23
Jul

Very short post this week. Forgive me if you expected to have something long read while taking the train or having breakfast. You see, there’s little time this week as I’m flying tomorrow to the UK for the main indiepop event of the year: Indietracks. On top of it all I haven’t been feeling well these past two days, some sort of cold is trying to get into me, but I’ve been fighting with both Dayquil and Nightquil. It makes me feel very knackered, but I’m feeling less sick. Prices to pay.

Anyways. The good news this week is that at last The Occasional Flickers 7″ masters are on there way to the pressing plant. So hopefully we’ll have it ready for sale late August, early September! Well, actually you can pre-order it now. But it will be available at that time.

Also earlier today I managed to at last add the Interviews and Lost Bands links on the right sidebar of the blog. Those two lists used to be there before the blog was hacked almost a year ago. When I reinstated the blog, I could save all posts and comments but the links were lost. So I have manually added one by one to the list. Many people had been asking me for these, as it’s easier to navigate that way than using the Search tool (I agree with this of course, I’m not dumb), so there it is. For all of you that think of the blog as sort of an archive that needs a table of contents, an index, of some sort.

And so, this is goodbye. Goodbye because I’m heading for summer fields! For a week. I’ll see you readers next week after I return from Indietracks. Those going to Indietracks or to the London Secret History/Comet Gain show, please say hello, buy me a beer, buy me lunch, dinner, or support Cloudberry and buy from me some records, fanzines or t-shirts. It’s going to be fun. I look forward to an indiepop-fun-packed-weekend! As Dan Treacy used to sing, it’s going to be a SMASHING TIME.

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Somerfield (originally Gateway) was a chain of small to medium sized supermarkets operating in the United Kingdom. The company also previously owned the Kwik Save chain of discount food stores. The company was taken over by the Co-operative Group on 2 March 2009 in a £1.57 billion deal, creating the UK’s fifth largest food retailer. The name was phased out and replaced by the Co-operative Food brand in a rolling programme of store conversions ending in summer 2011.

Did the name of the band came from there? Don’t know. There’s really little information online about Gary Aspinall’s band. Yes, that much I know. The one member. And that comes thanks to Harvey Saward who told me about it when I interviewed him many years ago. Thing was Gary was also part of The Odolites as Harvey.

Gary would also play in to The Killjoys, who I tried to interview once, sending questions, but with no success. The Killjoys have a much more bigger presence on the web, even a Facebook page, so if you are curious. I say just google. But the topic today is this mysterious band Somerfields who only released a 12″ EP in 1991.

Discogs doesn’t list the record. I have never seen the sleeve. The only place were it is listed is in Twee.net. No surprise there, it was Peter Hahndorf who introduced me to this band. Actually this MP3 comes from a CD he gave me. I wonder how did he find this rare Tasmanian 12″!

I know Gary is still around, he just produced the new Steinbecks album to be released by Matinée. I still haven’t listened to it, but will order it as soon as I return from Indietracks. Because of this new piece of evidence, I assume he lives in Melbourne, not in Tasmania anymore.

I keep googling. I stumble upon an old Swedish website. It looks like Geocities. Remember those days? In it I see a Killjoys record listed with the musicians credited for their participation in it. A new clue arises. The drummer David Folley is also linked to Somerfields. We got two now.

One last clue. The website for Mark Woods Audio. The record is listed there. Mark Woods has recorded it. The list of bands there baffles me. I see Hellvyvelln, Sea Stories, MacGuffins, Captain Cocoa and more. It’s clear he was the go to guy in Australia if you were doing jangly pop!

And that’s where all the clues stop, leading nowhere else. If anyone else knows anything else about them, please share! Or a spare copy would be nice too! Would love to hear the rest of the songs. I’ll reply next week when I’m back! Enjoy!

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Listen
Somerfields – Over My Head

6 Responses to “:: Somerfields”

Got the 12″ on December 22nd 1993 at Phantom Records in Sydney. Nice Christmas present for me

July 24th, 2013

Hallo I joined the band in 1991 to replace the departing drummer from the album. Dave Folley replaced me after I left to join Chris Wilson. Bass player is Rupert Beaumont from Tasmania and Guitarist was Dennis ?Grant? from New Zealand. They both live in Melbourne still to the best of my knowledge.

I also played drums with Harvey Sayward in a band called the Tender Engines along with Mark Narkowicz and Andrew Viney of the Fish John West Reject (of which I was the founding drummer), and Paul Stothard on organ..

Gary is a brilliant songwriter and crafter of pop imo. My 3 favorite songs of his are “I’ll show you why” from Face Down in the Violets (The Oddolites) along with “Over My Head” and “Carousel” (The Somerfields)

There are actually two EPs from the band. The second was a called Carousel from memory, but, meh, that was two lifetimes ago…

Tim
January 17th, 2014

Hello Gary is on Facebook to contact and currently lives in castlemaine .. If you email me I may be able to send you cd copies as Gary and I shared a house during the years the somerfields were playing..so I’m sure I have spare copies around..
Also happy to answer question 🙂

February 3rd, 2014

I LOVE The Somerfields and my daughter, just turned 8, can sing Medicine Ride by heart! I’d love to know what the singer is up to these days, please?

Sonya
August 22nd, 2015

Here you go buddy I just added the 4track ep to Discogs here
http://www.discogs.com/The-Somerfields-The-Somerfields/release/7704258

Shaun
November 10th, 2015

What a random find! I was just googling my indie pop vinyl collection and found this.

I can’t add anything much here but the somerfields toured Sydney behind this single – they stayed at my house in Newtown and put on a good show at the Sando.

The guitarist was a kiwi, as I recall a chat about Van Morrison at some point.

The other guitarist played the Sando a bit later with the Killjoys and I recall this gig because the chubby bass player made a crap reference to the stamper being a ‘door bitch’ which earned him an onstage dressing down from Anna!

Bobski
February 3rd, 2016