Random Music Theme 3: Christmas Countdown

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OK, so it's a cliche, but what the hey. Your own musical advent calendar. Which means that you may be able to guess what the next entry is going to be...as an added bonus, all but 2 of the (proposed at least) entries are on the Vasputer, you have to spot which two.

But I'm not going to tell you what they are in advance. You have to click on the number, so, like a proper advent calendar, you have to do something to see the surprise within. I'll give you the gen tomorrow.

Your first door to a musical universe:

1

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One Dove

I can't remember when I first heard them. I think it was The Chart Show. I was however instantly drawn in to their come-down sound, reminiscent of Morcheeba or FSOL, but with more pop involved. It was only when I got their one and only album - "Morning Dove White", named after Elvis Presley's great-something-grandmother - that I found that the guitarist was Jim McKinven, of the greatest band ever, Altered Images. So it was all good.

The main motive force behind the band was Ian Carmichael, who ran Toad Hall Studios and had been around for a while, and the two of them teamed together with a musical neophyte, chemistry student Dot Allison, to form Dove, named after the ecstacy tablet. Unfortunately for them Thatcher's favourites The Thrashing Doves had just dropped the Thrashing from their name and so the Scottish trio added "One" as a distinguishant. (I suppose by the time Sub Sub changed theirs, everyone had forgotten.)

Their debut single was the gorgeous "Fallen" - early copies withdrawn and pulped following the use of an unauthorized sample - and it got the attention of Boy's Own Records, who threw them some money, Andrew Weatherall, William Orbit and an album deal. And that album did achieve some success; a couple of top forty hit singles. It could have been the precursor for something magic. Alas, Boy's Own got taken over by London, and the new management messed around with the trio so much that they never completed the follow-up album.

Jim McKinven is now a member of alt-country Wilson Tan and has become an acclaimed photographer. Carmichael still runs a studio and remixes from time to time, although his main occupation is as a lecturer in sound engineering in Manchester, and Allison has released ever-more critically acclaimed - but commercially unsuccessful - albums.

So, on to today's door.

2

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The Associates

I mentioned them when talking about Martha & The Muffins but they deserve their own entry. Because despite the claims made for those such as Carey or Houston or Loaf et al for being the greatest voices in pop, there is only one candidate. The late, indisputably great, William Arthur "Billy" MacKenzie.

The story started in 1976. Alan Rankine was an 18 year old playing guitar in an Edinburgh band called Caspian. Billy MacKenzie was the precociously talented vocalist in a Dundee soul band called (oh dear) Stan And Deliver. Caspian needed a vocalist; Rankine heard about MacKenzie; Rankine went to see SAD; he invited MacKenzie to join; MacKenzie auditioned with an extract from Pink Floyd's "Great Gig In The Sky"; MacKenzie, unsurprisingly, passed.

MacKenzie and Rankine teamed together in songwriting, and became such fast friends that they decided to form their own separate duo under the name The Associates. They formed their own label to release their material - starting with a cover of Bowie's "Boys Keep Swinging" - under the name Mental Torture; their promising debut led Fiction Records to sign them up, and MacKenzie suggested they change the name to Associates, after he saw the name of the Fiction publishing company (Association of Parry and Babson). Under that name they had indie chart success with their own compositions such as "White Car In Germany", as well as critical acclaim for their Berlin sound. (Confusingly they later claimed they were originally called The Abscorbic Ones in an attempt to give themselves a longer pre-chart history.)

After one album ("The Affectionate Punch") in 1980 for Fiction, fellow indie Situation 2 picked them up for "Fourth Drawer Down" in 1981, and that gained major attention. Demos of their future hits persuaded MCA to sign them up and promise them their own label imprint; the £60k advance was spent in two months, making the third album, the masterpiece "Sulk" - expended on experiments like immersing a drumkit in a swimming pool for that deep sound and copious amounts of marching dust - giving them their biggest hits. Including the mesmeric "Party Fears Two" above.

The masterpiece finished them. MacKenzie took fright at the sudden level of success, and Rankine - and the other Associates that had been brought in, like ex-Cure bassist Michael Dempsey, as well as Martha Laidly of the Muffins - ended up leaving. MacKenzie continued with the name, as Rankine relinquished his rights to it, as Rankine went solo. Both worked with an increasingly esoteric set of creative partners, Rankine with the Cocteau Twins and Pale Fountains as well as making three solo albums, MacKenzie with Yello and Shirley Bassey; however neither could ever achieve the commercial and critical success of "Sulk".

