Jane And Barton – "Jane And Barton" (Cherry Red – MRED 53) 1983

The Otway and Barrett of Twee has to be Jane (Lancaster) and Edward Barton who,like Otway and Willy scored a minor chart hit across several continents.Especially when "It's a Fine Day" got used on several TV adverts,including a very bizarre one in Japan advertising Kleenex Tissues......they're bloody weird over there!?

In the grand folk tradition of unaccompanied singing,Jane and Barton,but mainly Jane,dare to be minimal,and alone, in an unforgiving world.

A gentler Indie Pop version of Folk legend, Ann Briggs if you want?

Its like being sung to sleep by your mother.And just like the death of your maternal parent,they never return to do it again when you are a fucked up adult.

So we need records like this,where someone called Jane is your mother replacement for a very short 20 minutes,which is probably in proportion with the average lifespan to childhood ratio that we are saddled with.

So we leave the mercifully short Edward Barton vocal parts to remind us of being forcibly pulled out of the womb into this horrific existence,then......well....you know what comes next.

Thanks for that Edward!? 

Tracklist:

1.There Is A Man
2.It's A Fine Day
3.You Are Over There (Part 1)
4.Mmmm

5.Of All
6.I Want To Be With You
7.You Are Over There(part 2)
8.Ha Bloody Ha

9.Leaves were falling

DOWNLOAD your sonic surrogate mother HERE!

We've Got a Fuzzbox and We're Gonna Use It – "The BBC Sessions 1986/1987" (Cherry Red – CDMRED 213) 2002

Without fail,the best moments in any bands history are the first things they do.

As a subscriber to the "First Thought Best Thought school of hard knocks",this quaint attempt at Folk-Art philosophy  should be carved on the stone tablets which emerged when the rock'n'roll Moses rose from the swamps with the Eleven Commandments of Rock clasped under his sweaty armpits.

Another rule scratched clumsily on these holy tablets is don't sign contracts with any entertainment industry conglomerate.

Sadly, "Fuzzbox"...as they came to be known after they signed a contract with an entertainment industry conglomerate..., didn't follow these simple rules,and rapidly became rubbish. Sadly not the first time this was to happen, mainly due to the vulgar pursuit of the mighty Dollah!.

Happily these girls were avid exponents of the "First Thought Best Thought"(or even better No thought No Thought!) process that pervades all great art,and were captured in their natural state,once again, by the BBC.As were The Slits a decade earlier. Nascent Fuzzbox were saved for posterity by the public service corporation of Great Britain,while Fuzzbox were still a new born phenomenon, and still called "We've Got a Fuzzbox and We're Gonna Use It".

I did type previously that all 21st century girl groups are shit in comparison.One was just paraphrasing/plagiarising a fellow blogger,honest guvn'r (Creepscanner)....strictly for shock effect mind.

The rather wonderful Wet Leg seem to be reviving the lost tradition of Girl groups who just wanna have a jolly good larf,and what are you gonna do about it? Hopefully they will curb the tide of dull post-hiphop nonsense that make up the majority of nominees for the joyless Mercury Music Prize 2022.You know what I mean,the Rap Singers.You've seen 'em on the Top Of The Pops..they used to go on there,you've seen 'em.The Rap singers.Y'know,The Rappers,Rap singers.Round the back of the multistory,...The Rap Singers.......

The tracks in these BBC sessions are frozen moments in time when these 2 minute symphonies were in their raw primal state,like Lionesses prowling the monochrome Savannah lands of Birmingham(UK).....dyed Pink of course.

Peel Session-Tracks 1 to 4: ℗ 1986 BBC. First transmitted 10/3/86
Janice Long Session-Tracks 5 to 9: ℗ 1986 BBC. First transmitted 10/4/86
Peel Session-Tracks 10 to 14: ℗ 1986 BBC. First transmitted 11/8/86
Janice Long Session-Tracks 15 to 18: ℗ 1987 BBC. First transmitted 12/1/87

Tracklist:

1 Aaarrrrggghhh!!! 2:23
2 Fever 2:25
3 Rules & Regulations 2:51
4 Justine 2:09
5 Aaarrrrggghhh!!! 2:25
6 Love Is The Slug 2:16
7 Hollow Girl 3:18
8 Console Me 1:33
9 Spirit In The Sky 3:03
10 You Got Me 3:43
11 Preconceptions 2:32
12 Jackie 2:35
13 She 4:02
14 Bohemian Rhapsody 5:18
15 Wait & See 2:11
16 Self 2:37
17 What's The Point 2:24
18 High Hopes 1:04

DOWNLOAD from the rich savannah lands of eighties pop HERE!

