said to consist of frustrated middle-England teenagers fighting a valiant rearguard action against the ugly death-throes of post-Oasis brit-pop and the associated culture of the era (and rightly so, because GOD IT WAS HORRIBLE), taking inspiration instead from DIY fanzine culture, the lingering influence of Riot Grrl, and Huggy Bear in particular, and (for better or worse) the inescapable suburban angst vortex that was/is the early Manic Street Preachers.

If you were in any way engaged with the British music world or music press around this time, you’ll probably know the score, but if not, the aesthetic we’re talking is: general prevalence of girls, or boys who wanted to be girls, fanzines, glitter, manga imagery, impossible to find multi-colour 7”s full of casios, fuzz and shouting, an unironic reclamation of bubblegum pop simplicity and chart pop glamour, righteous schoolyard level politics, postal communication and formation of scattered pre-internet communities, dyed hair, plastic jewellery, sparkly everything, too much lipgloss and eyeliner and a generally more punky and homemade take on all that stuff that’s now commonly recognised ‘indie-girl’ apparel ... and so on. You get the idea. Great stuff, obviously. The very best stuff perhaps, if the momentum and musical quality had stayed more consistent.

I was 15 in 1997, stuck in rural West Wales, and too distant and clueless to really claim any awareness of these rather inspiring goings-on, probably not even picking up on the tantalising hints that did creep into what little media I could get my hands on.

McNamee portrays this whole business as flaring like a mad firework in ’97 and swiftly dying a death, and from his “I was there” perspective, maybe that makes sense. But sorry David, it was during ’98 and ’99 that I experienced my indie coming of age, and there was some amazing music in this general vein still to be found in the corners of those otherwise culturally deadening few years. I suppose things were turning away somewhat from the militant lo-fi pop stuff (as exemplified by the first Bis album), and taking a more Kenickie-inspired approach to the simple pleasures of teenage pop-punk… which, speaking as a lifelong fan of The Donnas, certainly poses no problem for me.

Quite the contrary in fact; I spent these years crouched by the cassette player listening to good ol’ Steve Lamacq shambling his way through The Evening Session, sitting through hours of god-awful ladrock dross, poised and ready to hit ‘record’ every time I heard something with a fuzz guitar or a girl singer. And there were indeed a handful of truly joyous bands who gave me a kick in the right direction and a new lease of life at that crucial point when my tastes were finally moving beyond Nirvana to embrace The Ramones, The Pixies and, subsequently, all good music.

I remember the Melody Maker jumping on the ’97 bandwagon a tad late and trying to drum up some hype for a few months for what it deemed ‘Brat-Pop’, citing the likes of Gel, Vyvyan and Cheetera as prime examples, and I guess that’s the kinda scene I’m talking about here. Ash probably copped a bit of this too, as ‘scene leaders’ or some such, although they were already big and famous and heading toward their 20th birthdays and boring second album by this point.

It’s been nearly a decade since I heard Gel on the other hand, but I remember them sounding like the best band ever: mega-loud guitar distortion and hyper-energetic 90 second songs that consisted entirely of chorus. If I ever actually track anything by them down, I hope my memories haven’t lied (anybody got anything in digital, you got my address). Gel were boys (I think), but it was the girl bands from this era that I really dug (funny that..) and I’ve got various holy artefacts to prove that they still sound great to this day.

So, what all this is leading up to, is that I’m planning to do an irregular series of weblog posts introducing you to the joys of circa-1998 UK girl bands.

And it’ll serve a historical function too: coming just before the internet became an established fact of life, but not yet old enough to have become ‘historical’, this whole period in indie/punk culture is shockingly poorly documented. Barely any of the bands I’ve mentioned above, nor the ones I intend to write about, have a wikipedia page or an allmusic.com entry, and I can scarcely find any visual evidence online of the frequently awesome fanzines or record covers from the late ‘90s DIY boom. So, like a true lapsed history graduate, I’ll do by best to share as much information and speculation, and as many no-longer-available musical and pictorial goodies, as I can get hold of.

First post will be up this weekend, featuring the long-awaited appreciation of one of my favouritest bands of all-time ever – no foolin’.