Day 13 of self-isolation.
How is everyone holding?
Music keeps me sane as well as the many projects related to Cloudberry. The fanzine is looking good and I am having it printed this week. Should be arriving next week I think. I will add pre-order button for it soon. It is very exciting.
New music news, here:
The BV’s: our friends have just released a new video for their song “Be Lonely Together Pt. II”. This video was shot when they toured the UK in July 2019, including their gig at Indietracks! This song was included in their album “Cartography”. It is great!
Diners: another cool video release is the one for the song “Cup of Coffee”. This single is included in the band’s album “Leisure World” that will be released on April 24th on Lauren Records.
Graeme Elston: four new songs make up the “Miracles” EP from the ex-Slipslide and Love Parade. This is exactly the kind of music I like! On his solo recordings recorded in between Slipslide and his new project Auto-Vélo, he is as jangly as ever. Good stuff!
The Bell Streets: so Nick Batterham from the Earthmen and Blindside (who I have interviewed in the blog!) and Josh Meadows from Sugargliders have a new project together and are releasing an album on Popboomerang Records on April 3rd! We can preview 3 of the tracks that will be in the album “Disappointment Town”, “Fragile” and “Crying Inside” and as expected they are very nice!
The Forbin Project: this new song called “Isolation” sounds fantastic. I know nothing about this Milpitas, California, but from what I understand its been going since 2012 and recording 4 EPs, many singles and an album! I should go and discover the rest of their songs!
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I am not sure where the name The Castavetes comes from. I am quite curious about it. I was playing the other day at home a compilation I haven’t played in years called “Peachy Little Secrets…” and the song “The Phone Never Rings” came up. And suddenly I wanted to find more about them.
In 2006 I was into indiepop as I had never been. I was running Plastilina Records plus my Mira el Péndulo blog and I was already planning what would Cloudberry be. It was a great time. People were buying records, postal prices were decent, and streaming platforms weren’t a thing. It was fun. Fanzines were making a comeback and from all corners new labels and bands were appearing. One of the labels that surprised everyone was Fruit Records because they came from far away Singapore and were releasing terrific music. Just remember that last year I dedicated a post to Serenade, the lovely Singapore band that had their album released by this label.
Fruit Records was run by Isman and Elisa, a super nice couple. We used to trade records. Nowadays I don’t get to trade that much. Not as back then. One of the records that they sent me was the “Peachy Little Secrets…” compilation (FRUIT003) that they released on CD in 2006. This superb record included lots of top bands, from Annemarie to My Favorite. It was through this compilation that I got introduced to The Castavetes with their song “The Phone Never Rings”.
There is a small bio on Last.fm that kind of slaps me on the face. Left me cold. It seems that one day, after band practice, their keyboard player tragically died in a car crash. After that the band split.
Did they continue making music with other bands later on? What happened? Or did they stop and never picked up their instruments again? I feel so sad now.
The band hailed from Sweden, it seems that they came from the city of Gothenburg. I do know too that at least two other songs were recorded as I found them on a Myspace playlist. These were “Eighties Ideals” and “After the Holiday”. There’s also a different mix for the latter called “After the Holiday Winfield mix”.
Then I find an old playlist from a German radio called Radio Blau. That radio played the song “After the Holiday” and they mention that it came from a “Demo” CDEP released by Outafocus Records. Interesting. What other songs were in this CD?
The last post I found was of a blog called “We Wanna Lazerdance into the Night” which seems was written by a girl from Lund. She has a post where she tells about a visit she did to Gothenburg. During that trip, on a Thursday of February 2006 she saw The Castavetes at a venue called Rio Rio.
And that’s it. For some reason I remembered them as making a bigger splash back then, I had this idea that more blogs had written about them. But it seems very little info is available about them. Would love to know more for sure.
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3 Responses to “:: The Castavetes”
Hi, around the time the Castavetes songs were released I was also trying to find out more but have not been more successful.
Funny you mention the Radio Blau show. I’ve once heared “the phone never rings” on the station “otter pop radio” and was infected. I wrote my friend Uwe about the band and he played “after the holiday” on the show “45 minutes” you were writing about.
Meanwhile I am doing my own radio show in Switzerland and started some Castavetes research. I’ll let you know if I find out something new. Or did you during the last years? Best!
Hi Andreas,
I was in touch with Helena (who was on a band I had released actually, Lovingly Yours!!!), the vocalist, and send her interview questions… sadly she never sent back any answers… so yeah, dont have more details other than that!
The Castavetes band member who was killed was also in a band called Lola Barbershop. They had a great song called Girl in the Record Store.