Depressed after the death of his mother, Billy MacKenzie killed himself on 22 January 1997. He was 39. Posthumous album "Beyond The Sun" made the charts in October. Alan Rankine now teaches music business studies at Stow College in Glasgow. Amongst his pupils were Belle & Sebastian - and under his encouragement they recorded "Tigermilk".

And now, uploaded just in time.

3

[Shireblogger]

From the sublime to the ridiculous, indeed.

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Professor Stanley Unwin

Deep joy. The masterbold of Unwinese on recordy soundy. Unwin fallolloped out of his mother's wombold in 1911, Southly Africold way, moved to Englandold during the first warbangy and became addicted to the radio set-set. Dammit, I can't do this.

His passion for radio translated into his career; he became a radio engineer and wireless operator for, amongst others, the electronic giant Plessey and later the BBC, including being part of the outside broadcast team for D-Day. His James Joyce-esque abuse of language - genius, in that it is almost, but not quite, comprehensible - started when he was reading bedtime stories for his children, which later became "Goldyloppers and the Three Bearloders" (as above) and "The Pidey Pipeload of Hambling" (the stories, that is, not the children), which were later captured for posterity on the album "Rotatey Diskers with Unwin"; the standout track on that album is the final one, of prog length, consisting of an improvised press conference where Unwin took on queries about music. When with his family on a BBC jolly, he was overheard talking his Unwinese by a producer, who decided that it should be broadcast, introduced him to number one radio star Ted Ray, who adored the almost-English, and the rest is history...

By 1960, his guest spots on radio shows had become so numerous that he was able to take early retirement from the BBC and become an entertainer full-time. Television and film expanded his repertoire; he appeared in Carry On Regardless (note Kenneth Williams being able to match Unwinese very well) and Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, and even had close to a series devoted to him - Gerry Anderson's mix of live and puppet action The Secret Service.

Unwin was very popular with musicians; John Lennon's work obviously owes a lot to the absurdity of Unwinese, and Ronnie Scott worked with him on occasion, but it was taken a stage further by The Small Faces. For their masterpiece "Ogden's Nut Gone Flake" (the album in a round sleeve to imitate a tobacco tin), Unwin was brought in to narrate the second side. Six weeks at number one followed. His other chart appearance, with rave act Wubble U, was less successful, peaking at 55...

Unwin continued with his guest-spot career for most of the rest of his life, appearing with acts as diverse as Jim Davidson, Roland Rat and Michael Parkinson, and being a popular voice-over choice for adverts. Unwin died, aged 90, in 2002.

How else can one finish other than with his version of one of England's greatest poets, Ruddigard Kiplode?

If you can barmy-coolers when others caubs you blamit'n take the candlow. If you can trusty-how when all suspissy-hocus, and onnyswarky molly pensers too … you'll be a bipeddey-male of the spiecie neanderthole. O joy!

(Incidentally, note the sheer spite of the music industry. The link I was going to use was closed down just before I was making the post, but by coincidence someone uploaded a new version literally the day before. Copyright issues? The track falls out of copyright next year...)

And for today:

4

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Robert Lloyd & The New 4 Seasons

Punk exploded in 1976. The Pistols, Damned and Clash toured the UK spreading the word; the seed was fertile in certain places - Manchester (Buzzcocks), Scotland (The Skids), Liverpool (Big In Japan), Northern Ireland (The Undertones) - but one area that missed out was Birmingham. Whether it was because glam and metal occupied the niche of doing your own thing and doing something loud, and that the alternative to that was evolving into the ska revival, I'm not sure; as it is, there was really only one Birmingham punk band, and their sole single was released after they broke up. The Prefects.

Lead singer/songwriter was Cannock-born Robert Lloyd, who answered an advert in the Evening Mail from a couple of brothers who had a guitar and drums. They were always a bit more advanced than the punk archetype (to be fair, so were many other punk bands; see for example Wire) - one of their lost tracks is one about the Birmingham pub bombings, the vitriolic "Bristol Road Leads To Dachau" - but they never got the chance to record anything before they broke up. At a time when total rubbish like Chelsea were getting deals this was a bit of a waste.

Nevertheless, most of The Prefects re-emerged as The Nightingales. Under that name they did manage to release three albums, and play more Peel sessions than any other band outside The Fall. Debut single "Idiot Strength" was out on Rough Trade, and they soon signed to local label Vindaloo; it was while the band was on that label that they participated in the Vindaloo Summer Special collective (with labelmates Fuzzbox and deadpan comic Ted Chippington) on the single "Rockin' With Rita", which, mirabile dictu, got to number 56. After 35 years in the music industry, this marks Lloyd's only chart appearance.

