Thanks again to Mark Mortimer for the interview. Some days ago I interviewed him about his previous band, Great Express, and now we try to remember the days of Space Seeds, another band that had a great guitar pop sound but with a broader set of influences. You can also see my previous article about Space Seeds here. Now enjoy read and discover another great band with Mark Mortimer on it!

++ Hi again Mark! Thanks for being up for another interview, this time about Space Seeds. We are going in chronological order so far, right? So tell me how did Space Seeds start after the demise of Great Express?

After the Great Express ended I was still full of songs & still as desperate as ever to make music, create & move forward so there was never any question about me stopping what I do. I carried on writing songs, making demos of them with various friends & somehow from those demos a new band was formed which was the Space Seeds. At first it wasn’t even a band, more of a solo project but my big problem is I am a crap singer & there was no way on earth it could ever be an eponymous ‘Mark Mortimer’ thing.
The mere thought of that makes me burst into fits of laughter!!

++ Who were the members and how was the recruiting process? At some point you were seven members, right?

The band’s creation coincided with that period just after I’d met my future wife Christine & she had gone to live & study in Munich, Germany & it was quite a lonely time in my life which meant I was writing tonnes of songs.

Initially, as I say, it was mostly me writing songs by myself & recording them with a nucleus of mates at the Expresso Bongo Studios in Tamworth which was run by Paul Speare. Various people from the Dream Factory & The Great Express had kindly lent a hand in the studio along with Paul (Speare), Barry Douce, who was playing keyboards on tour with the Mighty Lemon Drops & a few more.

Initially myself & Ted Wilson from the Great Express plus Gavin (Skinner) from Primal Scream recorded a piss-take of the Beastie Boys called ‘Mollusc No. 5’ & that kind of set the ball rolling. Then I wrote a tune called ‘Autumn Girl’ for Christine: I had this romantic notion of it being an audio love letter which I would post out to her in Bavaria. It had this lovely strings & flute sound which was subconsciously influenced by Love’s ‘Da Capo’ album & I asked Martin Kelly, a folky guy with a love of John Martyn & Nick Drake records, to sing lead vocals on the tune for me as I was incapable of singing in tune!

Barry & Chantal Weston (Great Express) played keyboards, Ted from the Great Express added 12-string guitars & Paul Speare played the flute parts. I played bass & acoustic guitars, added more keyboards & Julian Amos from the Great Express added some rhythm guitar & backing vocals while Tim Goode from the Dream Factory also joined in vocally. It was quite a big session & cost me a fortune but I was proud of the end result at the time & it inspired me to continue writing & recording. The next tune I wrote & recorded was called ‘Enchanted’ on which I played most of the instruments & Martin sang the vocals & this was followed by a new version of an old Dream Factory track called ‘Feel Your Touch’ which had more of a northern soul / R&B feel with big horns.

These three demos were really the start of the Space Seeds. At the time I was hanging out a lot with Gavin (Skinner) who was drumming with Primal Scream at the time & also Rob Cross who had been in a Tamworth band called the Ferocious Apaches. I’d really loved them & had even paid for them to record a demo a few months earlier at the Expresso Bongo. They were influenced by the Modern Lovers, Velvet Underground, Jesus & The Mary Chain etc & Rob was the dirtiest-sounding of their guitarists, was a fellow traveller on the psychedelic path & was one of the coolest, hippest & funniest people I’d met!

The two of us made the first official Space Seeds recording, which was a trippy instrumental of Pink Floyd’s 1967 album track ‘Chapter 24,’ before we recruited anyone else. I think we thought we could use it as a gig intro tape or something. Then I bumped into Mark Brindley – known locally as DeHavilland – outside Tamworth Arts Centre. He had left his band World Intelligence Network & we got talking & I asked him to join my new group. There were then two singers in the Space Seeds & though Mark was totally different to Martin their voices blended beautifully. At first we didn’t have a drummer & Gavin programmed some drum machine stuff to see us through until we eventually advertised & recruited Stu Pickett, who was one of Tamworth’s best known and most talented drummers. I’ve no idea why he had the stage name of ‘Stu Blain.’ Also, I had managed to come across two brilliant trumpet players, Mark Allison (from Tamowrth) & Martin Cooper (from Solihull) and they were immediately roped in. They had a more classical & big band background & I felt I learned a lot from them musically.

There was a sax player from Tamworth called Pete Clark who initially joined to help complete the horn section & it was with this line up of people that then recorded the ‘Switchblade Love’ / ‘Saturn In Her Eyes’ demo at the Expresso Bongo supplemented by Paul Speare on baritone sax & former Dream Factory players Paul Stansfield (trombone) & Andy Codling on alto sax. A few months after the demo we came across keyboard player Alan Hodgetts after another advert in the local paper.

To be honest the band’s line up was a real hotch potch of people who should never have got together!!! We all came from different backgrounds with, at times, conflicting musical tastes which meant that this band was always ever going to be a short trip but it was part of my on-going process of distillation & I’ve always thought a little conflict can be a good thing!

I don’t think I was aware of it at the time but since I deliberately destroyed the Dream Factory I was bringing together different people & seeing how varying combinations worked chemically. Often it was too ambitious, too clever for its own good & ended in tears & if I am honest this experimentation with line ups has continued all the way through until recent times with my current group DC Fontana. A bit like Pete Townshend being the Seeker, I was also continually searching though my hunt was for that elusive chemical reaction to produce great music that would last the passage of time. With the Space Seeds there was way too much diversification of backgrounds for it to ever work properly!

++ I had this theory that the name came from Star Trek, but most probably it didn’t, so care to shed some light about the origin of the name?

You were right! The name came from ‘Star Trek.’

We weren’t Trekkies at all, you understand, but Rob & I were having fairly wild psilocybin-dominated parties at the time & each week we’d want to experience watching interesting stuff on the TV to see what we could find under the surface. Usually it was ‘Barbarella’ or ‘Yellow Submarine’ but on this occasion we happened to be watching ‘Star Trek’ while tripping & decided on the band name there & then.

++ Also what would you say was the main difference, sound-wise, or maybe even the aesthetics, between this band and Great Express?

The differences were quite striking really – whereas the Great Express had a much more “rock & roll” edge & was built around powerful &, at times, heavy guitars, the Space Seeds was to be a vehicle for my lighter songs really. Obviously, having been in a soul/mod influenced band like the Dream Factory two or three years previous, working with a horn section wasn’t new to me & I re-introduced horns to my music with the Space Seeds. But whereas one or two tunes had a soul influence, by & large the music was still very psychedelic influenced with strong poppy vocal melodies & we only occasionally vamped the guitars up heavy.

++ I see there are different influences on this band as well, what were you listening at the time, maybe not that much C86 stuff?

I’ve always loved rare 60s music whether it be psychedelia, garage, soul, R&B, jazz, folk-rock, Latin soul, acid rock, exotica or whatever & that is always apparent in my songs; it’s the common thread that binds all my groups together. But my musical palette has always been very wide & incorporated a million & one different influences. In 1988 I was still very much listening to and following the whole so-called ‘indie-music’ underground & overground.

++ I read on the Tamworth bands page that you played a total of 8 gigs. Which were your favourite and why?

The Space Seeds was only a short-lived affair & really provided the bridge between the Great Express & what followed which was the unfortunately-named Bash Out The Odd. As a result there were only a few low-key local gigs & I don’t have that much of a recollection about them if honest.

++ And with Space Seeds there wasn’t also a chance to have a proper release? No label interest?

Like the Great Express I didn’t spend any time trying to court any label interest, partly as I knew full well the band was a million miles away from being ready.

++ I really enjoy the track “Switchblade Love”, it’s fantastic! Care to tell me the story behind it?

Thanks man! It’s a song that is special & personal to me and is very much a “real life” tale of fucked up love – so much so that I re-wrote it for the first DC Fontana album. It’s the tale of how love can go sour & take a violent turn. The story behind it surrounds the disintegration of my first marriage – I was married in October 1986 & yet it was over by June 1987…a real whirlwind of emotion. I guess there’s no need to get too deep into the personal reasons behind it all but it was truly off its head & ended with me hospitalized after being run over & attacked with a knife.

