2015

It takes something BIG to make me put two finger tips to computer keys nowadays.

 

It’s about two bands who have released records this year, they both have what seems to be a similar feeling regarding whether you dig them or not, whether you listen to them or not. They both give off a form of nihilism, they both reek of indifference, they both SHRUG at the listener.

I wonder if its the times we live in, there’s an agonizing cynicism to everything as we all tip-toe around trying to not say the wrong thing, to change our FB profile pic’s at the right time, to not have ambition, to take photo’s of ourselves PURELY to put them onto the internet to show how awesome we are with our families or with our bands or with our friends or cats. LOOK AT ME, DOING SOMETHING, I DON’T JUST SIT HERE WANKING.

 

Every week when Jools is on, the same people moan about what’s on it. Every year the Mercury’s get announced and people moan. Then Christmas comes around and someone puts up their decorations early so everyone moans. Then someone posts ‘the SLAYER Christmas lights’ and gets 4 ‘LIKES’. Halloween pisses people off, religion pisses people off, ATP pisses people off, there’s SO MUCH to be pissed off at…… behind a keyboard. 

 

Then of course, everyone eye’s up the next ATP (oooh….the two berth’s are all gone, we gotta find FOUR or SIX or fucking EIGHT to share with…”How are we gonna do that, darling? I HATE EVERYONE I LIKE”). Everyone watches Jools ANYWAY, puts on their Christmas jumpers, get’s MOIST at the latest reformed band. 

 

The zeitgeist is racing away, the REAL KIDS, those who are 15…not YOU….are listening to GTA5 radio, and aren’t on FB, and they don’t give two shits about vinyl or CD or cassette because they’re listening on Youtube and paying for NOTHING. 

 

These two records in particular capture the times for ME. In what is a strange time to consume music, albums are big for a week. Records are ALBUM OF THE YEAR after one listen, vinyl is perpetually delayed as the major labels clog it all up with Dire Straits reissues, advertising is still considered important yet as ever WORD OF MOUTH is still the best way.

I’ve lived with these two for 6 months in one case and 3 in the other, and they carry themselves so sweetly in attitude and bluster and pure SWING, they are ‘just’ rock albums. I think people forget about: ‘just’ rock albums. 

Being awesome with a cat:

 

Grey Hairs are a four piece from Nottingham. The album is miserably called ‘Colossal Downer’, it has a photo on the cover of a worn out and bored looking child faced with a table overflowing with classic party food. It sort of symbolizes all I’ve said so far in the one photo. We have EVERYTHING but we’re all so fucking GRUMPY. These words from their page on the Gringo website: “form a band and tour in a Transit while no one takes any notice whatsoever” are the words of the child in 20 years time, no doubt. 

 

The music harks back to a pre-internet time somehow, when you ordered your records by POST. God damn they were SLOW times, but it made you so excited to get the record. I still have a hand written letter from Dischord Records thanking me for asking for a catalogue….DIFFERENT TIMES…I bet Grey Hairs have a letter from Dischord, or maybe Sub Pop. This is music for fans of The Wipers or The Pattern or Evergreen (the Louisville Evergreen). It has a head bobbing garage punk rock grind that is timeless. It’s not of this time.It’s for all times.

 

The Workin’ Man Noise Unit record, Play Loud, has a GUSTO to it that’s pure.The tunes snap with a swagger that makes me want to start a band, they make me so happy. I get a feeling of intense potential. Like somehow things are possible. Yet, despite ME getting this, they don’t seem to have it… The sleeve, a TF classic, is of a motorbike riding man riddled with EYES and ARMS heading straight into hell. The insert, with photocopied pencil writing: “COMING TO AN EMPTY ROOM NEAR YOU SOON” and “WMNU FAN CLUB, 123 FUCK OFF STREET” doesn’t exactly spill over with Oasis style bravado….I love them for it. 

 

The music? It’s ‘noise rock’, or ‘grunge’, or ‘punx’, or ‘AM REP ROCK’. It’s nine tunes played by four people on bass/drums/guitar +vocal/skreeeee. I would say it’s ZZ Top played by characters who first learnt about decent music via Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater. OR WHATEVER. It make me want to watch them in an empty room, near ME. 

 

Both WMNU, who are from Reading, and Grey Hairs, put shows on in their hometowns. They both PUT BACK. So despite the worn out world view, and cynicism, it’s clear all 8 of them are LIFERS. 

