Day 62. Last batch of orders I could mail were sent. Still at home orders for Spain, Germany and Japan waiting. I will try next week, see if the postal service has resumed service to these countries.

In the meantime, there are a bunch of great releases out there now:

C19: our friend Joel in Peru has just put together a new digital compilation under the Impermeable Records name. This compilation is titled “C19”. It is an interesting name, right? It is 2020 now. But yeah, these are all songs recorded in 2019, and I must say this is a very careful and thoughtful compilation. The songs have been cherry-picked and you can see it as it includes amazing bands like Astral Brain, Dayflower, Nah…, The Umbrella Puzzles and more! 22 songs in total and artwork by the great Casio Van Doesburg!

Los Monocromos: two songs recorded during the shelter in place in Chile, “Un Lugar” and “Hace Tiempo”, that is how Matías Valmore presents his new project. The sound of DIY, of bedroom pop with poppy guitars, are what makes this a charming digital single.

Eterna Joventut: the debut song (!) for this Barcelona duo formed by Júlia and Asier is called “Vuelve Junto a Mí”. It is a sweet short song (under 3 minutes) with jangly guitars and female/male vocals! From what I see this is the first song they have been recording during the pandemic, so we should keep an eye on them, probably there will be more soon!

Apple Orchard: are our friends Ryan and Dale back? It looks that way! “A Slow Dissolve” was just recorded during the past few weeks! How cool is that. Sporting a cool artwork, this new digital single sounds excellent. It is noisy, poppy, and just so good! Are they preparing a release? I really hope so!

Dan Dan Dero: the Lima band is back with a new video for their brand new song “La Camiseta de James Rodriguez”. It is a great song, catchy and fun. But I must say that it causes me some problems! I really don’t think highly of James Rodriguez. He is terribly overrated in my book! Well, all Colombian players are overrated these days, they always choke at important matches. The last great Colombian for me was Iván Ramiro Córdoba. Not that you care, you came to read about indiepop and not football. But I am passionate about football too. So nevermind me. This song is GREAT and the video is FUN!

—————————————————————–

I have had the intention of writing about the Autumn Parade for a long time. Finally I will do it. It is hard to plan ahead for these things to be honest. I just write and write about bands and I leave drafts ready or almost ready to publish. Then I revisit them when it is time to publish. Sometimes on a post I’d say “a few weeks ago”, but then when publishing three months have passed. It is funny.

The Autumn Parade didn’t leave us any records. No releases. But they did leave at least two songs recorded and published in a compilation called “Expo 1” that was released both in vinyl and CD in 1991 by the label Beachwood Music (EXPO1). These songs were “White Sand” and “Julia Blue”.

This record was compiled by Colin Simmons and Tim Millington. And I am thinking all tracks were recorded for this compilation. Why? Because there is one producer, Chris Nagle, for the record. Though ok, there are many engineers, Alastair McMillan, Dave Drennan, Huw David Price, Paul Tipler and Richard Scott. The photography on the sleeve is credited to Sheena Land.

Then in the credits it mentions that the songs were recorded at different places, like Blackwing in London, Strawberry in Stockport and Homestead in County Antrim. Where then did Autumn Parade recorded their songs? I think Stockport. There is a small bio on Last.fm that mentions that they hailed from there and were around 1988 to 1992.

Shelflife Records wrote about them many years ago, in 2009. That’s how I heard about them for the first time. It was a cool time, there were many good blogs discovering lost gems. Shelflife shared a Myspace page for Autumn Parade, and there were two more songs, “Skylight” and “Phased”. It also mentions that the band had an album to be released called “Indian Summer”.

We also know the names of the band members:
John Hamlin – vocals, songwriter and guitar
Phil Pearson – keyboards and backing vocals
Rob Bennet – bass
Ben Power – drums

It mentions that indeed two songs were recorded at Strawberry Studios but also two other were recorded at Amazon Studios in Liverpool. We find out too that the band toured a lot and got some demo budgets from labels like Phonogram and Siren but nothing came to fruition. Then in 1991 the American label Atlantic Records showed interest but again, nothing happened in the end. What a shame really!

I keep looking for more info and I find that at some point John Hamlin was making music with Emmy McIntyre and released two with Invisible Girl Records.

Not much more information sadly, but this is good stuff right? Now I do hope someday we get to listen to more of the songs that were recorded for “Indian Summer”. And also of course, I do hope to interview them sometime and find out the story behind the band!

::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

Listen
Autumn Parade – Julia Blue