So the song was this fucked up cry for help & a scream of incredulity at how something so precious & pure as love could turn so dark, twisted & then end up in blood-letting. While writing the song I was examining my own role in the end of the marriage & lyrically I was trying to make sense of it all, trying to find reasons to blame myself, trying to defend the person who had phsyically injured me & a load more besides. I think great stressful moments in your life can help you produce good art & ‘Switchblade Love’ was an unusually fast song for me to write….normally it can take me weeks or even months to finish a tune but this was done & dusted in less than 10 minutes: it all came out in this huge weeping catharsis of mourning for a dead love & the deeply felt heartache & loneliness.

I never really explained the pain behind the song when I asked Mark & Martin to sing it in the studio, partly because it hurt too much to continually re-open the wounds & partly because I consciously wanted to maintain the song’s duality. And the paradox is that lyrically it’s very dark & violent while musically & melodically it’s light and poppy, almost up-lifting: this was totally deliberate. I had used all these cute major 7th chords in the track (taking inspiration from Arthur Lee’s Love group of the ’60s) & encouraged the two singers to soar and uplift. Paul Speare, who was producing the session, felt that Mark & Martin had a lovely Walker Brothers vibe to their harmonised vocals & it really worked in a poppy way so I didn’t explain too much the trauma behind the tune as I didn’t want to make the music itself dark.

++ From what I gather you only recorded 7 songs. Where did you record them? And what memories do you have from those sessions?

All songs were recorded at the Expresso Bongo recording studios in Tamworth with former Dexy’s Midnight Runners sax player Paul Speare producing the sessions. The ‘Chapter 24’ session was recorded at night & was wonderfully freaked out. I remember Paul’s wife playing keyboards with us in that session. The ‘Switchblade Love’ & ‘Saturn In Her Eyes’ session was the quintessential Space Seeds session & i fondly remember both tracks being recorded in a great spirit.

++ And which of them is your favourite one?

Defiitely ‘Switchblade Love’ & ‘Saturn In Her Eyes’ from the official Space Seeds period – both were tunes I really enjoyed recording & playing live. Otherwise ‘Autumn Girl’ was highly memorable.

++ Now looking back, how do you feel your songs have aged? You’ve recovered some for your new project, right?

Not sure if the recordings have aged very well if honest though you can, I believe, hear the vibe in ‘Switchblade’ & there is some magic in evidence there. Likewise I can still hear the original ‘Saturn In Her Eyes’ from that session – the 60s rave up outro always makes me howl with laughter with Mark doing his psychotic vocal howls.
I re-wrote both ‘Switchblade Love’ & ‘Saturn In Her Eyes’ for the debut DC Fontana album which we recorded at Parr Street Studios in Liverpool at the request of Will Sergeant, Echo & The Bunnymen’s guitarist. With ‘Switchblade Love’ we added a cute Laura Nyro type electric piano vibe to the tune and we had the honour to record with members of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra from Liverpool (going under the pseudonym of the Liverpool Session Orchestra) who provide the lovely real strings.

On ‘Saturn In Her Eyes’ I hung out with a number of musicians from the Indian sub-continent to get a proper handle on my desire to give the track a more genuine Indian feel. This was also a true honour & it felt special breaking down the barriers of racial & geographical background. Surinder Sandhu, one of the world’s leading sarangi vurituoso players, contributed some very haunting parts to the song & Iqbal Mohammed Khan added some Urdu poetry & harmonium. Carl Peberdy played real sitar (as opposed to the cheap sampled sitar on the Space Seeds’ original version) & the circle was completed when Gavin (Skinner) played tabla & African udu drums on the track. Gav had programmed the drum machine parts for the Space Seeds’ recording of ‘Saturn In Her Eyes’ so it was a conscious circle-closing moment for me.

++ Sadly, the band lasted so little. Why and when did you split up?

The band actually metamorphosed into Bash Out The Odd when Martin Kelly quit the group around the end of 1988. We replaced him with the former Great Express singer Julian Amos& simply re-named the band there and then.

++ Then you formed Bash Out the Odd and I guess that’s another interview so we can cover that period. But going back to our previous interview you were telling me that Indian food is your favourite. Do you have a favourite indian dish?

No particular favourite dish: food is a little like music with me….I can change my top ten favourite tunes every day depending on my mood & food is the same….
Indian food can be quite an experience though I must admit & I am a committed & passionate vegetarian.

++ And what about beer? Are you into ales? I still can’t enjoy them, even if I try. I need my beer chilled!

Never been a big beer drinker I’m afraid, I don’t mind the occasional one & prefer them to be chilled too! Have always preferred the Bavarian stuff if I had to choose but I don’t drink much as I am always driving….

++ One last question, I’m curious, because of the name Space Seeds, if you are into sci-fi and stuff? Are you?

Probably no more than anyone else but when I was a kid I was crazily into the TV show “U.F.O.” – loved Nick Drake’s sister in her short shiny skirts & metallic purple bob & all those “space age” mod fashions, sci-fi grooviness.
Also, we did use on stage with DC Fontana a couple of sci-fi B movie type characters called the TV Heads at a gig in London which was a nice moment of surrealism. But I’ve never been “nerdy” about sci-fi. I do adore the freedom of some of the more out there TV shows from the late 60s like Patrick McGoohan’s “The Prisoner.”

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Listen
Space Seeds – Switchblade Love

Thanks so much to Johnny Wood for the interview! East Village were one of the finest guitar pop bands from the late 80s, early 90s. Their legacy lives on on the classic records “Drop Out” and “Hot Rod Hotel” as well as in classic songs like Vibrato, Strawberry Window or Circles. If you haven’t heard them yet, well, you better do it soon!  Johnny lives in China these days and in his spare time he paints, check out the inspiring stuff he is doing here. And now sit back, read and enjoy.

++ Hi Johnny! Thanks so much for being up for the interview. I hear nowadays you live in China? What are you doing there? Have you already learned Chinese?

I got tired of living in England, wanted something new. I always liked being on the move, so came out this way two years ago. It’s interesting. I do a spot of English teaching to keep food on the table!

++ I’ve visited your artwork site and I must say you are really good Johnny! What inspired you to paint? And who are your favourite painters ever?

Thanks .. art was my subject at school. Suddenly developed a talent for drawing at 14. Don’t know how or why. Painting was just a natural progression. And we study it at school. So it became just a thing that I do, like playing the guitar. A part of myself.
I guess Peter Blake was my first painter hero, the British POP artist. Then through him I got into Robyn Denny, a Situation artist. Edward Hopper, Van Gogh, and my all time rave Alberto Burri. There are so many … Tracey Emin I think has done some good things.

++ So I know that East Village evolved from Episode Four, who I’d love to do a feature about them in the near future, but how did this change between bands came about? Why not continue as Episode Four?

A lot of bands come to a point in their development where they feel the need to present themselves differently. We’d all moved away from our home town which E4 was synonymous with. We had gelled as a band and needed a name that represented where we were, who we were …

++ By the way, how did you knew the Kelly brothers?

I had a mate who played guitar in a band which the Kellys were in. I went along to see my mate and got to know them like that. I’d go to a lot of the gigs and started hanging out with them at other times. We liked a lot of the same music and became friends.

++ Where does the name East Village comes from?

I think Paul hit on the name. So his reason may differ but for me it comes from the place in New York where all the poets, artists, musicians etc lived and hung out. That’s what we were as a band, a ‘place’ for poets, artists and musicians. We were a very creative lot …

++ As a guitarist, who would you say were your influences? What guitar did you play during the East Village years? And what is your favourite guitar ever?

So many influences; early on the Beatles etc. then Roddy Frame from Aztec Camera. Donovan, Blind Willie McTell, Tony Joe White, Byrds – a mix really.
I played an Epiphone Casino back then, these days a cheap Chinese acoustic. I love the sound of a Gibson J200, Paul’s Rickenbacker on EV records.