Leicester City & Supporters - "Filbert Street Blues" (Cherry Red Records) 1990

             

Well, i've just about recovered enough now from the revelries of yesterday's F.A. Cup final victory for my beloved Foxes.So as my hangover fades I will inflict this collection of Leicester City themed aural atrocities.

These 19 tracks are from a time when supporting the foxes was a kind of masochistic torture. There were brief moments of joy, but it was largely pain,frustration and disappointment. A lot of these songs ,seemed, at the time to be overoptimistic and unrealistic;but nowadays,the lyrics of all these tunes seem to have come true.

Suddenly those ill-advised tuesday evening round trips to Middlesbrough to watch our footy team lose seem worthwhile.

What a fucking goal!!!!!(click to relive the magic HERE!)

I could spend the rest of this post slagging off the so-called big boys,but frankly they ain't worth it;just listen to Chelsea fans moaning about handballs, offsides, and how we were lucky....as in they didn't win so the other lot must have been lucky...pathetic.

Leicester are the peoples team,rather than a Russian Oligarchs plaything. Moan all you like and wish your millions could buy a goal like that screamer.....

We also have players who are brave enough to show support for Palestine as they collected their medals

Leicester lad Hamza Choudhury risking being accused of Anti-Semetism for exercising his freedom of speech.

This also gives me a chance to plug my much praised compilation in Tribute to Leicester City for winning the Premier League in 2016. This one has lots of local groups,rather than a bunch of dodgy fans.

And a much more in depth analysis of what it means to support an 'unfashionable',read as 'Not Rich', football club in England: Click this......

"Dilly Ding Dilly Dong: No-one Listened To Our Songs (a Die or DIY tribute to Leicester City FC) " - (a DIE or DIY? mixtape No.9)

Here's the tracklist for Filbert Street Blues,including a tune that's on both of these tribute albums,the prophetically named "This is the Season For Leicester", the the 1974 squad....produced by Trevor Horn of Buggles fame nonetheless!?

Tracklisting:

1 This Is The Season For Us
by Leicester City F.C. 1974 1:37

2 The Tank
by Leicester City F.C. 1974 2:45

3 Champions
by The Leicester Lads 3:33

4 Post Horn Gallop
by The Band Of the Royal Marines 1:53

5 Yes We're Back
by The Back Five 4:42

6 Oh Leicester City (Calypso)
by The Back Five 3:07

7 Follow The Foxes
by The Back Four 2:23

8 The Glory Boys In Blue
by The Back Four 3:46

9 Blue Army Blues
by The Bangers 3:39

10 Wembley Roar
by Kev Price and the City Strikers 3:49

11 The FNF Rap
by Filbert Fox Songs 4:05

12 The Filbert Fox Song
by Filbert Fox Songs 3:32

13 We're Going Up
by Blue Army 3:35

14 This Is The Season For Us
by Phil Bert & The Foxes 1:37

15 Flowing Tears (Wembley 1993)
by Kev Price and the City Strikers 2:54

16 Come And Join Us
by Steve Tilbury and the Blue Team 2:58

17 Frank Worthington
by The Joe Jordanaires 2:22

18 Leicester Boys
by Kev Price and the City Strikers 2:42

19 We're Back Where We Belong
by Ray Nardfox 3:23

DOWNLOAD from the home of the blues HERE!

Marine Girls ‎– "Beach Party" (In Phaze Records ‎– 002 1/2) 1981

Once upon a time,back at the Birth of the Indie Sound,which was specific to the British Commonwealth only. We find four sixth formers from Essex taking Young Marble Giants' minimal de-butched rock and putting it through the mangle, squeezing out everylast piece of alpha-male rubbish and flushing it.Also obviously influenced by the Raincoats' demasculated post-punk they were spotted by Indie group numero uno The Television Personalities,who released this on their own Whaam records as a proper LP.

