Yesterday I went to the movies. I saw this trailer for (500) Days of Summer where the boy is listening to the Smiths “There’s a Light That Never Goes Out” on his ipod (or cd player, can’t remember exactly!) inside an elevator. There’s a girl too there, and she talks to him: “I love The Smiths”. And eventually they fall in love and you know… eventually break up. I don’t know if the movie will be any good, maybe it’s just another chick flick… but isn’t it a lovely way to start a movie? moreover, isn’t it a lovely way to meet a girl? I wonder why it took so long to Hollywood studios to figure this out!

Longing for something as fantastic to happen, and probably because of the influence of that gray donkey skin sky smashing the summer through our huge window, suddenly I felt arrested by melancholy. No wonder I’m stuck listening to this song a thousand times now. I just love (<3) this song. I just ask will somebody, one day, give Pat Fish the credit he deserves?

Here I am, I’m just lying on the floor with you
We had to get drunk, it was the only thing we could do
Well, it’s funny ‘coz I thought that it could have turned out quite romantic
But it isn’t like that, which is fine, ‘coz it means I can stand it

My best friend’s girlfriend… I’ve got a girlfriend
And you’re somebody’s girlfriend too
You know it only ever makes me down

Oh look, it’s easy,
You come round my house, give me information, then you go home
Well, it sure beats talking all that foolish rubbish on the telephone
But I don’t know about all the implications of all this,
I just feel so-so,
But it’s a measure of a feeling that I can’t identify
that I can let you go

My best friend’s girlfriend… I’ve got a girlfriend
And you’re somebody’s girlfriend too
You know it only ever makes me down

Something’s got a hold on my heart and it’s making me down
You left me singing
“Don’t sleep in the subway darling,
Don’t standing in the pouring rain, Maureen.”

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The Jazz Butcher – Girlfriend

Molesworth Records? Newleaf Records? Does any of these names sound familiar? Not to me. But today I pulled out from my collection this fantastic 7″ by The Nightjars which is catalog HUNTS 06. So there must have been 5 previous releases on this label(s). At least I can tell that this 7″ shouldn’t be too hard to find on ebay or other online stores for a good price. Now what about the other records?

So the band took the name from Nightjars, which are medium-sized nocturnal or crepuscular birds with long wings, short legs and very short bills. They are sometimes referred to as goatsuckers from the mistaken belief that they suck milk from goats (the Latin for goatsucker is Caprimulgus). Some North American species are named as nighthawks. Nightjars usually nest on the ground. Sounds interesting?

Actually, yesterday I was visiting a friend that is a bird watcher. He goes every Saturday at 5am to the Everglades to photograph different birds. Even though there are no nightjars in this swampy, grass river, you can find a diversity hard to match with birds like ospreys, hawks, mockingbirds, etc. But for me it’s hard to go and wear those huge boots and be target of all the thousands of mosquitoes that live there. But on top of all, I couldn’t wake up that early to go there. Impossible! Oh! And if you are into alligators and crocodiles, this is the only place in the world were you can find both living close to each other.

But far away from here, in Wistow, Cambridgeshire, there were five guys that were The Nigthjars back in the early 90s (and maybe in the late 80s; I couldn’t tell, this 7″ is dated 1990). Don’t know if they were into bird watching or not, but they were John Lindsell (vocals), Michael Green (guitars), Tim Slater (guitars), David Wick (bass) and David Fletcher (drums). This 7″ includes on the A side the song “Acid in Your Face” and on the B side “Hang Me out to Dry”. Did they release any other records? No clue. Google doesn’t seem to know much about them. I did find out that it was an NME single of the week.

And this is no surprise as Acid in Your Face is a burst of C86 style pop, very much in the vein of The Soup Dragons first singles. Yes, if you like teenage, fiery and distorted guitars, this is for you. And why not, if nowadays you like The Pains of Being Pure at Heart, this should be up your alley. Although, expect it to be more shambolic! The B side is quite different I think. It’s a bit slower and it’s haunting… the intertwining of the two guitars is brilliant! The vocals are a bit darker while the song is still poppy and catchy, like a mix again of the Soup Dragons and early Mighty Lemon Drops. I really, really, enjoy it!