++ You had already worked with Jeff Barrett with Episode Four when he was running Head, now when he was doing the Sub Aqua label you also worked with him. How important was him for your music career and what did he bring on the table?

He had so much enthusiasm and energy. He got things done. He helped us into a scene in London and through him we got our records made.

++ You gigged quite a bit, didn’t you? There were tours with House of Love and McCarthy for example. How do you remember these tours and which was your favourite gig overall that you played?

They are remembered with affection! Actually it was very exciting to go on tour and a lot of fun, despite the frustrations and long hours hanging around.
We did a lot of gigs that were memorable. Personally I have two favorites from that time; One was with the House of Love tour, where the crowd loved us more than them. Their sound man had liked us and sorted our mix out. We went down better than they did. The crowd were shouting for us and it inspired us to play our socks off and put on a bit of a show. A great time and Chadwick never spoke to us after that!
The other was in London at the Camden Falcon. It was a hot, sweaty night and the place was full. We’d started getting a good reputation and there was a bit of an expectation. London crowds could be difficult – too cool for school kind of attitude – so we decided to not fuck about. We went on, turned the amps up and blasted our way through our set which we’d decided would only be 6 songs. We played really well, no breaks, no chit chat. Knocked the crowd out and left the stage. It felt like a victory.

++ And what about anecdotes playing alongside The House of Love who at the moment were causing quite a splash in the indie music scene?

Not much to say really. we’d meet up with them en route to gigs, have a cup of tea and chat. It was pleasant. Guy Chadwick seemed a bit distant but the others were always friendly. They’d give us beer from their rider, ha ha. But the guitarist Terry became a sort of mate on that tour – he would always encourage us, and hung out with me a few times. He borrowed my guitar for one show. Wow!

++ The story says that Bob Stanley financed your album “Drop Out”. What do you remember of these recordings?

Yeah, he came to our rescue. Strange times. The music scene had changed a lot very quickly. We were kind of out on a limb. But we had some good songs that we had to get on tape. We scraped some money together somehow and booked a studio with some empty promises … thats when Bob stepped in. He’d heard some of the results.
Overall the sessions were good. We wrote Silver Train in the studio and had fun with that. My best memory of that was going back to Martin’s place in west London after a late session and listening to what we’d just recorded as the sun rose. We’d smoked somthing to help us relax and suddenly there appeared hundreds of hot air balloons in the dawn sky, hanging there over the skyline. It was very beautiful actually.

++ I would assume because of this, that Bob Stanley was an important figure for East Village. I’m wondering how did you all knew him? He was a big fan of your music obviously 🙂

I think we met him through his fanzine … he asked to interview us. Then we went to the pub with him or something and realized he was a good guy and he liked us.

++ You made many great songs, indiepop classics, but I want to pick one so you tell me the story behind it. Care to tell me what is “Circles” about?

I’d love to but I don’t know, ha ha! Martin wrote that one … but I connected with it because I could sense the feeling of wanting to hold onto someone when you can feel them slipping away. Its always in the morning? ha ha, I have no idea, maybe a case of too much information!!

++ And what about your favourite East Village song, which one would it be?

Actually I like a lot of them. What Kind of Friend Is This? has a good feel, I like Vibrato for personal reasons, Strawberry Window is a nice pop song, Kathleen …

++ So you split up on stage at the New Cross venue. Was this planned? Why did you split? And what did you all do after?

Well, I went to the pub for 5 years, ha ha … Martin became more involved with Heavenly, so did Spence. Paul formed Birdie and is now a film maker. I did a degree in Fine Art after I sobered up …
It wasn’t planned … times had been difficult. You know we were getting older, had relationships, no money etc. Where was the band going? We had this sell out gig, went on stage and someone’s guitars had gone out of tune. Just one of those things but it was a breaking point – literally. It just seemed to sum up our luck at that time. We all realised it in front of all those people … so we looked at each other and knew. Ok fuck it, here’s a good a place as any to split, ha ha.

++ Talking about venues, which were your favourite venues in London back then? And was there any sort of scene/community then between the guitar pop bands? Which bands from the time did you enjoy going to their gigs?

Camden Falcon was always good to us .. the Phil Kaufman Club. Yeah we got friends with some of the bands. Wishing Stones were mates. Later the Rockingbirds.

++ Some years later Summershine Records put together the “Hot Rod Hotel” compilation. How did this came about? How did you have a connection with the Australian label?

That was through Martin and Heavenly. I didn’t have anything to do with it other than say ok.

++ And then in the past decade both the album and this compilation were released again, in deluxe editions, in Japan thanks to Excellent Records. Also they released a 7″ with unreleased tracks. All of these, are already sold out of course. How do you feel about your music being sought after by collectors up to this day? And if there’s any more plans to release your songs again?

Well it feels great. We were a good band, very creative and had a truth about us. People that like us really like us. And that’s a hell of a lot better than looking back with embarrassment.
I don’t think there’s any plans to release any EV. Maybe do something of my own …

++ Because of this ongoing interest in East Village, I wonder how do you think your songs have aged?

Pretty well I think, especially the Drop Out ones. And that’s because we helped, or were a link in the chain that inspires the guitar bands today.

++ Looking back in time, what were your highlights of being in East Village? Any regrets at all?

Yeah some regrets for sure. But mostly glad I was in it. The highlights; recording sessions, the tours, just the fact we got it together.

++ A couple of more questions. Is there any interesting guitar pop in China?

Difficult one that … you hear some nice guitar on some tracks. I haven’t heard anything that really grabs me but you have to realise the culture here.
Sometimes bands play out on the street and they can have something about them but the equipment is crap. Maybe in the future something will happen, when the country opens a bit more.

++ And what is your favourite Chinese food? Is it much different to the one you find in every corner of every major city of the world?

Yes a lot different apart from fried rice. It’s very spicy … Hunan food. Beijing Duck is always a good option.

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Listen
East Village – Circles

To my new job I walk around 8 blocks everyday. It’s quite close. Long gone are the days of taking the bus. Still, I still dream of taking the subway to work. There’s something about taking trains that I love. I don’t know if it’s the galloping sound, the shaky wagons, watching people coming in and out, looking around if there’s a cute girl to make eye contact, observing people, their clothes, their newspapers, their books. I’m always curious at what people are reading. Watching their hands, their shoes. I always watch also if people are balding, I will one day I’m sure, I am a bit obsessed with that. Anyhow, I don’t get to be in a subway that often. Maybe once or twice a year when I’m in New York, and then I usually take it lots of time very late at night, after a gig or going out, when it goes almost empty or with people so drunk that they fall asleep and miss their stop. And the other times I’m lucky enough to take my favourite mean of transport is when I’m in London. I must say that I’ve taken the subway also in Glasgow (which is a joke), in Berlin, Hamburg, Chicago and Stockholm. But none can compare to the network of rails under the ground of Londinium.

These days I’m very familiar with the London Underground even though I’ve never lived there. I don’t get lost, I don’t miss my stops, and I’ve even given directions to people. There have been times I’ve had to take the Overground, from Walthamstow or Brockley, but most of the time I’ve been taking the Jubilee Line, the Northern Line, the Central Line, the Victoria Line, and more. My memory is still fresh, it was just 11 days since I took the underground for the last time, taking the Piccadilly Line all the way to Heathrow terminal 4. It was the last day of a great trip around the UK, though I left very early that day from my friend’s Jennifer house, deep south in Lewisham, so I won’t count this day as a full day. But the rest of days, my memories of going up and down the escalators, with friends, by myself, listening to the handful of songs I’ve managed to put on the iPhone years ago, and saying goodbye to friends just as the paths fork towards different line platforms, are still very fresh in me.

Before continuing, let me have a little break here to see what I’ve been listening on CD this week:
1. Mo-Dettes – The Story So Far (Cherry Red)
2. Seapony – Go With Me (Hardly Art)
3. Brian – Bring Trouble (Setanta)

Just 3 CDs! I know, been quite slow, but I’ll start catching up soon!

