Day 304.
Basic Flowers: the latest on the Mexican netlabel Stupid Decisions is the “Sentimental EP” by Basic Flowers. It just has three songs, “Confused (I Know… Again)”, “Vainilla” and “Self Portrait”, and it feels too little because they are so pretty, fragile and dreamy. Would be nice to get a full album someday.
Starry Eyed Cadet: our San Francisco friends are back with a new song called “Good Night”. It is as usual fantastic. One does wonder when will there next release be out. Are they working on an album? an EP? It’d be good to know. They never disappoint.
The Fisherman and His Soul: a new song by our friend Sebastian Voss was released on December 28. It is called “Perfect Bathrooms” and came out as a digital single on the always trustworthy Shiny Happy Records from Indonesia. Good stuff.
Torrey: we go back to the Bay Area, to meet this four-piece formed by Ryann, Kelly, Eric and Adam. Their latest song is called “90s Loop” and it is a dreamy one. But that doesn’t mean ethereal or boring, it means poppy, bright and luminous in their case.
Tired Up: lastly why not some shoegaze from Russia, from this band from the city of Ufa. Their latest song is called “Ice Cream Lips” and it is as fuzzy and hazy as they come. Thumbs up.
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While I am out of town it is a bit harder to just check my collection and find out obscure bands I should feature and try to find more info about them. But I did think in advance and took photos of all The Sound of Leamington Spa compilation booklets so that way I never ran out of ideas and at least until my return to New York I keep the blog updated!
Today I return to “The Sound of Leamington Spa Vol. 4” which was co-released by Firestation Records (FST 060), Bilberry Records (BILB08) and Clarendon Records (W6 6CD) in 2003. Here I find the song “Waiting Here For Me” by Johnny Says Yeah!
Them appearing on this compilation would end up in even better news as two years later, in 2005, Firestation would release a 13 song compilation called “Friends Gone By 1986-1989” that included these songs, “Waiting Here For Me”, “Bittersweet”, “Some Things are More Simple”, “Better Off Dead”, “Suzie”, “Time Comes to a Standstill”, “Promises”, “I Won’t Let You Go”, “But It’s True”, “Everything is Mine”, “In My Heart”, “Happiness is Such a Thing” and “Now I’ll Dream”.
So as you can see in that title, 1986 and 1989, in between those years the band was active. While they were active they released two 7″s, both on their own Day I Ate the World Records.
The first one was the “Bittersweet” EP” (JSY 1/ JSY2) from 1986. First question, why two different catalog numbers for it?
This single had four songs, “Suzie” and “Bittersweet” on the A side and “Don’t Bring Me Down” and “No Problems” on the B side. It is interesting that 3 of these songs weren’t included in the retrospective compilation. Why?
The second 7″ was “I Won’t Let You Go” (JSY 3) on the A side and “Some Things Are More Simple” on the B side. Again now the B side wasn’t included in the compilation. I find this odd!
The booklet of The Leamington Spa sheds some light about the band. It says:
The band began writing/recording songs as Johnny Says Yeah in early 1986 with all the band still in their teens. The songs were written by the partnership of the two brothers, Ja and Jools Wilson, who along with the bass player, Simon Preston, and drummer, Dan Machin, were the nucleus of the band. After playing gigs in their local area of Lincolnshire, Johnny Seays Yeah!, released their first single “Bittersweet” in the summer of 1986, on their own “Day I Ate the World” label. This was followed by a 4 song session on the Janice Long Show on BBC Radio One in the autumn of 1986. With no record deal negotiated, the band released a second single on their own label entitled “Some Things are More Simple”/”I Won’t Let You Go”. Johnny Says Yeah! continued gigging and recording new songs into 1988 but released no more singles.
Wow! There was a Janice Long Session! Which songs were recorded for it? Would be great to know for sure.
The CD retrospective also has a little bit more information about the band. This is what it says:
So here we go…. a little look back in time… and a bunch of songs written by brothers, played by friends.
I guess the story, in as far as it is a story, started a couple of years earlier in the wilds of Eastern England, as a band called Outside Edge. A few recorded songs, and a handful of gigs, and lots of cold nights practising in dusty sheds led finally to a a change of name to Johnny Says Yeah! in early 1986.
Two singles followed on our own Day I Ate the World label, a bit of national radio play, a BBC session, some memorable gigs in less than memorable venues, and then a swift, painless drift into obscurity.
Jools and Simon continued writing and playing as Michael Sometimes. Ja produced a few acoustic numbers under the loose banner of Paintstorm. Dan drummed in a host of trash punk bands, and god only knows what happened to Bruce!
But this is THEN… a couple of years in the mid eighties. The iron fist of Thatcherism may have ruled Britain, but John Peel ruled the nightime radio and guitars still ruled the world!
Some more details mention that the songs were recorded around the Fenlands in England. We also know the full band members:
Jason Wilson sang the songs and wrote the words
Jools Wilson played guitar, piano, and sang backing vocals
Simon Preston played bass guitar
Dan Machin played the drums and told the jokes
Shaun Tranter played the saxophone
Nick Stevens played the trumpet
Simon Machin played piano and keyboards
Bruce Hosie played guitar and harmonica
Mark Harrison played piano
As you can expect there is no information about the band on the web. Of course there are many questions to ask. For example how did the bands Outside Edge and Michael Sometimes sounded like? I’d love to hear them. What about the Janice Long session? Would be great to find those recordings. And again, why weren’t all their songs included in the retrospective album? Maybe one day we’ll find out!
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One Response to “:: Johnny Says Yeah!”
Interesting little read!
I came across this whilst searching for info on Lawrence & the comfortable society, having found an old cassette of them after seeing them live in Norwich around 1985-86
I can answer some of your questions. The songs were often recorded on more than one occasion in different studios, but as you can imagine nobody really kept hold of the masters (even if there were any!). I think when it came to the compilations, Simon was working as an engineer in studios in London and maybe even used cassettes to transfer to digital, not really sure.
The Janice Long session was probably the highlight of JSY. I was only 16 or 17 I think, somewhere there is a photo of me playing the baby grand at Maida Vale, whilst wearing an hideous orange carigan (though later made much cooloer by Kurt Cobain it seems!). I seem to recall that the Housemartins were in the very same studio as us the day before and I remember seeing Bob Holness walking down the corridor as I was peering into the big studio where they recorded the BBC philharmonic.
Michael Sometimes songs were probably a bit more advanced musically and recorded in tune, we were better musicians by then. But, it didn’t have the same vibe and it wasn’t the same without my brother singing tbh.
On a sad note, Dan passed away at the tender age of 49. Gone much too soon as often it seems the good ones are. Still think of him loads 🙁