Was it because of this the Nightingales split? Whatever, Lloyd came back with his new group The New 4 Seasons, and had a couple of indie chart hits, "Something Nice" above being the larger, but after 1990 they vanished. I next heard of Lloyd in 2004, when it was announced that The Nightingales were reforming, and they have been performing life off and on since.

Not a major superstar, evidently, but without whom the music scene would be that bit poorer. And at least he added to the store of human achievement. No Robert Lloyd, no "Something Nice"; no Joe McDingleberry, no...hm.

And to today.

5

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The Fall

The world is divided into 2 categories. People who like The Fall, and women. Always the same, always different. One of the most iconic acts of all time, and, as mentioned above, the most Peel Sessioned-act of all time. And probably the only act ever to have singles dedicated to a dead pope and an east European football team.

There's not much I can really add to The Fall's legend, though. They have been well documented by the grumpy old man of indie himself in his autobiography - actually, two of them - and Guardian writer Dave Simpson, who undertook to track down every ex-member of The Fall for his book The Fallen. Between them you get a portrait of the idiosyncratic approach of Mark E Smith and how he sacks members seemingly at random. Especially if they get too comfortable. Smith works off the tension created in the band, laying down the basics for their songs, and honing them via performance. Really you need to get those works, if you haven't already, to make some sense of the wonderful and frightening world of The Fall. Although a timeline here gives some idea of the turnover of personnel. There was a period from 1986 when the line-up was almost static; maybe it's just coincidence that at that period they almost became successful? Their cover of R Dean Taylor's "There's A Ghost In My House" (I so miss the old Channel 4 chart show, sniff) ALMOST got them onto Top Of The Pops, and their most famous record - the proto-baggy "Hit The North" - also charted.

Since their formation in 1976, The Fall (named after the reference in a James Joyce novel) have put out 28 studio albums - the most recent "Your Future Our Clutter" coming out this year - plus 5 part-live and 30 fully live albums, a host of compilations, a complete set of Peel Sessions with all 24 of them on 6 CDs and 44 singles. Phew. The week of 8 May 1993 therefore becomes seminal; the only week in which The Fall found themselves in the top ten. When album "The Infotainment Scam" debuted at number 9. Deep joy.

Mark E finally made his TOTP debut nearly 10 years after The Fall's biggest hit. Guesting with Inspiral Carpets. A splendidly casual performance. Not unlike his Tim Gudgeonism.

From one legend to another...

6

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Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark

They're back. Many have suggested that "History Of Modern" is their best work since "Architecture And Morality". Not true. Because "Dazzle Ships", featuring the peerless "Genetic Engineering" (the video featuring the same girl who was in Mobiles' "Drowning In Berlin" video, I remember her as being a mate of Calley and Ronnie in Grange Hill), was their best work. For all its experimentalism into sampling speaking clocks and Communist radio jingles. Unfortunately the British music taste had shifted. From 3m album sales down to 300k. They'd alienated 90% of their fanbase...

And their first couple of albums were brilliant as well. OMD were not even a proper band, originally. Andy McCluskey and Paul Humphreys were members of alternative band The Id and used the name VCL XI (later a b-side title) for their more experimental side-project. Third member Winston didn't really exist - it was their tape machine on which bizarre false drum tracks were laid. They changed the name to the most pretentious one they could find, an old Id song title about son et lumiere, First single "Electricity" was released on Factory and sold 5,000 copies in the Liverpool area; not enough nationwide penetration to chart, and Factory ended up losing money thanks to the expensive Martin Hannett sleeve, but they were scouted by Virgin to go onto their Dindisc imprint (run with an all-female staff, at least initially) and started to have a few hits.

Their eponymous debut album inadvertently started the trend for multiple sleeves; the plastic-crate pattern did not change, but every time a new printing of sleeves was required, Dindisc changed the colours. To McCluskey and Humphreys' surprise they got queries from fans asking what the next colour scheme would be and when they could buy it...they brought in a couple of Id members (Mal Holmes on drums and Dave Hughes on synth) to assist; Hughes left to move into movie sound effects, and was replaced by Martin Cooper, who had contributed sax before. That was the classic four-piece OMD line-up that recorded second album "Organisation", which sort of included this track; it was on a seven-inch given away with the first 10,000 copies.

Then "Architecture And Morality" got them into the genuine stardom, and post-Dazzle Ships it was all downhill...for further information consider Paul Humphreys' brother Mike's book "Messages", named after their best single,but be quick, there's one copy going for 70p on abebooks and the next cheapest will cost you a score.