“You are shaking my world, my subway girl”

The needle dances over this fantastic slab of black vinyl. I get a bit sentimental with the great lyrics of this song. I wonder if I have ever had any subway girl, or any girl that I could associate to my underground travels. I remember the one who I bought my first ‘remsa’ in Stockholm and rode with me the tunnelbana from Gullmarsplan to Hammarby, the same girl who later  would take me around in my first visit to London and not letting me get lost in that tangled network of little dots and lines of different colours that is the underground system. I remember clearly her red coat and silly hat, and her white tennis. The funny day when her and another friend invited the “air band” to the train’s crowd surprise, when they played the air guitar and the air bass. And then the trumpets come in, and the needle is reaching the end of the record. I play it again, it’s such a wonderful song. It’s Hellvyvelln’s “Subway”. And I know absolutely nothing about them.

As I recall my trips on different subway systems, with different friends, I remember the first time I took it. In New York City, in 2007, with my friend José. We took it from Penn Station to somewhere in Harlem that I can’t remember. We had met some friends and we needed to burn some time while we waited for the guy that was going to give us the key to the apartment we were staying in Brooklyn during the weekend. We were going to NYC Popfest that weekend. I remember we went to the apartment of Caitlin’s friend. If I remember correctly he played in the Alsace Lorraine band and was good friend’s with Isol, that Argentine muse that sang in Entre Ríos. He was an undertaker. At the time it resulted me shocking that an undertaker may like indiepop. Anyhow, my friend José, as a true Peruvian, asked if he could shower at his place. Nice.

Later that day we picked up some 75 cents carnitas from a Mexican place just next to the station, and rode the train, dripping salsa all over the train floor. Good times. I could go and on with stories about the subway that make my heart jump, but let’s go to the weekly obscure band.

I was introduced to Hellvyvelln by the great Peter Hahndorf when I was in Bremen with Nana, I remember he handed us a CD-R copy of a project he was working at the time called The Sound of Glen Waverly, a two CD compilation of Australian bands from the late 80s, early 90s. Included on the first CD was this fantastic track, Subway, by Hellvyveln. Some months after, I was able to track down this single on eBay. I think I paid very cheap for it, I think it was too obscure for even the indiepop collectors. It might be the case, if you google about this band, there is absolutely nothing aside from the obvious Twee.net entry (Peter’s page!).

The B side is “Elvis”, which is also a very nice track. But I’m obsessed with the A side, with “Subway”. It reminds me to many great bands and songs from the C86 era, from The Hepburns to The Chalk Giants or A Riot or Colour and more.  The record was released on Polyester Records, that was based in Fitzroy, Victoria, in Australia, and the catalog was LUV 13. This same label also released some stuff by Ripe and the great Little Murders. The record was recorded in August 1989 in Silkwood Studios, in Melbourne and released later that same year. It was produced by the band and Dane Simpson. Simpson also engineered it.

Hellvyveln were Jeremy, Nick and Andrew. No last names provided. The arrangements on “Elvis” were courtesy of Ben Grant whereas the trumpets on “Subway” were thanks to Stephen Grant. Where they brothers? Also Michael Kennedy helped on trumpets on this track. The horn arrangements on it came by the way of Dave Hannon.

Then the only other piece of info on the 7″ back cover are the thank you notes, but I can’t really recognize any of the people here. The band’s address shows that they lived in Brighton, Australia. There’s a Brighton every where, isn’t it? I was at the UK one, which I assume is the original, not so long ago either. Looked a bit like Miami, but with brown sand, and hills.

And that’s all there is about this fantastic, and elusive band. If you know anything else about them, what does the name Hellvyvelln means, who is the girl they sing about on “Subway”, if they had more releases, or even more songs, please get in touch! It would shake my world to know a bit more about these guys that penned such a beautiful song.

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Listen
Hellvyvelln – Subway

Thanks so much to Jason Brown for the fantastic interview! Back in April 2010 I wrote about this fantastic band from Manchester and happily some days ago Jason got in touch with me to clarify and answer any questions I may had! Great to learn that there are many unreleased songs by this band, and a 12″ that I don’t have! Enjoy!

++ Hi Jason! How are you doing? Whereabouts in the world are you? Are you still making music?

HI there. I’m doing well thanks. I’m still living in Manchester keeping abreast of the latest on the recent surge of civil disturbance! I haven’t made any music in the past few years since the birth of my first child in 2007 – been busy doing lots of dad stuff. Up till then I played and co-wrote a couple of albums with Tom Hingley (ex Inspiral Carpets) and Steve and Paul Hanley (The Fall).

++ How was the recruiting process for This Gigantic World? Were you all from the same town? How did you know each other?

I moved to Manchester from Derry (Ireland) in September 1988 to study for a degree but really using the opportunity to get to England and get a band together. In the decades before the internet the recruitment process was old school. I trawled around music shops and alternative hangouts answering adverts for guitarists. Simon had an ad up looking for a band – I remember it well, it sounded promising so I rang him and we met up. We got on well and decided to go for it. From what I remember we put ads out for a rhythm section and Matt (bass) tuned up fairly soon – he slotted in immediately so the three of us started writing while looking for a drummer. We went through a few flakey drummers before we got Trev who had been in a band with Matt in their home town of Grimsby. Then TGW was born and we spent 9 months locked in a cellar wiring a set.

++ So where does the name of the band come from?

I seem to remember Simon came up with it. Something to do with having different perspectives. A bit like Gulliver’s travels I suppose where the little people live in this gigantic world – something like that… I think we were under the impression it sounded good so we went along with it. I was also a big fan of That
Petrol Emotion so I guess unconsciously a triple barrel name felt good.

++ “Raft” is such a fantastic song, care to tell me the story behind it?

Yeah it is a great pop tune – I was quite pleased when I heard it recently for the first time again in years! The guitar riff came from a sound check and we carved it out in the rehearsal room. We spent a lot of time carving arrangements as a band. Simon wrote the lyrics which I think speak for themselves.

++ And what about “Hoover Bag”?

A bit of a funky groove really with a classic Madchester wah wah. It was a Matt riff I seem to remember – he was the master of melodic bass playing. (The lyrics were written on the back of a hoover bag, hence the name…)

++ I was wondering, why the release came out in a 12″ if it was only 2 songs? You could have added more! Or maybe made it a 7″?

I can’t for the life of me remember why that was decided. I guess money was a factor.

++ How was it working with Cieran from That Petrol Emotion? Any anecdotes you could share?

Well I enjoyed it as I was a big fan of the Petrols. I knew Ciaran from my Derry days so we had a bit of history before that. He tweaked the song a bit and brought an engneer with him to get the best result we could. I’m sworn to secrecy with the anecdotes…

++ Is the 12″ your only release? Were there maybe some compilation appearances?

TGW released two 12”s – Raft furrowed by Swagger (1992 I think). There was a third (everyday Living) but that never made it to vinyl after the recording.

++ Why didn’t you get to do more releases?

Good question! We put a lot of energy trying to get a deal with a major. We were close to success with Slash records initially and when this fell through we spent quite a while thrashing out a deal with Radioactive Records (a subsidiary of MCA) until the A & R woman left the label to write a biography on the recently demised Kurt Cobain. Of course when you’re A&R contact leaves you’re kind of screwed. Her replacement swiftly moved on and signed Black Grape instead (doh!). In hindsight really it would have been sensible to keep banging out indie 12”s but again getting finance or small labels to support the release was always a challenge.

++ Do you have lots of unreleased stuff lying around maybe?

Yeah-heaps. We spent a lot of time writing and recording. Simon got in touch a couple of years ago to get some online presence and collate our demoes before they rot in the loft! There’s probably a couple of albums worth of stuff of varying quality. There’s a couple of videos on YouTube (Peach and Jah Candy) – a guy in Japan saw the vids recently which rompted him to buy the two
12’s – he got in touch saying how much he likes
them (which is nice…)

++ Who were the “World In Action” label?

I think that was just an indie that we set up but we got distribution through Action records.

