Thanks so much again to Jon Clay for another interview!

++ Hi Jon! Tell me how after The Ferrymen you decide to start Barny? And was there more people in the band or was it just you?

Barny started pretty much straightaway after The Ferrymen ended. The band consisted of all The Ferrymen except for Chris (The Ferrymen keyboard player), and the only change in line-up was Nathan (The Ferrymen’s trumpet player) took over playing keyboards. Most of the songs were written quite quickly, so we had a full set ready to be played at gigs within a month or so.

++ Why did you call the band Barny?

Barny was the only semi-respectable name that we could think of that hadn’t already been used! Another favourite was Boyracer, but there have been at least two other bands called that, and at the time one of them was a band who lived in a town nearby, so we couldn’t call ourselves that! We played our first “Barny” gig as ‘Starboard’ but when someone announced us on stage we all cringed at the name, so it got scrapped in favour of Barny!

++ During the time you were in Barny you were living in small Paddock Wood, right? Why did you move from Doncaster and how did you find this new town? Did you like it? Where are you living now?

Yes, shortly after The Ferrymen ended I decided to move down to live in Kent with my girlfriend at the time. Doncaster is a very big industrial town with lots of people and lots of pubs and clubs, whereas as Paddock Wood was very small. At first I wasn’t sure that I’d like living there but I soon settled in and I got used to the quieter way of life! I did commute by train to work in London every day, so I did have the busy side of life too I suppose! The only problem was that the rest of the band still lived in and around Doncaster, so I had to travel up there every fortnight to rehearse with them. Nowadays I am living in a suburb of North London called Highgate, which is most famous for the Highgate Vampire and Karl Marx’s grave which is in the local cemetery.

++ How many songs did Barny record? And how many did you actually had?

Barny only ever recorded three songs – Take Me Away, Undisputed Beauty Queen and Liquid Satisfaction, although a live recording from a gig in London does exist. Altogether we had about 10 songs, so just enough to play a decent length live set!

++ Undisputed Beauty Queen is the only song I’ve heard by your band and I find it fantastic! Is this a real story? The sound has changed too from the “Northern Pop” of The Ferrymen to something more “mod-ish” I’d say. What were you listening at this time?

Thank you! Yes, it is quite likely that Undisputed Beauty Queen is a true story although I’ve never actually asked Wayne! The line “Around the town Saturday afternoon, the girls are hard and the boys think they’re cool” is definitely true of Doncaster… ha ha!! Yes, the sound did change quite a lot from the Northern Pop sound as Wayne has been listening to a lot of the current English indie bands of the time such as Oasis, and he wanted the band to sound a bit more like those sort of people. At the time I was listening to lots of Northern Soul and Britpop, pretty much the same stuff I listen to now.

++ Barny was showcased in two compilations “25 A Silver Jubilee” and “Breeze C”. Care to tell me a bit about the compilations and how you ended up on them?

To be perfectly honest I can’t really remember exactly how we ended up appearing on those compilations. However, The Ferrymen also appeared on them, so it’s quite likely that someone wrote to me asking about The Ferrymen and I sent them tracks back from both bands.

++ Did you play gigs as Barny? If so, which ones do you remember the best? If not, why not?!

In total we played around 10 gigs as Barny – 1 in Brighton, 2 in Leeds and the rest in London. The best gigs were probably the ones in Leeds, as Nathan (the keyboard player) was at University there at the time and he managed to bring along lots of people. All the London gigs were organised by me, and because I’d only been living and working down there for a month I didn’t really know many people, so most of the gigs were quite badly attended. The last gig that we played was the one that I have a live recording of – Water Rats in Kings Cross, London. I worked there at the time so it was quite easy for me to get a gig there!

++ Highlights for Barny?

Well, the band was so short-lived that I don’t really think we had any highlights. However, I’m glad to say that we played at a couple of semi-legendary venues which have now closed down – The Laurel Tree in Camden Town (very small but quite famous during the Britpop era of the 1990’s) and the original Mean Fiddler in Harlesden, North West London.

++ When and why did you call it a day? Did you continue making music with another band?

The band ended at some point during 1998 although I can’t remember the exact date. At the time it just seemed pointless to me to keep playing in London to almost no-one and having to bring the rest of the band down from Doncaster (4 hours by car). So, after the Water Rats gig everyone went back to Doncaster and I didn’t call them and they didn’t call me! Yes, that’s what happened!!! We’re all friends again now though, so it’s OK!!! After Barny ended I played in a few bands with friends although we only ever played 1 gig (the band was a punk band called Blacklist Brigade). Nowadays I’m in a band called The Platers with a friend of mine called Chris. Currently it’s Chris, me and a drum machine! We’ve only recorded 2 songs so far but are hoping to record some more soon. It seems that whenever Chris is free I am not and whenever I am free Chris is not!

++ I heard your favourite city is Berlin! I really liked it there as well! I bet the Firestation Records guys would be proud that you like it there! Why is Berlin your favourite city? Tell me what are your favourite spots there?

Yes, without a doubt my favourite city is Berlin – I just love it there, especially the district of Kreuzberg. The last ever Ferrymen gig took place at Trash in Berlin in 1997, and I’ve loved the place ever since. I’ve been back there on short weekend breaks 3 times since then, and I’ve also been there lots of times with other bands as a sound engineer. I really keep trying to meet up with Uwe from Firestation Records when I’m over there but we haven’t managed to meet up yet for various reasons! I’m going back there later in 2009, so I will hopefully meet up with him then! My favourite things in the city are the entire district of Kreuzberg (!), White Trash Fast Food, The Rock ‘n’ Roll Herberge, Mr Dead & Mrs Free Record Shop and the Brandenburg Gate!

++ So… fish and chips or wienerschnitzel? What are your favourite 5 dishes? What about favourite beer?

Oh, most definitely fish and chips…. and I can definitely recommend Fishbone in Fitzrovia, London and Bipsham Kitchen in Blackpool as the two best fish and chip shops in England! As for my favourite 5 dishes…. oh, this is difficult…. 1. any kind of risotto 2. vegetable vindaloo curry 3. salmon pasta 4. fish and chips 5. salad cream and black pepper sandwiches…. ha ha! Wow, that was quite difficult! I’m not really much of a beer drinker to be honest…. my favourite tipple is Whiskey or Sailor Jerry Rum!

++ On myspace you say you like zombie movies and blaxploitation movies, I have to say that I do not know much about these. So give me some tips!

Well, as for Blaxploitation movies anything which contains Pam Grier is good for me! Also stuff like “Across 110th Street” and even more well known films such as “Superfly” are great. I just love seeing the urban sprawls of (usually) 1970’s New York, LA and Detroit in those kind of movies… As for Zombie movies, well the older the better, and the more low-budget the better!

++ Was does Jon Clay dedicates his time nowadays? Any other hobbies you are passionate aside from music?

Nowadays I work as a live sound engineer for bands. I work at a venue in Central London but I’m also the sound engineer for various bands including Palm Springs (www.myspace.com/songspalmsprings), Songdog (www.myspace.com/songdog1) and The Subterraneans (www.myspace.com/subterraneanswasere), so I go wherever they go. The last time I was in Berlin was when Palm Springs played at The Privat Club in Kreuzberg…

++ Thanks again Jon, anything else you’d like to add?

I’d like to say thank you to Roque for offering the interview and for taking an interest in the band. I’d also like to say that I’d be happy to send a CD of the Barny studio recordings and live gig recording to anyone that wants a copy – just email me at fuzzyjonclay (a) gmail.com

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Listen
Barny – Undisputed Beauty Queen

Thanks so much to Janie Nicoll for the interview! Check more songs at their myspace!

++ Who were The Vultures? How did you knew each other and how did the band start?

The Vultures were myself, Janie Nicoll (vocals), Allison Young (Bass), Anna Watkins (Lead guitar) and Ian Binns on Drums. Anna, Allison and I were all at Edinburgh College of Art in the same year. Allison and Anna, had persuaded Ian to be the drummer and a bit later asked me to join the band, and we started practicing in the practice rooms off Blair Street, sharing with Jesse Garon and Rote Kapelle and various other bands. We didn’t have a drum kit, amps or any equipment so we used the other bands’ equipment .

Ian Binns was in about 4 other bands (including Rote Kapelle, The Thanes, the Stayrcase) at our first gig at the Onion Cellar, he was in at least 2 of the other bands playing that night.

Later we had Andy Clements on drums, and when Anna left, David Nicol played lead guitar.

++ All of you were art students, right? What was your major? How close of a relationship was there between the art you studied and the music The Vultures were making?

Allison and I were in the Tapestry Department, which was and still is, a very forward thinking department, more about installation than weaving. Then I changed to Painting. We both had a fairly punky approach to our work. Allison used make up the posters, just collaging images together in quite a spontaneous jokey way, that worked really well, and she also designed the cover for the EP, so it was influenced by that sixties Psychedlic look, but in quite a tongue in cheek kind of a way. Very rough and ready, but we were all into the sixties garage sound of the Sonics, and the do-it-yourself quality of the music. Anna dropped out after 1st or second year I think but we ended up sharing a flat together and we used to go to a mid week club called the Snake Pit, that played grungy sixties tracks.

++ Why the name The Vultures?

Allison and Anna chose the name, I think they wanted something that sounded a bit aggressive even though we were a “girl band”, but we were always fairly embarrassed by the name. Embarrassment was quite a major feature of being in the band!!

We first did a demo on a 4 track porta-studio with the help of Angus McPake, who was in Jesse Garon and the Desperadoes, and later the Fizzbombs. The demo seemed to end up getting bandied about in London and getting a good reaction, probably because we were 3 girls of a certain age. We played the Black Horse in Camden with Jesse Garon, and we got an enthusiastic review in Sounds. The Happy Mondays had played the bar 2 weeks before! Also I had met up with My Bloody Valentine, as they stayed at my flat after they supported Sonic Youth when they played the Edinburgh Venue. I gave them a copy of our demo and they really liked it. When they next played in Scotland we supported them in Glasgow and Edinburgh.

++ You recorded a 12″ for Narodnik Records. How did the deal happen? Were you good friends with them? Or they were loyal followers of yours? The label seems a bit obscure even though they released indiepop luminaries as Jesse Garon and The Desperadoes, care telling us a bit more about the label?