7

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School Of Seven Bells

One of my favourite songs this year, by one of my favourite contemporary bands. Funny, about 75% of the Vaspod consists of female-fronted groups, yet there have hardly been any that made any sort of chart impact since Blondie...

I don't really know much about them, only that they have twin sisters in them and make beautiful soundscapes of sub-Slowdive indie; comparisons with the Cocteau Twins are not inapt as Robin Guthrie has produced some of their output. Part of the Brooklyn scene that has produced other ace tweepop-influenced bands like The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart. Alejandra and Claudia Deheza were discovered by the guitarist in Secret Machines, Benjamin Curtis, when they were singing in the forgotten nugaze group On! Air! Library! (no idea if the !s were borrowed from You Say Party! We Say Die! or !!!, guessing not Wham!) and ended up as bottom support to Secret Machines and headliners Interpol. Like Gary Numan, the band composes the songs by getting the lyrics first, then the tunes. Their name comes from a made-up group of South American pickpockets; their second album "Disconnect From Desire" has made them members of an extremely exclusive club, that of bands who have spent 1 week at number 200 in the Billboard Album Charts.

Sadly they are now a duo; Claudia left in October, so I hope the two can continue the magic produced by the three. Claudia brought out a Bachelorette-sounding album with Scott Herren (aka Prefuse 73) under the name A Cloud Mireya pre-SOVIIB, so perhaps it genuinely is a case of musical differences. But I'll miss their harmonies.

8

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Juniper Moon

"Wow! This is fresh and sweet punkpop!" That's what it said on their album, and it was quite right. Whereas Pixies were said to have been basically quiet, then loud, Juniper Moon were often slow, then fast. Or sometimes just fast from the get-go. But they were lovely shouty punkpop all the time.

Alas I know eff all about them. Other than they were Spanish and signed to the wonderful Elefant label, like The School and Rose Elinor Dougall. They came from Ponferrada, up at the top left of Spain, gradually coalesced in 1996 - taking their name from a song by Swedish group Merryland - with various line-up changes and finally settled on a surnameless sextet of Sandra, Ivan, Dado, Eva, Raquel and Jaime.

Their debut single, "Volveras?" (will you come back), is perhaps my favourite single from continental Europe of all time. It even got airplay from John Peel. Their debut album came out in 2002 - "El Resto De Mi Vida" - and the titletrack appeared on the Rough Trade Indiepop compilation. The song linked above - which translates as eight months in a balloon, the mind boggles - was the b-side to their last single, 2003's "Solo Una Sonrisa" ("only a smile"). By this time Raquel had left; within a couple of months, they were no more...

The members have since re-emerged in other bands; Ivan and Eva formed Linda Guilala, others have joined groups such as Sportbilly and Spivak, but other than the first-named none of them seems to have released anything.

9

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Adam Ant

The reason why music today sucks. Not Ant, but the industry policies. It took a bit of time for Mr Goddard to break through; one of the punk pioneers, leaving pub-rock band Bazooka Joe to form his own group The B-Sides and then the Ants, it was after he engaged Malcolm McLaren as manager - and then saw McLaren nick the Ants to form Bow Wow Wow with Annabella Lwin - that he met up with Marco Pirroni, guitarist with the Banshees at the notorious 100 Club gig in 1976 which saw Sid Vicious "drumming" behind Siouxsie, and strike gold.

It was a race to the charts between the Ants and BWW; McLaren had advised Ant to bring in a second drummer as the Burundi beat was going to be the next big thing. The Ants got signed to CBS and won the race; McLaren concentrated too much on shock value - the extremely dodgy paean to underage bondage "Louis Quatorze" was a great pop song, but was never going to get airplay, and his advocacy in favour of home taping was calculated to annoy the industry, thus guaranteeing chart exclusion. Yet it took the Ants some time, on its original release "Kings Of The Wild Frontier" barely scraped the fifty.

But back then the radio used to PLAY manic-depressive American Indian-cum-pirates with two drums and scarce guitars. KOTWF is perhaps the most out-there song ever to reach the top ten, yet it became mainstream. 1981 saw all sorts of stochastic chart appearances, ska, fat men doing the Can Can, performance artists, even The Exploited - NOTHING like that would be allowed to succeed today.

The album KOTWF (the second for Adam) was a statement of intent. Us against the world. Nearly all the songs are about the band. Astonishing egotism when they had not been in the charts at the time of recording, but the swagger worked. Three months at number one. Yet even though it was a highlight musically all people tend to remember are the videos.