 

These are the times. There’s too much going on, we have no time for any of it. We’re impatient. Gif’s are too long. We have to do agonizingly shit jobs purely to keep us in beans and tea bags, but it’s what we do in our SPARE TIME. And in the first post on this blog for a couple of years i’m saying these two records are THEE records of the year, 2015. 

For Grey Hairs go to GRINGO

For Workin’ Man Noise Unit go to RIOT SEASON

 

Billy Bao presents “Buildings From Bilbao”

There’s a saying and it goes something like this – When all is said and all is done far more’s been said than’s got done (sic). There’s an argument for that summing up modern day punk rock, all bluster, Top Man t-shirts, and empty bottles, fighting the system with a laptop and some slogans from middle class surrounds.

Look it’s a Top Man punx!

Who hits women!

Billy Bao’s fourth album carries with it a genuine threat of mobilization, of anger. Recorded 40 years after Funhouse and taking its cues from said album, song titles, listed song lengths, Buildings From Bilbao is a guided tour through the San Francisco area of the bands home city. Like Richard Linklater’s debut film Slacker where the camera follows a variety of souls around Austin, Texas for a single day, catching snippets, clearly showing a love for the city, this record does that for the bands own neighbourhood.

Check this:

It’s called TV Eye, and it rages.

Spitting fury at regeneration and inevitable gentrification the seven songs are a masterful mix of noise rock, tape edits, and pure Stooges-esque nut swang. Sax wails over the thundering caveman riffs, vocals wave the flag at the inevitable-ness of it all, “…things will change and you will not like it….” They bellow and you wanna go into battle with them.

Songs collapse to nothing, sporadic bass thumps, mumbled words, and then out of nowhere comes a shaft of light, as in Slacker when bursts of sound pour from the clubs and shops, we get taken into a now defunct bar called Precious. With a gleeful sense of humour and love there’s a remix or refit of Lagos band 9ice’s Gongo Aso, a regular tune on the jukebox in the bar. It’s a nod and a wink to the area’s Nigerian Community, it captures the spirit of the closed down bar, it gels the area to the record.

Here ya go:

Nice, 9ice.

City’s have neighbourhoods that have been made by communities over years and years and the beauty of this record is the way in which it nails it down, the vibe and spirit of the area. The sleeve is as important as the record, a beautiful gatefold affair with images of houses (fun or otherwise) and the people dancing, protesting, skulking in the shadows hiding from the recently added CCTV cameras. The CCTV subject is covered in the tune above, TV Eye; San Francisco is the first area in the Basque Country to receive their double edged joys.

Sweet sleeve, with stickers from label:

Punk rock takes on all forms, but with Billy Bao’s output you get a sense of the bigger picture via the targeted nature of it. There’s 500 copies of this record, they’ll go quick, but don’t worry BB are anti copyright so they’ll have it up for free download around now, take that Top Man punx, take that.

Buy it: http://burkaforeverybody.bandcamp.com/album/b-f-e-10-billy-bao-buildings-from-bilbao-lp – i got it from them. 19.50 (euros) which includes p+p to uk. You gotta email em. You gotta do some work to win the prize.

(I promise, if you give a hoot, to get back on with the JF tale. Hit a bit of a block.)

2nd Aug 2003. Last words on the 2MM bore-athon. Thank fuck

I want to dash this sucker off quick. Very bored. Very very bored.

The 2MM CD was out, we did an all day gig to celebrate this fact. The Arts Cafe on Commercial St, near Liverpool St, East London was booked. I just googled the Arts Cafe and this image came up, my memory is gone, is this what the Arts Cafe looked like?

It looks shit.

We got 11 bands to play it.

These were them, with a brief summation by Mike Diver:

Ships Going Down (“missed“), Trencher (“they’ll steal your shoes and try to eat them“), Cove (“Slightly more sedate“), Econoline (“most melodic set of the day “), Lords (“interesting “), Montana Pete (“not everyone’s cup of tea “), Billy Mahonie (“neither rocks nor bores“), Stanton (“seem to lack that certain, elusive something“), Charlottefield (“excites without the need for madcap moshing“), I’m Being Good (“woefully out of tune instrumental soundscapes“), Joeyfat (“They supported bands like NOFX early in their career“).

Fair enough.

The venue was sold out twice over, it was a beautiful day, The Arts Cafe had a big outdoor space so as people went out to avoid whatever band they hated we let more people in.