On the liner notes:
Recorded at the Flightpath, Cambridge
Produced by Tim Harding and the Nightjars

All songs written, arranged and performed by the Nightjars.
All lyrics by John Lindsell.

That’s all the information there is. And of course, maybe you know more about them and you can share. I would love to get in touch with the band if possible, would love to know if there are more songs recorded or if there were any other releases.

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The Nigthjars – Acid in Your Face

Not very sure where the name Watt Government comes from. Not very sure about who were the Watt Government or if they released any other records. The only thing I know existed, the only thing that you can google, is this 7″. And maybe if you are lucky, like me, you can find a copy for a fair price. I’ve seen some Japanese stores sell it for good money, but it seems in UK it’s still not very well known so that’s your best chance to get hold of this fabulous single.

Among the people that carry the Watt last name and were related to some kind of government, I could find the Australian politician William Watt. But seems a bit strange that they would name the band because of this person. There’s also this news article from 1982: “Govt. auditors reported accusing Interior Secretary James Watt and wife of misuse of government funds; details given. Case noted involving their use of the Custis Lee mansion.” The headline for this news article was Watt / Government. Strange. Still doesn’t make much sense. Maybe the name is something much more obvious and I can’t figure it out!

Among some facts that are pretty clear to me is that the band was from UK and the record was released in 1986, our favourite year. Also, this 7″ has two songs, one on each side, my favourite being the A side, the catchy “Working My Fingers to the Bone”. The B side is good as well and it’s called “Waiting for a Phone Call”. It was released by Volume Records and this is number 18 in their catalogue. There’s not much liner notes but if it helps:

“Recorded at Lynx. Engineer Mickey Sweeney. Produced by Watt Government. (Special thanks to Martin Brammer, Dave Brewis). Re-mix at Fairview Studio by Mike Chapman, Roy Neave and Watt Government”

So what does it sound like? Japanese people would immediately label it Neo-Acoustic, and if that rings you a bell, that means that it sounds fantastic. Ok no, I’m kidding, it does sound fantastic, but that’s not a good answer. It’s what indiepop pre-indiepop sounded like. It does remind me to bands like A Craze, Tralala, Big Outdoor Type, Friday Club or The Moody Elevators. Very upbeat pop, with trumpets, horns, classy keyboards. And of course a girl singing. “Working My Fingers to the Bone” is without doubt, one of the best “discoveries” I’ve done in eBay this year. Yes, I bought it blindly, and Im happy that it was such a wonderful round plastic full of surprises, with fun arrangements like that whistles at the end or that “pop-pop-pop” sound at the start. What makes that sound? you tell me. I don’t have a clue what instrument it is. Then the chorus comes and I want to start dancing. The song continues it’s upbeat march: a very positive vibe even though the lyrics are not that positive. Gee! working your fingers to the bone? Maybe it’s a good message for these times of economic crises? Now it’s time to work work work! No vacations allowed because next day you may or may not have a job! Oh dear!

Please, if anyone knows anything or even a bit about this band, please share. I’m always eager to know more about people who made my day, who make life a little bit nicer everytime I put their music in my turntable.

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Watt Government – Working My Fingers to the Bone

Many years ago I stumbled, I believe in soulseek (Twisterella room maybe?), with some songs belonging to a band I had never heard about before: Boys Like Charlotte. I’ve been googling for years now and always the only entry I could find was a best of list in Twee.net where someone had voted for the band. I didn’t know where they were from, when were they around or who were they. I assumed there were no releases. The songs I had were tagged as demos. The song names were:

+ Cry Myself
+ I Say it’s True
+ Hiding in the Sun
+ Now That You Are Gone
+ What You Say
+ Through the Rain

These songs sounded very British, like those late 80s pop band demos. You know, these tapes that many bands recorded back then and now are totally forgotten or lost. Well, happens these sounds came from Sweden and Tommy Gunnarson, Heavenly Pop Hits factotum and future writer of the definitive book about indiepop in Sweden, solved the mystery for me.