++ What about gigs? Did you gig a lot as This Gigantic World? Any particular gigs you remember?

Yeah we did loads of gigs around Britain and Ireland. We had a surge of interest in Sheffield due to playing a couple of university gigs and having our first demo bootlegged – they were good times.
I remember supporting the Divine Comedy in Belfast when they were three young blokes with some good songs and were in their infancy. I remember Trevor spotted Neil Hannon’s lyrics even then…he always had an ear for these things (not bad for a drummer 🙂

++ What other bands from that period would you recommend?

The Sandmen were fantastic. Check out the Home/ Dustdevil and Tighten Up. A real mix of dub and indie – way ahead of it’s time – great rhythm
section. Of course all the Manchester favourites – Stone Roses, Mondays, Inspirals, The Fall, The Smiths, James et al

++ When and why did you call it a day? Are you all still in touch?

I suppose we just got tired. We gave it 100% for 6 years and packed it in some time in 1994/95 I think. Trevor had already jumped ship a year earlier and we were playing with another drummer. By that stage Oasis and Britpop were taking off and I think we felt we’d missed the boat (or the Raft for that matter).
I still see Trev quite a bit and Matt when he’s in Manchester. Simon we see occasionally.

++ Looking back in time, what would you say were the highlights of This Gigantic World?

The whole experience really. I’ve released and recorded a range of records since but it was TGW that was the youthful “us against the world” band. It was great to spend so much time writing, recording and playing music with no boundaries and highly charged ambition. We did some great gigs and drank copious amount of free beer…

++ Now the most important questions. Favourite beer? Favourite English food?

My recent favourite is Cumbrian Ale. And curry of course 🙂

++ Thanks again, anything else you’d like to add?

Here are some other bits I’ve dug out which may be of use. (Landscape.doc) (Portrait.doc) [both of these are Word files and includes photos and magazine/newspaper cut-outs of the band)

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Listen
This Gigantic World – Raft

Thanks so much to Mark Mortimer for the great and lengthy interview. On November 2010 I wrote about this great Tamworth band on the blog and recently got in touch with the man behind it. The songs by Great Express are lost gems that deserve to be listened now. Great guitar pop from the golden years of indiepop. Sadly they were never properly released. For sure they should be showcased in a future volume of The Sound of Leamington Spa! Enjoy!

++ Hi Mark! Thanks so much! I know you’ve been in many great guitar pop bands, but I’d like to start our interviews with Great Express! My first question is, how was Tamworth back then in 1986? Has it changed a lot? Was it a good place to play music?

I got to hand out a mini history lesson for any of this to make sense so bear with me!

Tamworth is middle England’s freak-out zone or at least it was back in the early and mid 80s…. For those who have never heard of the place it’s a fairly small & inconsequential town just 14 miles north of the country’s second city, Birmingham and though in mediaeval times it was the capital of the old Kingdom of Mercia, little has ever happened of consequence for many centuries.

It was the town that manufactured cheap plastic three-wheeled cars called Reliant which were made famous by the 80s TV comedy ‘Only Fools & Horses’ (my dad spray-painted them for a living) and the only musical person to come from the town of any note was Julian Cope of the Teardrop Explodes.

Tamworth was bitten hard in the ass by punk in the late mid and late 70s and the venom went deep I am delighted to say which really did kick start a tiny “garage band” scene in the town….

I was very very fortunate to be part of a great scene at my school where I was surrounded by cool, creative people all desperate to be in a band and make a statement. We had a communual diary we secretly wrote in during lessons at school without the teachers knowing and called it the ‘Memorable Book.’

There was Donald (Skinner), Mas (Matthew Lees), Bam (Andrew Baines), Clem (Paul Clements), Sedge (Stephen Edge), Poge (Ian Harding), Nana (Chris Underwood), Derek (Goodwin), Sam (Holiday) & myself and it was a VERY cool scene.

Whereas punk & new wave sounds turned us on, we were also into some 60s stuff like the Who and Syd Barrett plus we liked the burgeoning mod revival scene & Two Tone but it was bands like Echo & The Bunnymen, the Teardrop Explodes & Joy Division who fuelled our dreams.

There seemed to be a new band formed every lunch hour at school and they had names like (Fetch The) Comfy Jigsaw, Slightly Green, The Travelling Dog, Thirty Frames A Second, the Classified Ads etc….none of us could really play & we were more into the idea of being in a band than actually having any musical ability that warrnted it!

There was intense rivalry between the bands and you counted your closest mates as being the ones you were allied to in your own particular group at any particular time – it was quite brilliant.

There was one exception to the “we can’t play very well” rule: Donald Ross Skinner who we called simply Donny in those days. He could not only play guitar properly but he could tune the strings, knew chords and his dad, having been a jazz musician of note, had obviously handed down some great musical DNA to him.

Ironically, Donald used to play drums mostly at school even though he was already the best guitarist in the town aged 15…

Donald did briefly play guitar with my first proper band The Dream Factory who were a sort of psychedelic soul group and during the summer of 1982 I first became friendly with Julian Cope who had just moved back to Tamworth to escape the implosion of the Teardrop Explodes.

I was a teenage trainee journalist just out of school but being a huge fan of the Teardrops, I promised myself I’d blag my way into meeting him by asking for an interview.

I didn’t realise that Julian was in a very emotionally weird place at that time and was not far away from a nervous breakdown because his first marriage had also gone kaput and he was seeking solace in Tamworth not the attentions of hite teenage admirers.

Through sheer persistence and illegal trespass in his garden, I eventually got Julian to answer the door.

He was initially freaked out and refused an interview but offered me a cup of tea and a chat which I readily accepted.

We sat there listening to lots of rare 60s psychedelia and garage stuff and everything seemed to click between us….within a few weeks I had played him my first Dream Factory recording. COincidentally we had recorded at Steve Adams’ home studio on the outskirts of Tamworth Julian had just made some far out recordings including “Hey High Class Butcher” & “Wreck My Car” which wound up on the B side of his first solo single, “Sunshine Playroom” a little later.

Anyway, it seemed we had lots in common; Julian was attracted to my enormous appetite to hear new music and to expand my view on 60s music and he was also totally into Donald’s guitar playing with the Dream Factory.

That eventually led to Donald being drafted into Julian’s self-styled “two car garage band” and I carried on with Dream Factory without him.

We built up an enormous following across the UK and had a few singles, one of which dented the charts, but then dissolved in 1986 as I was determined to make the band more lysergic whereas our singer wanted the group to softer and jazzier.

In the final six months of the Dream Factory I had already formed The Great Express as an outlet for my new direction and I guess it was influenced a lot by the C86 generation of bands and also I was really getting into the Stooges, MC5, Blue Cheer etc.

At this time in Tamworth most people were in a band and most of them were shocking but there were some very talented people about and the town did manage to earn itself a reputation which spread far and wide for being a happening place.

Musically, it was very diverse from heavy rock bands including Wolfsbane who were about to become quite big, through to quite twee pop groups, punk bands, synth pop stuff and so on. There was a developing “indie” scene and I was very active on it really.

In those days there were a clutch of small venues and most gigs in the town were well supported although most of the audience were quite snobbish as most people were in bands and everyone was judging what they saw against their own groups which I always found amusing!

But there was a certain charm to it, there was great energy and a real buzz even if most of the bands were rubbish.

Has Tamworth changed a lot since those halcyon days? Most definitely!

There are no venues, very few bands and the whole strident band culture has dissolved, a lof of the town’s youth have suffered X Box apathy or dance club-itis these days, and it’s very sad…

++ Tell me about Great Express. How did you all know each other? And what sparked you all to start this band? I heard it was a vision of yours?

The Great Express was a personal vision, a reaction against the Dream Factory falling at the final hurdle.

The Factory had been on the cusp of “making it” & we had a national fan base, mostly of mods and scooterists but I had become disillusioned with the violence that had tainted that scene; having watched some skinheads attack reggae star Desmond Dekker on stage at a scooter rally I was sick of it all and musically I was really aching to branch away from the sound of the DF.

