There are a couple of tracks from the US based band Paris Working on Soundcloud. They are on an account by someone under the alias of whoopingkafka. What can we find out about this band?

The tracks are “Faith” and “Baby Camille“. Both are good tracks, but I must say that my favourite is the latter, it is more poppy. The songs also date from early in the 80s, before indiepop was even born, so keep that in mind.

“Faith” was recorded in 1982 at Tom Mallon Studios. Where is that? According to Discogs it was located in San Francisco. We know that the song was produced by Peter Woods and Michael Belfer. On top of it all we also have the names of the people that were part of the recording.

Gregory Griffith was on vocals and guitar, Paul Ramont on vocals and guitar, Dan Magazin on backing vocals and keys, Steve Winkle on bass, Richard Doty on drums, Benjami Bossi and Norman Salant both on sax. Safe to assume the band was formed by Gregory, Paul, Dan, Steve and Richard?

I look for more info. I find that the name Paris Working is most probably named after a period of intense ritual involving strong drug use in which the gods Mercury and Jupiter are invoked. Is that so?

Discogs has a 12″ vinyl listed dating from 1983. It is a self-titled release and is listed as a goth rock, synth-pop, minimal EP. It came out on Fatal Marble Records (FM 001). This is the only release on this label, could it be a self-release?

The tracks on it are “Movies of You”, “Everything is Coming After” and “Pieces of Heaven” on the A side and “Sleep” and “The Film of Breakdown” on the B side. Now the band members include Ken Weller on bass. We also see two new drummers listed, Phil Hertz and Dave Carothers (who is credited as a guest, thanking his other band Mutants). The producer for the record was Steve Fisk. The engineers were Dr Bob and Gary Clayton. the songs were recorded at the Tom Mallon Studios again.

Some of these songs are on Youtube as well as some other that are unreleased and they are good. Here are “Pieces of Heaven“, “Everything is Coming After“, “Sleep“, “It’s a Wonderful Life“, “Staples“, “Movies of You“.

I look if the band members had been in other bands. Dan Magazin had been in Surface Music, Gregory Griffith on Martian Lamps, Ken Weller on Seven Day Diary and Voice Farm, Phil Hertz on Scientists.

The band also appeared on compilations. Their song “Sleep” was on the tape compilation “Sub Pop 9” released by Sub Pop(S/Pop 9) in 1983. Then “Downtown” was on “On-Slaught No. 6” a 1985 cassette comp released by Idiosyncratics. This was a tape that came accompanying the 6th issue of On-Slaught magazine. Lastly the track “I Won’t be Dancing” appeared on the German vinyl compilation “Voices from North America” that was released by Temporary Music (TM001) in 1986.

I learn too that the band hailed from Berkeley, close to San Francisco, in California.

There seems to be another band of the same name hailing from the UK. So it is a bit difficult not to confuse some of the info online. But I am confident what I shared is correct.

So I wonder, what other information we can find about them? They had some very good songs, and you wonder why their name is not more known. Did they play live much? Did they play outside of California? Anyone remembers them?

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Listen
Paris Working – Pieces of Heaven

Benton is a city in and the county seat of Franklin County, Illinois. The population was 6,709 at the 2020 census. In 1839, Franklin County was split roughly in half and the county seat was permanently fixed “at a hill at the south end of Rowling’s Prairie”, the site of the future city of Benton. Benton’s namesake is Missouri senator Thomas Hart Benton. The village of Benton was organized in 1841 on 20 acres (8.1 ha) of property donated by John Ewing and Walter S. Akin. In 1902, the village became a city, and incorporated under the mayor/commissioner form of government.

Benton, today with a population of 6,709 people, that’s where we are heading today.

The band Cruces, formed by Derek Cook on vocals, Christopher Fouke on guitars, Danny Wilson on bass and Matt Arms on drums, was around in the early 90s it. They released a tape album in 1991 called “Painted Grey”.

The name of the band seems to be in Spanish and would translate to Crosses. I do a little bit of digging and find a Youtube channel for Chris Fouke were he has uploaded tracks from the album as well of many of his own videos showing his own guitars. It looks like he makes industrial guitars and here in this channel he demoes lap steel playing in different styles.

The songs in the album are “Tapestry of Change“, “A Summer Afternoon“, “The Cabin Song”, “Shade Me Grey“, “Dear Harriet” and “To Touch so Fine” on the A side and “Remember Me”, “The Forbidden“, “Skin“, “So There“, “Peaceful Rock”, “I Tell Myself”, “Thirteen Hours” on the B side. I have linked the ones that are on Youtube. It is important to mention too that “Dear Harriet” is a tribute song to Harriet Wheeler of The Sundays.

