Back in May, in what became ~Kitten Wine~#7:'60 Minutes in The Anorak City', I wrote about a mix-tape that has been a constant companion of mine over the last 22 years. In listing the songs and enthusing about them I was lucky to find video clips to accompany most of the songs. However there were about 5 songs that I could find nothing for at all. All from flexi-discs released in the Spring of 1988. In fact for four of them I could find scant info on the Internet at all....just nothing. So....
A few weeks ago on a beautiful Autumn's afternoon Griff, Ray and myself convened at the Streetlamp HQ and set about putting this to rights, and so we made MP3 copies of the original tracks and then Ray created videos for them. So here we have it....a chance to finally enthuse properly about these fantastic songs and at last share them with people who, unless you bought the fanzines these Flexidiscs came with at the time, will never have heard them.
Let's do it....
We begin with 'Anorak City' by Another Sunny Day. Now this Flexidisc is numbered Sarah 3, and came with a fanzine entitled Sarah 4. I'm sure you've probably figured out that these were the third and fourth releases on Sarah Records. The cover of the fanzine announces that both fanzine and flexi can be purchased for a whopping 50p. The fact that this fanzine and flexi combo now commands over £100(if Record Collector magazine is to be believed!) is staggering.
I've already declared my love for this song profoundly enough in ~KW~#7, so I'll share with you what Matt and Claire of Sarah say about the records inside the pages of the accompanying fanzine: "Anorak City plays at 45r.p.m because that's POPmusic speed, ALBUMS play at 33....is just 5 and 3/4 inches across and the thinnest plastic ever because it's only POPmusic, flimsy, throwaway stuff....crackles and fizzes and POPs because it contains such things as ENERGY, COLOUR, EXCITEMENT....is called 'Anorak City' because some people are incredibly stupid". Sentiments we all agree with.
I LOVE this song and I hope that you enjoy both it and the video Ray has created to accompany it....
The next tracks are by The Magic Shop and The Visitors and are on a Flexidisc released on Sha-la-la Records. Unfortunately I've long since lost the fanzine it came with, but thankfully not the record....although I'm sure there are many people out there who have either lost both, or made the record unplayable and kept the fanzine in mint condition!
'It's True' by The Magic Shop is a splendid little ditty that chings along all trebley guitars and wobbly Farfisa organ. When we were converting this track, Griff couldn't stop smiling at the singers vocals as it sounds as though his voice is in the process of breaking as he sings, or that the song is in too high a register for him. It's a cracking wee song though and really buzzes with youthful naivety and exuberance...
Naivety and exuberance are hardly to the fore on 'Goldmining' by The Visitors however. This is quite a bitter, downbeat little track that seems to find it's creator raging hard against marriage.I'm not quite sure exactly what the overall point of his bitterness is, but in a literal reading of the lyrics it sounds like he(or someone) has married their childhood sweetheart only for the marriage to end amid boredom and infidelity. I hope the singer isn't speaking from experience. The song doesn't sit well amongst all the sweetness and frivolity of Sarah Records and their compatriots, but that's one of the reasons I love it so much, and why we're bringing it to you here for the first time anywhere....
Next up is another Flexidisc from Sha-la-la only this time showcasing two bands from the Sombrero Records roster. Sombrero actually only had three bands, all with rubbish names, all wonderful; The Siddeleys, Reserve and Bob. All three bands, it's safe to say, were indebted to The Smiths....The Siddeleys were often compared to The Smiths and vocalist Johnny Johnson(a girl by the way) was often hailed as the female Morrissey. Bob once had a song that mentioned 'Slow Hand Johnny and Steven P M', and Reserve couldn't sound more influenced by The Smiths if they tried! We intend to cover Bob in a full Blog sometime in the near future, but today let's concentrate on The Siddeleys and Reserve.
'Wherever You Go' by The Siddeleys is just fantastic, a jaunty, jangly little whizzbang of a song that, nowadays, would be said to be about obsessive love, but really it's just about love and infatuation. That's the problem with growing old and cynical, you forget the electric shock rush you used to feel when the girl of your dreams walked by that now you view these self same feelings in others as unhealthy and obsessive. But this song is not dark in any way, it bursts with joyful declarations of undying love that only seem to come from the young and the naive. Leave your cynicism at the door and wallow in the headrush fireworks of young romance....
