Last weekend for our Cloudberry 3CDs for the price of 2. Monday will be the last day I’ll be able to go to the post office as I will be away for a week. Any other orders placed between Christmas and New Years will be posted on January 3rd.
Beauty Parlour: I’m really loving the dreamy sounds of their “Fall in Love” EP. This Forth Worth, Texas, band’s first release on Bandcamp is a true gem. There is very little information about them, just the four songs, “Fall in Love”, “Chance on You”, “Mistrals” and “Jamais Vu”, that are great with superb boy/girl vocals!
VA – We Love You, Jerry: The Rosebuds from Sacramento have added this EP to their page. The band contributes the first song, “We Love You, Jerry”, but it is not all. There is a song by Dusty Miller, Bunny Nightlight, Sad Numbers, Soul Brother and Rocketship. Yes, very important. There is a song by the most amazing BUNNY NIGHTLIGHT!! “Song 3” it is called and it is brilliant!
Posh Lost: another digital EP. This time from this band that hails from Minneapolis. The EP is titled “Fortune” and comes with four songs, songs that are an interesting mix of post punk, dreampop and shoegaze. Worth checking out.
Tullycraft: some days ago they unveiled the song and video for “Passing Observations”. Now they have put it up on Bandcamp with a “B side” called “Stop Press Girl”. The cool (or not cool?) thing is that this song won’t be part of the album “The Railway Prince Hotel” so I guess we can only listen to it on repeat here!
Star Horse: one of my favourite Swedish bands is back with an album! At the moment you can only stream one of the songs, “Albatross”, that will be included in the “You Said Forever” LP that will be out on Startracks in February. There will be 9 songs in it, and I can’t wait to listen to the whole thing!
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Frank Pryce on vocals, Gerry Fahy on guitar, Brian Neavyn on bass and Pete Kinsella on drums were The Slowest Clock, a Dublin based band. I know very little about them as it is the common thread among all the bands I feature on the blog. So why don’t you join me into discovering their music and their story.
They started late in the 80s, releasing a 7″ in 1987 on the Comet Records label (COMET 004) that included “Clarke & Jones” on the A side and “Secret Flowers” on the B side. This is of course an important label as it released the classic Irish compilation “Comet EP One” that included Cypress, Mine!
The songs on this 7″ were recorded at Temple Studios in June 1987 and were produced by the band. Declan Morrell and Mark Power were the engineers and the mastering was done at S.T.S. Studios by Liz O’Toole. The art is credited to Dave, and the photograph on the front cover is a still of Truffaut’s “The Bride Wore Black”. There are no band members listed on the sleeve (I’m looking at the scans, I don’t own a copy, I wish I did!), but there are many thank yous and among them we see lots of important names like Guernica, Microdisney and more.
Their second release came out on Bewildered Records (BED 6001). It feels like this might be the band’s own label as the three releases listed on this label are all by The Slowest Clock. The first one was the “2-Car Garage” 12″ that included four songs, two on each side. The A side had “Carnival” and “Fear in Me” while the B side had “That Girl” and “Mothers of America”. On this record we find out who formed the band:
Brian Neavyn on bass
Dave Burke on drums
Gerry Fahy on guitar
Frank Pryce on vocals
That same year the band would put out another 12″, the “No Hand Signals EP”. It also came out on Bewildered Records (BED 6002) and again 4 songs were recorded for it. The A side had “Millenium Train” and “Where’s Andi” while the flipside had “You’re Wrong” and “Raindrop Hill”.
It would take the band a little over 5 years for another release. Their album “Life Still” came out in 1995 on Bewildered (BED 6003) with 12 songs: “Little Fishy”, “Wasted”, “Warhol”, “Say It”, “Le Bordel”, “In the Cinema”, “Cherie”, “Desert Mouth”, “Acid Lake”, “Say What’s On Your Mind”, “You Never See Me” and “Memories”. The songs were engineered by Albert Cowan and Joe Wearan and I believe were produced at Sonic Studios by David Wallis.
There is another release that I’m curious about. In 2014 the CD compilation “Smile Futurismo! All I Heard Was Purple” was released on Eye Unseen Records (DACA 7051). it was a 15 song compilation that were original studio recordings made in 1989 and 1990 that were intended for their debut album. Odd. So “Life Still” would have been their 2nd then? It is strange as many of these songs were in “Life Still”. It says that these earlier recordings were lost and only found a decade later. That the ones on “Life Still” were a totally different recording session and that the band run out of funds and interest and split prior to “Life Still”. The songs on this compilation were “Going Home”, “Warhola”, “You’re So Strange”, “Le Bordel Philosophique”, “Little Fishy”, “Cherie”, “Eastern Flowers’, “Acid Lake”, “Turning Green”, “Say What’s On Your Mind”, “Wasted”, “You Never See Me”, “Desert Mouth”, “Rejoice” and “In the Cinema”.
