Squad – "Red Alert" (Squad Records – SQS 1) 1978

And now Terry Hall also, has succumbed to the 'thing' that makes life utterly fucking pointless.... Death.

He did have a talent for conveying such pointlessness within his vocal style coupled with his natural deadpan presence.

Never a fan of The Specials meself,, however i did see them supporting The Clash with Suicide when they were the Coventry Automatics. blah blah fucking blah!

Oh sweet jesus, never has there been a band where the Tonic suited,Fred Perry and Pork Pie hat decorated audience all thought they were in the band,and Danced to order as their idols commanded.

Lots of Punky Bands started to bark shite like "Why aren't you Dancing" to the crowd....because we don't fucking want to??? If we wanted to dance we'd go to a bloody Discotheque wouldn't we? I'm here for the existential angst and the freedom to spill beer in the melee thanks. The Specials or Joy Division.....I know Where I'd rather be.

However musically not my thing Two Tone may have been,or not been, they were completely DIY in execution.,and incredibly successful at it.!?

Terry, was in the early line up for Coventry Punk Rockers "Squad"...whether it's 'The' Squad and not just the contracted version I dunno,but it was fashionable for record labels to drop the "The" at the beginnings of Band Names,like when Virgin insisted that The Ruts had to be called, just ,"Ruts", to be cool enuff for Richard Branson.

Terry was there, in "Squad", for about five minutes;but long enough to get a writing credit for "Red Alert",I don't think he got recorded, but the singer on the plastic does sound uncannily like him....Gus Chambers, who,i am told,is also deceased!? From imbibing  an accidental cocktail of his medication and alcohol...not recommended.

In fact "Squad" are a fine example of no-one is bigger than the team,as the line-up was totally different for their second,less charming, single as compared to the original line-ups...including terry, who went onto pastures during the first ten minutes of "Squad's" existence....presumably joining the Coventry Automatics, aka Special aka. 

As there were several bands called "Squad" in the UK, they could have had interchangeable personnel if only they knew of each others  being. 

Concrete Fly-overs, Lady Godiva , and Two Tone is what Coventry is known for, and Terry is part of that forever,the pleasant chap he apparently was....hopefully still is?

No, I don't own this record...its as rare as Hens Teeth.

ps....i'm gonna have to change tack...this is getting dee-pressing!

Tracklist:

A Red Alert
B £8-A-Week

DOWNLOAD and sound the alert...life ain't a permanent condition!? HERE!

Silver Apples and Spectrum ‎– "A Lake Of Teardrops" (Space Age Recordings ‎– ORBIT 016CD) 1999

What a nice career junkie Pete 'Sonic Boom' Kember was? Rescuing all these forgotten electronic heroes from the trash heap. Like Delia Derbyshire, respect due, Peter Zinovieff, and Simeon Coxe of the Silver Apples.
Recorded in Coventry(uk) no less,whose concrete brutalist vista's of fly-overs and piss soaked underpasses seem to suit electronic music far more than those horrible Ska-revival bands that the place is more famed for.
If this was the Apples fourth album,it may have rivaled 'Contact' as their best. A drug hazed electronic fog of bleeps,swirls and analogue sweeps that would have fit nicely tacked onto the end of an episode of Dr Who in 1963.

Tracklist:

1 Streams Of Sorrow 5:12
2 Sixth Sense 0:55
3 The Edge 4:17
4 Second Sight 0:31
5 Whirlwind 5:22
6 (I Don't Care If You) Never Come Back 2:36

DOWNLOAD from the lake of teardrops HERE!