Narodnik records was run by Eddie Connelly who had been in Meat Whiplash, a band from East Kilbride, who had an early Creation single, and who were pals of the Jesus and Mary Chain, and the Shop Assistants. Eddie was going out with Alex, and Paul from MW was going out with Sarah from the Shop Assistants and they went on to form the Motorcycle Boy, after Alex left the Shop Assistants. Eddie had set up Narodnik records on one of those government schemes for setting up a business (Enterprise Allowance). He had already put out singles by Jesse Garon and the Fizzbombs and I think they thought we were a bit raw-er and less twee, nobody was keen to be labeled as twee back then it wasn’t very cool.
We were all quite friendly as it was quite a close nit music community.
Eddie and Alex ended up sharing a flat with my then boyfriend David Scott, who went on to play lead guitar in Motorcycle Boy. It was all very incestuous!

++ What do you remember from the recording sessions of the Good Thing EP? Any anecdotes you can share?

We first recorded the four track EP at Jamie Watson’s old Chambers studio, below Avalanche records, just down the road from Edinburgh College of Art, with Douglas Hart from the Jesus and Mary Chain producing it. He had produced one of Jesse Garon’s singles and wanted to do ours, which all seemed quite glamorous as the JAMC were pretty huge at that time. Unfortunately it wasn’t up to scratch and that got shelved. We then re-recorded it at Jamie’s new studio in Portobello and it worked out a lot better. That went pretty well except for the maracas on “You’re Not Scared” which Jamie ended up having to do himself because none of us could get it right. He made me promise not to tell the rest of the band so that’s that cover blown…

We also made a video, with a photographer friend of mine. It was really arty with us dancing on our backs in Princes Street, photographed from above on top of massive photos and doing a pre Stone Roses paint splattering session in a studio but unfortunately I haven’t been able to locate a copy of that for our Myspace site.

++ How many copies of the 12″ were released? Maybe I haven’t looked well, but I can’t find a copy for myself!

I think we had a thousand made but we never knew if they were particularly well distributed. We imagined they were just sitting in boxes in a warehouse somewhere. You can get them on Ebay and there are specialist shops in Britain and the US that stock it, so it is still available. The single got good reviews apart form some “feminist” female writer at the NME (which for me was the only record paper that mattered) who took objection to the Jack the Ripper track, so we were a bit down hearted about that.

++ Also you have many unreleased songs, right? How many demo tapes were recorded? Why wasn’t there more releases from the band? Will there be some kind of retrospective release one day

We only recorded one demo of six songs but we recorded the 4 track EP and we did the Janice Long session, we had a couple of new songs and various other tracks that I only have as live versions. I have a taped copy of the gig we did at Barrowlands with MBV’s on one side and us on the other. But there is a lot of feedback from the guitar so it’s a really bad recording. I think Eddie gave up on putting out records after our EP and they went full steam ahead with Motorcycle Boy, front page of the NME and a tour with the Jesus and Mary Chain.

++ You gigged quite a bit, supporting great and important bands like The Pastels or My Bloody Valentine! Which were your favourite Vultures gigs and why?

Most gigs are a blur as we were always so nervous that we just raced through each tune as fast as we could. Our sets only lasted about twenty minutes! The most memorable ones were supporting my Bloody Valentine at Rooftops and Barrowlands Revue Bar, as the MBV’s were starting to get well known and also Motorcycle Boy at Potterrow and the Venue. I think the Venue was a great place for gigs I went there a lot to clubs like Splash 1, etc. The Pastels were always quite shy. I still see Steven around in Glasgow at gigs. Also playing the Black Horse in Camden was a highlight as it was only about our 5th gig and we got a really good response which we didn’t expect, and we got an enthusiastic review in Sounds.

++ Do you still live in Edinburgh? How do you remember the city back then? What was the coolest place to hang out and what was your favourite restaurant in town?!

I live in Glasgow now but Allison still lives in Edinburgh. The best pubs were the City Café, the Kangaroo Club, Thunderball, Sneeky Petes, the Hooch, the Venue for bands, Wilkie House did good clubs. My favourite restaurant at that time was Viva Mexico on Victoria Street, for Mexican food, I think its still there.

++ The sound of The Vultures is now quite trendy, don’t know if you’ve noticed. There’s a very popular band that kind of sounds like you called Vivian Girls. Of course I like you better, but are you aware of this scene happening in New York? Do you think you were ahead of your time?

Its funny to think our sound has come back into fashion again… things obviously go in cycles. I look back and think that the Shop Assistants were a great sound – perfect pop. There were lots of other great bands operating that eventually gave up. It’s a shame that the indie labels at that time were run on a shoestring and weren’t able to promote the bands. There wasn’t much of a support structure especially in Edinburgh I think that’s why very few Edinburgh bands had the success they deserved. Also there seemed to be a reluctance to get involved with the mainstream as that was seen as selling out.

I have heard of the Vivian Girls, and they played in Glasgow a couple of times recently, but I haven’t managed to see them. I think their sound is more like the drums and guitars of the Shop Assistants and the Fizzbombs, or like the vocal style of current Glasgow band Camera Obscura. I think the sound of the Vultures was more garage and less shoe gazing, more of a nod to the Sonics, and we were also compared to The Pleasure Seekers and to punk band The Cravats. Bands like the Thanes, who were producing authentic sixties sounding music were quite an influence on Allison and Anna. We had more of a Psychadelic sound, and we seemed to be a bit more rough and ready than other bands around at the time. We did a version of “Lets take a Trip” by Kim Fowley but through listening to a version by some obscure 60’s female garage band. The other cover we did was “You Drive Me Ape” by the Dickies, who were also pretty punky.

++ You also recorded a BBC session for the Janice Long show? How was that experience? Which songs were recorded?

We recorded a session for the Janice Long show at BBC Maidavale studios in London. We were booked in to do it on a Sunday, so I borrowed an art school minibus under false pretences pretending we were going on a research trip and then we drove down to London. We got to the studio on the Sunday morning, to find that the drum kit we had borrowed was unusable as it had a burst drum skin. We had to phone round all the music equipment shops in London to find one open and wait for a courier to bring us a new skin before we could start recording anything. We wondered if that was possibly a sabotage attempt by whoever leant us the drum-kit! In the end we were only happy with 3 out of the 4 songs we recorded. They were “You Drive Me Ape”, “Something New”, and “Kill That Girl”.

++ Why and when did you call it a day? Were you involved with any bands after?

We were offered 9 gigs in London but we were going through a rough patch confidence wise, with what seemed like not much success with the single. Also Allison and I felt under pressure at Art College and I also had my degree show coming up, it was time to make that decision about concentrating on getting a degree or heading down to London in a transit van and sleeping on people’s floors. We decided to cancel the gigs, which seems a bit crazy now when you look back, and that was pretty much the end of the band. I think we were lacking in confidence and it was quite tough to be in a band back then, the music business was really male dominated. We had the odd fan letter but overall we felt like we had very little feedback about what we were doing. Now there is direct contact through MySpace, I’m sure it must be much more rewarding now.

++ Are you all still in touch? What do The Vultures do nowadays?

I have a career as a visual artist, I exhibit and curate exhibitions and I have 2 children, so I am pretty busy. I got more into House music and the club scene in the 90’s but more recently I’ve been going to see a lot of bands again and I’ve also started doing a bit of DJing. www.myspace.com/janienicoll

I still see Allison every so often at exhibitions in Edinburgh, she paints landscapes now. Anna moved down south and I’ve not seen or heard from her since and I haven’t seen David either. I met Ian Binns at Glastonbury one time. Andy, the second drummer is down in London after living in Glasgow for a few years. I still see Fran from Jesse Garon, and Andrew Tully is married to someone I know. Angus McPake was working for BBC Scotland as a sound engineer, and I don’t know what happened to Alex and Eddie. I met up with Kevin Shields and Douglas Hart a few times backstage after Primal Scream gigs, and also all of the MBV’s when they played 2 gigs in Glasgow last year! It was great to see them, and none of them have changed!

++ Anything else you’d like to add?

We had a good time while it lasted !

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Listen
The Vultures – You’re Not Scared

Thanks so much to Chris Yeamans for the interview! Watch the video for “Take it All” here!

++ How does Friends of Harry start? Who were the members and how did you all knew each other?

Friends of Harry came about when parts of two Newcastle bands joined together. Those bands were ‘Pop, Dick and Harry’ and ‘The Bats’. FoH were Chris Yeamans, Sav Scatola, Zoe Lambert, Phyll Scammell and Rob Brown. Newcastle is quite a small city and we new each other through the local music scene. Pop Dick and Harry (PDH) and The Bats did a few gigs together. When both bands split up around the same time, it was an easy choice to make to join the two bands together.

++ Why the name “Friends of Harry”?

We kept the ‘Harry’ from Pop Dick and Harry . Funnily enough, I’d been reading an article about some shadowy organisation called ‘friends of harry’ who were these group of politicians/businessmen planning for in the event of nuclear catastrophe (which seemed quite likely at the time) by hiding machinery /food etc at the bottom of some deep mines around the world. I just stole the name !

++ You gigged quite a lot around Europe and you say Switzerland became a second home for you! Which other countries did you play in and how come you were so well known in Switzerland?

Newcastle had a swiss connection from the mid 1980’s when a Newcastle band called ‘The Ground’ were touring in Europe. They made friends with some people from Aarau, near Zurich. These people had some friends who were film makers who wanted to make a film involving English bands. By the time they got round to making the film, ‘The Ground ‘had split up. 3 Newcastle bands were chosen to be in the film, PDH luckily happened to be one of them. The filmmakers came over to England to film the bands in Newcastle, then a tour was organized for us in Switzerland, and we were filmed on tour. It was very exciting at the time. PDH split up before the film was released, so FoH went back to Switzerland to do another tour to promote the film. The film was shown in bars and venues , then FoH would perform after the film. The film was also shown at the cinema and later on TV. As you can imagine it was great publicity for us and we became quite well known because of it. This lead to further tours around Europe and a few TV appearances. We played in Spain, Italy, France, Germany, Poland , Czechoslovakia (as it was at the time).

++ What was your favourite way to travel around Europe? car? train? plane? and why?

Van, without a doubt . We had a transit van with room for a bed in it. We spent so many hours in that van it became like a second home to us.We had a tape deck in it so we would all make compilation tapes of our favourite songs to listen to while we toured. We were nearly going to call our album ‘Stand by Your Van’ in homage to our wonderful Ford Transit. Occasionally if it was for a one off gig, we flew to Switzerland, but generally it was in our white van, packed to the gills with guitars drums and amps.

++ Which are the gigs you remember the most and why? Tell us some good anecdotes!