Ok, so Tracey Thorn went on to adorn the coffee tables of the Thatcher 'loadsamoney' generation, but this was one big v-sign,middle finger, to all those butch punkers who,instead of destroying that uber macho Rock nonsense,carried it on,but with a sillier haircut. The Marine Girls were the unwitting pre-cursors of an indie pop future,you can't get Twee-er than this,but,oh, how they tried!

Kurt Cobain was a fan,as he allegedly was of Young Marble Giants also........again.....was he actually listening?

It's not his fault,just another victim of the American need to 'Rock Out Maaan'.This is also why the american Indie route led directly back to where it all came from.....Rock,but this time renamed 'Grunge' for some unfathomable reason.Long hair was back and feet on monitors,calls for seeing hands in the air were heard. In the beginning of the post-punk period,as Punk never really happened in the USA, all the groups wanted to be Devo before they reverted to type,so all the American groups were herky jerky Devo-a-likes,before eventually mutating ,maybe via hardcore, into Dinosaur Jr....which was thee proto-grunge band or what(?); or The Jesus Lizard,who were still Devo really,but Rocked Up and dressed down.

Meanwhile there were no Grunge groups in the UK,post-punk had gone pop,and all that was left were just twee indie bands,and nothing else until Ecstacy hit in '88....and we all know what happened then don't we.Stll living with the consequences today. Just thousands of types of 'Metal' and 'Hip Hop' are the dreadful result of all this chaos.

Recorded at the In-Phaze garden shed.

Tracklist:

A1 In Love
A2 Fridays
A3 Tonight?
A4 Times We Used To Spend
A5 Flying Over Russia
A6 Tutti Lo Sanno
A7 All Dressed Up
A8 Honey
B1 Holiday Song
B2 He Got The Girl
B3 Day Night Dreams
B4 Promises
B5 Silent Red
B6 Dishonesty
B7 20,000 Leagues
B8 Marine Girls

DOWNLOAD on the count of twee HERE!

Attila The Stockbroker ‎– "Ranting At The Nation" (Cherry Red ‎– A RED 46) 1983

A common double act in the backwater venues of the 21st century was Patrik Fitzgerald and Attila The Stockbroker. They even had a shared single together!?...I suppose the connection was that they were both in the 'Punk Poet' category.The difference being Patrik Fitzgerald rarely spouted anything overtly party political,and went a lot deeper lyrically.Also Fitzgerald had some tunes,whereas Atilla ponced around with a mandolin like some comedy folk act. I would have loved to slowly crush that bleeding mandolin.
Attila's less irritating side was his Ranting Poetry,which although tiresomely pinko,and reeking of someone trying too hard, was actually amusing in places
This is his debut album,which i bought expecting two sides of poetry, but got one lives side of ranting, and a side of terrible faux medieval albanian folk tunes that were....not to put too finer point on it...crap.
So, i've took artistic licence again and uploaded the 'Live Side' only.You'll thank me for it if you're ever unfortunate enough to have this clever clever 'ain't I post-Ironic' rubbish forced on you.


Tracklist:

Live Side
A1 Awayday
A2 The Night I Slept With Seething Wells
A3 Contributory Negligence
A4 Nigel Wants To Go To C&A's
A5 Albanian Football
A6 The Perils Of Stealing Half A Bottle Of Wine
A7 They Must Be Russians
A8 Russians In The DHSS
A9 Russians In McDonalds
A10 The Oracle
A11 Death In Bromley
A12 A Bang & A Wimpy
A13 Nigel Wants To Go And See Depeche Mode
A14 Russians At The Henley Regatta
A15 Russians On The Centre Court

DOWNLOAD some russians into your living room HERE!

Kevin Harrison ‎– "Inscrutably Obvious" (Cherry Red ‎– BRED 16) 1981

Cherry Red seemed intent on signing up everyone in Nuneaton.So, Kevin Harrison got his chance to foist his revamped version of his "Earth2" cassette from 1980 on the public,and called it "Inscrutably Obvious".
It's a very krautrocky, minimalist electronic offering, which reminds one of fellow Coventry area electronicists "Sea Of Wires", and of proto-house cosmic guitar legend,kraut, Manuel Gottsching's mid-seventies albums,or Achim Reichel; with a large splash of Frippertronics.