Digital Dinosaurs ‎– "Extinction: 1979-82" (Hyped 2 Death ‎– Messthetics #207) 2003

Up the road a bit from Nuneaton, at the scene of Hitlers greatest atrocity of bombing Coventry flat and unleashing a wave of evil British Modernist architects on the survivors; we find UK DIY's version of the Kinks. Among the concrete flyovers,tower blocks and empty office spaces, somehow a group of young hippies spent their empty evenings writing dozens of underground pop songs and releasing them on cassettes. After-all, Coventry was famously the subject of The Specials number one hit "Ghostown", so patently there wasn't much else to do. The architects had conveniently forgot about people when they made their technical drawings.
Music from Coventry seemed to be a form of escape rather than reflecting their unfortunate urban situation,unlike in Manchester. They had to make their own entertainment and alternative reality, so we got the Two Tone thing (yuk), and The Digital Dinosaurs (Hooray). Even their football team were reflective of a a pointless struggle, constantly finishing a season one point away from relegation for thirty years in a row!......thankfully they were finally relegated,and are to this day languishing in the lower leagues.
The Digital Dinosaurs were always in the lower leagues of musical sucess, but are now slowly gaining recognition as fine exponents of the lost art of British Melodic Pop .
This collection cherry picks tracks from their early cassettes, and there's a couple of previously unreleased ones for good measure.(get more Dinosaurs HERE)

Tracklist:

1 Red Fire Engine 1:33
2 Fingers & Thumbs II 4:07
3 Dinosaurs And Giants (Too Many Tigers) 2:37
4 The Oldest Girl 3:08
5 The Sideways Man 2:23
6 Dessert Island Risks 4:50
7 Eyes Front 3:31
8 Have You Seen The Saucers? 3:21
9 Lost In Stars 2:50
10 Mars Telephone 3:12
11 Who'd Be A Turkey 3:31
12 Mesmerelda 2:35
13 Screaming Old Woman (On A Bicycle) 4:11
DOWNLOAD to save from extinction HERE!

Tangerine Dream - "Live in Coventry Cathedral,England, 4th October 1975"

I'll bet a pound to a pinch of shit that at least Chris Jones from The Sea Of Wires attended this famous Tangerine Dream performance in the rather attractive Coventry Cathedral. Built,as mentioned in the previous post, next door to the original Cathedral which was one of the many victims of the Luftwaffe's carpet bombing of the city's central areas in 1940. So, ironically, here we have a different kind of German doing something constructive in that very same city;doing something far more worthwhile than the British Modernist architects of the 1950's,who made the place into something out of A Clockwork Orange.
So for those of you what is interested....here's some major label Kosmiche Krautrock from the Berlin School of Electronics. These fellows were as influential on the cassette underground as anyone.Inspiring hoards of bedroom dwelling loners to pick up a synthesiser and make some fuzzy cosmic cassettes.

Tracks:

1. Part 1
2. Part 2
3. Encore

DOWNLOAD these nice germans doing good HERE!

The Sea Of Wires ‎– "Recordings 1980-82" ( Vinyl-on-demand ‎– VOD131.9/10) 1980-82 / 2014

As we've established in the previous post that Another view weren't from Coventry after all;here's an electronic act who were; The Sea Of Wires. Sounds pretty much like my music office here at Die Or Diy HQ.
There seems to be a few electronic bands from this west Midlands eyesore? I blame it on Tangerine Dreams much lauded gig at Coventry Cathedral in 1975, one of the better modernist buildings in the town. Ironic that a German group played there when it was their parents generation who flattened the original cathedral;the ruins of which are right next door as a reminder.
Sea Of Wires are obviously a very TD or electronic krautrock influenced combo,and ,probably as a belated sorry for destroying their city, a German reissue label has ..coff.....reissued SOW's back catalogue; although with a few tracks missing,but as usual you can find those on this blog.....HERE.
These versions are naturally of superior quality to the cassette tapes,so I have posted these for you to contrast and compare.....personally I prefer the tape versions.
An analogue bubble bath that compares favorably with a hit of morphine.

Tracklist:

Individually Screened

1 – Invincible 7:15
2 – Is The New Man Human 8:30
3 – Return Of The Captain 2:15
4 – Robot Dance 2:19
5 – Breathing 8:30
6 – An Endless Rainy Day 16:15
7 – Seascape 12:10

Diversions

8  – The Man Who Smiles 3:50
9  – S.O.W. (The Sea Of Wire) 5:50
10 – New Age (With Apologies To You Know Who) 5:40
11 – It Will Never Work 3:00
12 – The Nightmare Continues Edit To 3:00

Beyond The Edge Of Tomorrow

13 – Recollections Of Death 29:54

DOWNLOAD a sea of zero's and ones HERE!