All the good guys and girls were there.

Each band got £50 for their troubles apart from Montana Pete who played and fucked off immedietely, that was their ‘schtick’. Crazy cats.

This was Stanton’s last ever gig, we were ‘OK’ by the end, less drunky. Chris moved to Brisbane a few days later. I shed a single tear, unfortunately this was spotted by Ian Scanlon from the band Econoline, he mocked me, I have never forgiven him. I THOUGHT YOU WERE EMO, MR. SCANLON.

We then put the comp to bed and never spoke of it again.

Listen to The Minutemen.

Trencher

All of you know this band, grindy ‘casio core’ (I think they hate this term, it’s very VICE magazine) featuring the amusingly monickered: Lock Monger on drums, Milk Shit on casio + vocals, and Pox (he of the weak handshake as mentioned in a previous post) on bass. Through the early 2000’s they played every hardcore, grindcore, d beat, metal, fucking whatever show that happened in London. John Peel played them shitoads, and no wonder, some of their tunes were only 30 seconds long. Perfect to squeeze between The Congo’s and The Wedding Present.

Here they are with their tits out:

I took my then 4 year old son, Stan, to see them play downstairs in Rough Trade, back when Rough Trade was in Covent Garden and run by grumpy fuckers who hated everything. Unlike the spick and span coffee swilling nightmare it is in East London nowadays, “HI! HOW CAN I HELP YA!, WE HAVE COFFEE! YEAH!”. Who fucking wants coffee in a record shop? East Fucking London that’s who. They even had toilets. Toilets in a record shop. Let’s spend all day in the record shop! YEAH! They had to shut the toilets cos people kept jacking up in them, and probably fucking in them as well. Coffee! Jacking up! Fucking! All to the latest Dubstep! YEAH! I’m not sure Stan liked the band, but he stuck it out, like a trooper.

Anyhow.

S.O.U.L released their first thing in 2001, a cassette, gloomily entitled ‘Presumed Dead’. 26 glorious anthems to optimism and living life on a sunny day and embracing the world and showing a clean pair of heels to the haunting spectre of suicide and depression. They probably sold shit loads of them. The kids like self help tapes.

They then released a couple of split singles on kookily sized vinyl.

They had one of those unreadable logo’s.

They were good guys and were good live and I found them funny.

Something that seemed to happen a lot ten years ago, or I only noticed it then, it could of been going on for years, was the ‘multi label release’. It was a genius idea: tiny band releases record on numerous tiny labels dotted around the planet, thereby spreading the slop in one giant anal sweep. It saved the hassle of one tiny label doing all the leg work, it also looked ridiculous / amusing when all the labels logos were laid out on the rear of the album.

Trencher were big fans of this malarky. So when it came to releasing their seminal work, When dracula thinks: “look at me”, they knew what they wanted.

The situation was confused by the fact they’d had the recording of the album financed by a company called ‘Punish Productions’ who were hunting out a record deal for them. When EMI didn’t come knocking they started slumming it and asked us, along with piles of other shitty record labels. We jumped at the chance. We had to pay to get the recordings, we had never paid for recordings before and never did again. The cost was spread over the six labels involved. We owned the recordings. Like what a proper label does. We puffed on our fucking massive fat cigars and stroked ourselves, satisfied. We laughed a maniacal laugh. We released the Trencher album on CD.

Have a look at the discogs page, it’ll be quicker than me typing out all the labels involved:

http://www.discogs.com/Trencher-When-Dracula-Thinks-Look-At-Me/release/816268

We did 1000 CD’s. They looked like this:

Very grindcore, I’m sure you’d agree.

But you want the vinyl, here’s a photo of it on my kitchen floor. I have set up a Lego man in an amusing and whimsical fashion. It looks like he’s screenprinting the B side. HA HA. Man I’m fucking funny / bored.

Wakusei and Crucificado Pelo Sistema released the vinyl, 250 copies. One sided pink vinyl with the screen print on the other side.

The CD’s sold well, but we only had about 100 of them due them being split left and right between the band and label and distribution. I doubt we broke even on it. Another success.

Trencher then signed to Southern, who released their follow up record, Lips. Southern then re-issued the album that all us shitty labels had put out and owned the rights to. We’re still waiting for the cheque.