Not so long ago I was talking with Tommy about the future Sound of Starke Adolf compilation. We were talking about Aerospace and their great songs, and that there was an unreleased song that for some reason didn’t end up in their EP. I told him how talented was Toby, that I loved his previous band Stevepops as well. We kept talking about Swedish bands and somehow the name Boys Like Charlotte popped into my mind, I asked Tommy if he had a clue who played in that band. “That’s Toby from Aeorospace as well” was his answer. Wow!

I’ve got in touch with Toby and asked him in a couple of emails about this fantastic and obscure band. Toby was very kind to fill in the blanks and share with me the story about the band. Here are some bits and bobs of what he told me:

As I recall the best songs are actually missing from your list; the fuzzy “Down, Down, Down” and three tracks of jangle that really want to be Happydeadmen songs.

Well, the reason there is no information about Boys Like Charlotte is because I didn’t have a clue about what I was doing at the time.

Boys Like Charlotte existed in two eras actually – the first one being from about 1988 to 1990, basically between two versions of Stevepops (with or without a drum machine actually, as well as in Swedish and in English) and then there was another era as stevepops folded about 4 years later.

The first Boys Like Charlotte stuff was done just as the Swedish indie (jangle/wimp/shambling/anorak/take-your-pick) scene was taking its first few steps. There was very few bands around; happydeadmen were the only ones that had released anything, and The Wannadies and This Perfect Day were still unknown to anyone living south of Skellefteå, all other bands were leftovers from the drab goth stadium era of Echo & The Bunnymen and (early) U2. The fanzine Sound Affects had done their first few issues and Marcus Törncrantz had advertised the sale of Grimsby Fishmarket. Red Sleeping Beauty and Acid House Kings were still in the bedrooms. There was one record store in Stockholm that stocked Sarah/Subway records 7” and I think they used to order 5-6 copies of each release; most often that would mean one copy each for Marcus Törncrantz (Grimsby Fishmarket), Niklas Angergård (Acid House Kings), Mikael Mattson (Red Sleeping Beauty) and I although I doubt that we even knew each other at the time and god knows who bought the remaining few stocked records.

We would nod at each other at Happydeadmen shows (as they were the only band that ever played live, we saw each other at the most strange places such as punk rock squats and dive bars) but that was about it.

I had no idea what to do with the stuff I put on tape – I probably did give one copy to John Boqvist who later went on to play keyboards in Aerospace and somewhere along the line he must have passed the songs on to someone else. I just put the finished songs on tape and then put them in a drawer and moved on. They were never properly packaged, there was no demo or anything, just one or two copies of the original mixes – and I just found some of those tapes a few months ago, so god knows who even transferred them to any digital form. So the fact that anyone, at all, even knows about the band is a complete mystery to me.

I think I might have done about 10 songs over those two years, all stolen from what I was listening to at the time; it’s just blatant rip-offs of The Darling Buds/Flatmates/Primitives/Shop Assistants done with borrowed guitars played through a minimal guitar amp set at 10 and an Alesis sequenser to power the drums and bass off a Roland MT-32. After seeing happydeadmen enough times I got myself an acoustic 12-string and proceeded to rip them off as well (and stealing unashamedly from McCarthy). I used go to the UK on my own using a eu-rail pass and pick up the NME/Melody Maker at Victoria Station and then just travel the UK for a week or two to see any jangle/wimp/shambling/anorak- band that was playing at the time (I don’t think I even talked to that many people at all during those travels, I was just too shy, but I did get to see The Sea Urchins, McCarthy, This Poison and The James Dean Driving Experience among others and they are still some of my favorite bands of all time) and when I came home I just redid the songs that I’d heard (as well as bought) to my best ability.

Most of the songs were total rip-offs; I stole the melody and lyrics from The Flatmates I Could Be In Heaven (“I wanna hang around with you”) for a song called Down, Down, Down. Looking back it was more like an academic course in indie songwriting than anything else.