Anyway, fed up with the idea of the band, Ant disbanded it in 1982 and worked solely with Pirroni. Even though he followed it up with a number one and a couple of top tens, the public moved on to total rubbish, where it has stayed ever since. "Apollo 9" showed where Ant had fallen in the pop firmament; a great single, but instead of a lush, big-budget video with Antstunts, it looks like it was knocked off in an afternoon...

I met Adam two years ago. Very nice bloke, pianist's hands, and eyes that seem to sear through you.

Previous week I had had a cuddle with Clare Grogan. Good times.

10

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Curve

I have an NME from 1980 somewhere. For the Altered Images article, naturally. But there's also a mention of a blonde 16 year old called Toni Halliday who is being touted as something of a talent. It evidently worked, as she was spotted by a member of The Tourists. He made a note and when Dave Stewart started his Anxious Records a few years later he signed her up.

She was a member of the funkesque band State Of Play, but as part of that, and then as a soloist, she did not make much headway. So she turned semi-goth and reunited with Dean Garcia, a former Eurythmics backer and State Of Play member, and came up with something a lot darker. The link between shoegaze and house.

"Ten Little Girls" was their debut single, and featured JC001, the Irish-Asian rapper from Manchester who got some airplay on SnubTV (*sniff*). I've seldom heard a debut single that seared across my mind so much (maybe The Darling Buds' "If I Said"). One of those songs that seems to get better as it goes on, even the rap augments it, and when there's it reaches the coda I need a lie down. Oh God.

Anyhoo. Curve continued in this vein on and off for 14 years, concentrating initially on EPs, like a lot of bands of that era (see for example Mansun) - a great way for album bands to end up on ver Pops. In the end they recorded five albums of fresh material, before finally calling it a day in 2005, on the basis that the record buying public's cumulative IQ was about twelve.

Post-Curve, Halliday has been recording under the name Chatelaine (and guested with The Killers on their Christmas song), and Garcia formed the nugaze band SPC ECO, fronted by his daughter Rose. Dammit, now my favourite pop stars have children old enough to be pop stars...

11

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Spın̈al Tap

The greatest group never in rock & roll. Like the Blues Brothers and the Rutles, they started off as a one-off sketch on a comedy show, although unlike the others the show that spawned them was not a success. Indeed their original performance was simply a promo without the metal umlaut.

The project - Rob Reiner as writer/director, and Michael McKean, Christopher Guest and Harry Shearer (the voice of Monty Burns) as the band and co-scriptwriters (like Mike Leigh, the theme was known, the words semi-improvised and edited down by Reiner) - developed into a film in 1982. A whole history of the band was created, with references to albums such as Intravenus De Milo and other delights.

The inspiration for many of the events came from metal band Saxon, whom the Tap members followed on tour to get some insight into the rock lifestyle, and Shearer based his bass technique on Saxon's Steve Dawson. Although the Tap's fictional progression is more like that of Status Quo; listen to Tap's debut hit "Listen To The Flower People" and compare it to Quo's "Pictures Of Matchstick Men"...

There were lots of other influences, of course; Guest's nom de group Nigel Tufnel is a parody of Eric Clapton, his guitar technique is copied from Jimmy Page, and the introdcution of the band "from the depths of Hell" taken from Venom. Incidentally, it seems Black Sabbath took the inspiration for Stonehenge from the Tap, not the other way around, but Aerosmith's 1982 album "Rock In A Hard Place" had Stonehenge on the cover...

Unusually no commercial spin-offs followed from the film, which was only a sleeper hit. It took until 1992 for an album to be released, a more straightforward metal production, featuring "b**** School" (banned on the radio, despite the band claiming it was about dog training) and follow-up hit "Majesty Of Rock", which to me sounds like Magnum.

Since then, the Tap have reunited occasionally, for a world tour (of one gig) and charity appearances, and released "Back From The Dead" last year (an AC/DC influence?) and the film has been repackaged numerous times on DVD. And is still one of the best films ever made. The creators themselves have produced other similar mockumentaries, "A Mighty Wind" based on their other alter egos The Folksmen, and the dog show expose "Best In Show".

Incidentally Lord Vas shares a birthday with David St Hubbins. And Fidel Castro.

12

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My Life Story

I suppose one of the advantages of a thread like this one is that people will have heard of the acts. On the other hand it makes it a bit more difficult to write something about them. My Life Story, a cross between Menswe@r and ELO, had a fluctuating line-up of musicians popping in and out, but, a la I'm From Barcelona, revolved around one key motive force - former music promoter Jake Shillingford. Unable to afford a full orchestra to perform his pop epics he stuck notices at some of the posher music colleges to entice the more rebellious chamberists away to the evil world of Pop. He's still around and about, recording under the name Choppersaurus (with a line through the o), and most recently emerged writing the song "You Are Not Alone" with Dutch dance act Mason.