There were a few standout memories

1. Playing at Reading Festival on my birthday was pretty amazing. We played quite early in the day, so it meant we could spend the rest of the weekend relaxing, getting drunk and watching lots of great bands.It was one of those lovely hot weekends.perfect
2. Playing ‘live’ on radio 1 in Newcastle. Radio 1 used to have huge listening figures. every summer they would go out on tour on the ‘Radio One Roadshow’ We got picked to do the Newcastle show in a huge park in the city. There was a massive live crowd watching us and an estimated 5 million listeners on the radio . Got interviewed by some famous DJ and did a couple of songs live.
3. Doing a live gig in Czechoslovakia. It was an outdoor folk festival (it appears on the ‘take it all’ youtube clip).The Czechs had just had a revolution and got rid of their communist government. Apparently up to that point, folk music was one style of music that was ‘rebel’ music. During our first song, a lot of the older audience left because we weren’t playing pure folk music..but all these young people got up and started dancing. They came on stage and danced around us as we played. The look of joy on their faces was amazing. It was as if they had finally been let off a leash and were reveling in their freedom. It was a really profound moment in many ways.
4. This one was with Pop, Dick and Harry. We had gone to Amsterdam for a few weeks to do some busking and have a holiday. On the first afternoon, after we had finished a song, a man came up to us and asked us if we fancied doing a gig because their support band had cancelled. He gave us an address and asked us to turn up at six. When we got there it was a huge hall in the centre of Amsterdam. We came out on stage to an audience of a few thousand people. We didn’t realize we were supporting Crowded House.

++ You started in 1988 as a folk/roots revival band but then you evolved to an indie pop sound. How did this progression happen? What bands influenced you in getting this new sound?

The folk roots thing came from PDH. PDH started off by doing covers of American country boogie songs..usually about trains…night train to Memphis, mystery train, that sort of thing. When I joined PDH, I started writing songs in that style. It was a great live style to have and at that time it was completely original. Audiences responded really well to it. When FoH started , we carried on with that style because it was still quite new and exciting. Then all of a sudden, that whole ‘Madchester’ beat thing happened and very quickly our sound sounded very dated. We all got into that Happy Mondays, Stone roses, Inspiral carpets music. Listening to that stuff all the time obviously influenced what I was writing. Also it was the heyday of the Pixies, so they were a big influence too. As a band it gave us a whole new lease of life cos it gave us all much more scope musically to try different things. Unfortunately, the first album was released just as we were going from one style to another, so it was a bit of a musical mess. Also we had performed hundreds of live gigs , so we were great live but had very little experience of trying to capture our strengths on record. The album was a big disappointment in that sense.

++ What’s the full discography of the band?

The band always had a do-it –yourself ethos so a lot of our songs were recorded onto tapes and sold at gigs.Our one proper album release was

‘Six Days of Madness’ on Roundabout records plus

‘Take it All’ which was released as a single from the album

++ Do you have many unreleased songs? if so, will one day we”l see them finally released?

Yep quite a few of unreleased songs. We had a whole new album ready to record. Because we financed everything ourselves, we had to decide, if we were to record a second album, that we would have to commit another 2 to 3 years of FoH to pay the record off by selling it at gigs. A few people in the band didn’t want to do that, so we decide to quit while we were ahead. There are still 2 or 3 songs that the girls sang that I think would make great pop songs for other bands to perform

++ Your song Messing About the River appeared on the tape compilation “Sailing Home”. Care to tell us a bit about this compilation?

We got to know Ray Laidlaw from a famous Newcastle band called ‘Lindisfarne’ who had the job of putting an album together for a special event in Newcastle. There was a ‘Tall Ships Race’ being started from Newcastle to some other European country that year, so a nautical themed album was brought out. We were asked to perform ‘Messing about on the river’ for the album Its an old song from the 60’s .We just went into the studio one morning, learned the song and recorded it in about 3 hours. It’s a bit of a daft song, but I actually quite like the version that we did.

++ What happened to the covers of the Take it All 7″ that they had to be hand painted? What do you remember from those days recording this single?

When we recorded the song , one of the band came up with a brilliant sort of mosaic colour picture for the front cover . Just before pressing, we found out we couldn’t afford full colour , so we had to pick just 2 colours instead. We didn’t have chance to check it out before printing. On the way to Switzerland, we stopped off in Leicester to pick up the single from this record factory. When we got the cover , we all burst out laughing. The picture of the front was totally unrecognizable because it was a 2 colour mosaic that didn’t work at all. So we stopped at the nearest art shop, bought some gold, silver and black pens and coloured the sleeves in by hand…all the way to Switzerland.I was driving so I didn’t have to colour any. All the rest of the band had sore wrists by the time they arrived in Switzerland. Each cover is unique.

++ What was the biggest highlight of Friends of Harry?

There’s so many to choose from but probably our first trip to Spain was the most memorable highlight. FoH hadn’t been together that long, but before we knew it, we were being flown out to spain, staying in nice hotels with a van and driver provided. We appeared on a TV show. As we left the building, the car was mobbed by hundreds of people trying to get autographs. It was the first(and last) time that had happened to us. We were only there for six days, but it was ‘six days of madness’ . That’s where we got the name for the first album

++ Do you still live in Newcastle? Has it changed much compared to those early 90s? Do you still follow the music scene there?

Yep I still live up here, I had kids and they grew up here. The music scene is pretty good at the moment. There are a few bands like the Futureheads who are doing really well. My girlfriend is close mates with these lot so I’ve got to know them . Also bands like ‘The Week That Was’ who are also highly acclaimed and maximo Park, who are now a huge act.

++ When and why did you call it a day? Did you keep making music after?

As mentioned previously, it was a tough choice, stop or carry on for another few years. We did it for 5 years. That’s quite a long time to spend with the same group of people. Being in a touring band is a quite intense situation…..i think we were a bit burned out. In hindsight had we taken a few months off we might have come back refreshed and carried on, but 5 years constant touring takes it toll. It drives you slightly insane.

I started in a new band in Newcastle about a year after that. There’s a homemade video on youtube ; ‘Honey Locust – Buzzer’ . I really loved this band, musically a lot more intense and more my style of music. We were described as somewhere between ‘the pixies’ and ‘the doors’ and had a good local following. It was at the time though, when guitar bands were out and hip hop was in. After that I packed in for a while but then got back into composing stuff using my PC as a home studio. there’s one of my songs on youtube ‘ Anyway by Earworm’

++ Are you still in touch with Friends of Harry bandmates? What are you all doing today?

Funnily enough we’ve been in touch recently because someone had heard ‘take it all’ and wants to try and get it ‘placed’ for an advert, film, TV programme or something like that. Apparently the song still gets played on Greater London Radio. Some guy who owns a promotion company heard it and decided he might be able to do something with it. I’m not holding out great hope, but you never know, you may switch on your TV one day and ‘Take it All’ might be on.

As for the band, Sav the guitarists became a 3D designer(computer graphics), Phyll bassist, lives in France and still performs all over the world, Zoe vocalist/accordion player is an actor. she appeared on ‘Emmerdale Farm’(a UK soap) regularly a while back. Rob drummer works doing sound/stage stuff for a theatre company , and me, well I’m just qualifying as a media teacher. I teach kids how to make music videos.It’s great fun.

Looking back it was a great 5 years with Friends of harry, we got to see a lot of places and meet loads of great people, whilst doing something that we all really enjoyed. I’m glad we got out when we did.

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Listen
Friends of Harry – Take it All

Thanks so much to Pete Major for the interview!

++ So tell me how did the band come together? How did you all meet? Why did you decide to start a band?

Well, thanks so much for asking for an interview … it’s been a long time since I’ve done one of these … this will test my memory!

The Holsteins were formed when Belfast band Firehouse burned out in 1991. The band re-formed as the Holsteins having recruited singer Niamh Rooney via the traditional “advert in the music shop” method. She was the first to call my number (well, her friend was actually … she was too shy!) and so we got together with the band and once we heard her fantastic voice we knew we need look no further.

Strangely enough, we hadn’t really imagined having a female singer (Firehouse were an all-male 5-piece) but most calls responding to the advert were from girls.

Anyway, getting Niamh was the best thing that could have happened to us, and also made us somewhat unique in what was an almost totally male-dominated local music scene in the early 90s.

I’ll cover how the rest of us met in the next question …!

++ Were any of band members involved with bands before The Holsteins? If so, care to tell me a bit of these bands?

James Elliott (who became Firehouse’s lead singer) and myself decided one day during a boring Chemistry class in school that we should form a band and call it “Big Pink Things”. This amused us greatly. What was initially just a joke actually came to fruition when we played, now under the name “Sod This … I’m Off!”, at our school “Battle of the Bands” competition. We had about 12 people on stage and played the Undertones’ “Jimmy Jimmy” plus, for some bizarre reason, which even to this day I cannot understand, “House of the Rising Sun”. We were of course terrible and didn’t win, but I think at that point the spark had been lit for myself, James and Stew McDowall (who became Firehouse & Holsteins bass player) … we wanted more!

Having recruited my friend and neighbour Davy Burton to drum, we started writing songs and practicing. The songs were good, and James had an obvious talent for great lyrics, but in truth our musical ability was very limited and Davy really wasn’t keen on the drums, so we called it a day after a few months.

However due to a chance meeting with a “proper” drummer while gardening (really), we eventually reformed (in 1989) as Firehouse with James on vocals, myself on rhythm guitar, Davy “promoted” to lead guitar, Stew on bass and Mr Brian McNamara on drums.

Everything clicked from the first practice, and Firehouse quickly became regulars on the local scene, receiving radio airplay with our 2 demos and even managed to support Echo and the Bunnymen when they came to Belfast in November 1990.

However following the recording of our 3rd demo, James left the band and went on to form the fantastic “Emily Ryder” … I remain great friends with James to this day.

We then advertised for a new singer and the Holsteins were born when Niamh joined.

++ Why did you choose the name? Was it really because of the cows? I guess you weren’t vegetarians?

I was sitting upstairs in my attic contemplating the band name when I glanced at a postcard stuck to the wall which James had sent me while on one of his many round the world adventures. It featured a Gary Larson cartoon entitled “the Holsteins visit the Grand Canyon” … the shortlist of names that I took to the band were the Holsteins, Fine, Gloria and QFL (Queue For Love) … wisely we picked the Holsteins, and I’ve always thought it was fitting that James had (albeit unwittingly) inspired the name of our new band.

++ Tell me about those two early demo tapes you released? Were these songs released later? Maybe one day we’ll all have a chance to listen to these songs?

“Plastic Poems” (1992) and “Black Recordings” (1993) were both expertly recorded by Belfast music legend Johnny Grant (he told me to say that) … terrific fun and they became remarkably successful locally, with many plays on radio and vying for the top spot of the local top ten chart with the likes of Ash, Therapy? and the Divine Comedy.

The actual demo tapes are no longer available, but the 7 songs were featured on our debut album “Angel Train” along with 3 new ones.

