30
Jul

Day 506

Grandstands: Let’s start this Friday with the classy jangle pop band Grandstands from Melbourne, Australia. Their latest album was called “I Love That You Want to Live Here Too” and it actually came out last year. And I missed it. But I can make up to it a year later, right? The ten song album has great moments of guitar pop, so give it a listen. As far as I know it was released only digitally.

Main Street Light Parade: here’s another Australian band that I just discovered. Hailing from Adelaide, the band has just released on Bandcamp two new releases. A live set at the Golden Wattle dating from July 31, 2020 and an EP of demos from the years 2018 to 2021. Nice!

Wynona Bleach: now we head to Belfast for some punchy dreampop! The band’s latest single is titled “Drag” which will be the opening track of the band’s forthcoming album “Moonsoake”. When is this album released? No info! But I’ll keep an eye!

Lightfoils: the Chicago band is back with two new songs, “306” and “Summere Nights DEATHMIXX” which are being released on a limited edition tape. The tape that comes with some very cool artwork by Terrell Culbert is part of the band’s 4-single cassette collection. Previously they released the “Sunblind” single.

Submotile: and we end this week with shoegaze thanks to Submotile , an Iris-Italian band, and their label Shore Dive Records from Brighton. The band has just released a limited CD of 9 songs titled “Sonic Day Codas” and it is powerful buzz of walls of guitars. At the time of writing only 4 copies of the CD were left!

—————————————————————–

Again looking for treasures and obscure bands. That’s what an indiepop fan does, right?

Today I want to know more about a band called Recruits. I believe they hailed from the UK but I have no other details about them. Once they were recommended by Uwe from Firestation Records on his blog, saying that “See My Face” was a superb indiepop song with male vocals in the vein of Rumblefish or This Final Frame.

So I am listening to that song. And it is good. That was on their 1989 7″ single. But let’s go in order.

Their first release dates from 1983, a 12″ single that was self-released with catalog number RE1.

This is much more synth-pop than indiepop to be honest. The three songs on this record were “Three Squeezes (The Mirror and Me)”, “Cherokee” and “Three Squeezes (remix)” is on the B side as an AA. The songs had been recorded at Studio 80 in London, produced and engineered by Martin Rex. The songs are good, catchy. But maybe not the usual stuff I would recommend in the blog. I guess we’ll care more about the 7″. But we need to know the whole history of the band, right?

The band was formed by Terry Hope on bass, Phil Shock on guitar and vocals, Phil Evans on keys, Pete “the Corporal” Bolger on percussion and vocals and Mel Wallis on vocals. For the second single Martin Aspland is credited for keyboards and Dane for vocals.

The 7″ as mentioned came out in 1989. It had two songs, “See My Face” on the A side and “Dream Heaven Scene” on the B side. The catalog number was RE2. Again self-released. This time the band recorded the songs at Ha Bloody Ha Recording Studios in Ashtead, Surrey. The engineer was Ade Orange, long time keyboard player for Gary Numan.

I couldn’t find any compilation appearances for the band.

One thing I find is that the band played in Yarmouth, in a venue called The Big Apple sometime in 1983.

Sadly I can’t find any other details. Very little indeed for this band. Maybe some of you remember them? Where in the UK were they from? Did they record more songs? Were they involved in any other bands?

:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

Listen
The Recruits – See My Face

One Response to “:: Recruits”

I, Dane Pestano, joined when the band were called The Recruits. UK band based in south London. The single ‘See My Face’ was composed by Phil Shock and the first half of the lyrics were written by him. The second half of the lyrics written by me.

The B side – ‘Dream Heaven Scene’ was originally to be called ‘Sweet Ecstacy’ and you can still hear those lyrics in the song. But we were advised due to the drug connotations to change the name. The song is actually about astral projection and the lyrics were written by me. See My Face was played on the radio up north somewhere but we didnt have good enough PR to push it any further and we all had good jobs.

As my influences were more Goth I took the band in that direction and we became ‘The Cage of Osiris’ and played south London venues and the Rock Garden a couple of times. When grunge came along we morphed into a more poppy grungy sound (not grungy enough for me) and became ‘The Cage’. You should find ‘Sophia’ and ‘Fried Video Monkey’ out there somewhere. We did make an album during the early transitional pop to Goth stage only available on casette but I’m not overly keen on it except for a couple of tracks.

I left the band when they wanted to return to a more poppy sound. That was when Three Squeezes came along.

Dane Pestano
September 24th, 2023