The Digital Dinosaurs ‎– "Huh?..." (Spott Records PUSS 5) 1980

While we're on the subject of Coventry,we may as well check out other groups from that gray city.
One of the leading lights,and most musically gifted, of the UK DIY cassette underground,were the prolific pop machine that was The Digital Dinosaurs. They had beards(well...one!) and dared to write well crafted and melodious pop songs. Disturbingly they were quite obviously from that 'lost generation who were too young for Hippie,yet too old for Punk......like Joe 'Woody' Strummer.But like Joe,we will forgive them for that,although Mr Mellor will not be forgiven for being Posh.
These jolly ditties are pervaded throughout with a splash of 'pythonesque' humour,which is the only thing thats dated about this cassette.The songs ,thankfully are classic examples of  British pop songcraft that follows that fine tradition from 'Love Me Do' via Donovan to The Digital Dinosaurs,and still surfaces today. I say Donovan,as he was a great favourite of the Dinosaurs,but they sound not at all like the randy scotch troubadour.A more accurate comparison would have to be The Kinks in their English whimsy phase.Only The Cleaners From Venus beat them in the DIY world for such melodious joy.

Tracklist:
1 Army Green 4:47
2 Huh Prologue 1:00
3 Boots 2:55
4 What A Waste 2:42
5 The Man Who Would Not Live 3:08
6 Amy Turtle 2:44
7 Nuclear Nightclub 5:18
8 Pinkie's Flesh Crawled 2:45
9 Batman 2:33
10 Dinosaur Disco 1:35
11 Dreaming In My Sleep 2:31
12 Tumble-Drier Link 1:11
13 Tex Thistle 3:24
14 Superella 4:32
15 Secret Jehovah 1:35
16 The Girl Who Goes On Nine 3:21
17 B66 4BQ 3:11
18 Tones Link 0:19
19 Organs 2:06
20 Hole 2:51

DIGITAL DOWNLOAD HERE!

Stress ‎– "The Big Wheel" (Adventures In Reality Recordings ‎– ARR 014) 1985

In 1985, one of the worst years in pop music, Stress and Adventures In Reality goes plastic with a mini album. The title of which seems to mimic the atrocious Heaven 17's soul-synth atrocity "Crushed By The Wheels Of Industry". Stress obviously had chart ambitions, which is never a force for good in any medium. 
They had also invested in better equipment, used a proper recording studio,which results in a harder EBM influenced sound, and do I sense a sampler? Thankfully there's no Orchestral Stabs,or any "Oh Yeah!"'s;but a few Reagan samples and the 'Bagpuss wakes up' harp glissando. Anyone one who samples from "Bagpuss" deserves a medal in my book. I never listened to anything Reagan had to say at the time,and on the evidence of these samples the bloke was a complete prick! They (the USA) would have done a lot better having Bagpuss as president, a puppet with a heart who could tell a mean yarn.(Also 'Bagpuss' had a soundtrack that rivals 'The Wicker Man' for weird dark folkiness.)
On the subject of 1985 being one of thee worst years in pop music;......we now know this not to be true.At the time it was,but little did we realise that every year from 1989 to 2016 would be worse. 1973 used to be cited as the worst, but this is total crap; it was jam packed with prime prog rock (not including Yes or ELP of course), 1974-76 were markedly worse; even Can were shite then!
This album is very 1985 sounding,with sophisticated sequencing, car skidding and speech samples, thudding drum machine kick drums, and an amusing attempt to sing like the bloke from Front 242.
As a francophone, the tune "Slaves To Beat" never fails to amuse me, and the French in general, because in French the word 'Beat' refers to a male sexual appendage; written 'Bite' its pronounced phonetically as 'Beet', aka Beat (titter titter)......how amusing eh kids?