More shit about the 2MM comp and some about hand shaking

Both double 7″s did well, so not to cock a snook at our very own cash cow we only went and dumped it onto a CD didn’t we. Eh? Jokers.

We made it purple, cos that’s what red and blue make. Clever. Very clever.

32 songs over both comps at 2 minutes each equalled 64 minutes. A CD holds 76 minutes. We added some more bands. We wanted to sell the CD to people who didn’t own record players and we wanted to sell it to people who had bought the vinyls. We were selling coal to Newcastle. We were selling it to Sunderland. Er, Newcastle has record players, Sunderland doesn’t. I think this is a ‘euphemism’, enjoy it as I don’t believe in using them, they’re very lazy.

It came out on the 11th August 2003.

So here are the last bands, the one’s who scraped on by the skin of their helmets:

33 – Monster Bobby – ‘I always knew I was wrong’. MB formed girl band The Pipettes, although if memory serves Monster Bobby was a man with a massive face.

34 – Sam’s Hot Car Lot – ‘Scalp/Lobotomy’. SHCL were from Scotland and sent the rudest emails ever. They played loud angular rock and probably fell over whilst doing it. No idea what happened to them, chances are they are sleeping on the street and shouting at the traffic.  

35 – Thread – ‘Breadcrumb trail’. Thread released a 7″ on Victory Garden, they were a poppy sort of affair. This tune was decent. Again, no idea what happened to ’em. I bet this was the highlight of their career.

36 – The! Lights! Alive! – ‘You made your bed, now lie in it’. T!L!A! were great. This may have been their only release. There was a four song CDR kicking about that someone should have put out. This tune was from it. In this band was Luke ‘floppy handshake’ Younger (as we knew him), his mum drove him down with the master tape. He’s now in Birds Of Delay and Helm and runs a killer record label called Alter Stock. James Blackshaw was in them also, he is a finger picking wizard who has put stuff out on all sorts of hip labels. I believe one of them, the moustache faced keyboardist, is in Cleckhuddersfax who release things on Upset The Rhythm a record label based where Nathan Barley is based. So anyhow, this was most definitely their springboard to success, I’m sure they’d agree. Someone should still put out the CDR. Not us though, we’ve lost enough money.

Here is a photo of a character in the band cleckhuddersfax:

“hmmmmm”.

37 – Ships a Going Down – ‘Hank’s Arm, It Ages’. We used to call them Shits Going Brown. We were hilarious. Complete Billy Mahonie worship, but actually not bad with it. They were a three piece, bassman, Rob, always wore a cap. He went through a phase of asking loads of label related questions then he formed a label and was way better at it than us. I think he put out the first Bloc Party single. They also had a fellow called Tim Dellow, who was the guitarist, he was a fanzine writing character who has also climbed up the music industry ladder running a record label and being 10 times more successful than we ever were. Again, I’m sure as they gaze back from their ivory towers this would rank as the highpoint of their career so far.

38 – Trencher – ‘Autopsy’. Grindcore from London. This band will get covered in more detail very soon, I’ve been looking forward to writing about them. Mark is now in Palehorse, Liam is a globe trotting tattooist of some repute. Not sure about bass Trencher, if memory serves he also had a floppy handshake. Towards the end of this tale we will meet one more floppy handshaker, I dread to think what would happen if they met and got involved in a ‘shake off’. Terrifying sci-fi scenes would develop.

This is a Trencher:

It’s called ‘The Ditch Witch’. Which is also a good name for a band.

39 – Lords – ‘Dismount’. From Nottingham, Lords were a Gringo band. Chris was in Reynolds. Elvis was in Aqua Vista and Twinkie. Chris and Phil were in Wolves (Of Greece). Chris is in a shit ton of other bands. Elvis now surfs in Ireland. Phil takes photos of office desks, from what I can gather. Lords were a  ZZ Top / Beefheart inspired affair driven by Elvis’ killer tubthumping. More about these later on. Promise.

And that was the comp. Finished. Finally.

One more slab of cack about the 2MM next, concerning the final all dayer we did, then I’ll not mention it ever again. I swear. I’m as bored of it as you no doubt are.

Tenminutemen Two, Maida Vale. Launch night, Betsy Fucking Trotwood.

 

John Peel dug the 2MM2 compilation. Playing the lid off it. Again, we got lucky and he agreed to a second night in his company at Maida Vale, on the 23rd July 2003. Five bands from the comp were chosen by him and his gang. I asked him how he decided on the five bands and this is what he said:

 

 

Typical rude Scouse bastard.