Tracklist:

A1 The Cantonese Detective Agency
A2 Some Aspect Of Music
A3 All Night Long
A4 Wooden Heartthrob Of Peking
A5 Chase The Dragon
A6 The Word
A7 Cyclotron
A8 Water
A9 Take It Away
B1 Flicker
B2 Stretch / 1
B3 Stretch / 2
B4 Horizontal / Diagonal (Live At Nags Head Nuneaton)
B5 M0903A
B6 Melodica Melodica
B7 People In Space
B8 Free-Float

DOWNLOAD HERE! obviously!

Eyeless In Gaza ‎– "Caught In Flux" (Cherry Red ‎– bred 18 + 12 bred 18) 1981

I didn't rush out in my school lunch break and buy Eyeless in Gaza'a second album of 1981,unlike I did with the first album.
There was far too much going on musically back then,and they had started to repeat themselves as early as 1980,then continued to do so.This album is a testament to that.
Basically its 'Photographs as Memories' 2, but without the hits.
However, listening to it now , compared to the incredibly terrible pop the kids listen to today this is Mozart. Full of the intelligence, energy and passion that the millennial generation seems to have none of......even when they're playing on their X-Box or Playstation. Obsessed by trivia in an insular world of 'Tech', and disposable triple albums for twerking about breaking up with boyfriends.
Such was the small demand for Eyeless In Gaza products, Cherry Red included a free 12" EP.But things moved fast in those days and they got lost in the milieu......funny how time seems to have slowed down, or is it because our own personal perceptions have sped up?...but art in general seems to have become stuck.
Musically 'Grime' is spoken of as the latest thing, but wasn't that around at the turn of the millenium(?), Dizzy Rascal and all that? That's not excluding the fact that its really just 'Hip-Hop',(which has been around since Eyeless In Gaza's Caught In Flux!) with a silly name featuring 40 year old rappers talking in that very silly accent where 'Th' become 'Phfff' ......I Phffink,Phffank God, therephorr I yam.....Nah,I don't Phffink so mate!
Someone was going on about how 'Rap' began in Africa last week.....frankly who gives a flying fuck where it was invented,the sad thing is that it can't be uninvented in Africa!......dunno how I got here but, it was fun.

Tracklist:

The Eyes Of Beautiful Losers

A1 The Eyes Of Beautiful Losers 5:25
A2 Still Air 3:38
B1 Out From The Day-To-Day 3:00
B2 True Colour 4:17
B3 Keynote Inertia 2:30

Caught In Flux

C1 Sixth Sense 3:30
C2 Point You 2:27
C3 Voice From The Tracks 4:00
C4 Scale Amiss 3:00
C5 The Decoration 2:45
C6 Continual 2:15
D1 Soul On Thin Ice 2:50
D2 Rose Petal Knot 2:10
D3 Skeletal Framework 3:30
D4 See Red 2:35
D5 Half Light 3:15
D6 Every Which Way 5:01

DOWNLOAD in flux HERE!

Eyeless In Gaza ‎– "Photographs As Memories" (Cherry Red ‎– BRED 13) 1981

What a great album?
I vividly remember spending my £3.99 one school lunchtime on this after reading a Review in Sounds. I thought it was by Dave McCollough,but no, it was Des Moines, the compiler of 'Hicks From The Sticks".....and guess what...here it is:

FUTURA OPTIMA
by DES MOINES (Sounds, February 14, 1981)