Tracklist:

A1 The Big Wheel
A2 Elizabeth Selwyn
A3 Get The Most
B1 Slaves To Beat
B2 No Sane Alternative
B3 The Price You Pay

DOWNLOAD and go down on the beat HERE!

Stress ‎– "Restraint" (Adventures In Reality Recordings ‎– ARR 010) 1984

Stress's next tape after their incredibly watery debut,was 'Restraint'.Which is ironic,because their sound before 1984 showed considerable restraint; especially vocally. There is a marked inprovement on this one.The vocals are marginally more confident,and the music marginally harder. Moving more towards the Belgian end of the minimal synth world rather than the camp English androgyny set. You could probably dance to some of this?

Tracklist:

A1 Engrave The Name
A2 Nothing New
A3 Raga
A4 Hide From View
A5 I Go To Pieces
A6 Semi-D Prison
B1 Down Through The Years
B2 Freespeak
B3 Enigma
B4 Rule Of Force
B5 The Pulse Thickens
B6 4th Dimension

DOWNLOAD without restraint or stress HERE!

Stress ‎– "Help Comes Too Late" ( Adventures In Reality Recordings ‎– ARR 005) 1983

Stress,is appropriate,especially if you are a Manchester City fan today......losing 3-1 to low-budget rivals, the mighty Leicester.Just gotta dick Arsenal next week and its all over bar the shouting.
Of course Leicester is about 20 minutes down the M69 from Coventry,home of Adventures In Reality,but also guilty of Two Tone;the first in a long line of forcing white men to dance fad's!
Luckily, Adventures In reality never tried to do that to us.
One in a long tradition of 'synth duo's',Stress, was Alan Rider's, head honcho of Adventures In Reality fanzine/Label, foray into the pop world. I assume he is one of those shadowy figures on the insert.
If anyone's ever been to Coventry,they will know what a despondency inducing,concrete clad, architectural atrocity it is.....post WW2.Once a medieval treasure ,second only to York,it was bombed flat by the Luftwaffe;and then finished off by British modernist architecture of the 1950's.
This would explain this alienated and despondent synth pop outing.
Its kinda like Soft Cell with even wimpier vocals; a Softer Cell if you prefer?
Its fairly anemic stuff,which is all part of its charm; Front 242 it is not,and very English. 

Tracklist

A1 Help Comes Too Late
A2 Work Ethic
A3 Love Mafia
A4 I Stand Alone
A5 Saving Graces
A6 Perfection
A7 Distortion
B1 Hiroshima Blues
B2 Crying In The Wilderness
B3 Tribal Rite
B4 Tin Soldiers
B5 Glacial
B6 Help Comes Too Late Too

DOWNLOAD without stress HERE!

Attrition ‎– "Death House" (Adventures In Reality Recordings ‎– ARR 11) 1982

According to Discogs, this was the tape that invented "Dark Ambient",which is ,as usual, total crap.That accolade probably goes to Kluster,or  at the latest Lustmord?
I'll use more from Discogs' slushy superlatives, 'Rich Shadowy electronic soundscapes......interweaving the ephemeral with the operatic'...what?......'gloomy atmospheres mixed with prodding beats;classical bombast melded with ambient noise'......there's more!......'enveloping listeners in a dense nebula'.
Put that sick bucket aside now, as this isn't too far from the truth. I'd write something similar myself, if I wasn't listening to Leicester City beating Liverpool 2-0 on the radio.So I might as well snaffle somebody else's pretentious waffle.I'd watch it on TV but the rights have been bought up by the ruling elite to sell it back to us for a massive profit.
"Death House" tonight, means the death of the working classes right to the stuff they invented to entertain themselves. At least we're fighting back in the music world by taking down the record companies. There's more music around now than there has ever been,and it's mostly free or very cheap. Reclaim the streets, and come on yee Foxes to reclaim the Premier League for real football clubs.