But what of the other members of MLS? (Not Melys.)

Well, on their orchestral debut "Mornington Crescent", they had:

Helen Caddick on keybaords - she went on to do orchestration for Shack
Harry Blue on bass - now a member of The Debutantes
Jason Cooper on drums - went on to join The Cure
Lucy Wilkins on violin - writes for Glaswegian theatre group Suspect Culture; sessionist par excellence, has worked with Van Morrison, Roxy Music (on tour),Paul Weller and, er, Martine McCutcheon; also a member of sessionists Millennia Strings, with...
Becca Ware on violin - has performed with Lucy with Tindersticks and Beth Orton, and, in descending order of musical worth, Boyzone and Jamiroquai
Becki Doe on violin - Royal Academy trained stringist, now a sculptress and tutor at the Art Academy
Rob Spriggs on viola - joined obscurists Copenhagen (with violinist Ruth Gottlieb, who sessioned for MLS on their second album) and later Stephen Cracknell's folkies The Memory Band, and has formed part of the elite Wrecking Crew Orchestra of session musicians (named after the legendary LA sessionistas who provided Spector's Wall of Sound and Brian Wilson's Pet Sounds), with...
Oliver Kraus on cello - who appeared on Duffy's "Rockferry" album and most recently on Skunk Anansie's Wonderlustre; and another member of the Wrecking Crew...
Roxanna Shirley on trumpet - who has also performed with the Wonderstuff
Billy Mowbray on sax - signed by George Martin (whose son Giles produced MLS at George's studios) to be an in-house songwriter, now records under the name ManOrMouse? - bassist Ricky Barber worked with Toni Halliday (everything is connected...) and Mark Richardson on drums has worked with Skunk Anansie...
Mark Bradley on trumpet - joined romo outfit Orlando before becoming a teacher

By the time "The Golden Mile" came out, the album which featued "12 Reasons" as the lead-off track, there had been some changes...Wilkins, Doe, Spriggs, Kraus, Shirley and Bradley were still present, but there were some other new musicians:

Paul Seipel on bass - no idea what happened to him
Simon Wray on drums - seems now to be with an outfit called The Kingpins
Danny Turner on keyboards - with a degree in studio techniques he wanted to go on the road, and when Caddick quit, he stepped in; later formed the band MacArthur who seemed to vanish without trace
Ruth Thomas on trumpet - session musician, worked on a tribute to Michel Polnareff a couple of years back
Nia Bevan on violin - part of the Wrecking Crew Orchestra and now in the Bristol Ensemble
Sophie Sirota on violin - session player, worked most recently with Bat For Lashes

...and a bunch of one-off session musicians who were not part of the semi-permanent MLS.

After five hits out of five for their major label Parlophone, guess what? They were dropped. Work THAT one out. Never recovered, but as you can see they've almost all found their way in the industry. They even reformed in 2006 for a greatest hits package concert. One thing MLS should be famous for - they released a download-only single in 1999...I think the first-ever. So far back in internet music history that it wasn't even in MP3 format.

13

[vastar iner]

The Besnard Lakes

Sonny & Cher, Peters & Lee, The White Stripes...The Besnard Lakes. All duos, all married. At least for a while. The Lakes still are, Jase Lasek (anagram of Lakes) and Olga Goreas, who met in Vancouver in 2000 and now live in Montreal. Unlike Lake Besnard, which is in Saskatchewan and where Jase and Olga spent their honeymoon. Bet it's a bit chilly there as well.

Jase owns and operates Breakglass Studios, and has worked with a number of Canadian bands. Owning your own studio is a Good Thing; it enables you to make your own music in your own time and to your own tastes. And the Lakes certainly do that. Three albums in seven years - "Volume 1", "...Are The Dark Horse" and "...Are The Roaring Night", all with the spaced-out sonic cathedral sound reminiscent of Sigur Ros or the psych-indie of Godspeed! You Black Emperor - the latter band provided some guest appearances on "Volume 1". The track here, "For Agent 13", is on the second album, the first of their two (unsuccessful) nominations for Canada's equivalent of the Mercury, the Polaris Prize. Fourth time lucky, perhaps.

No chart impact though as yet; the latest album snuck into the Heatseekers US album chart at 27, or 12 places lower than the Pipettes managed. Unlike "We Are The Pipettes" though the Roaring Night is a concept album, about a retired spy spying on a female spy and getting confused (Lasek is obsessed with spying, and there are spy songs on all albums, such as "For Agent 13", as well as Morse code and Conet project station numbers between tracks). Perhaps its time has come.