We had been given a tag of being a new generation mod revival band which wasn’t my initial blueprint at all and I was both depressed that we had got so close to success and also that musically I had much wider horizons than that “mod” tag was allowing me to get away with.

We had just been beaten to a major record deal by the then unknown Stone Roses and I really wanted to toughen the band’s sound up & was already writing songs with a spikier feel which really pissed off the Factory singer, Tim Goode who I had been best friends with since the age of 5.

I was listening a lot to Pere Ubu, the Modern Lovers and Television and going to see the Mighty Lemon Drops play whereas Tim was listening to Sade and the Style Council!!

I knew it was going to end in tears but I hadn’t quite got the courage to fully quit so I decided to start the Great Express as a side project.

Also, Donald’s younger brother Gavin had filled a “friends’ vacancy” for me since Donald had gone off globe-trotting with Julian on tour and Gav was this brilliant, off-his-head guy who was SO funny! Just great!

I hung out a lot with Gavin, Barry Douce (who was playing keyboards with the Mighty Lemon Drops) and Rob Cross who later played guitar with Mr. Ray’s Wig World and it was fairly wild, trippy and rock & roll!

Anyway, Gav followed in the Skinner family tradition and was already a drummer of real distinction. He was soon playing with Primal Scream & so my personal circle was moving far away from that of the Dream Factory & I was happy to be saying adios to their soul & mod vibe while still retaining a huge love of rare 60s music.

The first incarnation of Great Express was myself and school friend Brian Lacey and we came across a girl keyboard player called Chantal Weston, one of those hanging out at gigs on the Tamworth scene and she was cool. It didn’t work out with Brian and so I advertised in the local newspaper for a new guitar-playing lead singer.

Then I decided I had to climb on the Express full time so I closed the Factory and at our last gig Tim punched me in the face and made my nose bleed while were on stage but I just hugged and kissed him as I felt his frustration and I knew I had ruined his dreams.

So having freed myself of the Dream Factory yoke I wanted to make the Great Express an out of control train that could speed along mytholgical tracks to indie-pop notoriety and it was this appropriate imagery of speed and excess that drove me on.

The first track I wrote for the band was called “Total Excess At 200 Yards” which was a screaming mixture of dirty overdriven guitars, pounding tribal drums, cranked-up reverse sitars and ghost-like screams by yours truly, recorded while I was totally off my face. The second track was called “Graveyard Faces” and the third was “Wankerside”, a sneering reference to the Tamworth shopping centre Ankerside.

It’s fair to say that soul and mod music was a million miles away now! But I still needed new cohorts and fast so I was delighted to audition several people at my house early in 1986.

Two well known personalities from the Tamworth scene showed up among those interested: Julian Amos was someone I knew from a band called Orange Blossom Special and he was a good rhythm guitarist with a love of Postcard type pop which was great in my book.

I auditioned him first and told him he was in without even seeing the rest of them.

Half an hour later I auditioned Ted Wilson, a long-haired guitarist whose background was from the town’s heavy rock scene and yet it turned out he was a huge Julian Cope fan and was big time into the Mighty Lemon Drops, Crazyhead, Pop Will Eat Itself and other new bands I was into.

I was really impressed by the fact he loved the MC5 and the Velvet Underground and that had swayed me to have him in the band even before he played a note at the audition.

As it was, he was a much more gifted player than Julian Amos but not as strong vocally. Even though I had my heart set on one singer-guitarist I also told Ted he was in!

I didn’t sleep afterwards trying to figure out which of the two I was going to have to disappoint and then realised how stupid I’d been and that great bands often have two guitarists!

As for the drummer, Dave Burgess was a 17 year old from a nearby wealthy village but he’d been a fan of the Dream Factory and although I had no idea if he could play drums I liked him a lot and so he was in too without an audition.

++ What about the name Great Express?

I honestly felt my musical journey was a trip and I guess it still is so it seemd wholly appropriate!

The fact that Donald had also been in a brilliant band (with a brilliant name) called Freight Train in 1985 during his downtime with Copey (check out ‘Man’s Laughter’ on Bam Caruso Records, it’s GREAT) genuinely had nothing to do with it!

I also liked words with energy: the word ‘Great’ came actually from the World War 2 film “The Great Escape” but I dug it because the word drips with positive energy while “Express” came from speed.

When this band came together it coincided with enormous upheaval in my personal life.

My marriage collapsed, I was attacked by someone with a knife, run over by the same person in their car & deserted by my family so it was a crazed period & felt like my heart had been torn from my body, impaled on a fork and roasted over a blazing fire for most of the time the Great Express was in existence.

Therefore, it was quite suitable that the group should boast a monicker that summed up the aggression and speed of those psychotic times.

++ I’ve listened to many of your bands, and I can say Great Express is maybe the one closest to the indiepop/C86 sound. Also with this band you played gigs along C86 bands. Who were the influences you had at that time? Which other bands of the period did you like?

This is probably because the Great Express were born in the spring of 1986!

I loved many bands from that period if honest; it was a thrilling time for music and was a lot like the punk explosion all over again….I was into loads of people from the Mighty Lemon Drops, the Smiths, Woodentops, Lloyd Cole and many more.

I was already aware of Primal Scream through Gavin and adored their stuff and loved the Pastels too and the Loft.

There was so much great stuff I loved at the time and other names I’d throw into this would include the Jesus & Mary Chain, Laugh, Jasmine Minks, June Brides, Shop Assistants, Talulah Gosh, Brilliant Corners etc….

++ And talking about gigs, you played many! Which ones were the ones you remember with nostalgia, and why?

Actually, I played far fewer gigs in those days with the Great Express than I do now!! The Great Express wasn’t in existence for that long actually but we played a number of mostly small and low key gigs.

There were a few that I remember with nostalgia, mostly because I had met Christine, my current wife, around this time and 1987, in particular, was an emotional bulldozer of a year as I split with my first wife in the summer, met Christine and fell in love with her and a lot of the tunes I was writing around that time dealt with pain and joy in equal amounts.

I particularly enjoyed a Great Express gig we played at Leicester University and I can remember that Ted had bought a lovely 12-string guitar and, like Jim Beattie was using it through a distortion pedal to get this beautiful high-octane sound.

We also travelled south to play a gig on the Isle of Wight off the south coast of England and that was great – I remember us messing about in the outdoors swimming pool before and after the gig and drowning our sorrows because Thatcher had just been bizarrely re-elected as Prime Minister and I was horrified!

++ You recorded around 10 songs. How come none of them was properly released? Was there any label interest?

You have to remember we had no management, no financial backing and were all young people just out of school with rubbish paying jobs and no money.

So basically we couldn’t afford to self fund a music career like I am doing these days with DC Fontana & we recorded cheaply and incredibly quickly whenever we had a spare £400 and never thought too far ahead.

The songs were recorded to demo standard only; there was no producer really, just me.

And we didn’t go out our way to seek a record label either…I had just come out of the Dream Factory and I had initially hoped the group’s manager Neil Rushton was going to stick with me and the Express. Indeed, Neil had indicated he would and were close but then Neil to flew to Chicago (& then on to Detroit) as part of his northern soul record-hunting activities and he stumbled across the new underground house and techno scenes in Michigan and fell in love with electronic music.

Though Neil and I stayed very close friends, he went on to be largely responsible for house & techno sounds getting a foothold in the UK and ended up forming his own record label but though he wished the Great Express well he no longer had the time or energy to help us out.

He was ploughing all his energies into this new form of dance music which he identified as a sort of nouveau northern soul, very underground, very much fuelled by drugs; it had its own esoteric Rites of Passages and codes and Neil was intensely charmed by the experiemental electronic musicians he met like Kevin Saunderson (later of Inner City), Derrick May, Juan Atkins etc.

Just to complete this part of the story, a few years later I later went to work for Neil’s record label Network during the 1990s as his Head of Publicity and although techno & house music was never my bag I adored the anarchic punky attitude of the label and we were very much like the dance music brothers of Creation and, indeed, McGee was great friends of ours.

