Published on
October 2, 2014
Category
Features
11. BRON AREA
‘Green Avenue’
(Ambivalent Scale, 1980)
A great, unfairly overlooked duo-cum-trio from Nuneaton, the three boys from Bron Area – Chris Dunne, Martin Packwood and Steven Parker – ran with the Eyeless In Gaza ‘crowd’. Indeed, their first two releases – the One Year cassette, and Fragile Sentences 7” – were both released on Ambivalent Scale, the label run by Eyeless In Gaza themselves. You can hear some of the ‘parent’ outfit’s intensity in the vocals, but Bron Area were far more denuded, plotting away the simplest chord changes on a tinkling keyboard, while a bass throbs in the background. They would eventually sign to Glass and release a 12” and LP – someone should get onto a reissue of their catalogue, and soon.
12. BUBA & THE SHOP ASSISTANTS
‘Something To Do’
(Villa21, 1984)
A classic slice of Scottish pop, this was the first release by The Shop Assistants, who would later go on to some degree of infamy thanks to their association with the mid-eighties indie/C86 movement, though like many of their peers they were made of much tougher stuff. On ‘Something To Do’, though, the group is Keegan, Stephen Pastel and Aggi (also of The Pastels), and the result is one of the coolest blasts of post-‘60s girl pop, Keegan’s guitar roughed up with the buzzsaw vibration of The Ramones.
13. THE CLEANERS FROM VENUS
‘Wivenhoe Bells II’
(Man At The Off Licence, 1982)
Where to start with Martin Newell’s long-running Cleaners From Venus? Another DIY group who’ve had their reissue campaign via Captured Tracks, Newell is one of the hidden jewels in the English pop crown, and by rights, he should sit alongside Robyn Hitchcock and XTC’s Andy Partridge (with whom he’s collaborated) as one of England’s greatest surrealist-pastoral pop songwriters. There are too many great songs from the early, self-released Cleaners From Venus cassettes to choose from, so I’m going with a personal favourite, one of Newell’s most tear-drippingly melancholic moments.
14. THE COLOURS OUT OF TIME
‘Rock Section’
(Monsters In Orbit, 1981)
I think The Colours Out Of Time can lay claim to being one of the greatest groups out of Crewe, just for their ‘Rock Section’ 45. A brutally unrelenting riff pumps the blood through the song’s very veins, while another guitar extemporises, near-freely, in the left channel, and the vocalist sings out such winning lines as “We are the rock and roll dead, we didn’t wanna die, we didn’t wanna OD”. Deeply psychedelic, it’s no surprise that David Roback picked up on the single and ended up covering ‘Rock Section’, slowed to a turtle’s crawl, live with Mazzy Star. The only other people I’ve heard talking about this single are Julian Cope, The Dead C’s Bruce Russell and Siltbreeze Records’ Tom Lax. Time to join the exalted crew.
15. THE CRAVATS
‘Gordon’
(Small Wonder, 1978)
Were they really neo-Dadaists? On this evidence, I can get with that. Let by The Shend, this self-released single ran on idiot energy, the giddily mad sax line coursing through the song as though it’s a pup just let off its chain. Given their cheery demeanour and Beefheart-ian spew, it’s no surprise to hear they were Peel favourites, recording four sessions for the venerable DJ. Their music can be hard to really connect with – the Dadaist vibe keeps me from fully getting to grips with their collected recordings, which were released on Overground as The Cravats In The Land Of The Giants – but they’re definitely significant.
16. THE CULT FIGURES
‘Zip Nolan’
(Rather, 1979)
From the first ten seconds, it’s pretty easy to figure out that The Cult Figures are The Swell Maps under another guise, bringing their pals in for a laugh and indulging in their kid’s story fantasies – Zip Nolan, of course, being “the highway patrolman… giving kids a fright”. It’s got the same antic energy to it as other great, off-the-cuff Swell Maps moments as The Phones Sportsman Band’s cover of Slade’s ‘Get Down & Get With It’, or ‘H.S. Art’ from A Trip To Marineville. But what’s that in the liner notes? “Any rumours that Marv, Joe, Barry & Howie are in fact Swell Maps are vicious and slanderous”? Yeah, right.
17. DANNY & THE DRESSMAKERS
‘Eggs On Legs’
(Weird Noise, 1979)
One of my favourite moments in unexpected DIY madness was watching The Quietus’ John Doran interviewing Johnny Marr, and having the latter make an unexpected reference to Danny & The Dressmakers. They might be best known (if at all) for gifting Graham Massey to the world – after spending time in post-punk funksters Biting Tongues, he’d go on to fame as a member of techno outfit 808 State – but there’s so much more to Danny & The Dressmakers, one of the finest exponents of “bad music” circling around the Weird Noise, Fuck Off Records etc. cabal. They released a batch of cassettes – this track is from their 39 Golden Grates – pitched in with various compilations, played some wild shows where their performance antics were every bit as important as the wigginess of their improvised non-songs, and generally terrorised Manchester for a couple of years: all highly admirable pursuits.
18. DEEP FREEZE MICE
‘Teenage Head In My Refrigerator’
(Mole Embalming Records, 1981)
There’s plenty to love about the Deep Freeze Mice, not least their arch-surrealism, in fine evidence on the title track from their second album. But it’d be a mistake, I think, to read them as any kind of New Wave of psych group – while yes, there’s definitely something psychedelic in some of their records, on sides like Teenage Head In My Refrigerator they’re mining the same seam as people like Bing Selfish, albeit with more liberal doses of humour. They lasted into the late ‘80s, releasing most of their music on Mouse Alan Jenkins’ Cordelia Records, also responsible for great sides from associated groups like Po! and Ruth’s Refrigerator, along with albums from like-minded souls R. Stevie Moore and Leven Signs (whose Hemp Is Here was recently reissued by Digitalis). The good folk at Scotland’s Night People label recently released a compilation, The Best Of Deep Freeze Mice – start there, and don’t look back.
19. DEFIANT POSE
‘Fight’
(Groucho Marxist Record Co:Operative, 1981)
Another blat from Scotland, this time the Paisley punk scene. There’s a good lot of rama-lama anarchy punk energy in records like the Ha! Ha! Funny Polis, the compilation on which ‘Fight’ appears, but there’s something in the slippery nature of the player – that drummer’s struggling a bit with keeping time, and the song is all the better for it. Some of these Paisley punk records were compiled on Michael Train’s brilliant Kilt By Death: The Sound Of Old Scotland (1977-1984) triple-CD set, and that’s a great place to start if you want to get a sense of what was going on in Scotland during the post-punk, DIY years. But you should try and hunt down the records on Groucho Marxist, too – they’re all beautiful shots into the void.
20. THE DELMONTES
‘Don’t Cry Your Tears’
(Rational, 1981)
More great music from Scotland, this time featuring one Bernice Simpson, who would eventually join The Pastels, The Delmontes were a five-piece from Edinburgh whose sound was deceptive: they could come across in the retro-psych zone, and there are elements of their songs that could have fallen off the back of a downer girl-group single, but the dark swirl of ‘Don’t Cry Your Tears’ gestures just as much toward the darker end of ‘60s psychedelia – indeed, this single seems to predate much of the American Paisley Underground, and Australian groups like Died Pretty.
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