And so we finish off with 'The Sun Slid Down Behind The Tower' by Reserve. It seems apt to finish with this as this is the track I used to finish the mix-tape. I'm always a sucker for songs about Summer nights and the romance of sunsets and that's exactly what this song conveys to me. As I said above this is a band that maybe listened a little too closely to The Smiths; the janglesome guitars, the vocal pitched just a little too low and morose sounding. But it all works beautifully and if ever a track captured that end-of-a-golden-Summer feel it's this one. I feel that Ray has created one of his best videos to accompany this track, which is only fitting.
It feels such a privilege to able to bring these long lost songs to you, especially as they have meant so much to me over the last couple of decades.
Whilst you can find info on Another Sunny Day, Reserve and The Siddleys on the Internet, there seems to be absolutely NOTHING on The Visitors or The Magic Shop. If anyone connected with either band happens to stumble across this Blog, we would really like to hear from you so we could do a more in depth piece on both bands. Also, as we've mentioned above, we have the tracks here on MP3s if anyone may be interested.
Contact us at the e-mail address at the top of the page.
~Gordon~
Showing posts with label Sarah Records. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Sarah Records. Show all posts
Sunday, October 24, 2010
Wednesday, April 28, 2010
~Kitten Wine~ #2 "Emma's House" By The Field Mice
Celebrating The Best Indiepop Records #2: "Emma's House" E.P. by The Field Mice
"Where is that chaos that usually flows from me?"
How can a 7" 4-track EP contain all the clout, imagination, and life-affirming beauty of a triple LP concept album? Simple....when it's the "Emma's House" EP by The Field Mice, or Sarah Twelve to the anoraks!!
This is quite simply one of the GREATEST records ever made....I love it, I absolutely LOVE it!!! This is the record that soundtracked the golden Summer of 1989, the record that created a backdrop of warm twilights, giddy headrushes, broken hearts and melancholic longing.
Let's take it by the hand and walk to the top of the hill....the sun's just setting.......
Five to Six....somewhere it's always Five to Six, and Five to Six is the time I used to leave my house to walk the considerable distance to the only bus-stop in my village where I could get the bus to HER town......and on title track 'Emma's House'; "Five to six that's what the time is//Where you are...." I used to sing this refrain every time I walked that bus-stop. On the way I would pass a run down old house that we always used to believe was haunted; "Emma's house is empty//So why do I call it Emma's House?" The song sounds like pure Summer, strummy chiming guitars, the bass playing a melody of it's own(รก la The Marine Girls), and a really primitive drum machine. It can't be any exaggeration that the Summers used to be better when we were young, but all the times I walked to that bus-stop, it only ever rained once!
Since my childhood, and through my teens, adolescence and twenties, I was a ludicrously light sleeper. A goldfish could break wind downstairs and I'd suddenly be wide awake. Whenever I stayed at HER house, I'd spend the entire night lying wide awake beside HER. This is where 'When You Sleep' comes in......
"When you sleep// I listen to you breathing//When you sleep//I listen as the air(pause)....leaves you". As we will discover later, it's the pauses that hammer the nails of heartbreak to the wall.
"I can't help feeling// This cannot last// I can't help feeling// You will break my heart(pause)...break my heart". The pessimists among you will know this experience only too well. If you've ever lay awake beside someone all night, you'll know how deep this song cuts, for it is at these moments that all doubts escalate, and this song captures that sense of hopelessness completely.
On Nick Cave's storming epic 'Do You Love Me', he growls mournfully one of the most downbeat lines imaginable; "I knew before I met her that I would lose her"....OUCH!!
And that could be said of 'The Last Letter'; easily one of the most heartbreaking songs EVER, I knew long before I ever met HER that there would come a time when I would have to turn to this song.
The melodic bass introduces us before a haunting(yet strangely upbeat) piano refrain drapes itself over the song. This is where songwriter Bob Wratten really comes into his own....this song is shot through with so much self-deprecation that the very timbre of his voice stabs you through the heart. The killer line that destroys me on every listen contains the single most heart rending pause; " I never was one// To try// I never was any good(pause)....was I?"
When SHE left, I knew it would become impossible for me to ever listen to this song again.....for a long time anyway. Even now, even though I love the song so much, I tremble before the power it has over me. It's a song I can only ever play if everything in my life is going well, a song of such incredible beauty that I can only wonder how empty my life would be had I never found it.