Tracklist:

A - Crawling
B - Dead Of Night

DOWNLOAD some classical bombast in a dense nebula HERE!

Attrition - "Onslaught" (Third Mind Records TMT06) 1983

The first release,a C-30 Cassette, from Coventry's Attrition(as seen on the Last Supper compilation from Adventures in Reality).
An exercise in electronic industrial minimalism, with a couple of synth's and a wellused echo machine. There's even an industrial disco track,'Shrinkwrap', which was a popular direction for many formerly industrial groups; and generally one to be avoided. If you close your eyes you can just imagine a sparse gathering of Goths dancing jerkily to this on a dark dancefloor in some awful club called the spiderweb ,or something just as naff, back in '83.
But the rest of the tape is most acceptable,if a tad over reliant on echo's for weirdness.

Many thanks goes to Alan Rider of Adventures in Reality for this tape.

Track Listing:

A1 Vigil
A2 Onslaught
A3 Shrinkwrap
B1 Tones In Black
B2 First Onslaught

DOWNLOAD Onslaught HERE!

Various Artists – "Sent From Coventry" (Kathedral Records ‎– Kath 1) 1980

Yet another classic local compilation of various 'too-late' Punk,Post-Punk, Punky Reggae,and Proto-Indie, bands. This time from the city that gave the world the punked up ska sound of Two tone. Wether this is something to be proud of, I dunno. Its due to this lot that we have to endure a myriad of punky-ska bands everywhere on the planet, with their irritating 'lets have fun' vibe. The repressing oppression of enforced jollity,is something to be avoided. I'll have fun, including Dance, when I fucking feel like it! As a 15 year old in 1979,it was depressing to see your former Punk Rock buddies become mods,or soul boys, and listen to Ska and Northern Soul; the polar opposite to what I saw as the musical progression of Joy Division, PiL and Throbbing Gristle. in fact PiL wrote a song about it,check out "Memories", not to mention "I was a Mod before you was a Mod" by the TV Personalities. The clothes were good though, but seeing a Specials Concert where the entire audience looked like they were in the band, desperately dancing like that superfluous member of Madness, was a sad indictment on the human flocking instinct;as abhorrent as a UK Subs gig at the time. What was the fucking point? At least Jerry Dammers was wise to the situation, as 'More Specials' was a fine album, in the classic sense of turning away from the 'successful' formula that record exec's crave. Now, a few of these groups had various Two Tone members who jumped ship before this was recorded.For example, Roddy radiation was in The Wild Boys, and penned the two tunes on this comp.Terry hall was in The Squad, and there are various ex- selectors, and other Specials connections scattered amongst the other lot on this,admittedly Fine LP.Stand out track for me being The Mix's "With You", a superior post-punky reggae number,that could have signalled greater things in another era not over-populated by similar acts. All this activity created in a city that some deem one of Hitler's (sorry to mention 'him' again, and please don't make any dumbass comments!) greatest atrocities. After the Luftwaffe bombed it flat, it let loose the British Modernist Architecture squad,and replaced, what was formerly one of Britain's finest Medieval towns, with concrete overpasses and underpasses, and Buildings that would not have been out of place in the Soviet empire and is quite simply an abysmally depressing eyesore. No wonder these bands had something to say. Crap football team too! (as a Leicester City fan, I have many miserable memories of Highfield Road in the M69 derby's of yesteryear; but it looks as though we won't have to play them again for years, as they/Coventry City, are dropping like stone!......quelle dommage!)

Track Listing:

A1	Wild Boys –	We're Only Monsters
A2	The Clique –	Mothers Never Know
A3	The End–	Panic In The Night
A4	The Mix–	With You
A5	The Machine–	Character Change
A6	Urge–	Nuclear Terrorist
B1	Protege –	Protection
B2	Solid Action –	Message From A Loner
B3	Wild Boys –	Lorraine
B4	The Squad –	Flasher
B5	Homicide–	.Armageddon
B6	Riot Act  –	Sirens
B7	V. Babies –	Donna Blitzen

DOWNLOAD from Coventry HERE!