In the spring of 1990 we (re)formed Stevepops and the anorak/jangle was democratically kicked out of the sound for our more punkish roots – the anorak thing was dying and we felt more at home with the sound of Mega City Four/Wonderstuff/Decendents/ Odd Numbers thing anyways. From a career standpoint it was probably a really bad move as the Swindie scene exploded (with The Wannadies, Popsicle, This Perfect Day, Brainpool, Cardigans etc) and we were on our own way star struck by skateboards and a very distant following of the US post-hardcore scene. Stevepops did their third ever show opening up for Fugazi and I still have the note given to us by Guy Piciotto (with the words “here’s the address to a friend of mine, he’s got a great label and would love your stuff”) with Calvin Johnson’s address. We never even though about sending him anything, we were more focused on getting a show in Gävle. Any interview stevepops did at the time was marred by miscommunication and a lack of shared culture. Indie fanzines would ask us questions about our favorite bands and look like question marks when we went off on the brilliance of Black Flag, Minor Threat, Big Drill Car, Hüsker Dü or the Descendents. And all the hc-kids ignored us because we played indiepop. As stevepops folded I got back to doing solo stuff, but it was a different era; there were tons of great lo-fi stuff coming out on K/Kill Rock Stars/Homestead etc, so the only thing that stayed the same was the name.

The second coming of Boys Like Charlotte was slightly more public – I played two shows (one in a corner of an apartment at a party way past midnight and the other opening up for Stereo Total) – and even managed to give away a song to my friends as a Christmas card (so there was a proper cover for that one song). The sound of Boys Like Charlotte 2.0 was the sound of Elliott Smith and The Softies only done really badly.

Then I formed The Shermans with Mikael Mattson, quit after doing 6 songs and 3 shows and formed Aerospace as a direct consequence to going to The Bowlie Weekender in the spring of 1999. The rest is more publicly known I assume. Thanks a thousand Toby! Hope I get to listen those 4 songs! I bet they are fantastic!

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Boys Like Charlotte – Now That You Are Gone

It’s been a while since I had some time to listen carefully some of my 7″s.  It’s a bit late and while waiting for the football highlights show, I chose this record that is quite new to my collection. I got it just a couple of days ago thanks to a tip from the wonderful Uwe from Firestation.

This seems to be a very obscure release on the Rampant label of Australia. I’ve already talked to The Odolites who were on this same label run by Bill Tolson. And if I thought The Odolites were not very well known, These Future Kings seem way more difficult to track down. This 7″ is catalogue number Rampant 048 and includes two songs, one on each side. Without a doubt the A side, “Bury My Bones”, is the star. It’s a fantastic jangly track. It starts with some great crystalline guitars, then a pounding bass, and soon we get to a fantastic chorus, and then to some trumpets, and then to the chorus again with some catchy backing vocals. And all along, while the song spins on my turntable, the guitar doesn’t stop jangling! Glorious!

This song was recorded in November 1987 in Melbourne by the band. So who were the band? 5 names appear on the sleeve: Charles Caldas, Mark Freeman, Steven Johansen, Claudia White and Perry White. Researching I went to find that Perry White went solo and participated on a compilation called “Lost Dog’s Show”.  I couldn’t find a way to contact any of the band sadly as I would really like to know more about them. The B side is “The Liar’s Been Found” which was recorded a year before, in 1986. It’s a fine track but, to be honest, it can’t fight back the prowess of “Bury My Bones”. This song has the collaboration of Warren Ellis, on violin, who would later be part of Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds.

There’s some more releases by These Future Kings that I still need to track down. Before the 7″ there was a self-titled 12″ mini-album released in 1986. And after “Bury My Bones” the band released the LP “Carnival”.  I believe both records came out also on Rampant Records.

Sometimes the releases appear on eBay and I think some Australian second hand stores may have it. So be patient and on the look. And of course, if you know the whereabouts, or any stories or anecdotes about the band, please share! A band like this, who wrote such a top tune as “Bury My Bones”, doesnt’ deserve to be forgotten!

