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

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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