Wallsend is a town in North Tyneside, Tyne and Wear, England, at the eastern end of Hadrian’s Wall. It has a population of 43,842 and lies four miles east of Newcastle upon Tyne.

In the mid-90s, in Wallsend, there was a band called The Sojourners. I just found about it on Soundcloud. Davy Craig, who was part of the band, uploaded 14(!) years ago a bunch of tracks. They cover a few different styles, but there’s a very good one that just makes this post worth doing, a track titled “Don”.

According to the little description the song was recorded at Impulse in Wallsend and is named after Don from Hoults Yard Rehearsal Rooms. The music is by Davy and the lyrics by Steve Jobling. Another extra bit of info is that the song was inspired by Donovan, The Beatles and The Smiths.

There are other tracks, also recorded at the same place and the same year. I’ll go through them.

“47 Hastings Parade” which was the name of the street Davy used to live in Hebburn. Then there is a demo of the track “Biscuit”, this one with lyrics by Ash Timmins.

“Blue Skies” is a track with both music and lyrics by Davy. “61 Miles (To London)” is a story of a journey to London when you are nearly there but stuck in traffic. Seems like everyone knows this story.

“Harry” is a track of a guy with the same name from Leroys in Hebburn. The lyrics were written by Davy and Steve Jobling. Then there’s “Distant Prayer”, “The Fiddle” and “Daddy”.

Lastly there’s “Beneath the Waves”. Here there’s a list of all the band members. So it was Ash Timmins on vocals, Davy Craig on guitars and e-bows, Stephen Jobling on bass and Luke Phillips on drums.

That’s really all the information about the band I could find. I do see Davy had been in another project called DRILL and that he has some songs solo.

Wonder how active they were on their day. Did they play much live? Did they release anything? Would be good to find out.

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Listen
The Sojourners – Don

I hope I am getting the band name correct and that they weren’t called something else. I found this account by a Duncan Forgan that has 19 tracks recorded between 1995 and 1999 by what looks like a band called The Cairo Years.

The quality is varied, but there are some gems not to be missed like “Summer Starts Here” or “City Sickness”.

The tracks available are: “Girl You’ll Never Know”, “Telling Jokes at the Astral Flights”, “Can’t Recall”, “The Other Side of Summer”, “Over You”, “Am I Bothering You?”, “City Sickness”, “Summer Starts Here”, “What’s the Gain Girl?”, “Warm Sun Rising”, “Papal Confession”, “Here’s To My Life”, “Lifeboat”, “New Kensington Stroll”, “The Fast Society”, “15 Years”, “Amsterdam Canals”, “Thirteen” and “Estrangement Song”.

All of them were uploaded 5 years ago. Aside from these songs there are a few more but they are not tagged as The Cairo Years. Maybe these were other projects of Duncan.

I do think I know what is Duncan doing these days. He seems to be living and working in Southeast Asia, mainly in Bangkok. He is a writer and broadcaster, especially about Asian travel, culture and cuisine, for different publications including TIME, Esquire and The Guardian. Previously he had been a features writer for newspapers in Scotland (where he is from) and an editor of travel guides in the Middle East.

He has plenty of articles online, here is one about Japan’s Nothern Soul club scene.

I am just going through some of them. I wonder then about these songs. If he was based in the Middle East at some point. Maybe “The Cairo Years” may mean recordings he did while he was living in Cairo?  Who knows. It is a possibility. Or just a coincidence. Don’t know if he lived there.

Many questions are to be answered, but it is really cool to see someone that has worked for news organizations and has good music taste, feels very close at home.

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Listen
The Cairo Years – Summer Starts Here

Tigerella was another band I discovered through Shelflife CD-R series. Their self-titled EP was the fifth release on that very important series of releases our friend Ed released back in the early 2000s.

The EP was released in 2003, in January I believe, it included just three tracks by the Los Angeles five-piece. These songs were “Existential War”, “Rid of You” and “E-Ticket Ride”. The songs were bright. The guitars chimed. Very nice!

The band was formed by Bryan Yoshida and Gilber Chinn on guitar and vocals, Seiji Morioka on drums, Felix Lau on bass and Yvonne Ng on vocals. I believe on the recording Linda Yoshida also contributed with vocals and later on Felix would be replaced by Steve (don’t know the last name) for their 2nd release.

The Shelflife EP was actually recorded in the year 2000. It waited a bit to be released. It was recorded by David Nolte.

The band released their self-titled album on Shmat Records with the catalog number (SHMAT04). I see a bit of a different sound in this record. It is fine, but a bit more indierock of the time. I prefer the first EP if I am honest. In any case the record came out September of that year and included 12 songs, “Filet”, “The Curse of the Matador”, “Stun Machine”, “Tidepool”, “Caleb”, “Junior”, “Insomniac”, “Jack London”, “Sailor Song”, “These Bears Can’t Be Real”, “Crash Course” and “Calculus of Love”.

The only other release of the band was appearing on the compilation “A Map of the Woods” (SHMAT 05) released by Shmat in 2003 where they included their song “Stun Machine”.

This label still has a working website and there there is a small bio for the band. We learn that they were formed in 1998.

Looking at other projects I notice that Bryan Yoshida played bass on Retro Notes. I also believe Bryan was the one behind Shmat Records, supporting bands from Southern California. He mentions that he has worked as a web designer, programmer, writer and blogger but now he focuses on his vintage modern shop A la Modern.

Did they all stop making music then? Im curious to know if any of the band members were involved in any other projects. Anyone knows?

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Listen
Tigerella – Rid of You

There are many bands I want to write about. Bands that I was interested back in the day and then never got around finding more information about them. So I was looking at one of them and stumbled upon a compilation called “I’m With Cupid – A Transatlantic POP Valentine”. I didn’t know about this CD comp from 2004. But I knew many of the bands there including big favourites like Action Biker, Would-Be-Goods or Free Loan Investments. So I played all the tracks.

There were a few that surprised me that I didn’t know at all. On top of it all I don’t have the CD so I don’t even know if there’s information about the bands on the booklet. So with the little tools available I was to try to find information.

The first band that I wanted to find out more was one called The Raindrops. They appear on the CD with a track called “Stone River” which is very nice. It has male and female vocals. And I can’t tell the accent. Is it British? American?

The name is not helpful either. Plenty of other bands have been called The Raindrops.

One thing I find is that the compilation is up online on the WIAIWYA Bandcamp. It must be a related release from Jerv. He must have put together early in 2004. There was even a new version of the CD that was sold in 2021 with a different sleeve, one made with recycled denim. I missed that one. The original label for this release was Waxfruit (WAMCD-01).

On Discogs it says that indeed the label’s parent was Where It’s At Is Where You Are. But that this Waxfruit label was a not-for-profit organization co-founded to support and create projects connecting indie music with other media arts and the community at large. Founded by brothers Joel Mellin and Jeff Mellin. They were based in the US. So it looks like they got a chance to release the CD thru WIAWYA in the UK.

All that’s interesting. But nothing online about the band. I would like to think that behind this band there are members of a more well-known band. But I am not sure of course, it is just a hunch.

Anyone would know anything else about The Raindrops and their song “Stone River”? If there are more recordings I’d love to listen!

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Listen
The Raindrops – Stone River