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These Future Kings – Bury My Bones

Today I felt it was time for some ramshackle pop in here. Not very sure where to start, I went over some of the latest posts on blogs I frequently visit. I thought about posting about Juniper (as Skatterbrain did), but I think I’ve found one of the members and thought: “always an interview is better than whatever I can write about a band”. Facts coming first hand from the band are way better. Especially as I’m pretty sure the A Turntable Friend 7″ was their first release and not the Orange Peel one as stated by Matthew, but, who knows. Both were out 1996. I only own the Fantastic Records 7″. Anyways, moving on, because I felt like writing at 12:30 am, I went over some of those legendary tapes from the 80s. Why not, most of the bands that appear in them are quite unknown to me. And listening them again always bring a surprise.

Perfect Kiss are a very difficult band to google. Of course, New Order’s song is what comes up most, if you were wondering. The song “So Many Alike” that appeared on the Positively Teenage cassette tape is the only one I know from them. It’s an upbeat, ramshackling slice of pop, quite lo-fi, quite happy, a little treat. It totally has a demo feel to it which I find charming. I wonder if they recorded any more songs. I bet Stephen Almighty Pop! must know something else about them (or maybe has a demo tape in a box in his garage!), especially as he put the tape out and the address for Perfect Kiss, on the fanzine, tells that they lived in Durham, UK. Same as Stephen!

What does it say about them on the zine?

Ashley Staff – Drums
The only drummer to have a drumroll every five seconds. This country lad from Town Kelloe is never sober (or is that in time) he also has a wicked lire in Callini t-shirts. Compensates by being a good laugh.

Dave Hickson – Vocals, Guitar
Unfortunately Dave loves Bronwyn from ‘Neighbours’ which has dented his credibility. However his wicked song introductions and bottom wiggling allows him to play guitar and sing as cool as Ralph McTell. He is to the band what Cliff Richards was to the Shadows.

Paul Dixon – Guitar
Walks home in the t-shirt while its snowing. Only just joined so is not featured on ‘So Many Alike’ but his stage prescense will allow Dave to insult the audience. Achieves amazing amplifier distortion when he remembers to turn it on.

Martin Scott – Bass
Falls asleep during practices and often pouts, (but is usually chewing a Cadbury’s creme egg). Refuses to turn his amp down, probably because he doesn’t know how to, he also suggests cover versions no-one else wants to do.

And that’s all. But maybe somebody else can throw some more facts, bits and bobs, maybe a gig review (!), on the comments section! Always good to know the whereabouts and what happened to the members.

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Perfect Kiss – So Many Alike

This past week I saw on eBay the elusive “(There Is) No Refrain” 7″ by Harrison. How much did it sell for? US $201.50.

This extremely rare single, this infrequent round slice of plastic, this black and white sleeve with a girl and her jump rope, shows up maybe once a year on the bidding site. And then everyone tries to have a hold on it. Of course it depends on how big your wallet is and if you are willing to confront the mighty yen. Facts about the band are very scarce. On the listing it says it was released on  the Skipping Rope label (Skip 01) and recorded in Birmingham. And then I found some bits of information on my friend Jessel’s blog. He showcased “Simply This”, the B-side, on one of his famous online mixtapes. He wrote:

One of my favourite songs! Even my 5 year old daughter enjoys singing this, especially when the “pa-pa-rap-paps” chorus comes in! The band was based in Hinckley in Leicestershire and was composed of Mick Adams on guitar, Matt Price on vocals and keyboards, Nige Shephard on bass and Andy Hill on Drums and was managed by a guy named Mike Walker! Sadly this self released 7″ was the band’s only output…2 great songs! I hope they (the band) or someone out there have a copy of their unreleased music…I would really love to hear more songs by them and find out what happened to the band members!

Lucky Jessel that he owns a copy. He is spot on with his questions too. What really happened to the band members! Where did they go?  were they involved with other bands? how do they feel about the prices their 7″ sells on eBay? or just to know how many records were pressed? It’s so rare that it seems only 50 were pressed!