Working at Network was wonderful and Neil Rushton was a wonderful maverick man to have as your boss during that time.

++ All of your songs were recorded at the Expresso Bongo Studios. How was that experience?

Wonderful, I hold those sessions with deep affection.

The studio was run by Paul “Snaker” Speare who was a top session sax player and had been a member of Dexy’s Midnight Runners around the time of their monster global hit “Come On Eileen” from their “Too Rye Ay” album in ’82 and he then played with Elvis Costello & The Attractions as the TKO Horns and also the Specials so he was someone I admired musically.

He was (and remains) a great friend and was very encouraging; I learned a lot of musicality from him and he broadened my musical and studio knowledge enormously.

Even though the Expresso Bongoo was a basic demo studio I always felt we produced good results considering the relatively small sums of money spent and I spent may long days and nights cocooned in there drinking tea, laughing until I wept with Paul – he has occasionally played sax with DC Fontana in recent times.

++ And what about working with Donald Ross Skinner (Julian Cope’s guitarist)? What did he bring on the table?

Despite Donald going on tour all over the world with Julian and them enjoying hit records and moving in different circles we stayed in regular contact and of course so it should be because he was one of my closest & true best friends.

We are very close like brothers.

I have always admired and marvelled at his brilliant musicianship. I was never jealous as such and got a great kick of sitting in front of the TV set seeing him doing great things because at one point it looked like Julian was going to be a huge mainstream star around the hit “World Shut Your Mouth.”

It was great when he agreed to come over to the Expresso Bongo and help oversee the recording of “(You Could) Change My World” – I was beaming from ear to ear and he added some great techniques like playing the organ through a fuzzbox which is something Julian Cope would do a lot.

That was another growing experience and though that session was short I loved it and I knew that at some stage we would do it again only properly, which is what turned out to be when Donald became my producer with DC Fontana recently.

++ Among the songs I’ve been able to listen from Great Express I really love “Silent Head”. What’s the story behind this song?

Thanks, very good of you man.

Lyrically it was about my then girlfriend Christine who I fell head over heels in love with during a very traumatic period of my life. She had been granted a place in college in Munich, Germany so our time together was very short and we spent it under the stars with her head resting on my shoulder, as the words of the song went!

We were married in 1993 and are still together today.

Musically, the song was built around a tom-tom heavy drum pattern heavily influenced by Joy Division and the tune had just two chords with Ted playing a chiming 12-string guitar riff I’d come up with and Chantal contributing a cute keyboard line using a very primitive keyboard sound that was supposed to sound like a sitar but it was nothing like one!

Coincidentally I have very recently re-written this tune as “DevilAngel” for DC Fontana using a cimbalom instead of cheap keyboard so watch out for that in the future!

++ Have you ever thought of putting together as a proper release your songs?

I am not sure that many people would be really interested if I am honest!

Also the original tapes from the demo we made (Witch-Well, Pieces, Heavenly Heavenly etc) have gone missing so I only have an inferior cassette to master from.

++ So when and why did you split? What happened after?

The band kind of ran its course – it was all over within 18 months really. There were no punches at the end, no arguments, nothing extreme.

If honest I can’t quite remember the reason it all ended but I think it was more of a case that the band evovled into another one. I know Ted left because his work committments as a telephone engineer became too difficult and the drummer quit the area.

I kept writing songs and demoing them with friends from the Great Express and Dream Factory and this eventually turned into a band I called the Space Seeds which was succeeded by the appallingly-named Bash Out The Odd and Julian (Amos) re-appeared in this band.

++ Are you still in touch with the rest of your bandmates? If so, what are all of you doing these days?

Sadly no.

Last time I spoke to Ted was ten years ago but I believe he is still living locally but not musically active.

Julian simply vanished one day….I drove to his house to take him to a rehearsal for Bash Out The Odd and his dad said he had left the house to move to another part of the country to become a private detective which was really bizarre as he hadn’t told us!

That was the last time I spoke to him, really sad.

I shared a bedsit with Chantal briefly for six months in 1988 but haven’t seen her since. Drummer Dave is now living in Australia it would seem.

++ Looking back in time, those years seemed to have been they heyday of guitar pop. Did you feel any sense of a community or scene back then? And what was the best thing, your highlights, of being on Great Express?

You are quite right – there was a communal spirit of sorts and deffo there was a scene, at least in Tamworth. I think there was a feeling the town was kind of “losersville,” a kind of hangover fromt he punk days.

And there was this vibe that we were all struggling to break out of the place and gain some recognition.

The truth is that the majority of Tamworth’s bands from that time weren’t up to much though there were several interesting and really talented personalities from that time.

++ And talking about Great Expresses and trains. What has been your favourite train journey in your life?

The continuous train set journey I had in 1974 as a young kid….I spent hours watching my train set imagining I was in charge of the trip……

++ One last question, the culinary one. What’s your favourite British dish?

I became a vegetarian in 1987 and I tend to like Mediterranean & Indian food more than the British stuff if honest

++ Thanks again Mark! Anything else you’d like to add?

The interest in the Great Express is enormously surprising and pleasing for me and I want to thank you for taking the time to contact me about such a turbulent and exciting period in my life.

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Listen
Great Express – Silent Head

Hip flask: A hip flask is a thin flask for holding a distilled beverage; its size and shape are suited to a trouser pocket. Last time I saw one, was Leonardo’s at the Comet Gain gig a couple of weeks ago. Smart man, the beer at the venue was so expensive and bringing some vodka and juice makes so much sense. That’s my friend!

Hi there! Back from Indietracks and of course as everyone that attended I’ve been having the post-indietracks blues. That means that I’ll try to recover this week and next weekend have an extensive post about Indietracks and more. At this moment I can’t write much as everything in my head is quite messy! On top of it all I’ve been trying to catch up with emails, orders, and work, after being out of town for a week and a half.

But don’t think I’m moody, just tired. I was hoping that tropical storm Emily would hit us this weekend so I had the perfect excuse to stay in. Well, it didn’t happen, though we had some heavy rain today. I did go out and did groceries and some other errands. I should have rested. It’s hard to rest when you have a pile of stuff to do. Anyhow, the fanzine is out and the Very Truly Yours 7″ is out. This week I start working on the next release, the Youngfuck 7″. Keep your eyes peeled for that. Also this weekend I booked a ticket to Toronto to spend the long weekend of Thanksgiving. I will probably freeze. I would love to go see Niagara Falls.

I did want to blog again starting this week, after two weekends without obscure bands. I will skip the “CDs I’ve been listening to” section this week though as I really haven’t had time to listen anything really. So I’ll save that for next week. This week I want to introduce a band that the great Graeme Elston introduced me some days ago: Hipflasks.

It was such a pleasure to meet Graeme in London first and then at Indietracks. His set on the train, playing many of his classic songs, from Pure to Love Parade, was among my highlights. I will definitely cover that on my blog soon. We’ll actually make some interviews I believe! But for now, let’s review this fantastic band from his hometown, Newcastle.

Just after arriving from UK back to Miami, Graeme sent me a very nice email, linking me to many songs from this enigmatic band. “They were one of my favourites at the time, but as far as I know they never had anything released.. maybe a track or two on a compilation. Of all the bands from that period who’ve been reissued, none of them have songs as good as Hipflasks in my opinion. Witty. Clearly there’s a lot of Edwyn in his delivery, but I love his doleful voice too.“ He told me. He also mentioned me that they were featured on the first Woosh fanzine. So I ran into my fanzine box, unearthed that fantastic piece of indiepop that is that fanzine and this is what I found out:

“Following a recent Sonata at Newcastle’s ‘Riverside’, I managed to pin down the enigmatic Hipflasks, for brief exchange:

Woosh: There seems to have been quite a few changes to the band over the last couple of months, Tom, what are you up to?

Hipflasks: Well we’ve introduced the accordion playing skills of Miss Zoe Lambert, things were getting in a rut, and the one guitar wasn’t always enough to keep a full sound. Not that we’re sounding anything like the Chieftains….

