rude club - men in suits

This one is a slow builder, but I'm surprised I didn't open the blog with it seeing as at the time this was one of my favourite things ever. I bought this from a townie girl at school on CD bizarrely enough, I had a copy of Locust by the same band which was alright, and she had bought this "by mistake" appparently, so for two days lunch money it ended up being mine, and in an unrelated incident she got pregnant and dropped out of school. Rude Club were part of the toilet circuit collective of Camden indie bands of the mid to late nineties, and it definitely sounds very much of its time with squawly guitars and slightly grating female shouty vocals, but they were definitely bigger riffers than some of your Fluffys and Tampasms, and the initial roar of guitar that follows the playground noise sampling, slightly overlong intro is HAMAZING. Trust me.


Normally this would be a picture of the band or the single artwork or something but google yields nothing and I don't have a scanner. These are just men in suits.

Anyway, the lyrics hint at seediness which was essentially a pre-requisite for girl fronted shouty indie bands at the time, lots of talk of money changing hands for favours etc, the guitars are loud and this song is generally good fun to smash your bedroom up to, download this now and set to doing that perhaps? I can't find much detail about them on the interweb which is unusual but they only had a few singles on Parkway Records so I guess maybe that's something to do with it. I think they were a London band although there's a myspace which claims to be run from Manchester but it's not actually the band's page so who knows. They made a great racket, from 1995 through to 1999, and then due to an argument between the two founding members and their bassist the singer decided she had had enough of the music business and set up a small minibus company offering lease and hire arrangements at reasonable prices. The drummer now works in Tesco in Camden and he once approached Chris Gentry for an autograph in 2003 causing both of them great embarrasment. The bassist is a successful middlemanager at KPMG.

rude club - men in suits.mp3

liz phair - batmobile

i first received this track on a mixtape back in the long distant primordial times in which mixtapes were actually cassettes instead of CDs. there were two tapes and each contained (amongst others obviously) one liz phair tune; this one, and animal girl. both are great tracks, but i have chosen this one to be my latest update, although as i type this i'm listening to animal girl and questioning my choice. anyway, allow it. batmobile is an amazing tune, almost comical (excuse the pun) lyrics, delivered with solemnity, making a great tune to sit and stare out of the window to in some suburban hole wishing you were anywhere but there. enjoy the tune. don't enjoy it, it's entirely up to you. no-one reads this anyway. knock yrselves out.

Liz Phair - Batmobile.mp3



here is the bit where i talk about the artist. liz phair was born in norwich and attended a variety of primary schools before moving to america where she received an honourary degree in philosophy. she released an album entitled juvenilia which the track i've just blogged came from, it's great, rumour has it she gave the demo tape to some record company guy in a bar, he was besotted with it and the album was released. after that she decided that it might be a good idea to write some big pop tunes and did, they were also not too bad. she then decided that she wanted to look like she does in the picture above which wasn't a great move and wrote several songs about wanting to molest young boys which didn't go so well. she was then ripped off by taylor swift in a savage way, who repackaged her stuff with a young girl singing rather than an older woman, and taylor swift went on to international success. juvenilia is the only good thing to really come of any of it. facts not opinions.

bye.

camera casanovas - breakfast and tea

this song is all of a minute long, but beautiful in its twee simplicity. a swedish band about whom i know not a great deal in all honesty, but i have a few tracks of theirs, and this is definitely the one to hear. the remix by a chap called benni, not so much. but we'll skate over that, this is twee indie pop at its tweeest, it's an ode to the delights of the titular breakfast and tea, completely resplendent in its cup and saucer, teaspoon and slurp samples. i defy you not to feel slightly charmed by this song. i bloody well defy you.