++ What would you say were the main influences of The Holsteins?

This is very hard to answer as the 5 individuals in the band had an incredibly diverse range of musical tastes. Niamh loved Maria McKee / Lone Justice, whereas Brian’s favourite band was Rush!

I always have and always will love the Undertones, but at the time we were playing was probably influenced more by the likes of the Pixies, Julian Cope, Jonathan Richman and the Fall. However when anything was written about us we’d usually be compared to either the Cranberries (which wasn’t that flattering) or Belly (which was fantastic!)

++ I read that listening to a Northern Irish compilation tape, Bullet! Records got in touch with you. Care to tell me a bit about this tape? Was there any other good band in there? Also, who were Bullet! Records and how was the relationship with them?

You are absolutely right that I said that in our biography, but that wasn’t strictly how it happened. Guy Trelford wrote the Official Underground Scrapbook, a local music fanzine, and had sent a copy of our first demo to Stefan Ehret of Bullet! Records in Germany who had been corresponding with Guy for a while. He loved the songs, got back in touch with Guy and then wrote to us asking if we’d like to be on the label … it was that simple. We hadn’t been actively looking for anything like this, so it came as an absolute shock … and of course we jumped at the chance.

Shortly after this, a track of ours (Death By Chocolate) was included on a compilation tape given away with the fanzine called “New Teen Idols”. Other bands on it included Resurrection Joe, Not Freudian, Collectors A.K.A., In-decision, Peppermoth, Fuss, Aquabucket, Jobbykrust and Dirty Noise as well as bands from England, Germany and Slovakia.

So Guy was the man who give us our big break, albeit unintentionally.

Recently he wrote and published a fantastic book on the history of punk in Northern Ireland entitled “It Makes You Want To Spit!”. Worth getting a hold of that one, it’s a great read.

Anyway, back to us! … the day I saw our vinyl-only debut release “Angel Train” was probably one of the greatest moments of my life … it absolutely bowled me over.

Stefan flew over to Belfast for the album launch (personally delivering boxes of albums crammed into his suitcases!) and it was an unbelievable night.

By the time our second release on Bullet! came out, vinyl records had all but disappeared, so “Pop-Gun Riot” was our first CD release. Again, it sold fantastically well locally, as well as in Germany and elsewhere in Europe.

We can never thank Stefan enough for all he did for our wee band.

++ How do you remember the scene of Belfast in the early nineties, who were your favourite bands? How do you see that scene compared to the early 2000s when you call it a day?

In the early 90s we played with a variety of great bands including Alumni Feedback, Tart, Flying Saucer Cult, Buzzkill, the Norwegians, Watercress etc. who all had lots of local success without ever getting too much further than that. Still, it was an exciting time to be in a band, and the Thursday night gigs at the Limelight and later the Saturday nights at the Duke of York were wonderful places to be, run by two giants of the local scene, Shep and Johnny Hero (Belfast’s John Peel). They were always big supporters of the Holsteins and that really helped us too.

When we called it a day in 2005, there were still many terrific bands around. However the biggest difference was that in the early 90s (as I’ve mentioned before) it was almost 100% all-male guitar bands … Niamh was a bit of a novelty to be honest. However at the time we quit there were many females playing in bands, which is fantastic and how it should be.

++ You gigged quite a lot, which are the gigs you remember the most and why?

Firehouse- first gig in the Limelight (the most happening venue in the city at that time). We were held up by police checkpoints all around Belfast, and just made it to the venue on time, stumbling on stage with James dedicating the first song “I was a bouncing bomb” to the RUC traffic branch.

Holsteins – album launch at same venue. The place packed to capacity (including many people we didn’t know!) and albums selling by the box load. I remember signing copies of the LP and thinking “how the hell did this happen?”

Holsteins – Robinson’s Bar. Niamh becomes increasingly “chatty” as the gig progresses, thanks to the effects of second-hand smoke emanating from a discarded “herbal” cigarette in an ash-try beside her.

Holsteins – Queen’s Student’s Union. With Davy sent by his work to live in some caravan in Russia (don’t ask) and Chris unavailable, our numbers were severely depleted, but we had a couple of mates step in to help us perform the gig as “the half-steins”.

++ What was the biggest highlight of The Holsteins lifespan?

Strangely, even though the band called it a day in 2005, the biggest highlight for me happened only a few weeks ago. Thanks to a Google search, I discovered the rumour that we’d been played by John Peel was in fact true. Some guy has created a website with an extensive range of Peel playlists, including Saturday 12th November 1994 when Sir John played “Drugstorm” from “Angel Train”. For me, it just doesn’t get any better than that.

++ Your discography is quite large, many released and also compilation appearances, care to tell us your full discography for the collectors out there?

Okay … you did ask! Here it is …

• PLASTIC POEMS E.P. – 4-track cassette (1992)
• BLACK RECORDINGS – 3-track cassette (1993)
• N. IRELAND ROCKS! – 1 track, “Remembered it Glows”, M8 magazine compilation cassette (1993)
• ANGEL TRAIN – 10-track vinyl only album, Bullet! Records (1994)
• NEW TEEN IDOLS – 1 track “Death by Chocolate” on O.U.S. magazine compilation cassette (1995)
• LITTLE WHITE KNICKERS – 1 track “Remembered it Glows” 25 Records compilation CD (1996)
• POP-GUN RIOT – 5-track CD, Bullet! Records (1996)
• …..OFF! -1 track, “Faith in Time”, 25 Records compilation CD (1996)
• LIVE AT THE EMPIRE – “I Could Never Love You” live on compilation CD (1996)
• SUB ROSA – 8-track CD, Shiny Records (1997)
• OBVIOUS – 1 track, “You Leave…I Bleed”, 25 Records compilation CD (1997)
• 7” SPLIT SINGLE (with “die Blumen des Bosen”) – 2 tracks “I Could Never Love You” and “Count the Stars” on Kaktus Records, Germany (1998)
• A SILVER JUBILEE – 2 tracks “A Year and a Day” and “Count the Stars” on compilation CD by Meller Welle Produkte, Germany (1998)
• OOER MISSUS – 1 track, “Medicine”, 25 Records compilation CD (1998)
• OLIVE’S ARMY – 1 track, “Done and Dusted”, 25 Records compilation CD (1999)
• COVERS AND OTHERS – 2 tracks, “They Don’t Know” and “Done and Dusted” on Immortal Records compilation CD (1999)
• BELFEST ’99 – 1 track, “Done and Dusted” on compilation CD (1999)
• DODGE THE GROUND – 6-track CD, Shiny Records (2003)

++ Why do you think you had more success in Germany than in UK? I ask because most of your discography was released in the Teuton country! Did you ever got the chance to play in Germany?

All credit to Stefan on that one. He promoted both releases really well in Germany, leading to a lot of requests for interviews and compilation appearances.

Stefan was keen to set up a tour of small venues around the country playing alongside some local bands, but we never got it organized for various reasons.

++ What is that that you miss the most of those days? If you were born again, would you be in The Holsteins again? Would you change anything?

Perhaps in hindsight we should have been a bit more confident in ourselves and tried to take that next step, beginning with the gigs in Germany mentioned above. We still couldn’t really believe that people believed in us (if you know what I mean) and were hesitant about committing to something on that scale. We were just young guys having fun playing pop songs in local clubs, after all.

But of course, I would do it all over again in a heartbeat. It was the biggest thrill of my life playing in that band.

++ When and why did you call it a day? What are The Holsteins doing nowadays?

A little while after “Pop-Gun Riot” Stew left the band and was replaced by Chris. The band then recorded “Sub Rosa” which was released by ourselves, although Stefan kindly sold many copies for us using his contacts. Again we had many positive reviews, great gigs and was probably the most fun we’d had in the brief history of the band, but I also think that by that stage we’d decided that this was very much a hobby and nothing else … there was no big push to become famous pop stars!

Our final release in 2003 was “Dodge the Ground”, probably our best recorded/produced set of songs, but my songwriting had all but dried up at this stage (thankfully Davy and Niamh helped out on this CD), and there was an underlying feeling that the old songs were much more fun to play than most of the new ones. We trundled on until 2005, playing very infrequently and to be honest most of the latter gigs were just social get–togethers for the band members with a quick 20 minute run through some old tunes just for a bit of fun.

Then, in 2005, Brian got married and moved to England and that seemed a good reason to finally call it a day.

However I’m positive that the 5 of us will perform again one day … maybe when we’re 50, or when Cloudberry Records invite us on an all expenses trip to sunny Miami!

++ Anything else you’d like to tell all the popkids out there?

My profound message to the popkids out there is exactly the same as it was 15 years ago ….”please buy our records!” (there’s plenty still available!)

And of course as they will know, being in a band and creating songs that at least some people will enjoy is just the biggest high you could ever experience, and great fun too … so DO IT!

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Listen
Holsteins – A Year and A Day

Many years ago I stumbled, I believe in soulseek (Twisterella room maybe?), with some songs belonging to a band I had never heard about before: Boys Like Charlotte. I’ve been googling for years now and always the only entry I could find was a best of list in Twee.net where someone had voted for the band. I didn’t know where they were from, when were they around or who were they. I assumed there were no releases. The songs I had were tagged as demos. The song names were:

+ Cry Myself
+ I Say it’s True
+ Hiding in the Sun
+ Now That You Are Gone
+ What You Say
+ Through the Rain

These songs sounded very British, like those late 80s pop band demos. You know, these tapes that many bands recorded back then and now are totally forgotten or lost. Well, happens these sounds came from Sweden and Tommy Gunnarson, Heavenly Pop Hits factotum and future writer of the definitive book about indiepop in Sweden, solved the mystery for me.

Not so long ago I was talking with Tommy about the future Sound of Starke Adolf compilation. We were talking about Aerospace and their great songs, and that there was an unreleased song that for some reason didn’t end up in their EP. I told him how talented was Toby, that I loved his previous band Stevepops as well. We kept talking about Swedish bands and somehow the name Boys Like Charlotte popped into my mind, I asked Tommy if he had a clue who played in that band. “That’s Toby from Aeorospace as well” was his answer. Wow!

I’ve got in touch with Toby and asked him in a couple of emails about this fantastic and obscure band. Toby was very kind to fill in the blanks and share with me the story about the band. Here are some bits and bobs of what he told me:

As I recall the best songs are actually missing from your list; the fuzzy “Down, Down, Down” and three tracks of jangle that really want to be Happydeadmen songs.

Well, the reason there is no information about Boys Like Charlotte is because I didn’t have a clue about what I was doing at the time.

