Between Holiday & Garland...

"...Rumours have been dripping down from Scotland about a diverse horde of determined post Skids / S. Minds / Scars groups all ready to shift our attention. Positive Noise, Altered Images, JosefK, Orange Juice . . . the newest rumours centred around The Associates, who it seems were refining the vision of 'Station To Station', who it seems had a singer who sang like that particular Bowie. He wasn't copying, that's how he really sang - from deep inside, neo-operatically (...) The Associates have things in common with Magazine worth talking about. That European feel for a start, which basically stems from their liberating remoteness from standard r'n'r influences: the logic and out of the blue maturity of their sound: a Kurt Weill caught up with John Barry cabaret tension: and a respect for the irrational. Billy Mackenzie is vocally reminiscent of Bowie: but Bowie has never sung with so much delightful range and subtlety, never really had to. Mackenzie's soul singing is in the pained, proud tradition of Holiday and Garland. He'd be comfortable and do a great job singing 'Windmills Of My Mind' (he almost does on 'Even Dogs In The Wild'). An artist at communication, he takes intense care over enunciation - the shape of words and the space between them. His vocals are either a folly or something very special: I reckon a little of the former, a lot of the latter.The Associates sound is somewhere between evocative Cure and dramatic Magazine: a passionate cabaret soul music, a fulfillment of the European white dance music Bowie was flirting with back then. It is a fabulist (as opposed to surrealist) entertainment vitiated by a cool sense of art. Don't look for message or moral - the songs affect a dreamlike incompleteness but are not unprincipled or uncaring. They develop an account of the various mechanisms by which people remain trapped in boredom, abstraction, essence. With Mackenzie's obsessive flamboyance, the invariably plangent melodies, the richly fragmented detail of the songs, The Associates are undoubtedly theatrical. But their sense of theatre is natural, even profound, not the usual pop flash-trivia. The Associates are real performers"... Paul Morley (NME) 1980

Baby you're out of time ...

Rarely has a band been blessed by italian musical magazines as Out of Time in the middle eighties. The group sprouted from Bra (a little town not so far from Turin) that even more than the major towns was a kind of fertile Paisley Underground territor at the time. This movement heralded the return of guitars to rock 'n' roll and sixties sounds offered a more musically proficient complement to the town's rising punk scene. Their idols were bands like The Long Ryders & The Dream Syndicate. It might seem quaint looking back now, but Out of Time and their peers were a revelation at the middle of that decade – a period still reeling from Italian disco or wave-gothic trends, the emerging prominence of the studio producer, and the diminution of the guitar. But the sound of the Rickenbacker re-emerged in music scenes across Europe in those years, including the Paisley Underground and later the garage revival groups. Out of Time were definetly a real power pop band altoght often influenced by the jangly guitar sound of the Byrds and by the Rolling Stones sogwriting as they also added touches of Gram Parsons and Buffalo Springfield to their music. The group's breakthrough debut & only lp, "Stories we can tell", is arguably a little masterpiece as well as its best marriage of italian post punk and the Byrds/Parsons influences. It has incredibily never been re-edited in 25 years! I think that rarely had roots music felt so interesting in Italy, or had punk music felt so melodic or fleshed out in our scene. History says that the band did not survive to their debut album which incredibily failed to generate any interest in public. Out of time split up soon after the following years, after supporting the Dream Syndicate & Hoodoo Gurus in their first unforgattable italian tours. I still remember their great performance jamming with Steve Wynn at Collegno's Certosa in 1985 (or it was 86?), but it was more or less a century ago! No one seems to remember them nowaydays altough they re-created a quite derivative kind of sound that anticipated part of the '90s italian alt-rock scene... Don't forget them!!!

If you wanna smile (and trying to sing like Frankie L.)

Peter Astor was born to be a superstar but he wasn't. As Abe Smith he began playing guitars in Colchester, England, in the sixties. Later he formed The Loft, the band which released a few interesting singles for Creation records before splitting up in 1985. Then came The Weather Prophets, definitely the most underappreciated Creation band ever! Maybe just because they were one of the least heralded bands to record for Creation in the '80s, maybe because they jumped to the short-lived Creation-fed/Warner Bros.-financed Elevation imprint, or maybe because they didn't overflow with flash like the Primals or mess with heads like My Bloody Valentine. They just played their straightforward indie pop songs with a minimum of fuss and left the scene, doomed to be forgotten and undervalued. Chief songwriter/vocalist Pete Astor wrote and played at a same level as Lloyd Cole and Edwyn Collins and those were great songs... So Peter really has a stunning back catalogue for those eager to indulge and of his later stuff, the Wisdom of Harry is worth diving around on-line to find. Please take a listen again to the prophets playng germany in the late eighties and enjoy once more the wonderful jangly sound of the lost decade.