The songs from the album were recorded at different periods. So “Thirteen Hours” is from October 1990, “Shade My Grey” and “The Cabin Song” from November 1990, “To Touch So Fire” from December 1990, “Peaceful Rock” from January 1991, “Remember Me” from February 1991, “Skin”, “The Forbidden”, “Dear Harriet” and “So There” from March 1991, “Tapestry of Change” and “A Summer Afternoon” from April 1991 and “I Tell Myself” from June 1991.

The other bit of information we have is that the album was produced by the band and Scott Munson. Scott also is credited as the engineer. The songs were recorded and mixed at Soundcore Studio in Carbondale, Illinois.

The design of the cassette sleeve was done by Todd Freeman and Derek Cook with art by Derek Cook and Christopher Fouke.

On Discogs I looked if any of the band members were listed in other bands, but no, no other bands show up.

And that’s all I could find about them. Anyone remembers them? Did they play much live? Are there any other recordings by the band?

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Listen
Cruces – Dear Harriet

Years ago I interviewed Simon Parker about the band he had been in while in Chichester, The Violet Trade. On this interviewed he told me when asking him about other bands he had been involved with:

This is always a good video to share: Colourburst (with me singing a punked up version of Wham’s ‘Last Christmas’) which got shown on late night ITV twice over the yuletide of 1995. We never did get permission to cover this, but I reckon George and Andrew would have liked it!).

Colourburst put out 2 vinyl singles (one good one bad) and then fragmented into Fruit Machine, fronted by Jennie Cruse (Fisher-Z) and Rachel Bor (Dolly Mixture).

Gary left Fruit Machine who were then signed to producer Steve Lovell (Blur, Julian Cope) . The remnants of this band then morphed into Lumina but bad luck and industry dogma thwarted these projects and eventually saw me take a break from music before returning a year or so later with Villareal.

It took me quite a while then to share here the music of the Brighton band Fruit Machine. Simon was the bassist, guitarist and keyboardist on the band. Maybe I should reach out and ask for a new interview about  Fruit Machine. I really enjoyed all the songs on their Bandcamp.

Indeed, on Bandcamp they have uploaded a trove of recordings, 18 in total, that include demos but also an unfinished album the band recorded between 1998 and 1999. The songs from this album remain in rough mix format but still worth listening for sure.

All these recordings date from 1995 to 1999. I’m going to break the tracks in a few categories, if they are from the album, demos or remixes.
From the album: “Monte Carlo”, “Oxygen”, “Would You do the Same”, “The World is Upside Down”, “Sickly Blue”, “Electric”, “C-Drift”, “(This Had Better Not Be a) Dream” and “Everybody Needs a Reason.”
Demos: “Ariel”, “In Colour”, “All Fall Down”, “Sickly Blue”, “Monte Carlo” and “Frog.”
Remixes: “Electric (Nathan Ben 240 Volt Mix)”, “Mote Carlo (Remix)” and “Monte Carlo (Chaos Remix).”

The band was formed by Simon as mentioned but also featured Jennie Cruse on vocals, backing vocals and keyboards, Rachel Bor on guitars, keyboards and backing vocals and Nick Hopkin on drums and loops.

On the recordings we also see Gary Capelin who played drums on the demo tracks and James Portinari who played guitar on the demos.

The producer of the songs were Steve Lovell and Pete Jones.

I saw a piece written by Simon on Vinyl Revolution, mentioning that the German label Marina was a big fan of Fruit Machine. Why didn’t they release it then?! Also we learn that at the point the band was going him and Jennie were together as boyfriend/girlfriend.  And what’s Vinyl Revolution? Simon explained to me last time:

Vinyl Revolution is at the heart of everything we do! It was actually the name of the two record shops that my partner and I set up and ran between 2016-2019. It was a dream come true for me to own my own record store and we had locations in Tunbridge Wells and Brighton. But running a shop is very difficult these days due to dodgy landlords and extortionate business rates and the rise of Amazon etc.  But despite this, Vinyl Revolution was very popular and got a lot of great press, including a brilliant feature in The Independent which said we were the best record shop in Brighton!

But when Brexit came along, Rachel and I headed for France and started looking into ways to make vinyl records more sustainable. The product of this all work is NAKED Record Club and we are out there doing it right now!

Now I would suggest listening to Fruit Machine, rediscover this lost band which has some ace tracks,
“All Fall Down” is a corker, but do check all of them out. If I could suggest checking out the demos first, please do. I find them punchier and poppier than the album tracks, but that’s just me.

Many questions are still to be asked. Why didnt their songs got released properly? Did they play live much? Any Brighton friends remember them?

Enjoy!

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Listen
Fruit Machine – All Fall Down (demo)

Holger Fath-Tati is the man behind the Berlin-based project Graf Tati. I found out about their music many years ago thanks to Martin from Brideshead who also co-runs the great Apricot Records. It is this label that released the project’s first album “Lind” back in 2007.

