A long weekend here as it is Labor Day this coming Monday. I will have a post still and I am really hoping to have Cloudberry news this upcoming week! Keep in touch!
Sister Ectoplasma: just found out about this fine Mexican band the other day through this video for their song “With Every Bullet, So Far”. It seems this video was just released but the song has been around for a bit. It was included in a 2018 EP called “Hopefully, Wiser”, that is available on the band’s Bandcamp. Very nice.
The Memory Fades: there’s a new EP by Stephen Maughan’s band! It is called “Space Pilot” and it sounds great! It is available on CD so there is no reason to miss it. There are four songs in total, and there’s even one sort of a tribute to the JAMC, “Listening to the Marychain” which has vocals by Estella from Nah… And that’s not all, our friend Pete-B from Horowitz plays bass on the 3rd track, “Run Away”. Cool!
Foliage: this great band from San Bernardino, California, has been a blog-favourite for some time now. It is great news that the band is releasing an album called “Take” on September 20th. It will include 12 tracks and will be available on tape. At the moment we can preview 5 tracks and I am hoping it gets a CD release, or vinyl could work ok too! You know me and tapes, not the best of friends. I just want to listen to the rest of tracks, I really like everything they’ve recorded so far.
For Tracy Hyde: I still haven’t got the new album by this amazing Japanese band. I think it will be out on September 4th. I should order it. It is called “New Young City” and is being released by P-Vine Records and they’ve been promoting it with a few promo vids that I have been sharing on the blog. Now there’s a new one, for the song “Can Little Birds Remember?”, and I might say this may be my favourite song so far that I have heard from the album. Really loving the boy/girl parts!
The Reds, Pinks & Purples: how prolific is Glenn Donaldson! He just released an album on Pretty Olivia, but he has also released two new songs on Bandcamp! They are “A Kick in the Face (That’s Life)” and “They Only Wanted Your Soul”, and strangely enough he hasn’t added the word demo in parenthesis as usual!
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The Headmen is a group of fictional supervillains appearing in American comic books published by Marvel Comics. They are a group who believe that they should rule the world by virtue of the intellect. Dr. Arthur Nagan wanted society to operate like a precision instrument, Dr. Jerry Morgan wanted a society where his genius was recognized, Chondu the Mystic wanted personal wealth and Ruby Thursday wanted to replace the head of every human with a plastic head of her own design. They fought the Defenders, She-Hulk, and Spider-Man on different occasions.
The Headmen. 2 releases and goodbye. That’s what looks like. Where were they from? Who were they? Did they start as a band in the 80s? Or in the 90? What are they up to these days? Many questions, let’s see how many answers I can find.
Both records the band released, a 7″ and a 12″, came out on Positive Records. I must say that I am very unfamiliar with this label who mostly put out records by H.D.Q. and Instigators which I think are not indiepop bands. There is a compilation though called “Step Up” with lots of bands I have never heard before which I am hoping are indiepop? Who would know?
The first release by The Headmen came out in 1990, and it was a 7″ (POS 016) that included two songs. The A side had “Kissed to Pieces” while the B side had “Roundabout”. The songs were produced by the band and Bliss and the engineer for the recordings was Steve Whitfield. They were recorded and mixed on September 1990 at Beaumont Street Studios in Huddersfield. Did the band hail from there too?
The sleeve also gives us some details about the band. We know they were formed by Simon Eskriett on vocals and guitar, Nick Keene on guitar, Matthew Slater on drums and vocals and David Pattern on bass. Eskriett was the main songwriter, both songs are credited to him, though “Roundabout” also credits Keene.
The next year they would put out a 12″ (POS 017) with 4 songs, a proper EP. The A side had the lovely “Reach the Sky” and “You Make Me Smile” while the B side featured “Yesterday, Today and Everyday” and “Shortsong”. Again the songs were recorded in January 1991 at Beaumont Street Studios. It is interesting that this studio opened in 1985 and closed in December 2009. Steve Whitfield was now the producer with the band. Some other credits on the record include Matthew Riley who did the artwork and Porl Medlock who took the photos for the sleeve.