 

I recently emailed a man called Leon, who at the time lived in Tunbridge Wells, and is now a mover and shaker in ‘that’ London:

 

“leon, you remember when joeyfat and bilge pump and charlottefield and i’m being good and twinkie did the 10minutemen session. is it true that in TW there were ‘radio partys’? outside? somewhere? or something….just doing this blog thing…trying to make it interesting…joe”

 

Leon replied.

 

“Yes, we all ended up in a field in Chiddingstone in Kent with a few car radios blaring it out. I was there along with Lawrence and a few pals, we all ended up camping. I even drove a car for the first and last time, hand-break turning into cow pats. When we woke up all the cows were in the field. It was a good evening!”

 

So, there we are. Peel invited those five bands into Maida Vale to play for ten minutes live on his show, and down in Kent some Cows got irked.

 

 

Leon is on the right.

 

My memory of the night in Maida Vale is, ahem, ‘foggy’. I think Joeyfat put up paper signs around the place. Here is the singer from Joeyfat, he looks like the sort of chap that may well put up paper signs around a place, I think you’ll agree.

 

 

Tom Charlottefield may have played with his shoes off. It seems unlikely but it’s what my mind is telling me.

 

 

In this photo, not taken at Maida Vale, Tom’s feet are hidden by a cymbal. Judging by the fact one of the band is playing in a winter coat it’s hard to believe Tom would have bare feet. I really am not sure what to believe about Tom’s feet.

 

The other bands, Bilge Pump, Twinkie, and I’m Being Good went off without a hitch. I just wish I could remember more about it.

 

There was a launch gig for the record. Bob organised it at The Betsy Fucking Trotwood, London. A venue that hold 7 people. The stage is so low that I (a freak, in the eyes of The Betsy Trotwood, at 6 foot 5) cannot stand up straight on the stage. Due to the imminent birth of son number two I couldn’t spend the whole day there, which was lucky as all the bar staff were pointing and running away from the giant in their midst. I was going to eat them. Fe Fi Fo Fum. Etc.

 

 

L-R: Me, Man who runs The Betsy Fucking Trotwood.

 

I caught the first band, Lo-Fi Sucks and had to do a runner.

 

Maybe someone who spent the day there can add some words of wisdom. Also, any photo’s or memories from the Tenminutemen session, anyone?

 

Please?

ROLL UP! ROLL UP!

(it’s, again, slighty off the rails in regards the JF tale. Apologies. etc. Get your teeth into it none the less).

It’s a no win situation one finds oneself in when attempting to release music at this level. Bands want success, but pretend they don’t care. As a label, you want success, but pretend you don’t care. The distributor wants success, but barely conceals it’s disappointment as yet another horse fit for glue clip clops out of your stable.

“Hi!

I’m JFR037!”

And the cycle witters on. And everyone is over the moon at a radio play at 2am. And everyone wishes they had tried harder at school. And no one wins.

And now, to make this minefield a more mine filled field, comes what every self respecting vinyl hunting, diy music supporting, new music loving woman and man should be shuddering and rallying against:

The indie rock equivalent of the 80’s pop revival tour. Something to thrill to as old bastards roll out their rather dated sounding back catalogue for old bastards to relive a fake youth they never had, and for young bastards to watch, and to not learn from any of the mistakes being made right in front of their impressionable eyes.

“Roll up, roll up!”

“Here to eat up what little money people have, we give to you:

Slint as Bucks Fizz! The Pixies as The Human League! Dinosaur Jr will be Culture Club! (Mascis makes a sweet Boy George, I’m sure you all agree!), and tonight, re-new to the scene we also have Bitch Fucking Magnet as ABC, and to really get you going Codeine will be bringing up the rear performing all of Stock, Aitken and Watermans greatest hits! And hellllo, who’s this rubbery chicken we see before us… It’s the IG! Here to sell perfume and car insurance and not get his cock out like he used to. Sorry!”

The Stooges laughing at 'The Ig's' antics.The crowd (out of shot) goes wild because 'The Ig' is famous for his antics.

“If you’re lucky, one of them will perform, in it’s entirety, a back catalogue fluke that despite being a 6/10 record has, over time, been deemed a classic by those whose opinions matter!”

“Everyone, BE HAPPY!!”