Boys Like Charlotte existed in two eras actually – the first one being from about 1988 to 1990, basically between two versions of Stevepops (with or without a drum machine actually, as well as in Swedish and in English) and then there was another era as stevepops folded about 4 years later.

The first Boys Like Charlotte stuff was done just as the Swedish indie (jangle/wimp/shambling/anorak/take-your-pick) scene was taking its first few steps. There was very few bands around; happydeadmen were the only ones that had released anything, and The Wannadies and This Perfect Day were still unknown to anyone living south of Skellefteå, all other bands were leftovers from the drab goth stadium era of Echo & The Bunnymen and (early) U2. The fanzine Sound Affects had done their first few issues and Marcus Törncrantz had advertised the sale of Grimsby Fishmarket. Red Sleeping Beauty and Acid House Kings were still in the bedrooms. There was one record store in Stockholm that stocked Sarah/Subway records 7” and I think they used to order 5-6 copies of each release; most often that would mean one copy each for Marcus Törncrantz (Grimsby Fishmarket), Niklas Angergård (Acid House Kings), Mikael Mattson (Red Sleeping Beauty) and I although I doubt that we even knew each other at the time and god knows who bought the remaining few stocked records.

We would nod at each other at Happydeadmen shows (as they were the only band that ever played live, we saw each other at the most strange places such as punk rock squats and dive bars) but that was about it.

I had no idea what to do with the stuff I put on tape – I probably did give one copy to John Boqvist who later went on to play keyboards in Aerospace and somewhere along the line he must have passed the songs on to someone else. I just put the finished songs on tape and then put them in a drawer and moved on. They were never properly packaged, there was no demo or anything, just one or two copies of the original mixes – and I just found some of those tapes a few months ago, so god knows who even transferred them to any digital form. So the fact that anyone, at all, even knows about the band is a complete mystery to me.

I think I might have done about 10 songs over those two years, all stolen from what I was listening to at the time; it’s just blatant rip-offs of The Darling Buds/Flatmates/Primitives/Shop Assistants done with borrowed guitars played through a minimal guitar amp set at 10 and an Alesis sequenser to power the drums and bass off a Roland MT-32. After seeing happydeadmen enough times I got myself an acoustic 12-string and proceeded to rip them off as well (and stealing unashamedly from McCarthy). I used go to the UK on my own using a eu-rail pass and pick up the NME/Melody Maker at Victoria Station and then just travel the UK for a week or two to see any jangle/wimp/shambling/anorak- band that was playing at the time (I don’t think I even talked to that many people at all during those travels, I was just too shy, but I did get to see The Sea Urchins, McCarthy, This Poison and The James Dean Driving Experience among others and they are still some of my favorite bands of all time) and when I came home I just redid the songs that I’d heard (as well as bought) to my best ability.

Most of the songs were total rip-offs; I stole the melody and lyrics from The Flatmates I Could Be In Heaven (“I wanna hang around with you”) for a song called Down, Down, Down. Looking back it was more like an academic course in indie songwriting than anything else.

In the spring of 1990 we (re)formed Stevepops and the anorak/jangle was democratically kicked out of the sound for our more punkish roots – the anorak thing was dying and we felt more at home with the sound of Mega City Four/Wonderstuff/Decendents/ Odd Numbers thing anyways. From a career standpoint it was probably a really bad move as the Swindie scene exploded (with The Wannadies, Popsicle, This Perfect Day, Brainpool, Cardigans etc) and we were on our own way star struck by skateboards and a very distant following of the US post-hardcore scene. Stevepops did their third ever show opening up for Fugazi and I still have the note given to us by Guy Piciotto (with the words “here’s the address to a friend of mine, he’s got a great label and would love your stuff”) with Calvin Johnson’s address. We never even though about sending him anything, we were more focused on getting a show in Gävle. Any interview stevepops did at the time was marred by miscommunication and a lack of shared culture. Indie fanzines would ask us questions about our favorite bands and look like question marks when we went off on the brilliance of Black Flag, Minor Threat, Big Drill Car, Hüsker Dü or the Descendents. And all the hc-kids ignored us because we played indiepop. As stevepops folded I got back to doing solo stuff, but it was a different era; there were tons of great lo-fi stuff coming out on K/Kill Rock Stars/Homestead etc, so the only thing that stayed the same was the name.

The second coming of Boys Like Charlotte was slightly more public – I played two shows (one in a corner of an apartment at a party way past midnight and the other opening up for Stereo Total) – and even managed to give away a song to my friends as a Christmas card (so there was a proper cover for that one song). The sound of Boys Like Charlotte 2.0 was the sound of Elliott Smith and The Softies only done really badly.

Then I formed The Shermans with Mikael Mattson, quit after doing 6 songs and 3 shows and formed Aerospace as a direct consequence to going to The Bowlie Weekender in the spring of 1999. The rest is more publicly known I assume. Thanks a thousand Toby! Hope I get to listen those 4 songs! I bet they are fantastic!

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Listen
Boys Like Charlotte – Now That You Are Gone

Thanks a lot to Matt Jones for the interview! Get their new album Trojan Hearse here or here.

++ You have just released a new album “Trojan Hearse”. Tell us a bit about it, what can we expect? Does it continue the line of “Something Worth Stealing”? Any funny anecdotes while recording it? Why the change of labels?

If you’ve heard a Hepburns albums before then you’d probably be expecting some guitar-based pop songs with half-happy, half-sad lyrics and an album that sounds as if it’s cost a few hundred quid to record in portable accommodation in the shadow of a slag heap in a remote Welsh village.

The Hepburns became known for well-written songs with a lo-fi sound long before the term ‘lo-fi’ entered common parlance. Our ‘homemade’ sound was due to a lack of cash, mainly, but also the ‘junk’ aesthetic of punk and post-punk. We grew up in the 60s and 70s, made our first records in the 80s, and were influenced by the original ‘indie’ bands like Orange Juice, so the point for us was always the tune, the lyric, the passion and energy with which those were delivered, with production values on somebody else’s list, probably a band from down the road who were into Zappa or something.

“Trojan Hearse” isn’t like that, though. We recorded it in the fabulous Music Box Studios, Cardiff, with a friend of ours, Charlie Francis, who is a brilliant producer and who we knew would get the best out of The Hepburns, take us to new places in the studio – such as the amazing vegetarian Indian restaurant on Penarth Road…seriously, Charlie had worked with one of our heroes, Sean O’Hagan from the High Llamas, and has an incredible way of getting inside the minds and the work of the musicians he records. We thought this more thoughtful – more expensive! – approach to recording was long overdue after 25 years of just whacking it down.

Any interesting anecdotes? The Super Furries had been rehearsing the week before in Music Box and as we arrived their stuff was being loaded into a lorry. We felt elated and deflated – not unusual for The Heps – sort of like “Hey, there’s the Super Furries’ amps!” then realising how pathetic that was. There was a Vox AC30 amp that used to belong to the Webb Brothers which Charlie let us use so my guitar may – may! – have come out of the same amp as ‘Wichita Line Man’. Also, Martin Carr had been recording there and I’d like to state now, for the record, that there is absolutely no truth in the rumour that I recorded half the album on the Gibson semi-acoustic he wrote “Wake up Boo” on.

The change of labels was like any other change – to do something different, fresh, exciting. The Bendigedig Recordings headquarters are in Nantgaredig, a small village in the Towy Valley, which in a way is a bit more us than San Francisco – where Radio Khartoum is – although I like both places to be honest. The label belongs to our old friend and mentor, TV’s Simon Wright, although his son Jamie was heavily involved with artwork and stuff, so it was good to do it in Wales for once.

++ You say this album is for drunks, cyclists, and drunk cyclists everywhere. Why is that?

Drunks and cyclists? Well, no need to harp on about drinking, it’s what most people do, isn’t it, the Welsh might do it more often and with more of a vengeance than others, but it’s pretty boring though, getting pissed, being hung-over, getting pissed, being hung-over…when we went to the States on tour me and Mike (bass) got pissed every night for three weeks, that’s no way to see a fantastic country like America, is it? The worst was going to an after-show party in Seattle and waking up still half-cut in Salt Lake City. What a weirdly beautiful place that was, like a moonscape, but frankly I didn’t know where I was – I could have been in Port Talbot for all I knew. What a waste. I almost felt sorry for the Scandinavians on tour. We were relentless. In Fredrikstad, Norway, we went to this Film company’s xmas party where there was a free bar! The Norwegians like a drink but we drunk the place dry – literally – then ate taco mince with our hands as the sun came up. We were like a plague on the town, I should apologise now for the hurt we caused. Childish it is.

During the summer I cycle between 120-150 miles a week, weather depending. Every year I do the London-Oxford ride, 60 miles through the Chilterns. Anyway, on the London ride last year I was joined by an associate of mine, Ken Garrington – we met in a Smiths gig in Swansea Uni back in the 80s – he’s a bit of a drinker, cider being his beverage of choice. Trouble is with Ken is he’s known to start early – or finish late, same difference – so no surprises when he started off around about 5 am with a pint of white wine and two cans of Strongbow. Fortunately he was accompanied by his girlfriend Emily who’s a computer programmer but who acted as his personal nurse on the day. I’d have left him for dead myself, spread-eagled on the pavement 2 miles out of Oxford, begging for a can of pop. For her dubious reward Ken’s marrying Emily next year. The song ‘Breakfast of Champions’ is dedicated to him and his ilk.

++ What are the future plans for the band now? Do you feel you’ve accomplished all you wanted with The Hepburns?

Future Plans? We’re going to record some more material with Testbild! in Malmo. We started doing a record with them last year, such a great time, Testbild! are one of my favourite bands, so it was a huge thrill working with them. Their music is wonderfully intricate and fabulously constructed and I’m hoping some of that care and consideration to writing and especially recording will rub off on us. Apart from that – nothing really. Our criteria for success have always been very basic – provided we’re writing good songs and making good records we’ll carry on. You’ve got to live your life to be able to do that and the songs are just records of a time and a place and the things which happen to you. So – living and writing, that’s all I want to do.

++ Which is the strangest place you’ve ever played a gig? What about the farthest place from Wales? And your favourite gig?

Strangest place we ever played a gig was in a basement in Olympia, Washington. The roughest place you ever saw, singing through guitar amps, surrounded by young Olympians singing their heads off and their hearts out to our tunes, totally wonderful – roughest, strangest and best. Farthest place is either Seattle or Monterey, I guess, somewhere on the West Coast, anyway.

++ I have to ask this question, even if it is kind of silly, did you name the band because of Audrey Hepburn or was it for some other Hepburn like Katharine?