So what does that leave us with? The wistful coda of 'Fabulous Friend'; a vapour-trail, a faded Polaroid, a glance backwards, memory tail-lights fading....."She WAS my fabulous friend"(emphasis on the word 'was')....and YEAH, that's all SHE was....and this is only a 7" piece of vinyl with some songs on it, right?
It's a record like this that makes me despair of people whose lives aren't dominated by music, those for whom pop songs are mere aural wallpaper, who never feel the emotions of a strummed 12-string crackling and popping on the Dansette.
Emma's House may be empty......but now my heart is full.
~Gordon~
"Where is that chaos that usually flows from me?"
How can a 7" 4-track EP contain all the clout, imagination, and life-affirming beauty of a triple LP concept album? Simple....when it's the "Emma's House" EP by The Field Mice, or Sarah Twelve to the anoraks!!
This is quite simply one of the GREATEST records ever made....I love it, I absolutely LOVE it!!! This is the record that soundtracked the golden Summer of 1989, the record that created a backdrop of warm twilights, giddy headrushes, broken hearts and melancholic longing.
Let's take it by the hand and walk to the top of the hill....the sun's just setting.......
Five to Six....somewhere it's always Five to Six, and Five to Six is the time I used to leave my house to walk the considerable distance to the only bus-stop in my village where I could get the bus to HER town......and on title track 'Emma's House'; "Five to six that's what the time is//Where you are...." I used to sing this refrain every time I walked that bus-stop. On the way I would pass a run down old house that we always used to believe was haunted; "Emma's house is empty//So why do I call it Emma's House?" The song sounds like pure Summer, strummy chiming guitars, the bass playing a melody of it's own(รก la The Marine Girls), and a really primitive drum machine. It can't be any exaggeration that the Summers used to be better when we were young, but all the times I walked to that bus-stop, it only ever rained once!
Since my childhood, and through my teens, adolescence and twenties, I was a ludicrously light sleeper. A goldfish could break wind downstairs and I'd suddenly be wide awake. Whenever I stayed at HER house, I'd spend the entire night lying wide awake beside HER. This is where 'When You Sleep' comes in......
"When you sleep// I listen to you breathing//When you sleep//I listen as the air(pause)....leaves you". As we will discover later, it's the pauses that hammer the nails of heartbreak to the wall.
"I can't help feeling// This cannot last// I can't help feeling// You will break my heart(pause)...break my heart". The pessimists among you will know this experience only too well. If you've ever lay awake beside someone all night, you'll know how deep this song cuts, for it is at these moments that all doubts escalate, and this song captures that sense of hopelessness completely.
On Nick Cave's storming epic 'Do You Love Me', he growls mournfully one of the most downbeat lines imaginable; "I knew before I met her that I would lose her"....OUCH!!
And that could be said of 'The Last Letter'; easily one of the most heartbreaking songs EVER, I knew long before I ever met HER that there would come a time when I would have to turn to this song.
The melodic bass introduces us before a haunting(yet strangely upbeat) piano refrain drapes itself over the song. This is where songwriter Bob Wratten really comes into his own....this song is shot through with so much self-deprecation that the very timbre of his voice stabs you through the heart. The killer line that destroys me on every listen contains the single most heart rending pause; " I never was one// To try// I never was any good(pause)....was I?"
When SHE left, I knew it would become impossible for me to ever listen to this song again.....for a long time anyway. Even now, even though I love the song so much, I tremble before the power it has over me. It's a song I can only ever play if everything in my life is going well, a song of such incredible beauty that I can only wonder how empty my life would be had I never found it.
So what does that leave us with? The wistful coda of 'Fabulous Friend'; a vapour-trail, a faded Polaroid, a glance backwards, memory tail-lights fading....."She WAS my fabulous friend"(emphasis on the word 'was')....and YEAH, that's all SHE was....and this is only a 7" piece of vinyl with some songs on it, right?
It's a record like this that makes me despair of people whose lives aren't dominated by music, those for whom pop songs are mere aural wallpaper, who never feel the emotions of a strummed 12-string crackling and popping on the Dansette.
Emma's House may be empty......but now my heart is full.
~Gordon~
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