The kangaroos postcard

Glasgow like Brisbane? The legend says that Mc Lennan and Forster took a train to Glasgow in a frozen 1980 March morning and David Mac Clymont, the OJ's bass player, was there at the station waiting for them. As far as I remember they were in Scotland to do an audition for Postcard Records which ended up being the I Need Two Heads single. Steven Daly was credited with drums in the sessions and someone said that "edwyn our hero" was also around the studio providing some guitars and cymbals... It was a legendary session anyway as Mc Lennan still remembers: "It was a great time. They were our age, they did not take music too seriously but it was the only thing they were interested in!". This was the story, the Go Betweens played also a pair of dates in Scotland with Orange Juice & Josef K and they finally fell in love with the city crowd. But now we all know that there were no Scottish folow up and the label itself soon lost its indie identity. Soon the kagaroos went back to London searching for a new contract and time deserved a quite luminous future for them. In the same days, Orange Juice signed to Polydor for their debut album, becaming a mere shadow of their former glory. But we like to imagine the two bands gigging together in front of an enthusiastic audience for once managed to dance to a group. The start and the finish of the Glasgow scene.

Distance fades between us

Andy McCluskey and Paul Humphreys emerged, initially in early outfits such as The Id, but devoting increasingly more time to their experimental work as VCLXI - essentially the prototype Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark. Their debut gig at Eric's Club in 1978 - and the subsequent release of Electricity - changed everything. OMD moved forward as a pop engine through a mighty catalogue of electropop classics but this was another story. There are some recordings, (not so) rare & precious, that still sounds as they could eventually be... an original band that launched their own unique style of catchy electronic melodies, in a quite inspired experimental vein, far enough from their maestro Gary Numan. Back then, Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark might have seemed somewhat unwise, but the obvious commercial appeal of their music provoked enough interest that it eventually led to Factory Record's supremo Tony Wilson offering them the chance to cut their debut single 'Electricity' on the Factory label. Tony probably listened to the tapes I enclude here, perfectly capturing their infectious blend of melody and melancholia thru the sound of distant synthetizers. No punks or dope, no guitars & drums...take a step back to 1978 where those tracks were probably recorded and have a good listen!!!

Before & after digital synthesisers

So this is new roma(nce)? I know that we talked about them in a recent post about the new italian scene, but they are so great that we absolutely wanna make them bigger than they actually are letting you know better their music. I'm talking about Ancien Regime, the capital band that sounds exactly like Duran Duran & Omitd in their heydays, mixing stunning melodies with cold drum machines in a Kraftwerk style! Now that all their Mannequin records went so soon out of print, you absolutely have to listen to their wonderful 12" vinyl split debut, shared with the american postpunkers Led er est... just 4 tracks but really memorable! Hope they will make more great music soon, but for the moment, please support them and do not miss their future gigs here in Italy or everywhere else... they will be famous soon!!!

http://www.myspace.com/ancienregimeband

from Liverpool to Papua

China Crisis were founded in Liverpool, England by Gary Daly and Eddie Lundon. Eddie and Gary first met at St Kevin’s school in Kirkby. The two started working together in 1979 after leaving school.China Crisis debuted in 1981 with the single "African and White", then followed another single "Scream down at me" in 1982. Both these releases were on a small Liverpool independent label, Inevitable Records (.Inevitable recs – label ran from 4 Rutland Rd & formed in 1978 by Pete Fulwell (who ran Eric's) & Jerry Lewis (Amazon studios). 1st rel was to be Freedom Fighters by Dalek I Love You, but they signed to another label, so Inevitable wasn't officially launched until Dec79. Had numerous Indie & Chart hits with Wah! Heat, Modern Eon, Dead Or Alive, Faction. Pete left in May81 & set up Eternal Recs leaving Jerry to continue.) The band was then signed by Virgin Records who re-released "African and White", which then became a minor UK hit, reaching number 45 in the singles chart.The debut album "Difficult shapes and passive rhythms, Some people think it's fun to entertain" surfaced in late 1982 and hit the number 21 spot in November. times changed so fast and theen they started recordings overproduced tracks following the ghost of success. But I prefer to remember them in their heydays when they recorded also some interesting Peel sessions where you can hear the pure & genuine sound they had in their beginnings, a real pleasure for your ears!