Hello! weekend is over once again, and yet it is another Monday and we are almost in the month of August. The year has gone so fast. Just to let you know that the Dayflower 7″ is now in the pressing plant. That the Den Baron 7″ is out now and you shouldn’t miss it. And that we have an offer, for you to pick 3 7″s out of 5 for a very good price. So head to our website and support the label! 🙂
Now some good finds!
The Color Waves: our friends are back with two new songs, “The Bay” and “Paper Tiger”. They are classy and dreamy indiepop songs, with jangly guitars and introspective vocals. The digital single is now available only digitally but hopefully we’ll see a release of it soon. And yes, I still have some copies of their debut 7″ if you are interested!
The Model Spy: the Greek label Make Me Happy has made a splash by releasing retrospective of legendary Greek indiepop bands. Their next release is a contemporary Gerek band, The Model Spy. The band’s debut album “Serenest” will be released on November 8th on 12″ vinyl I am guessing! There are 12 songs of very finely crafted and elegant synth pop.
East Village: I wasn’t aware of a promo video for the song “Her Father’s Son”! Well on the East Village Facebook group this was shared last week and immediately everyone was ultra excited! The video was made to promote the band’s second single “Back Between Places”…. the only problem is that the video is not complete, just 1:57 minutes of it are available! I hope we get to see the complete version some day. This is fantastic!
Soumbalgwang: I believe that is their name in latin alphabet, the band is actually called 소음발광 and come from Busan, South Korea of course. I know absolutely nothing but I do know they have a song called “샤인” which they have made a promo video which is lots of fun, and the song is even better!
Las Infrarrojas: the Madrid based label Hurrah! Música has released a 7″ single for this four-piece (3 girls, one boy) that has also four songs: “Oh Kiss Me!”, “Darkest Night”, “La Misión” and “Contactos de la Star”, so two songs in English and two in Spanish. Fun poppy indiepop!
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I stumbled upon this lovely song called “Elizabeth” by The Beautiful Strangers. As I know nothing about them I will take on the challenge about finding any interesting details about them and hopefully some records?
Well, it would be just one record. The band only released one 7″. That’s too little. Well, better 1 than none as many bands from the 80s only left us demos or just compilation appearances. The Beautiful Strangers left us a two song 7″ that was released in 1986 by the label Two Zeros Above (TZA 001). As expected this label seems that it was the band’s own, that it was a self-release. There are no other releases listed for this label on Discogs…
The songs on the record were “Elizabeth” on the A side and “Heavens!” on the B side. The credits on the sleeve do give some background to us. The songs were engineered by Nick Robbins at Elephant Studios on March that same year. This recording studio was based in Wapping, in London. Probably then the band hailed from the capital city. The sleeve confirms this, they were based in Streatham Hill in London. We know that the photography for the sleeve was taken by Mike Collins. Then the producer was Jon Hurst who also added keyboards to the recordings.
The band was a four piece formed by Keith Sparrow on vocals, Jerry Cooke on bass, John Foxcroft on drums and Sheila Gill on guitar. Sparrow and Gill were the main songwriters.
Discogs doesn’t list any other bands for the band members. That can’t be true, it can’t be that they were just in The Beautiful Strangers. They must have been involved in more, right?
There are also no compilation appearances listed. Just the one single and that was it? Oddly enough there are more than 1 photo available on Discogs. I wonder if the band updated the info and added the photos. That’d be nice. I also notice that Twee.net has the band listed with band members, that’s not common. Again I wonder if the band did these updates. Or a big fan that remembers them?
Who knows. I can’t seem to find anything about them. There is a comment on Youtube where I listened the song saying that the band used to play often at the Woolwich Tramshed. Maybe some of you remember them too?
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One Response to “:: The Beautiful Strangers”
Hi I was the bass player with the BS.. We split up at the end of 86 after recording a second single with The producer Mark Dearnley.. Elizabeth was a self made record that we managed to have played on R1a few times.. I think we were a little to Indie for 1986..anyway.. I live and still play bass in France, Keith still performs in Cornwall.. Sheila pasted away afew years ago and John has disappeared off the planet which is a shame cause he is a great drummer