"This record celebrates the first anniversary of Nuneaton duo Eyeless In Gaza and simultaneously plugs another hole in the Coventry Nuneaton jigsaw already graced by the Reluctant Stereotypes, The Urge and semi-cult figures Pete Bosworth and Kevin Harrison.
Recorded and mixed very cheaply in 24 hours last July, the disc has a decidedly ‘live’ feel to it, a feel which guarantees plenty of atmosphere while taking its toll in terms of bum notes, fluffed timing (cock an ear to Bates beserkly-strummed guitar on ‘Knives Replace Air’) and recurrent instrumental indecisiveness. But that’s the price you pay for being committed to first takes and minimal overdubbing usually only one synthesiser overdub per track. The entire trip is excruciatingly intense, speculative and aggressive, and almost totally devoid of discernible influences.
American jazz-funk, Big Youth and Robert Wyatt are all professed heroes of Becker and Bates, but you hear as little of them as you do of anyone except Eyeless throughout this stupendously self-assured long-playing record.
There are a lot of flaws. Former R Stereotypes song-smith Bates has an extremely challenging voice but doesn’t vary it half as much as he needs to, and sometimes affects it so contrivedly it takes the form of unlistenable asinine rantings or else projects like an unsuccessful Louis Armstrong impression.
Usually, though, it’s just so for futurism par excellence. ‘From A to B’, ‘Speech Rapid Fire’ and ‘No Noise’ are three representations of how Becker (£200 Wasp synthesiser, voice, percussion, violin, stylophone, ‘treated tapes’) and Bates (voice, electric guitar, plastic organ, soprano sax) at full flow achieve their thoroughly magic melodies. Their formula isn’t easy to unravel. Becker’s uncanny flair for compelling succinct synthesiser hook lines is the conspicuous characteristic, but Bates’ imperiously evocative vocal is a factor just as crucial.
‘John of Patmos’, with a vocal line superficially reminiscent of ‘White Man In Hammersmith Palais’ and featuring Bates’ cliché crazy sax, is one that botches its pretension to ‘avoid entropy’, disintegrating into time-wasting chaos and representing Eyeless at their worst. ‘In Your Painting’ is similar rubbish, the musical equivalent of cycling over a canvas full of oil paints and calling the result ‘art’. Listen out for both of them nonetheless we rolled about when we heard them, they’re so ridiculous. They made us feel so conservative!
Sad that ‘Kodak Ghosts Run Amok’, the indie EP of ’80, didn’t join the other ‘Photographs As Memories’, a victim of the frequently misguided ‘no duplication-of-material’ stance favoured by your average left-field combo. But the highspots of the album are truly staggering, and it’ll be interesting to witness the band break cover from the false security of policy statements (‘It’s important to us that our music intuitive … we make music from pure feeling as opposed to analytical and methodical considerations‘ etc etc) get up there on a podium, take risks and sing for their suppers. Sing, in fact, lyrics like ‘Scratch at peeling veneer, worn unpolished. Carve more lines and refuse to acknowledge Praise up your figure. The Indian giver. As if it’s seven years bad luck just to look in the mirror’. (‘Seven Years ’)."

Yeah, I'll concur with that, saves me writing anything much anyway.

Just that it sounds better today than when i first played it.

Its hard to believe Martyn Bates was in the truly awful ska bandwagon missers,The Reluctant Stereotypes, with the truly awful future MTV 'VJ',Paul King of 'King';that truly awful group from Coventry who had a couple of truly awful hits in about 1985,and whose main contribution to fashion were truly awful mullets and doc martens sprayed with paint.....Truly Awful!

Tracklist:

A1 Seven Years
A2 Fixation
A3 Looking Daggers
A4 From A. To B.
A5 Clear Cut Apparently
A6 Speech Rapid Fire
A7 John Of Patmos
B1 Knives Replace Air
B2 Faceless
B3 In Your Painting
B4 A Keepsake
B5 Whitewash
B6 No Noise

DOWNLOAD these digital files as memories HERE!

Eyeless In Gaza ‎– "Others" (Cherry Red ‎– Cherry 31) 1981

Another Eyeless In Gaza EP from 1981 that contains interchangeable tracks that could fit on any of their early records,and could even sit comfortably in with the out-takes.Although these tracks could easily have been out-takes from the "Photographs As Memories" LP (up next)

Tracklist:

A Others 2:52
B1 Jane Dancing 1:02
B2 Ever Present 1:53
B3 Avenue With Trees 3:21

DOWNLOAD like the others HERE!

The Nightingales ‎– "Pigs On Purpose" +all the classic early Singles (Cherry Red ‎– BRED 39) 1982

Wow! How good is this classic debut album from The Nightingales. Its got the lot; cheap sounding weedy guitars played with amphetamine fueled  strumming, repetitive bass-lines, busy speedy drumming, intelligent and funny lyrics delivered amateurishly by that weird 'bloke next door' himself Robert Lloyd.
I remember "The Crunch(12" version)" being played in my local Goth club circa '83, and the dance floor was full of black clad whirling dervishes; I wish one had a smart phone back in those days!?....then it was back to The Sisters of Mercy and Alien Sex Fiend, and things calmed down(Yawn!).