There are two tapes called “Hong Kong Hi-Fi” and “A Tender Tension”, one from 1985 and the other undated. They seem like tapes that showcased electronic, ambient music. I really doubt it is the same band as the one that released on Positive. So I will skip for now. If someone confirms me is the same band then I’ll add the information about these releases.
The only compilation appearance I am sure about is on the 6-CD boxset “Bradford’s Noise of the Valleys” where on the 2nd CD the band appears with “Reach the Sky”.
A post on Youtube gives me many more details about the band. It confirms that the band hailed from Huddersfield. It also tells me that they formed in October 1989 and split in the summer of 1994. This might prove my theory that the band is not the same as the one in the compilation tapes. Then something more interesting, the band had recorded before the 7″ a 4-tack demo tape called “The Magic Shoebox” which included the songs “I Can Do Everything”, “You Make Me Smile”, “Fallen Angel” and “Waiting for the Sun”. I learned that the demo should have been named “The Happy Shoebox” rather than “Magic”, as the tape was named after the Happy Shoebox shoe shop in Huddersfield. They also recorded an EP after the 12″ which had the songs “Bridge to the Stars”, “Weird”, “Song 52” and “Wish Time” that still remains unreleased! It seems what happened was that everything was ready, mixed and all, but the master tapes of the recordings were destroyed in a fire that swept through the building the tapes were housed in. Oh! I would have love to hear these songs!
I find then a photo album on Flickr by one of the band members, David Pattern! How cool! There are tons of photos of the band in it. Thanks tot his I know the band played at different venues like the Halifax Return, at the Hipperholme (their first gig ever, in 1990), Queens Hall in Bradford, The Top Spot, Hebden Bridge Trades Club, The Mean Fiddler,
I also learn that the band was to tour the Netherlands following up the release of “Reach the Sky” 12″. It never happened. Also the band recorded a session for Jeremy “Jez” Hibbard for his evening show on BBC Radio Leeds.
Then I stumble upon David Pattern’s blog and wow! Here I find a post about the story of “Bridge to the Stars” and also links to the 4 songs that were to be released on vinyl and never did!
Thanks to his page I know too that the band has a Facebook page with lots of photos and memorabilia. Make yourself a fan of course.
And that’s about it. That’s all I could find online, it is quite a lot I think. I thought I was going to find myself empty-handed. So good that the 4 songs for the unreleased 12″ weren’t lost…. now I just need to listen to the “Magic Shoebox” demo! Who remembers them?! And what did they do musically afterwards?
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Listen
The Headmen – Roundabout
One Response to “:: The Headmen”
Cheers for this blast from the past — I was the bass player 🙂
I think the links on my blog may have stopped working ages ago, but I’ve got copies of most of the recordings stashed away somewhere, including the ill-fated “Bridge to the Stars” EP and also a 4-track demo tape that has some of the band’s later songs. I’ll try and get them all uploaded somewhere.
There’d been an earlier band called Cinema 3 that’d been four us from Rastrick High School 6th Form (Mark, Duncan, Graham and myself). I used to work part time at Tescos in Brighouse (where I lived) and Simon (from Wyke) also worked there — when he heard about the band, he joined to play bass and I went from bass to vocals. When the others left to go to uni, Simon & I wanted to carry on and Matthew & Nick (also both from Rastrick High) joined. I can’t recall why we picked “The Headmen” as the name tho! Nick lived in Elland and (I think) Matt was from Fixby or Birkby.
Simon had done some work experience at Beaumont Street Studios (which was also where Positive Records was based) and managed to blag some recording time which was when we did our first demo tape. Chris at Positive became our manager and signed us up to the label.
Nick, Simon & I ended up living in a couple of student houses in Bradford and Tumblers became our second home. I’m guessing that’s why we ended up on that Bradford CD set?
After the studio fire there was a lull in gigs and Matthew headed off to university. It took a while to find a replacement drummer and, for me at least, it felt like some of the spark had gone. We did a couple of final gigs in Bradford in 1994 and, since both Simon & I were thinking of going off to uni as mature students, we amicably called it day.