Today I continue posting Baby Lemonade CDs! I am very happy about the support for this new release. Thanks everyone that have ordered! I will have new surprises, very soon (I hope!).
In the meantime, I looked for some good new music over the weekend. Check them out!
Dumb Things: the very good Australian band will be back this November with an album called “Time Again”. It is going to be released by the Coolin’ By Sound label on 12″ vinyl on the 8th! At the moment you can pre-order it and listen to two tracks, “Crash Barrier” and “Today Tonight”.
The Belafontes: we stay in Australia, but now we head to Melbourne, to discover this duo that have just released the song “Big Man” as a digital single. Jess and Paul are The Belafontes and they make fun indiepop!
Ex-Vöid: the debut 7″ by ex-members of the brilliant Joanna Gruesome has two songs, “Only One” and “Ex-Vöid”! It is out already and it was released by a new London label called Prefect Records. The two songs are a bit different, the A side is a terrific indiepop track while the B side is a punky track, that I must admit not loving much. But the A side is worth the 5 pounds the 7″ is!
Cachorro: the first songs by this Valencia, Spain, band make up the aptly titled “EP 1”. Four songs of sunny bedroom pop by this duo formed by R. Peiró and D. Abadía. I believe the songs are only available in digital format, but we’ll be keeping an eye on them.
Los Jambos: Caballito Records is a very fine Spanish label. It is no surprise they have signed this band from Pamplona that sound really good! Lots of fun in their songs, catchy and even good for dancing! Los Jambos are a trio formed by Iñigo Maraví, Txema Maraví and Tamu Tamurai and they have released on the aforementioned label an album called “Chicos Formales”. Ten top tracks are in it! And yes, available on 12″ vinyl!
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The Gladstones is a band I discovered through the superb blog Wilfully Obscure. There are only a few blogs that are worth checking out these days, and that’s one of them. True, I love and prefer British and European bands in general and this blog’s best discoveries are American, but what discoveries there are! Like The Gladstones!
What we know about the band is that they were from Lincoln, Nebraska, and were part of the same scene as the more well-known For Against. The blog also tells that the band was originally called Playground.
The Gladstones only released one record, “Jeremy”. It was a p[roper album with 9 songs. Jangly and classy, the LP came out in 1990 on Tall Records (TR001). Why did they call the band “Jeremy”? None of the songs in the record are called like that. Was Jeremy someone important to them? Also who were behind Tall Records? According to Discogs they only put out this LP. Was it a self-release then?
With those questions I start tracking the songs, many of them on Youtube. I listen to them and enjoy them. On the A side there were just four songs, “Garden”, “Olduvai”, “Energy” and “Top of the World”. The B side had the remaining 5, “Ten Times a Minute”, “Mary I”, “Hurting In”, “Gallery Key” and “Horns of a Dilemma”. All songs were recorded at Mastertrax in Lincoln and were mixed by Dave Snider and Scott Leach at Downtown Records in Boston, Massachusetts. Snider was also the engineer.
The band, at least on the record (not sure if there were lineup changes), was formed by:
Karl Stephen on bass
Bruce Stephen on drums
Steven Hinrichs on guitar
Jonathan Baker on vocals
The record also got some tambourines on the song “Olduvai” thanks to Bobby Snider.
I wonder, were Karl and Bruce brothers? Or at least related? Was Bobby Snider related to Dave Snider the engineer?
Also why were there no more releases? Why release an album first, before releasing any singles? Why no compilation appearances? I find that quite odd. I am sure that there must. have been demo tapes and more songs.
After the demise of the band in 1989 Steven Hinrichs joined For Against. Karl Stephen also played on For Against at least on the “Echelons” album.
According to the Words on Music bio for For Against, Bruce and Karl Stephen were also part of Playground alongside Hinrichs and vocalist Marty Clough. It seems there was a tape recorded with tracks by Playground!
When Marty moved to Minneapolis, he left Playground and Jon Baker joined, that’s when they were renamed The Gladstones. Then we also learn that Karl and Bruce Stephen were founding members of the band Cartoon Pupils. Bruce also was away for a while, leaving the band (being replaced momentarily by Paul Engelhard) but came back for the recording of the album.
It seems too that the fine C86 radio show (by David Eastaugh) did an interview with Steven Hinrichs back in February this year. You can check that episode here. From it we learn that the band played a lot in Lincoln and Omaha in Nebraska, and also once in St. Louis, Missouri. A funny anecdote he shared was that the band sent a tape to Sarah Records and they got a reply saying that they “sounded too American” for Sarah!!
Steven also mentions that after recording the album they recorded 5 demos afterwards, but nothing happened with them.
Of course lots written about For Against on the web, but very little about The Gladstones. In any case, I am super amazed that I am not the only crazy person trying to find out more about them. That of course means that their songs are really good! But I do keep wondering if at some point we’ll be able to those demo songs that weren’t part of the album!
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Listen
The Gladstones – Garden