The Nightingales also released a string of singles to rival The Buzzcocks on Cherry Red/Rough Trade/ and their own Vindaloo records.
Starting with.....:

"Idiot Strength" - (Rough Trade ‎– RT075, Vindaloo Records ‎– UGH4.)1981

"Paraffin Brain / Elvis, The Last Ten Days" (Cherry Red ‎– CHERRY 38) 1982

"Use Your Loaf" (Cherry Red ‎– CHERRY 34) 1982

"Urban Ospreys C/W Cakehole" (Cherry Red ‎– CHERRY 56) 1983

All these frankly Brilliant singles are,of course included in the file ,with just one flick of the trigger finger.

If there is a stand out single from this repertoire,then it has to be "Paraffin Brain" and, the fantastically titled, "Elvis, The Last Ten Days". I have restless nights worrying whether this work of genius actually made it to number one in at least one of the infinite number of universes that theoretically populate the wider cosmos. If there was actually a reason for the existence of the multi-verse (which of course there isn't!) then this single would be it......but then of course there would be a universe where 'One Direction' got to number one and have utter awfulness like The X-Factor,Rap Music and U2.....SHIT!...its this universe isn't it!!!!!????...FUCK IT!

Tracklist:

1 Blood For Dirt 2:59
2 Start From Scratch 2:24
3 One Mistake 2:40
4 Well Done Underdog 1:47
5 The Crunch 4:51
6 The Hedonist's Sigh 2:25
7 It Lives Again 3:01
8 Make Good 2:24
9 Don't Blink 4:03
10 Joking Apart 2:17
11 Yeah, It's OK 5:15
12 Use Your Loaf 2:07
13 Blisters 4:35
14 Idiot Strength 3:11
15 Seconds 2:50
16 Paraffin Brain 3:03
17 Elvis The Last Ten Days 2:56
18 Inside Out 3:01
19 Under The Lash 2:15

20 Urban Ospreys 4:26

21 Cakehole 3:20

DOWNLOAD all this classic anti-pop on purpose HERE!

The Reflections - "4 Countries" (Cherry Red CHERRY33) 1981

Another peerless Mark Perry related release, this time accompanied by Nag(The Door and the Window), Karl Blake (Lemon Kittens),as well as Dennis Burns(The Good missionaries),and Paul Platypus(Doof).
Not quite up to the standard of The Reflections LP, "Slugs and Toads", but still high on quality anti-rock non-musicianship of the highest standard.
Of note,it is nice to see uber-weirdo Karl Blake try his considerable skills in crafting an alternative dimension pop tune with the genius's of the genre/non-genre, nag and Perry.

Track Listing:

A		4 Countries
B		The Coroner And The Inquest

Download Four Countries HERE!

The Reflections - " Slugs and Toads " (Cherry Red BRED 22) 1981

Anyone remember Blind Faith? Well this is the DIY equivalent, the nearest DIY land ever got to a super group.Dennis Burns and Mark Perry from ATV or The Good Missionaries,Karl Blake from The Lemon Kittens,and The legend that is Nag,from The Door and the Window. If that wasn't enough,the sleeve was designed by Danielle Dax!
The music ,bizarrely enough sounds like that of all the aforementioned bands,but....erm ...different. There's a hint of the pop song about it,and in this case its a good thing, 'cus it works.A great album indeed,even the cover version of Rocky Erickson's "Interpreter" is great, aided greatly by the dulcet tones of Mark Perry.An overlooked classic of the genre methinks.(click on the mp3 sample of tightrope walker for a taster)

A1		Tightrope Walker
A2		Zigzagging
A3		Keep It Easy
A4		Toy Dog Ripped By Cat
A5		Demon Of My Desires
A6		The Human Touch
B1		The Interpreter
B2		Oh Baby, Look Out ( It`s The New Dance)
B3		I Had Love In My Hands
B4		Clamming Up
B5		Nag Takes A Ride
B6		The Parting

Mark Perry, Nag, Dennis Burns, Karl Blake, Grant Showbiz,
Justin, Michele Bonett, Vicki Bonett, Steve Tannet
Recorded at Street Level and Denmark Street Sudios May/June/July 1981

Download Slugs and Toads HERE!