I’m fonder to the A-side though! (There Is) No Refrain is such a wonderful song! Listen it yourself (that fantastic galloping bass lines… so good!). If you know anything else about this fantastic single, or about the whereabouts of the band members please share! A band like this can’t fall into oblivion!

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Harrison – (There Is) No Refrain

Some time ago I wrote about Perth’s Stolen Picassos. I asked then if they had anything to do with The Picasso Twins. And the answer is yes. All this Picasso fanatism comes from Martin Gamble, the guitar player and vocalist of both bands. Which came first? The Stolen Picassos who were around more or less from August 1986 to May 1988 according to the Party Fears fanzine’s “Rickenbackers Revenge” (The Perth pop scene family tree). After the Stolen Picassos were over, Sandra Morgan, the vocalist, and Martin Gamble decided to keep on going, after the demise of Graham Hope (who I believe joined The Summer Suns at this moment) and form what would be The Picasso Twins.

There’s more to the story of course, there was a time when Martin collaborated with Ian Freeman from The Palisades and called their band The Pelicassos Brothers. Also during the early nineties, after The Picasso Twins, Martin went to record as The Mardi Picasso. But I don’t want to branch out too much, maybe leave these bands for future posts. Focus back on The Picasso Twins, on Martin and Sandra. I’d guess they were dating, though this is none of my business, right. What is, for sure, my business is that they released a tape album called “Some Mardi Sandwich” which included 12 songs. These are very very short songs, some of them lasting for a minute, some less than that, and none past the 3 minute mark. They are mostly acoustic songs and barely there’s any percussion. These are lovely little bits, but I won’t recommend them to you if you are going to go jogging around the park. The Picasso Twins are for a locked in Sunday, and if you have rain, even better.

The tracklist of the tape is as follows:
01. We All Fell Down
02. Let Sleeping Dogs Lie
03. Maybe I Will
04. In a Vice
05. Too Close
06. Grin and Bare it
07. Listen to Me
08. You Took My Head
09. Slender Waste
10. Great Expectations
11. Lie Until Down
12. One Into Three

And sorry, no rapidshare link. :p

Around early 1989, Martin and Sandra decided to leave Perth and relocate in Sydney. Something must have went wrong there as they split up soon after. That was it for The Picasso Twins. They only lasted a year. Martin went back to Perth and started to record on his own. On the other hand Sandra stayed in Sydney and teamed up with Ian Freeman (from Palisades, Pelicassos Brothers, Peppermint Drops, Mars Bastards) and started a short lived project called Flowerburger, not sure if they ever recorded anything.

Fast forward 20 years later. What happened to them? No clue. Would be nice to know their whereabouts and interview them!

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The Picasso Twins – Lie Until Down

After another round of cutting and pasting Cloudberry sleeves I decided it was time to do some vinyl ripping. It’s been a while since I used my USB turntable. The slow morning (though I should answer a couple of emails!) invited me to go through and rummage around the 7″ boxes I have in my room. Earlier I’ve been putting together some artwork for the next split single. It’s fantastic. Also finished all the small posters for the new Cloudberry Classics CD, The Proctors, should be out any moment (you can pre-order now if you’d like and you can listen Black Tattoos streaming on the Myspace page). Also talked with some amazing bands for future interviews, so keep tuned to this humble blog.

Back to lost bands. The 7″ that I chose today for this Saturday morning comes courtesy of Avalanche Records, though they forgot to write which was the catalog number. I’d guess the band comes from Scotland too. Did Avalanche release any band that weren’t Scottish?  Having a look on the threefold sleeve, Riverhead was formed by Michael Doran, Rod White, Richard Conte and Ady Powers. It includes lyrics for both songs contained in this single sided 7″. Yeah, two songs on the A side which are “Was Away” and “Haddit”.  It also lists some other releases by the band (which are not listed in Twee.net):

• Alpharetta – which is a 12″ record that includes four songs, Looking At The Sky, She Can, Strange and My Turn. This is AGAP 005
• Haddit – another 4 track EP. This is AVA 001. Don’t know which songs were included, though I guess Haddit is one of them.
• And lastly it lists two T-shirts to buy, each for 6 pounds, one for Haddit and one for Was Away. Was it the same design as the sleeve covers?