We named the band after two beautiful, stylish, female filmstars. Incredibly, I think we must have known what we were doing. It’s a good name. It’s belonged to several other bands, too, since we borrowed it from Katherine and Audrey, but like an old 50s dress, nobody wears it quite so well as us, not even ‘Hepburn’ and they were women. Just goes to show that gender is a state of mind.

++ Your first two releases came out on Cherry Red Records, two sought-after records on ebay, “Goalmouth Incident” and the “The Magic of the Hepburns” LP. What happened after? Why didnt Cherry Red support you? I heard there’s an unreleased “lost album”, is that true? Will Cherry Red re-release these recordings?

Yes, there is a lost album called ‘Road Movie’. The songs are fragments of life so I quite like the idea of some of those fragments being scattered to the wind. As for Cherry Red, I’m glad they took us on, of course I am, it’s unlikely I’d be talking to you if they hadn’t. They can’t be held responsible for the disappointment we felt when the music business didn’t meet our expectations – I mean to say, what did we expect? Three young boys with absolutely no clue about anything except how to write a song. Being dumped is the same whether it’s by a record label or by your girlfriend or boyfriend – kind of painful but you gradually become aware that nobody’s to blame and that life goes on, most importantly of all, that there’ll be another label – someone else – out there for you.

What happened after Cherry Red was, unfortunately, the 90s – then after that Alexander Bailey and Radio Khartoum. Bailey is our Clem Greenberg, our John Ruskin. If Cherry Red helped to kick things off then Bailey has kept us going – him and Simon Wright. It just goes to show that one person to hold your hand is all you need. By the time we made our first Radio Khartoum record I was 37 years old. Okay, so Ian Dury was about that age when he recorded ‘New Boots and Panties’ but the idea of old people making pop music had already become absurd by that late-90s – it probably seems even more foolish ten years on. If you were being cynical I think you’d say that we appealed to collectors from various parts of the world who’d bought ‘The Magic of The Hepburns’ and who wanted to ensure their collection was complete. RK was also, whether by design or not, catering for the ‘twee’ indie pop market that survived – still survives – the C86 thing. But if that’s all it had been – sort of our own Hepburns tribute act – then it wouldn’t have worked, not for us or RK.

I don’t think I’m deluded when I say that the point of the Hepburns – our skewed, slightly melancholic view of the world filtered through pop influences such as Jake Thackray, Orange Juice and Burt Bacharach – is just as valid, just as interesting, as it was 25 years ago. I think it’s one hell of a claim but I think it’s true. People say we sound like Belle and Sebastian when the point is – they sound like us. We were amongst the first people to realise that smart, grammar-school boy lyrics with references to literature, film and 70s sitcoms but also detailing the cracks of a broken heart sounded great to a John Barry-style backing. You may hate all that stuff – in which case don’t buy our record. The point is that it’s just as relevant or irrelevant as it always was and that we’ve earned our insignificant place in the history of small things.

++ Twee.net lists a release called “Electrified (From Countryside to City)” which was a private release. I’ve never seen or heard this record. Care to tell us a bit about it?

‘Electrified’ was released on our own ‘Magic’ label. We were assisted by Scott Longley, ex-Cherry Red, and sponsored by his dad, Brian, who died before we were able to press and release ‘Road Movie’. We did however release ‘Electrified’ which featured the frenzied guitar stylings of The King of Wales, but also a drum machine, our drummer Les Mun had found Jesus and Pharmacy in and lost his enthusiasm for playing live drums. You see, we were always disintegrating. Maybe writing songs and being in a band is 90% just trying to hold it together with the help of a few angels like Bailey and Wright.

++ What about that shared flexi with the great Waltones? Do you remember anything about how did this happen?

The flexi disc was stuck to the back of ‘Zine’ fanzine which was edited by Iestyn George, yet another of the Hepburns admirers who became much more famous than the band. I don’t recall any other recyclable tales except that we did a Welsh-language version of ‘Where You Belong’ called ‘Croseo i M&S’ or ‘Welcome to Mars & Spencer’ (‘Mae bwyd yno’n blasus ac yn fres’/ ‘The food there is tasty and fresh’).

++ The Welsh scene from the late eighties seems undocumented as compared to the one from England or even Scotland. When you started as a band were there any good bands you enjoyed from Wales? What about now, any good bands you’d recommend?

The only other band from the ‘Welsh scene’ was The Pooh Sticks. I’m still friendly with ‘Huw Pooh’ who’s a lovely bloke, always a lot cooler than me, now as then. The best new Welsh act at the moment is probably The Boy, saw him and his band in Swansea Milkwoodjam recently, thought they were very exciting.

++ Do you speak Welsh? Have you ever thought in writing music in that language?

Despite the ‘Croseo…’ song I don’t speak Welsh fluently – so I couldn’t write in Welsh even if I wanted to. I despise Nationalism. If it’s grounds for exclusion from a culture than I will quite happily be ruled out. You’ll find me sitting on a plane somewhere between continents reading Salman Rushdie’s ‘Imaginary Homelands’ and plotting the downfall of nationalists everywhere. I may not know who you are but I’m pretty sure where you live…

++ I read in another interview that one of your biggest passions was cooking! What are the latest specialties of Matt Jones?

Cooking wise, I’ve gone back to Uni to study English and creative writing, so at the moment I’m living on Beef & Tomato Pot Noodle which I make by placing the tomato sauce on top of the noodles then holding the lot under the hot water tap, thereby saving on electric. Beans on toast when I’m feeling flush – or a something from Jenkins the Bakers on my birthday.

++ Just wondering, why did you write a song for Velma from Scooby Doo? Was that your favourite cartoon? What other cartoons did you like?

I loved just about all the cartoons when I was a kid: Marine Boy, Whacky Races, The Hair Bair Bunch, although Tin Tin was, it has to be said, a bit rubbish. I wrote ‘Song for Velma’ about an ex-girlfriend of mine who was a scientist. There were echoes of the shrewd and perceptive Velma in her, or at least, I found the comparison amusing.

++ Thanks so much Matt, anything else you’d like to add?

Whatever makes you happy, I suppose.

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Listen
The Hepburns – Andy & Valerie

Thanks so much to Philip Suggars for the great interview! Hope you enjoy!

++ When, why and where did the band start? You were in the polytechnic, right? What were you all studying?

Yes, Warren (Waz) and I met at Brighton Polytechnic in 1984. He was studying illustration and has gone on to become something of a whizz in the comics world (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warren_Pleece). I was studying Computing and Vicki Ross was on the same course as me which is where I met her.

Like all 80’s bands the reason we got started was because of someone’s haircut. A mutual friend pointed out that since I had a guitar and a lot of New Order records I might want to meet up with Warren who had a Bernard Sumner-style short back and sides haircut and a bass guitar. I think pretty much my first words to him were “I play bad New Order guitar. I hear you play bad New Order bass. Do you want to start a band?”

++ It was you and Warren at the beginning, when did Vicky Ross came on board?

Waz and I just started as two piece and played our first gig with a female vocalist who subsequently left. At that point I took over singing and Vicki came on board as a second guitarist/keyboard player after about six months. Here’s a photo of the first gig. At the Basement club in Brighton.

++ On the liner notes of Leamington Spa Vol. 6 you say you were a “cucumber sandwich band”, what do you mean by that?

When we first started writing songs a lot of our material was a bit fey. It wasn’t a conscious effort on our part, our songs just came out that way. What was a conscious decision was that we didn’t want to be a “rock” band. At that time everything about mainstream rock just seemed so naff and manufactured. Our way of reacting against that (along with a lot of our Brighton contemporaries e.g 14 Iced Bears & Ten Million Quentins ) was that we wanted to be a pop group.

No rock posing. No guitar solos. No leather pants. No exceptions.

As a consequence one of my friends pointed out that our music was about as rock and roll as a cucumber sandwich and that stuck as a bit of a private label/joke for all of the twee bands from Brighton at that time.

++ What does the Candie Maids name mean?

I do remember very specifically wanting a name that had a female collective noun in it though given that every flippin’ indie band between 1984 and 1987 had a name that referenced sweets/candy I kind of regret that part of the name now. (Interestingly, I think you can read that whole ’sweetie’ fixation in indie bands as a collective attempt to reject adulthood in the Thatcherite 80s and escape into a sort of infantile secret garden)

++ Were you involved with bands before the Candie Maids or was this your first adventure in music?

They were my first band. Though Waz and I carried on as a song writing team in two or three other bands.

++ You wrote songs about kitchen utensils, heartbreak and pop-stars you hated! Which popstars did you hate? !

Oh god. We hated everyone. Anything that seemed to buy into ‘rock’. So U2, Simple Minds, Queen, Phil Collins. (Mind you. I do still hate all of those ‘artists’.) Oddly enough Primal Scream had moved to Brighton at that time and were they were a target too. Musical politics, eh?

++ I also read that the lineup changed quite a lot, why was that? Why was the tambourine player controversial?

The lineup changed a lot because a) I had the tendency to rope whoever I was going out with into the band. b) While I quite liked having a drum machine Waz hankered for a drummer so we had drummers rotate in and out of the line up a lot.

One of our lineups featured a tambourine player who made a few cheeky comments about a local promoter during a radio interview. This fellow also happened to be mates with McGee at Creation which made us unpopular and gigs hard to come by. Hence “the unmentionable” epithet on this gig poster.

++ Your only release, the Sexy Flexi came together with the Especially Yellow zine. How did this happen? Were The Candie Maids involved with fanzines? did you ever do one?

We weren’t involved in the fanzine scene. I lived in the same house as Gordon & Karen, the lovely people that ran Playroom records (Gordon also used to deejay at the Sunshine Playroom a seminal indie night in Brighton) I think it was probably through them that it ended up in the fanzine. Though it’s all a bit fuzzy now.

++ You shared this flexi with Cumbersome whose song is really good as well! Who were they? Were they friends of yours? Why did you made a shared flexi?

Cumbersome were friends of ours and we sort of morphed into a collective for a bit where we shared members and even played joint gigs, I think. In Cumbersome Waz and I played as bassist and guitarist though we didn’t write their material. More than anything though Paul Griffin, the lovely man who fronted the money for the pressing, liked both bands and wanted us to be on the same flexi. The Cumbersome track on the EP did get played on John Peel, incidentally. Here’s picture of a Cumbersome gig.

++ “Threadbare” is a fantastic song, one of the best of the Leamington Spa #6! Did you record any more songs on that recording session in the “Blue Box” studio? What do you remember of the session?

Thanks I’m glad you enjoyed it. Vicki’s dad coughed up the money for the session (so thanks Mr Ross.) and we recorded three tracks there. Threadbare, Nashville and Cut Up Rough. The only things I can remember about the session was that a) I had a terrible cold which actually was good cos it meant I was a bit more in tune than usual and also my voice had more of a bass register to it. b) The engineer kept moaning about why we didn’t want all our amps turned up to 11. c) But he also kept winking at us going “Uh, yeah, man. I think you’ll definitely get a deal out this.”