14

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14 Iced Bears

Somewhere in a draw I have a cassette that you could send for from the NME. It is called C86. It has the best in alternative music of 1986 impressed thereon. Not all of it is to people's tastes - Bogshed were never a favourite of mine, although Stump were (and are) despite the screamingly frightened reaction they get from other people - but some acts on there, such as The Wedding Present and WGA Fuzzbox AWGUI, did gain some mainstream success. The most successful band? The lead-off group. Primal Scream.

Thing is, although it represented quite a wide range of indie, the epithet "C86" came to be applied to jangly indie guitar bands in general. A genre that took of, to an extent, and dominated the indie charts for a while.

14 Iced Bears were doubly C86. Not only were they a jangly indie guitar band, but they signed up to do a single for the archetypal C86 label. Sarah Records. The Bristol-based label had started out as a fanzine that did the odd flexi, and became almost iconic for its friendliness and devotion to the seven-inch. The song "Come Get Me" was the Bears' sole Sarah release, but it found its way onto CD86, the 20th anniversary of C86 CD that came out four years ago (basically, you must get it). Once they reached Sarah 100, that was it; the label wound itself up. Original Sarah records are now quite collectable, ashamed to say I've only got three or four.

As for the Bears themselves, there's not much to say. Typical mid-eighties band, formed in Brighton, had a few singles, a couple of albums, plenty of line-up changes, a couple of Peel Sessions and then back to obscurity and the real world. Rob Sekula, one of the two ever-presents (with Kevin Canham), still occasionally performs. But at least they left a legacy of exquisite pop.

15

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Depeche Mode

Ah, the Mode. What can I say about them that everyone doesn’t know already? Not much, I’m afraid. So I will just run through them briefly for those who do not know.

This plucky band of synth experimentalists formed in 1980 from various other local bands, and named themselves after their favourite style of French de-fishing. They were signed by Hugh Abbott to his Moot label and found themselves with a top ten album, named for the popular electronic toy “Battleships”.

However, such success did not come cheap. Chief songwriter Vince Clarke’s ideas of music differed from the others, and he left to invent the Kazoo and become a Pet Shop Boy with David Tennant. He was replaced by Gene Wilder, fresh from his hit single “Break My Stride”, and the Mode started to have their songs written by Martin Corr – and move into something a little bit darker.

Their biggest success came with the gnomic “People Are People”, which won the BRIT Award For Stating The Obvious following a postcard campaign by Mode-ttes. Then onwards, the Mode became an internationally successful group, albeit one with a strong religious undercurrent, as albums such as “Music For The Mass” and “Songs Of Faith And Devotion” became giant sellers, as well as singles like “Personal Jesus” and “Enjoy The Sermon”, reaching number one in such countries as Timperley.

Unfortunately, the band collapsed under the pressure. Singer Dave “Rosie” Gahans ended up addicted to Calpol, and the other one failed to make the second part of the global “Erotic” tour. Corr was so despondent at the problems of the others that he recorded his own material with his sisters Andrea, Sharon and Nolan and had a few minor hits; Wilder went further, and left, leaving Mode as a three-piece for their ode to washing powder “Ultra”.

Since then, Mode have moved into space, hanging a mike outside their moonbase to record their latest album “Sounds Of The Universe”. However for tax reasons they have returned to Basildon and are busy working on their next album, under the working title “Paul Depechskisolido”.

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The Indelicates

As expected, it involved alcohol. The Basketmakers in Brighton, Robert Barry (ex-Worst Witch) and Julia Clark-Lowes (poetry junkie) were discussing subverting the whole idea of the girl band by parodying it, and went so far as finding a name - The Pipettes, which had the triple benefit of (a) being a real word, (b) having the Chordettes/Marvelettes sixties ending, and (c) hinting at it being an experiment. Rose happened to be there as well, spawning a number of forum jokes, and mutual friend Becki was brought in, and the rest was history...

Well, almost. Julia's ideas were more arch than the purer pop of the other Pipettes (and Cassettes), with songs like "Tie Me To The Kitchen Sink" and the Rabelaisian "Feminist Complaints" (language not for under 18s) being more her style. After the first limited edition single was out, Julia left, to work on ideas with her boyfriend Simon Clayton, whom she met at a poetry slam.