The Thrown Ups are about to perform, in its entirety, their classic record "Eat My Dump". The crowd, naturally, goes wild.

People have ‘some’ money. People can shove their ‘some’ money wherever they want, and to whoever they want. But when the marketing world sells something in the right way to the right people, people flock. And then that ‘some’ money will be gone, and it would have gone on a night watching a museum piece. And it may have been a good night, but it was probably an average night. And it may have been a night to remember, but it probably won’t have been. And then that money is gone. And then, slowly, as time crumples on, less new music happens.

And everyone is happy because more untapped old bands who haven’t yet been newly remarketed can temporarily leave their teaching jobs and have another month in the sun and an article on Pitchfork and a date at a Butlins.

Bob went to see Lou Barlow’s Dinosaur Jr and liked them. I thought they sucked.

Back to JF shenanigans next, once I’ve got my tickets for GBV.

it’s a quarter-time break

Sorry for delays.

 

Having downstairs of house destroyed.

 

 

So if I sit at the computer for too long I’ll be accused of being a slacking Joe.

 

Will be back on the case as soon as possible. Very soonly.

 

 

If Chuck can wait, so can you.

twominutemen two (again – no capital letters)

The first twominutemen compilation hadn’t done too bad, so what would any self respecting capitalist diy label do?

You ain’t wrong bruddah’s and sista’s. 2mm2. Another 16 rock ‘n roll acts over 4 sides of sexy black wax, sized 2×7″.

Oddly, and for reasons we can’t remember the catalogue number for this is JFR009 where as the first 2mm is JFR010. Baffling stuff. One for the nerds and whatnot.

SO:

1: i’m being good – nostalgic for fake times. If you want to be the first tune on a compilation start with a door bell sound. IBG have been around long enough to be wise to this. From Brighton, ex members dotted all over the world in various bands, none of which are as good as IBG. Remember that jokey funk party band called ‘The Go Team’? One of them was in IBG.

2: bilge pump – moil. Bilge Pump are from Leeds, Joe makes amps under the name Euclid. I have one. When it’s working it’s untouchable, when it’s got smoke coming out the back it’s also untouchable, but for different reasons. Killer amps. All should own one. Bilge Pump release their albums on Gringo. Bilge Pump’s albums are great. Also, Bilge Pump live is a great thing for your ears and eyes and nose. Here:

is a photo of Joe Bilge Pump shaving before a gig in France. Bilge Pump like to look good when entertaining the masses.

3: the murder of rosa luxemburg – i lost all my hair in a skiing accident. Chris and I saw TMORL at The Swan in Tottenham, a venue we frequented a fair bit. The waft of burnt goat and the shout of ‘DOMINO’ were regular quirks to The Swan. TMORL ripped it up. The crowd were pinned to the walls whilst TMORL swung guitars and mic’s and all of that shite around. They were one of those ‘singer falls over whilst singing bands’, with haircuts and belts. But fuckedy-doo-da they were raging. This tune was from their debut 7″. There was three stages to TMORL: 1 – Debut 7, fall over whilst singing, energy, etc. 2 –  album out on Rocksound Magazine label (so consequently losing diy cool points with other spock style barnet types), a few mellow bits but it’s still got juice. 3 – self released 7″, all mellow, sorta jazzy. For me, it was all gold. Nowt like seeing a band progress in front of your eyes. Then they stopped.

4: cat on form – palace of lights. This tune was over two minutes. We cried. But that’s the thing with bands who take their tops off and preach anarchy and punk rock and all of that. They do what they want. COF had Steve from The Oedipus in. They were a sort of Fugazi / His Hero Is Gone inspired affair. Vacuous Pop put out their debut 7″ and it’s a marvellous thing, lo-fi, scratchy, and perfect. Then Southern signed them, and, unfortunately put them in Southern studios, and, unfortunately produced an album that sounded clean, and, unfortunately a bit weak. Shame.

5: montana pete – das bot. Montana Pete released their own albums and gave them away. They would play live and leave the venue instantly, ignoring all other bands. They were funny cocks.

6: old time relijun – kettle. We may have performed a whopping bottle job on releasing their album around this time but we did chuck this corker on the comp.

7: twinkie – chaff the queen. Elvis from Aqua Vista was in this band. As was a man called Moo who always looked rather dapper and sported a fine ‘tache. Twinkie, from Derby, the North.