Based on the demo we had quite a bit of interest from Go-Discs and later on Sony, but nothing ever materialized from that. Our live gigs were always a bit shambolic and I think that put off the few talent scouts that did come to see us.

++ This song was going to be released by Playroom, but, what happened? Why didn’t it come out?!

Just money I think. Gordon and Karen put a lot of time and energy into the Morrison’s release and that took them a lot longer to get out than they expected. By the time that was done I think we were moving on musically, Vicki had left the band and we had another guitarist.

++ How was the scene in Brighton during those years? Any favourite bands? Did you also visit Grant La Di Da’s kitchen?

I vaguely knew Grant but I don’t think I ever visited the Kitchen. Club-wise I saw a lot of our contemporaries at a night called the Big Twang in Brighton (The Bodines, The June Brides, The Jasmine Minks etc etc). My favourite local bands were probably Whirl, The Milksisters and Cumbersome (Yes I know I played in them but I didn’t write the material!)

++ Why did you call it a day? Are you still in touch with the band members? What are you doing now?

We soldiered on in various guises for about 10 years, ultimately as CC Baxter (with Hayley from the Doris Days) but Waz moved to London and so we played one last gig in about 1995. By that point the whole Brit-Pop thing seemed to make us a bit redundant musically and manifesto-wise. I was quite into house music at that point and so started doing solo electronic work. After a while I realised that I enjoyed writing more than I’d ever enjoyed making music and so have been focusing on that ever since. We’re all still in touch and get on well. Oddly, I suppose. I don’t miss being in a band at all.

++ Anything else you’d like to add?

Thanks for getting in contact and for your interest. I haven’t thought about a lot of this stuff for a long time and Its been fun to dig the photos and posters out of the attic.

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Listen
The Candie Maids – Threadbare

Thanks so much to Noel Burke for the interview! Check their myspace here!

++ Hi Noel, I’ll try not to repeat myself as there’s a great interview to you in the Pennyblack Music page. The band formed in 1981 but you didn’t get a chance to release until 1987! Why did it take so long? How many great songs got lost during those years that didn’t end up in the album?

I think there were two reasons for that, the main one was that we were operating in Belfast, which was a bit of a musical backwater at that time – there weren’t any active independent labels for instance. In the end we got a deal with Probe Records in Liverpool. The second reason was that we went through quite a few line up changes before we settled on the one that recorded the first album.

++ You had a band before St. Vitus Dance called Positive Action. How did it sound like? Did you release anything? Why did you leave that band?

You’re very well informed! Positive action wasn’t my band – when I joined as a novice bass player they’d already played a few gigs. Peter and Damien who are in St. Vitus were already members – the singer was a friend of ours called Declan McCavana. Positive Action were kind of post-punk, angular guitars, shouty vocals, nothing like St.Vitus, basically. They never got around to releasing anything and I got the sack because of my lack of proficiency on the bass and my relaxed attitude to rehearsals. I occasionally remind Peter and Damien of their treachery just to keep them on their toes.

++ After the release of the “Love Me, Love My Dogma” album (one of the best of the era, if you ask me) you relocated from Belfast to Liverpool, why did you take that decision? Was it a good one? How did you like Liverpool? Any big differences between the two cities?

I’d say the decision to move to Liverpool came from a combination of the band wanting to get a bigger audience in England and my own personal determination to get out of the dead end job I was in and get a fresh start somewhere else. I’m not too fond of London, so Liverpool seemed an obvious choice, given the Probe connection. In retrospect, as far as the band was concerned, we probably should have stayed in Belfast a bit longer as we were building up a really big following just before we left and we had to start all over again in Liverpool. That turned out to be much harder than we anticipated, the gig scene was fairly non-existent at the time in Liverpool and gigs further afield were few and far between. I do like living in Liverpool – I’ve been here twenty two tears now and it’s still my favourite place in England – in many ways it’s similar to Belfast – both port cities, people are generally open and friendly with a wicked sense of humour.

++ Tell me a bit about the photo on the cover of the first album, where did it come from and why did you choose to use it?

The photo was taken by our guitarist, Damien, in Belfast city centre. It shows a street drinker being confronted by a placard carrying preacher and we instantly thought it was pretty symbolic of the Belfast we knew, where religion and drink tended to loom large in people’s lives. As quite a few of the songs on the album referenced the same topics the photo seemed to be a good fit.

++ The Liverpool scene from those years is quite well known with acts like Pale Fountains, Wild Swans, Lotus Eaters, etc. But what about the Belfast scene? Any names you could recommend us?

There were quite a few bands playing in Belfast in those days who never got the attention they deserved. Most of them never got round to putting an album out, some managed a single or two. Personal favourites were Big Self, Kitsch is Rich, Carpenter Joe, The Donnelly Brothers, Tie The Boy, Man Ray, Shock Treatment and Second Mary of Guise, who may have only played two gigs in their entire history but will never be forgotten.

++ On the liner notes of this album you say that everything revolved around Lavery’s Gin Palace. Care to tell us a bit about what kind of things happened there? What are your best memories from those years and that place?

Lavery’s is still there, although it’s changed a bit since our day. Bands play there now, but there wouldn’t have been room back then. It was just where verybody in those bands I just mentioned convened. You never needed to make arrangements to meet up with friends – you’d just turn up at Lavery’s and someone you knew would always be there. As a songwriter, scenes like that are really healthy, as you always want to keep up with or better what the guys in the other bands are doing. It’s a pity that the whole thing wasn’t documented by a few more records.

++ Just wondering about my favourite song by you, how did you end up writing such a song like Horse Sense? What was the inspiration behind it?

Musically, that song began with an idea from one guitarist,Phil, and was finished off by the other, Damien. Lyrically, if I remember correctly, it’s just a typical piece of self-loathing from me. I musn’t have been very pleased with myself at that time, I guess.

++ Out of curiosity, who is Mohammed from “Meet Mohammed” and Agnes from “For God’s Sake Agnes”? Are they real characters?

Not really, “Meet Mohammed” is about me saying “I’m not going to wait around forever” to a certain person who had up to that point overlooked my considerable charms. “Agnes” wasn’t about anyone in particular, it was just about a certain shallowness I’d observed in some people.

++ What was the biggest highlight of St. Vitus Dance?

Not sure, really. Releasing the album obviously, touring in Germany in 1988 was fun and getting back together in 2005 to play in Belfast again was special.

++ Why did you call the band St Vitus Dance? is it because of the medieval “dance mania” of the same name? Any relations to the song “Dancing Class”? Were you all good dancers by any chance?

The idea for the name came from Haydn, the keyboard player. I must confess up until then I hadn’t heard the term before, neither did I know that there were Bauhaus and Black Sabbath songs of that name. I just thought it sounded quite good and nobody else could think of a better one so we went with it.

++ I know there’s quite some nice German friends reading this blog, care to tell a bit about that West Germany tour you did? Which cities did you visit? Any anecdotes to share?

As I mentioned earlier, we went there in 1988, not long after we’d moved to Liverpool. We went with another Probe band, Jegsy Dodd and the Sons of Harry Cross. I can’t remember all the places we played but we certainly performed in Darmstadt, Rendsburg, Wiesbaden, Wolfsburg and Bonn. We were supposed to play in Hamburg on the first night of the tour, but the gig got cancelled due to the fact there was a full scale riot taking place involving St. Pauli squatters and the police. There are too many anecdotes to mention although the time we mistakenly drove the van up an exit road onto the autobahn to find ourselves facing a wave of oncoming traffic does stick in the memory.

++ You released, 21 years later, “Glypotheque”, a really nice and bright album, quite different from the first one. Will there be a third album by St. Vitus Dance? What can we expect in the future from the band?

Yes, I’ve already written about half an album’s worth of songs, so I can see us getting into a studio by the end of the summer with a new album to follow hopefully by New Year. We’ve done a couple of shows in Belfast this month, one of them supporting Lloyd Cole and they both went really well so we’re looking at doing a few more in Liverpool and Belfast in September or October, perhaps to try out the new songs with an audience.

++ What do St. Vitus Dance members do nowadays? Do you get together often maybe for a beer?

We do all sorts of things, a few teachers, a speech therapist, a journalist and a solicitor to be specific. Half of us are in Liverpool and half in Belfast so the band is kind of our way of keeping in touch. And it’s working quite well. We do indeed seem to manage the occasional beer together.

++ Anything else you’d like to add?

I’d just like to congratulate you for being the first person never to ask me a question about the Bunnymen.

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Listen
St Vitus Dance – Horse Sense

From the left you have: –
Phil Andrews-Vocals and guitar.
Ian Churchward-Guitar and vocals.
Dave Clifford-Bass and vocals.
Liz Honeywill-Vocals, keyboards and percussion.
Jerry Brimicombe-Keyboards, percussion and vocals.
Shelley James (kneeling at front)-Drums, percussion and vocals.

Thanks again a thousand to Phil Andrews for the interview! Check another interview with Phil about The Morrisons here.

++ How did the band start? I read that it started first as a duo comprised by Ian and Jerry, right? What year was it? How did you knew each other?

Yea Ian and Jerry started the band around 1982. Ian played guitar and did some vocals and Jerry played synth. I knew Ian from the growing live band scene he was a big fan of going to gigs but had learned to play the guitar about a year after me so hadn’t quite got going when I first met him. Ian had met Jerry at a gig somewhere I think and I got to meet him a little later on. I did join in at the end of their first gig when I was asked to “get up and just make some noise on the last song”.

++ How was the process of the other members joining the band? Who came first? How did you find out about the band? Maybe some ad in the local paper?

Steve Honeywill joined next on vocals. Steve was (and still is!!) a pretty wild character who had a great ability to “wind the crowd up”. I think Ian and Jerry wanted someone to front the band and take the spotlight off them to give them a better chance to get to grips with their instruments. There was a good local band scene around the early 80’s so we all used to know about each other’s gigs and half the audience would regularly be other band members checking out what was happening.

++ Two of these members left quite fast: Steve Honeywill and Bev Haynes. What happened with them? They left to form the Walking Wounded. I never heard this band, care telling me a bit about it ?

Yea it was Steve Honeywill and Steve Wright actually Roque. Steve Wright had joined on bass and the band was just starting to find its feet when the two Steve’s left to form The Walking Wounded. The Walking Wounded was very much an 80’s pop band but concentrated more on a mainstream keyboard based sound whereas Ian and Jerry were to continue with their lo fi sound which of course went on to be so popular on the mid and late 80’s indie scene. I can’t complain really if the two Steve’s hadn’t left I doubt I would have ever got the chance to join.