They called themselves The Indelicates and prove themselves to be far more scabrous and satirical on record than, well, most others. Debut single "We Hate The Kids" caused controversy via its sleeve, as you can see, and debut album "American Demo" - so-called because of the vague idea that every debut album is an attempt to impress American labels - followed in 2008. Their follow-up, "Songs For Swinging Lovers", came out Radiohead-honest-box-style earlier this year, and guess what the sleeve for that one looked like.

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Sex Pistols

I came very close to having Heaven 17, and unwinding their relationship with the Human League and A Clockwork Orange, but they're a bit more recent and maybe a bit more familiar. Instead I will take the opportunity to burst a few myths.

Firstly, the Pistols were not a McLaren creation. At least not the way Malcolm told it. The Sex in Pistols was meant to advertise his and Vivienne Westwood's Kings Road shop of that name, true; and McLaren was instrumental in introducing Rotten to the Cook/Jones/Matlock combination; but the foursome was not part of some McLaren plot to create a non-musical group. Paul Cook and Steve Jones had already been part of a band with the Stu Sutcliffe of the Pistols, Warwick Nightingale, basically doing covers, Cook on drums and Jones on guitars (often redistributed from pop stars' homes, notably Keef's), and had formed a very tight unit - Cook's timing was uncanny (which it had to be, given the Vicious involvement on bass later) and Jones is still in demand as a guest guitarist. With Matlock's experience on bass that he derived from growing up in a reggae obsessed neighbourhood, the idea that the Pistols could not play is a very, very false one.

They were lacking a lead singer, and Rotten was a frequent visitor (if not purchaser) to Sex, so McLaren suggested they get him involved; when asked if he could sing, the memorable response in that familiar sneer was "no, but I can play the violin, very well", and one mad audition later, when he screamed out the Stooges' "No Fun" (later on record), the Pistols were there.

Matlock was the chief tunewriter, and Rotten proved surprisingly adept at lyrics, so their first album was knocked off pretty quickly. With Rotten's arch sense of humour coming to the fore. When McLaren suggested they do a song about bondage and masochism, Rotten decided that instead of "submission" it would be about a "submarine mission"...

As it was, "Seventeen" is a misleading title as all too often the song was sung as "twenty-nine". It was basically about Richard Branson and his business practices. The Pistols were signed up to EMI, who then shamefully took fright after the notorious Bill Grundy interview (lots of EXTREMELY rude words live on Thames TV, and note Siouxsie dressed in her Berlin duds) and dropped them - yet another example of a record label giving up an income stream because they didn't like their own bands - and paid them £50,000 to LEAVE the contract (money which the Pistols ended up suing McLaren to get). They were then signed up to A&M Records, for about a week, when Herb Alpert got scared in turn; the Pistols ended up on what was then a fairly obscure hippie outlet, whose only success had been "Tubular Bells". Virgin. It turned Branson's label overnight into the edgiest indie around...

Of course, Matlock was eased out, by McLaren, in favour of Vicious, who looked the part, and the Pistols sort of coasted downhill from there; it ceased to be about music but chaos. No wonder Rotten got out before the dead horse was flogged to go even edgier with PiL (first concert played behind a screen). Not to say that the Pistols didn't have their moments; after Vicious killed himself, remorseful over his failed suicide pact with girlfriend Nancy Spungeon and hugely overdosing on heroin his mother had got him (jeez), Cook and Jones came up with "Silly Thing" about the whole thing (which also generated an unlikely Legs & Co dance) before changing their name to The Professionals to have another hit or two. Fact is, though, the classic Pistols only came up with one 8 song album - but WHAT an album...

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Bubblegum Splash

A real obscurity. I know next to nothing about this group. Indeed their recording history extended to 7 tracks, 4 of which were on their 1987 EP "Splashdown!", on the Subway label - a sort of sub-Sarah - founded by Martin Whitehead of the rather gorgeous Flatmates. Ironically "18:10 To Yeovil Junction" (note the Sarah reference to the Bristol locality), a sumptuous slice of simple lovelorn pop and their piece de resistance, did not make the EP...

The musicians of the group - Jim Harrison (the songwriter) on guitar, Alan Ware on drums, Marty Cummins on percussion and Dave Todd on bass - did like so many punk groups of 10 years before and what much of the C86/tweepop scene was about; they got involved in music via fanzines, they created one when at school. Nikki Barr on vocals arrived later, when she was wearing a Jesus & Mary Chain t-shirt in a Salisbury pub and Jim was so impressed by it he asked her to join their nascent group. They did a demo, sent it to Whitehead, he asked them to record an EP, and that's yer lot. One fractious gig in Stoke, involving a car crash, proved their end. Jim and Dave formed the not-dissimilar-sounding Jane From Occupied Europe, who made it as far as one album in 1991.

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