anorak

I ummed and ahhed about sticking this in 'indiepop' but decided I would... to be controversial



I was thinking of starting a thread called 'did The Smiths kill independent music and then Alan McGee give the corpse a kicking with his House of Loves and everything that came after?' but that seemed like just having a grumble and this thread's here to celebrate



Celebrate what?



Celebrate all them bands what came post-Fall, post-Nightingales, post-Post Punk who cadged bits off The Swell Maps, bits off ATV, bits off Captain Beefheart and later bits off the Earache bands and the American Noise scene, bits from everywhere (Dub; The Beatles; Benny Hill, for instance) but the (what seemed) obvious (like sounding just like The Smiths or The Velvets)- who were all over Peel's show, invariably (or not) on the Ron Johnson label... bands who were aBRASIVE! pOLITICAL! mORDANT! aCERBIC! aNGULAR! aLL sKEENING gUITARS! nORTHERN dRIZZLE! sHOUTING! sLOGANEERING ('dEATH tO tRAD rOCK!')! cOMEDY! cONVICTION!



Bands like The Nightingales; Yeah Yeah Noh; The Membranes; Bogshed; bIG fLAME!; Eton Crop; Glaxo Babies; The Noseflutes; Pig Bros; Age Of Chance; The Shrubs; A Witness; Stump; The Keatons; Jackdaw With Crowbar; The Ex; Buy Off The Bar; Dawson; The Dog Faced Hermans; Death By Milkfloat; Pregnant Neck; The Stretchheads; Terminal Cheesecake and Bastard Kestrel, to name a few



These bands seemed then as vital and as necessary to indiepop as the bands that get constantly namechecked in hindsight now (Pastels, Wedding Present; Shoppies; Junies; Goshies; Primals, etc)

So this is just a thread to talk about all of them here and maybe mention some I've missed and perhaps to look forward to now and who'd constitute 'Awkward' currently (I'd wholeheartedly advocate Sarandon as keeping this particular spikey torch burning bright and incandescent)



I apologise for the 'Awkward' tag, if anyone's offended by that, I just felt it was descriptively useful- these bands didn't shamble, oftentimes they played razor sharp and tight and accomplished... seeing Phil from Bogshed perform was a revelation, this bloke moved and minced (not a perjorative term) about like the consummate showman he was, he made the wilting can-barely-stand-upright-let-alone-face-the-audience affectations of some of the more janglesome bands of the period seem like the limp posturings they obviously were



Anyone want to say 'owt?

These bands came just before my time (or I just wasn't aware of them) apart from Stump. But I used to buy those Peel Sessions twelve inches and marvel at these bands' names on the covers.

Any chance of a compilation cd, Andy? I think I'd like most of it.

yeh, I should be able to do you something...

A welcome thread. I don't care where it appears. The fact that it is here can only be a good thing.

I certainly don't know all the bands. I missed a lot of this at the time. A little like ALOC - I came along to noisy guitars in this fashion a little late. But I had countless tapes from the 80s - from peelie that had some of these bands on. Sadly never got to see many bands of this type. I like the awkward descriptor as well. It fits, awkwardly.

How about a podcast of some 'choice cuts'? I'd love to listen to some that I don't know that well.

i was busy being born and then under the age of 8 in the 80s so all this stuff definitely passed me by... but it sounds like this sorta stuff would be further up my street than a lot of twee/indiepop/c86/whatever folk are calling it now, to be honest.

The Membranes: ace. I still love the fact that John Robb from Gold Blade and the Melody Maker was a huge influence on the musical career of Steve Albini.

I'll have a go, previous attempts have always gone by the wayside

I'll try not to talk between the songs on this one or invent a cast of funny comedy characters who keep coming in and interrupting me while I'm trying to cue up another record

I was listening to the Nightingales last week, 'Blisters' got repeat plays, and this morning I happened to mention Eton Crop to another old campaigner and he got suitably excited too

I go through stages where I think this is 'the most vital music of my life' to other times when I think 'nobody else will get this... give up'

Some of those covers look remarkably familiar.
Did you pinch some from Flickr?
If so, I think they're mine.
:)

that's precisely where I pinched them from

gadzooks! foiled again!

Amazingly, The Ex are still going (for 30 years now), although last year singer G.W. Sok decided to quit.
They have about an album's worth of free MP3s on their website:

http://www.theex.nl

They also number Andy Dog Faced Herman amongst their members these days.
The Ex remain one of the best live bands I have ever seen.

I've got a few songs from that period quite a few of them from Comps that Crayola uploaded on his xPQwRtz site - so if he could be persuaded to reupload them that would be a good starting point.

I would except I've got nowhere to put them.
Tell you what, I'll do a special comp for anorak.
How about that?

strikes me as good... you'll most likely:

a) have a wider selection than me
b) get it done long before I do this podcast thing

some other names I'd lump in here: the sperm wails, world domination enterprises, the turncoats, the great leap forward, the mackenzies, twang, splat, the sewer zombies (have I covered the whole ron johnson roster now?)

I should say a bit more than listing band names and talking hyperbolics

I think there's already a Stump thread on here, but there's an ace Stump history on Kev Hopper's site, here:

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/kevin.hopper1/Stump.html

Rightio.
I'll get something together.

Urgh. Sewer Zombies. The only REALLY bad RJ release.
I've been thiking about it and I'll perhaps try to order the thing chronologically through the 80s and into the early 90s - might give it some kind of, i dunno, logic (?)

I like the sound of that, I was going to attempt a 'possible and actual influences on Eighties Awkward (for want of a better term)' sequence (if you will) but it would all be speculation on my part (fall/beefheart/pere ubu/fire engines/nightingales/minutemen?)

rhodri marsden's ron johnson page on his timewasting blog is very much worth a gander:

http://www.timewasting.net/ronj/

I remember Rhodri getting that together.
I think I may even have been sharing his house with him at the time.
Funny old world.

I've just remembered i played a show with the Nightingales about 4 years ago, whilst Pete from Gold Blade was playing in them. I wasn't blown away by them... maybe it was the sound, or the line-up or something, but in all honesty they didn't sound worlds away from early Coral stuff.

Judging by other folks' reverence for them, i should hunt out some records and give em a reappraisal. Starting point, please?

the first lp (from 1982) 'pigs on purpose' is probably the best place to start, it includes 'paraffin brain'; 'use your loaf'; 'urban osprey' and 'blisters'

the band trundled on until the late eighties and then reformed in 2004

I've not heard them in their current incarnation, I'll be honest I probably wasn't overly familiar with them at the time (only by reputation) but heard them later and made the connection with all these bands that I'd been listening to in '85/'86 and onwards

it's weird looking back to my youth as in '86 a record from '82 would've seemed like 'I can't do that, it's 4 years old'... a 4 year old record would've freaked me out...