As mentioned “Lind” came in 2007 on Apricot (APRICD 039) as a CD album of ten songs. These were “Der Tag Beginnt”, “Zurück Zu Mir”, “Sommerregen”, “Teenage Walhalla”, “Bilbao”, “Trübseligkeit”, “Glücklich Mit Der Bachmann”, “Glaubst Du an Die Liebe” and “Neopren”. The whole album is available to listen to on Soundcloud. As you’ll notice it is a very nice indiepop album with influences from bossa especially.

On digital platforms there is also a compilation called “Cinema Romantics” from 2023 which includes some new Graf Tati songs as well as some by other artists like Zero Solaris, Miss Django and Cécile Dupaquier, which is worth checking out. There is a story about this record where it says that it all started in a Berlin bar when Zero Solaris and Graf Tati were having some beers. While chatting and drinking they figured out they wanted to write about their favourite actress, make a record about them, actresses like Romy Schneider, Jeanne Moreau, Charlotte Rampling and more. The songs by Graf Tati are “J.M.”, “The Look”, “Natürlich Ich”, “Romy Schneider – Cinema Romantics – Version”, “Foxy” and “Love Streams”. This album was released on vinyl as far as I know.

I also find another album called “Graf Tati & Les Alles”. Maybe a collaboration? This one dates from 2019 and includes 10 songs. 5 on each side of the record. “Beginner”, “Heroin Topmodel”, “Schuft DS”, “Apropos Pop” and “Le Slow” on the A side and “Romy Schneider”, “Wenn Es So Was Gibt”, “Madchen Hinter Glas”, “Leben Konnte” and “Dos a Dos” on the B side.

The only other thing I could find is that a collaboration between Graf Tati and Cécile Dupaquier was included in the compilation double CD “10 Jahre Club 49 – Ihr Seid Solche Fucker”. This collaboration was the song “Gilles” and was included in this double CD from 2015 released by the club itself, Club 49 Berlin.

Berlin friends probably are familiar with this artist. I do wonder too if he had been involved in bands prior to Graf Tati. I have the inkling that he might have. Who would know?

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Graf Tati – Glaubst Du an die Liebe

Dreamtime released a very nice 7″ with two tracks back in 1989. I am late in discovering it.

The tracks are “Cold and Lonely Place” as the A side of the single and “I Know” on the flipside. It was released by the Pure Recording Company (PURE 89/1) which might have been the band’s own label. A self-release probably.

We know the band hailed from the UK. But not much more. Let’s see what we can find.

I am very confident the band hailed from Southall in West London. The area that is often called Little Punjab or Little India. A South Asian hub.

I’ve seen a photo of the band, as they have shared a photo to a Soundcloud account that has the A side uploaded. It looks like it was a four piece. Three guys, and a female vocalist. There is also an interesting bit of info here, it seems the A side, “Cold and Lonely Place”, is actually. a recording that was done during a Janice Long Radio 1 Evening Session in 1987.

Then I find a review of the band on a Record Mirror issue from May 27, 1989. In there it mentions that the band had won the Janice Long session (how did they win it?) and that the band had supported The Darling Buds and The Lilac Time in 1988.

The truth is, the song is really nice. The A side. I haven’t heard yet the B side. So I wonder why they didn’t get more attention.

45CAT lists another 7″ record by Dreamtime. One from 1992 with the tracks “Drive” and In the Dream” on the A side and “Ragamuffin” and “Sand” on the B side. A record released by Refugee Records and produced by Andy Povall. I am not convinced that it is the same band. One thing is that there is no female vocalist listed anymore. Here the address on the back of the sleeve is from Liecester. The design of the sleeve is very very different too. But it may be the same band. The sound of the record is still very indie. The band here is credited as Henry Munroe on bass guitar and vocals, Nick Murphy on drums and vocals, Pete Sargent on guitar and Mark Harriman on vocals, guitar. It also says that the songs on this record are going to be part of the forthcoming album “Woke Up This Morning”. that is going to be released on CD and cassette. I haven’t seen a copy of it.

I keep digging, and then I find a 1991 tape, released on Extremely Nice Records (ENR 004C) from Ireland (is that right?). It dates from 1991 and has the same look as the 1992 single. This is a self-titled tape, with five tracks, “In the Dream”, “Drive”, “Sand”, “Ring the Changes” and “New York”. I am sure it is the same Dreamtime as the “Drive” single, Pete Sargent name appears here.

That’s what I could find. Would be good to find confirmation that it is the same band the one that released the 1989 single and the 1991 tape and 1992 single. If not, there are two indiepop bands with the same name? And where did they hail from? Southall? Leicester? it is a good mystery to me. Anyone has more information about them?

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Listen
Dreamtime – Cold and Lonely Place