camera casanovas! - breakfast and tea.mp3

idlewild - chandelier

"like a flight of stairs falling down a flight of stairs" was the rather glorious description of one of idlewild's early shows that first caught my attention back in the days when i first started reading the pages of the new musical express, amassing piles of now dogeared clippings on yellowing paper, conscientiously cutting out every advert for or picture of any bands that i loved to adorn my bedroom walls, schoolbooks, the family cats, anything i could find really. my mother once told me if i spent half as much time doing my homework as i did sprawled on the front room floor with ragged copies of the nme and melody maker and the kitchen scissors i would have been the best pupil in the school's history. she may have been right, but that's beside the point; i remember reading this review of an idlewild show while my family watched emmerdale farm on a winter night in what must have been 1996(?) and i knew just from those words that this was a band that i wanted to have a large part of and so i saved my lunch money all week, bunked the train from leafy suburbia to london in the pouring rain and emerged a few hours later sodden, and with this delightful seven inch in a rough trade bag for my troubles. i got home and had a furtive cigarette out of my window to celebrate whilst the glorious riot of noise exploded around my room, jumping around on my bed, and listening to chandelier still makes me want to do that even now.



idlewild - chandelier.wma

a great track which never featured on any of their albums, this version is a little scratchy as it was my favourite record for a long while, at a time when i had little respect for boring conventions such as keeping records in sleeves and the like, but i think it adds to the flavour, i'm sure you could find a cleaner mp3 somewhere if you desperately wanted it. but you would be a philisitine. anyway, idlewild were a band from scotland who started out pretty small and ended up pretty big. around the time that this came out they were very young and shambolic, roddy woomble the singer claiming that he'd never had any desire to sing or do anything musical before he ended up in idlewild. the other quote about them that sticks in my mind is roddy saying that he "wasn't an entertainer y'know, i wasn't one of those people who walk down the street singing or anything" which i always found quite interesting, but there you go; later in life they developed a much more refined style which in itself has its charms, but this is them at their best in my opinion. i have heard that the band is still together but their major label dropped them which is a shame, although that might well be old information by now. anyway, hope you like the mp3. i'm off for lunch.

Are You Lost? Are You Sad? - Misty Dixon

this is a song which has long held a special place in my heart, a moody and miserable romp through not feeling all that great. i tried to get a friend to do a cover once and he said it was the most depressing thing he'd ever had to listen and then he gave up. personally i just think it's a bit down but quite beautiful so give it a chance.


Misty Dixon - Iced to Mode - 02- Are You Lost.mp3


misty dixon were on twisted nerve, friends with andy votel so far as i can gather and the main vocalist recorded other stuff under her actual name of jane weaver. lots of jane's stuff is worth tracking down, as is the misty dixon album entitled iced to mode, but this for me is the standout track. the band's criminally undersubscribed myspace site is here.

candyskins - monday morning

hello,

it's been a while, but seeing as no-one reads this and i have no followers i suspect that no-one has been particularly offended. even so i should point out that i intend to resurrect this place like a phoenix from the shoebox that it's been hibernating in. with that in mind, please find below for your delectation an mp3 from a scratchy seven inch, namely the candyskins' wonderful track, monday morning.

as a youth, and pretty much for the rest of my life, i had a terrible issue with the idea of getting up. essentially you could say that i wasn't built to get up but i don't have the supernaturals track with me, and besides which, in the uk it's monday morning so this seems somehow more fitting. but yes, i was always chronically late for school, on a scale the likes of which my form tutor had never known, late pretty much every day for approximately three years with a variety of excuses ranging from dentist appointments to lack of interest so here was a song that resonated heavily with me.

i bought it from virgin megastore in brighton over some long distant school holiday period in the mid nineties, during which i would stay with my grandmother in a house in hove. in the balmy summer days i used to walk down into brighton town along the beach to mooch around the shops and look at records and other treats that i couldn't afford, but i had obviously saved some money from washing someone's car or found a fiver blowing down the street or something as this is what i bought on one such trip. i seem to remember it was a toss up between this or a tampasm single, but in the end i got the tampasm single another day because this came on shining white vinyl, at a time when i was besotted with such novelties, but it was always the sentiment that appealled to me the most i think, although it's very jingly jangly indiepop which never hurts either. anyway, here it is:


candyskins - monday morning.mp3


enjoy.