Some more evidence that the band could/must be Scottish is that this 7″ was recorded in Funny Farm Studios, in Haddington. That’s quite close to Edinburgh.

Where does the name come from? The only Riverhead town I found in UK, is in Kent in England. There’s a Riverhead in New York state and also one in New Zealand and in Canada. There’s a Riverhead Books, a subdivision of Penguin Books USA that published the Kurt Cobain diaries… that can’t be either, right?

I don’t think this 7″ is scarce at all. I think you can find it on eBay easily. I recommend getting it for the great c-86ish, Leamington Spa sounding, “Was Away”. What a great song it is. Sadly there’s no information online about them. If you know their whereabouts, or what did they do after or before Riverhead… or maybe if there are more releases, let me know! I’d love to hear more from this band!

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Riverhead – Was Away

For a couple of years I always wondered who were The Doris Days. The last week I’ve got to know much more about them that I could imagine. I thought there was no chance to find anything about them aside from the fantastic “Another Day” that appeared on the ‘Uncle Arthur’s Pop Parlour’ compilation tape. First it was Uwe Firestation who told me that some members of the band formed Pacific, that great pop band that left a couple of records on Creation and a favourite song of mine, Barnoon Hill. Also he told me that there were plans for a Doris Days single on Grant Lyons’ ‘La Di Da’ label. It never happened and their only demo was elusive for him and me.

Since the first time I listened “Another Day” I was hooked. I knew this band had that something, that they must have got some great tunes hiding somewhere. It is surprising they didn’t release anything, the quality of this song ask for justice, for it to be a single of it’s own. Come on, at least a flexi!

Doris Mary Anne von Kappelhoff was the real name of Doris Day. She was born in 1924 and she is still alive. Did she knows there was a band in the 80s, on the other side of the Atlantic, that were named after her? She was quite popular indeed and our Doris Days weren’t that much. She was nominated to the Oscars back in the day for her song ‘Secret Love’ which appeared in a movie that she acted as well, “Calamity Jane” (1953). Talking of which… this weekend the Oscars are happening again and I’m not very excited by the movies that are nominated. I think, to start, it is disheartening that Benjamin Button is among the nominees. It’s not a bad movie, but it’s not great at all. In any case, there has been better motion pictures this past 2008. Oh well, the excuse is that America needs a new life-affirming movie, a new parable for these hard times. But giving it a nomination, I think, is too much. Aging backwards? Hmm. Let’s talk about this on Monday after we know who won. Now to “another day”, to our Doris Days.

This past week I got in touch with the great Dave Driscoll who put out the ‘Uncle Arthur’s Pop Parlour Tape’ and asked him many times about The Doris Days (sorry about that!). And what he did, is something to thank him forever! He has rescued a live gig of The Doris Days from one of his many tapes! A wonderful 8 song set at The Basement, a club in Brighton on October the 24th, 1987. That night they were supporting my favourite band ever, McCarthy! These recordings are something no one that loves pop should miss! Where to find it? Well, if you see the blogroll here there’s a blog called “Fruitier Than Thou” (any similarities to a Househunters song is pure coincidence). You just have to click there and you’ll end up at the fantastic blog that Dave runs. The Doris Days’ gig should be his last post. Listen carefully to great tracks as “No Time For Feeling Sad” (love the ‘I don’t believe it’ comment on the middle of the song!) or the trumpet driven “Feet Stuck Sound”. I wonder which of these were recorded in the demo!

On his blog, Dave gives us some details of the whereabouts of a member of the band, Dennis, who now is in a band called Shrift. I’ll try to get in touch with him! I’d die to ask him some questions about the band! And what about that the La Di Da single was going to actually be a split 7″ with all-time favourites The June Brides! I think it would have been a killer single, both bands, I believe, would have complemented perfectly. How wonderful would it be to rewind time and make Grant release this record. Both bands gorgeous trumpets on vinyl. Ebayers today would go ape for it!

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Listen
The Doris Days – Another Day