As I mentioned earlier, the band appeared on the “Comet EP One” compilation on Comet Records (COME1T) that was released in 1986. The band contributed the song “Little Boy Lost”.
I look at Irishrock.org, which is always a great place to find out about Irish bands. Here it mentions that the band performed the song “Clarke & Jones” at a TV show called “Visual Eyes”. I found the video on Youtube. Another interesting detail is that the band recorded several demo tapes and one of them, the 1986 3-song one, was produced by Ritchie Taylor and engineered by Paul Thomas.
According to this website Dave Burke who I listed as a band member wasn’t an original member.In 1987, tThe ex Cliff Edge Panic (fantastic band who I featured on the blog before) actually replaced Pete Kinsella who was the original drummer. After The Slowest Clock split, Gerry Fahy went to join Candy Apple Red while Brian Neavyn and Dave Burke joined the Screech Owls.
It also seems that in October 1985 the band had recorded a RTE Radio 2 Session for Dave Fanning Show. Three tracks were recorded then, “You’re So Strange”, “Looking Up” and “Birds of Prey”.
Irishrock seems to be more complete than Discogs and has more compilations listed. On the tape “Moonstruck Christmas Casette” released by Moonstruck (MS 005), the band contributed “Say What’s On Your Mind”. This was a live recording at the Comet Records Punk Festival at the CIE Marlboro Hall in August 1986, which happened to be the band’s 3rd gig. Then on the “National Wash Day Single” 7″ released in 1987 the band contributed the song “Looking Up (Fanning Session 1987)”. I see, so there was also a 1987 Session! I need to find more about that one.
The band contributed the song “Mothers of America (early version)” to a 1988 tape called “Where to? What for? Witchunt” that was released in 197 by FOAD Records (FOAD 2 SPUC 88).
Lastly two sessions are listed. First a Dave Fanning Session from April 2nd 1988 with the songs “Mothers of America”, “Turning Green”, “Going Home” and “Where’s Andi”. Second a BBC Radio 1 Session for Liz Kershaw from September 1988 with the songs “Rejoice the Burning”, “Turning Green”, “Desert Mouth” and “Where’s Andi”.
According to the Fanning Sessions blog there were just the two sessions, the ones from 1986 and 1988. So that one listed as 1987 can’t be. Neither the one from 1985 that Irishrock has. I think Irishrock is off by a year on both. I trust Fanning Sessions blog for this case.
On the Fanning Sessions blog there is a press clipping from Hot Press dating 24th September 1987. This press clippings shed some more light about the band. For example we learn that the band came together through the Musicians Contact section of Hot Press. Brian Neavyn find about an add Gerry had put on the magazine. The band supported A House, Guernica, The Stars of Heaven, Something Happens!, The Gorehounds, Microdisney and The Celibate Rifles.
On Youtube I found another TV appearance. The band is playing “Turning Green” but I’m not sure what show they were on. There is also a promo video for the song “Millenium Train” which is a very noisy track. It is true the band played different sorts of guitar pop, from the jangly, to the noisy to the rockier. Of course I love the jangly the most, like in their song “Going Home”.
Another promo video they made was the one for “Mothers of America” in 1989.
More videos on Youtube. There is a live gig at McGonagles from November 23rd 1989 opening for Fugazi. Also a video of the band playing “Little Boy Lost” in 1987 at the Underground Club, at the TV show “Action Station Saturday” playing “Where’s Andi?” in 1988. ”
What about “You’re Wrong” in a TV show in 1989. What show was this? They seem to have been quite popular during those late 80s. There’s also “Fear in Me” at the Baggot Inn from September 1989.
Sadly there is nothing else written about them on the web. I guess the information I found is quite good. But still would be interesting to know about the demo tapes Irishrock mentions, why they didn’t become bigger if they were on TV shows, at least, how come they didn’t sign to a big label? There are many questions. Why weren’t the band members more active musically after the demise of the band. I’m sure my Dublin friends remember them. I actually saw a girl from Lesotho mentioning the manager of the band on a Youtube comment. Who knows where any information, any details may come from!
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