++ Where does the name Chapter 29 comes from?

I think it was inspired by a Pink Floyd song called Chapter 24. Ian was (and still is) a big fan of 60’s garage rock and loved the Sid Barrett era Floyd. A lot of people jumped on the Sid Barrett/acid rock thing some years later to “look cool” but Ian was raving about this stuff back in 1980 when we all used to go “eh what are you talking about Ian”.

++ I read that your first ever gig was one of your worst performances as you could barely play instruments. What do you remember about that day? How fast did you overcome that? What would you say was your best gig?

Well we were all inspired by the punk ethic to just get up there and do it but certainly Ian, Jerry and Steve had some nerve with their early gigs. I think they had difficulties getting bookings at times I can remember going to one gig that they held in the front room of Ian’s house!! It slowly came together though and by the time I’d joined and we had got Dave Clifford in on bass (he was an awesome player back then), Steve’s sister Liz on vocals and Shelley James on drums and percussion some of our later gigs together were pretty tight and were a hint at the guitar based indie sound that was to eventually be The Morrisons a few years later. I can’t really remember what would have been our best gig we used to play quite a lot in all sorts of odd venues it was just a great time we were all around 20/21 so we were just into having a laugh really.

++ Any great bands that you gigged with? I find that those years are quite obscure for indiepop but it seems there were some great pop bands around! So any recommendation would be fantastic!

The only one I can think of is when we played at Tapps nightclub in Sherborne Dorset with a band called “The Scarlet Downs” which featured brothers Simon and Mark Barber who would go on to be in “The Chesterfields”. Ian had a spell of working up in the area and had got to know Simon really well. Otherwise we played either on our own mostly in pubs or as part of a line up of bands (usually Torquay based ones) at a band night. There wasn’t much interest from promoters to put on gigs in the early 80’s where we lived so we had to book them and promote them ourselves.

++ With the second lineup, which was the classical lineup, you released several cassette albums. What was the complete discography?

Yea cassette was the only affordable medium back then. We did two cassette albums the first was called “Playing In The Rooms Of Twilight” and the second “A Bizzare Joy” we also had a track “The Isolate” on a compilation album “Forgotten Futures” but frankly the album was pretty crap and we were never that happy with the version of “The Isolate” that appeared on it.

++ This year you released a retrospective CD of Chapter 29, tell us about it! What can people expect from it?

Yea it’s all down to Ian really. He’s got an amazing collection of old demo’s, rehearsals and live recordings he just used to record everything back in those days. Luckily we found a label (Series Two Records-www.myspace/seriestworecords.com) who were happy to put it out for us. It’s very lo fi but contains a really mixed back of surprises. I think it sounds very “English” and if you like C86 type indie I think you will find plenty to like. One of the old Chapter 29 songs “Captured In A Jar” has even found it’s way into The Morrisons live set this year and is sounding pretty good. We don’t spend a lot of time looking backwards but sometimes its nice to re-visit a song you wrote nearly 30 years ago!!

++ I have a couple of questions about some of the songs on this compilation. Who is Benjamin from “Benjamin’s Dream”? Was the song Ispahan dedicated to the Iranian city? And what about “Fairfax Street Dreaming”? Is that an important street to you all?

I’d like to have a really arty answer here Roque but in truth there are no great reasons for the titles other than that we liked the names as song titles. We’ve never been too deep with our lyrics but as John Peel once said why spoil a great track by having crap lyrics!!

++ From all of Chapter 29 songs, which is your favourite one and why?

Well as I said earlier we’ve dusted off Captured In A Jar this year and it does sound good (I was having my Scott Walker phase at the time it was written I recall) and we had a song called Before which my Daughter can play on guitar now and my wife Shelley also enjoys singing and playing so those songs are often ringing around the house!!! In truth I think the joy of Chapter 29 was the fact that we weren’t trying to be cool we were young and just playing whatever came out and there is some real honest stuff on the compilation. I think there are plenty of great hidden pop songs if you are prepared to dig deep enough too.

++ Do you think you were ahead of your time? You think if Chapter 29 would have been around 1986 you would have had more success? I kind of believe that myself!

O yea definitely. Chapter 29 was a blueprint for The Morrisons and wasn’t massively different from bands like The Razorcuts and The Flatmates, The Raincoats etc. I think indie pop fans from 86’ would have loved it!!

++ Phil left the band in 1983 to form Haiti Chill, care telling me a bit about this band? Any recordings Phil?

Yea like The Walking Wounded Haiti Chill was a little bit more main stream 80’s pop and went through a more keyboard heavy phase. It didn’t start like that but developed over time really. I think when your young your hungry to try new ideas and nothing seems to move fast enough for you. It was like that leaving Chapter 29 really it was that hunger to move forward ever faster to the next thing. There are demo recordings that I have but we’ve never put them out. I slowly got back into the guitar towards the end of Haiti Chill and one song we had called “Looking Down From Heaven” was certainly a prototype Morrisons number.

++ When and why did the band call it a day?

Chapter 29 broke up in 1986 when Ian and I decided to form another band together (this was The Morrisons). We had remained good friends although musically Ian was never a fan of Haiti Chill “Where are the guitars Phil” he would say and “It’s not very 60’s is it”.

++ And of course later you all got together again and formed the mighty Morrisons! But would you like to add or tell anything to the popkids out there?

Just thanks to you Roque for letting me tell you all something about Chapter 29, As I said earlier if you like your indie lo fi and C86 in style I think you will like Chapter 29. Just sit back and enjoy………………………

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Listen
Chapter 29 – Before

Thanks so much to Carl Green for the interview! Definitely don’t miss the retrospective CD from The Whirlpool Guest House that is out on Summerhouse Records. It’s called “Rough Digs” and it’s a fantastic collection of songs! Also expect them to be showcased in the next Sound of Leamington Spa compilation!

++ Having read the great interview our friend Tommy Gunnarson did to you not so long ago, I won’t repeat the same questions. But tell me, what happened to Carl Green and The Scene and Rules of Croquet? Why did you decide to stop these bands and make music under The Whirlpool Guest House? And especially what made you change power pop for beautiful jangle pop?

CGATS and Rules Of Croquet had run their course. I wasn’t the sole songwriter in either band and I wanted to be. I was compromising too much, too often. I was utterly bored with playing live and wanted a pop group where the emphasis was on songwriting and recording and not live performance. The jangle pop thing was an accident really. My rudimentary guitar skills saw me play electric guitar like an acoustic- lots of strumming of chords with very few effects. A sixties feel was always the aim, but it actually didn’t sound like that. We were making 80’s indiepop and it was the most natural thing I’d ever been involved with.

++ Andy was also in The Scene and Croquet, so it was kind of easy to think he would join your new project, but what about Sallyann? Was she easy to convince? And what about Graeme Robinson, why wasn’t he in the “band” even though he recorded all drums?

Sallyann was Andrew’s wife and, despite being initially shy, she was happy to donate her vocals to such a good cause! Graeme was never asked to join. He ran a succesful recording studio and was very busy. Musically as well, he wasn’t really on our wavelength. He was more a rocker than a popper!

++ How did you meet William Jones from Friends? Why didn’t you ever had a band together? or maybe you did?

Me and Will worked together at Stockton’s Dovecot Arts Centre, now sadly pulled down. Will was a sole songwriter like me and had his own way of writing. We were/are musical control freaks! Once you find your own voice, it’s best to use it rather than keep it quiet just to maintain the peace.

++ Aside from your band and Friends, which other Stockton-On-Tees bands would you recommend? Was there a thriving scene as it seems from William liner notes for Rough Digs when he mentions Dovecot Arts Centre’s weekly performances?

There was a small scene, but only WGH and Friends were flying the indiepop flag. A lot of Stockton bands were creative and competent, but from a rockier place. Not really to my taste a lot of them.

++ Speaking of Rough Digs, it is such fantastic thing that it came out. Who’s idea was it to release it? And what about these 4 unreleased songs? Were they planned to be a single maybe?

The credit goes to William. I would never have conceived of the idea. I didn’t think there’d be any interest really- there certainly wasn’t on its initial release in 1989. Yes, the final 4 songs on the album were planned as an EP in 1990 but we’d already started to morph into Shandy Wildtyme, and they got left behind.

++ You were a print distributor, a photographer, a poster designer and a mobile disco proprietor, you were the jack-of-all-trades. Was that song about you? Which of these things enjoyed the most doing? Are you still doing any of these?

Yes, I liked to dabble! The print distribution business continues to this day, and provides me with a modest living. Photography is still a hobby of mine and I take pictures whenever and wherever I can.

++ What about The Plumber’s Daughter (my favourite song!), is it a real story? Did the plumber’s daughter really existed?

She probably does exist, but I never met her! Like the song says- “a silly impossible dream”!

++ You had another band called Gaberdine. What was the sound of it? I haven’t found much information about it online, maybe there were some releases?

Gaberdine were short lived- 1996 to 1997. No releases, not much to say. It was still pop, but punkier and less melodic. Not my favourite time if truth be told.

++ I know you has a different approach to live performances, having video projected while your songs were played, but honestly, you never played live with Whirlpool Guest House?

No never. We just didn’t want to.

++ Something that strikes me from your vinyl releases is the great photographs you used for the sleeves. Did you take them yourself?

Thank you. Yes, all my own work.

++ Why did you decide to change the name of the band to Shandy Wildtyme?

Basically, Shandy Wildtyme was the live version of WGH and we felt we had to put distance between the two bands. Also, the songs of SW were less indie and more harmony pop so we felt the time was right for a change.

++ What are the Whirlpool Guest House members doing nowadays?

I don’t know. We drifted apart years ago.

++ Thanks so much Carl! Anything else you’d like to add?

After Gaberdine, I created a cartoon pop band called The Close-Ups. We released 3 vinyl singles and an album (2am In Flat 3b) between 2004 and 2006 on my own Northern Round Square label. If you like WGH, you’ll love The Close-Ups! It’s pure indiepop and features the brilliant voice of Abby Connor who was 15 at the time. The album is still available on CD Baby etc and is one of my proudest achievements in music.
Bringing the story up-to-date, I’m now solo and go under the name Head Of Light Entertainment. It’s quirky alt-pop and I’m gigging again after a lengthy absence. I’m really enjoying being back in the thick of it. My debut album is planned for Autumn this year, and will feature 12 songs that sum me up both musically and personally. More info at: www.myspace.com/headoflightentertainment

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Listen
The Whirlpool Guest House – The Changing Face