8: meets guitar – george collins. Gavin from Billy Mahonie getting all banjo-y and all that. This time, with his dad. It’s a smart thing. Gavin’s dad once drove to Bath to see Stanton and complained we hadn’t played a certain tune. Gavin’s dad knew Stanton songs.

9: maquiladora – i’ve been waiting. Following on from the spunky 7, this tune. And. It’s lovely.

10: joeyfat – waiferville. Joeyfat, from Tunbridge Wells, Kent, near France. They release their records on Unlabel and between them they run music in Tunbridge Wells. The album ‘You Can Change Peoples Lives With Your Mouth’ is sexy, so sexy it came in bubble wrap. They toured with Green Day back when Green Day didn’t sound like The Levellers. Joeyfat have been going since 1991.

Here’s the second half of The Minutemen quote:

Magic stuff. Again, listen to the tune.

11: charlottefield – paper dart. A proper full thousand words will be spent on Charlottefield in due course. But suffice to say this came out on JF during a time when Fat Cat didn’t like them.

12: poplar – polska. Poplar was a Spanish man called Fabio, he ran Tritone who put out the Stanton album on CD. He was also in a band called Klint who did the soundtrack to a Guy Ritchie film called Snatch, which somehow got Simon to Hollywood to DJ at the opening night, where that bone headed singing tool from The Fun Loving Criminals spent the night asking what was being played. The world is small and famous people are stupid.

13: jay anderson / wolf colonel – how many nights. JA/WC, this tune was the loudest song ever received by us. A crushing four track recorded…..acoustic number. Normally when mastering a compilation you turn things up to meet the loudest tune, we had to master this one quieter.

14: lo fi sucks – and about time too. Oddly monikered Italians, friends of Stef and Perturbazione. Decent dudes.

15: fupper – gaitor. Simon’s solo stuff, of which he has thousands of tunes. It was us putting it out, why not chuck one of us on it eh?

16: gatto ciliegia – lysanya. More Italian friends. More characters from in and around Torino. The name means Cherry Cat or some such mentalness. Italians don’t mind wondering around with loopy names. Unlike us English speakers like Fudge Tunnel or Anal Cunt.

Old Time Relijun and Sage Francis, things that didn’t pan out.

Two things that almost came out on JF around this time:

We went to see a band called Burning Airlines (from DC, ex-Jawbox…if you’re not an “EX-MEMBERS of” band, you ain’t no band at all…), they were pretty excellent the first time we saw them and then terrible the second time. Such is life. the second time they were supported by a band called Old Time Relijun. It was at the Dublin Castle, Camden. OTR utterly blew our squash ball sized minds. Beefheart-esque wonkiness, double bass, just out of this world. Turns out they were on K Records, who as previously mentioned we had a soft spot / hard wood for.

Here is the band Old Time Relijun:

What is there not to like about that.

We sent Simon to speak to them, we thought his Canadian accent could help us. Or maybe we thought he was the drunkiest. Or maybe he was the keenest. Or whatever.

Simon got in deep, explained who we were, exchanged emails, etc.

Over the next few months it was decided we would do an OTR album.

Simon and Arrington OTR signing the relevant papers:

We were pretty excited.

Then they sent it.

It was terrifying, and a tough listen, and not what they were like when we saw them. It was total freeform and unlistenable to our tender ears. We cried.

So we told Simon, they’re new best friend, to come up with a reason that would get us out of releasing it.

Thing is, now, I would probably love it. We would probably all love it. Our heads were too indie and too into easy to listen to DC inspired emo rock like Braid and Burning Airlines and lilly livered indie like Sebadoh and whatnot. Although, even now, I’m still to make it all the way through Trout Mask Replica in one sitting, despite Barrack’s constant nagging that given time I’d fucking love it.

The other miss in our cannon was Sage Francis. There was a character who worked at Vital by the name of Richard Willis, he was a hip hop man. He introduced me to a tune called Makeshift Patriot by Sage Francis. After a few emails back and forth we were going to release a 7″ of it, a cheeky few hundred. But we were too slow and he ended up signing to Epitaph or whatever offshoot of an offshoot of a subsidiary of some big label it was and we blew it.

Check Makeshift Patriot out, it still stands up.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K3spSAvJkm8

Maybe as the weeks go by we’ll think of some others that we blew, there were certainly bands who we asked who said no. And fair play to em, Ursa, we’re looking at you…