Woosh: Indeed not, the accordion sounds great and gives the band something extra live and recorded, that most of the hoards of guitar bands lack.

If you’ve yet to hear anything of, or by the Hipflasks (which is likely, due to their deliberately ‘low profile’ approach. The band says “We want o either come from nowhere, or never have existed at all…”) then you have something to look forward to. Some classic songs, with melodies more instant than Birds Dreamtopping, with lyrics of subtle irony/humour on the ‘general dirt under the fingernails of life’.

Apart from some serious record label interest, meetings with A&R persons and the usual gigging, what’s happening Phil? “We’ve been working on new songs, they’re getting shorter, tighter and even better, in fact we’ve  about 40 or so to choose from live now”.

And how have the gigs been going? “Apart from one or two, very well, although we’re having a break to record a few more songs. We’ll keep you posted. Oh! and please come to our gigs”.

It also lists the band members: Tom Partridge (guitar, vocals), Andy Huscroft (bass), Phil Hayes (drums), and Zoe Lambert (accordion). Husky, the bassist went on to be in The Gravy Train (who released couple of 7″s on A Turntable Friend, Dolphin, Elefant and who hopefully we’ll cover in the blog) and Zoe was part of Friends of Harry and later became an Emmerdale Farm actress.

Their headlining appearance at the Riverside was on October 28th 1987. Graeme tells me: “The Riverside was a pretty big venue so if they headlined they must have had some kind of following.” I wouldn’t be surprised as all the songs I got are really nice! These are the songs that I’ve got the chance to listen: “All the Time in the World”, “Goodbye You Bastard”, “Let’s Pretend”, “A Year and a Day”, “Dorothy”, “Jellyfish”, “No One Should Live Here” and “Lovely Scar”. Great jangly pop! Because of the quality of these tracks one can only wonder why the hell there were no proper releases by this great Newcastle-Upon-Tyne band. From what we gather from the Woosh text, there was interest…

So why did they split? What happened to the other members? Were there more songs? It would be interesting to know the whole story of Hipflasks. If you know anything else about this great band, please share. Would love to hear more from them!

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Listen
Hipflasks – Jellyfish

Thanks so much to Péter Palátsik for the interview! The Legendary Bang, well, they are legendary in my book! They were a fantastic band from Itzehoe/Hamburg in the late 80s, early 90s, that released a couple of singles on Marsh-Marigold, both of them truly fantastic. Fast guitars, frantic guitars, great energy, and catchy lyrics mixed with boy and girl vocals, were their trademark. They should have been big! Enjoy the interview!

++ Hello Péter! How are you doing? Whereabouts in Germany are you these days?

I live in Berlin, which supposedly is the coolest city in the world, but honestly since I stopped going out much, I can’t really tell anymore. I see many tourists who seem to enjoy themselves very much. No, honestly, if you think about music, Berlin is maybe not the most vibrant place to be. Berlin is all about fashion, art and maybe clubbing.

++ How did The Legendary Bang start? Was it your first band?

Phew, let my try to remember. It’s such a long time ago. I guess it all started with the C86 sampler and the Smiths breaking up in 87, or so. Jens, Martin and me, we were schoolmates and I guess, Jens maybe had the idea to form a band.
Maybe you also need to ask him these questions. Jens was always the one documenting everything we did with the band, also having the idea and the urge to record the first sessions on tape and trying to sell them on the school yard. He always had a very good sense of marketing.

++ Who were the members? How did the recruiting process work out?

First it was Jens, Martin and me and two other friends. They left the band soon, though, as soon as we started to actually play instruments, play more gigs. It took several tapes with weird noisy songs that sounded more like BIG FLAME on drugs than real music.
When I moved to Hamburg and met Oliver from Marsh Marigold, the whole thing became much more serious and when Britta and Sandra joined the band, we actually only then really became a band.

++ Where does the name The Legendary Bang comes from?

You should ask Jens, he knows the answer, I don’t really remember, haha!

++ How did you find out about indiepop? Who would you say were the main influences of the band? Just out of curiosity, were you big fans of The Wedding Present?

I started listening to THE SMITHS, when I went on a school trip to England in 84, or 85. They were a revelation to me as much as bands like ORANGE JUICE, THE GO-BETWEENS or THE PALE FOUNTAINS, AZTEC CAMERA, THE STYLE COUNCIL, etc. But the C86 sampler was like a bible to me. The last song on the record was My favourite dress by THE WEDDING PRESENT and that was the moment I thought: “I want to play music!” I started to learn how to play guitar and because it was so difficult, I was actually mostly interested in playing very, very fast!
So, yes, the WEDDING PRESENT were a major influence. Still, when I listen to early Weddoes, it gives my the chills of pure excitement.

++ Those late 80s, early 90s, in Germany seem to have had lots of noteworthy guitar pop bands. Why did you think that happened? What do you think triggered that?

Good question. Maybe it started with BERND BEGEMANN and his band DIE ANTWORT or with the FAST WELTWEIT cassette sampler. Suddenly from everywhere bands popped up and played wonderful music. At those times everyone wanted to be in a band. Strangely enough not much of it is still left. Most bands are forgotten. Who still knows DIE FÜNF FREUNDE, although I still believe, they are until today the best German pop band, ever!

++ How was it like in Itzehoe? Were there any other bands there? Did you ever move to Hamburg?

Itzehoe was hell and I always wanted to leave as soon as possible. In retrospect we had a pretty fun time, though. I guess, especially Jens, Martin and me, we made the best of it. And having a band was like being in a gang, or so. Than, after high school, I was the first one who moved to Hamburg, because I started studying. There I met Oliver Goetzl at a GO-BETWEENS concert and we immediately connected. He was very upbeat and talking about his label, selling records from a plastic bag. He then listened to one of our obscure tapes and wanted us to record a 7″. Oliver actually was the very first person who said that we were good, haha! Until then we were just hanging out in Jens’ bedroom, torturing our instruments and screaming nonsense over pure noise and silly beats from a Roland TR-303.

++ As follows from the fact that Germany is not known as a bastion for indiepop or the kind of music that Marsh-Marigold would release, how did it feel coming from a town like Itzehoe, and then being known the world over, at least in the indiepop scene?

We didn’t feel special or anything, at least not for me. I just wanted to get out and I also didn’t take the whole band thing too serious. Like I never wanted to be a musician, I always wanted to make movies. Actually the first time I met some very nice Japanese guys at the last Sarah-Records event who not only knew our band but also where totally excited to meet me, while HEAVENLY were playing on stage, I realized for the first time that maybe some people out there actually may have liked what we did.

++ I read that even before signing to Marsh-Marigold, you were already friends with Oliver. How come? Did you go to Hamburg often?

As I said, I met Oliver at a GO-BETWEENS concert. SO, please see above.
Meeting Oliver with his spiky earring and his energy and love for music, or Sonja Commentz or Henning Fristzenwalder from DIE FÜNF FREUNDE, who both still are very close friends of my who I love dearly, was like meeting the coolest people on earth.

++ How did you get a deal with Marsh-Marigold? Was it with contracts and all, or just a handshake and some good German beer?

We never signed anything. Mainly because Oliver was afraid that as soon as Marsh-Marigold would become too big he would have to pay taxes. We also paid for the studio and the producer, who was Carol von Rautenkranz, the guy who discovered TOCOTRONIC.

++ Speaking of which, which is your favourite beer?

Haha, I don’t drink much. Since I live in Berlin, I sometimes like to drink Astra, because it’s this shabby beer from Hamburg. But I like it.

++ You started quite noisy but during time you became more and more mellow. Was there any reason behind that?

Very simple: We actually learned to play our instruments. Still Jens for example refused to play anything else than C, G or D minor because everything else was rock music in his opinion.

++ How do you remember your gigs? Were there always a big crowd? What are the ones you remember the most?

I remember we once had a smoke machine. Where was that, again? Anyway. We played in front of 10 people and sometimes more. Once we played a festival in Leipzig and the place was packed! I remember we rocked that place.

++ First 7″ was “Big Bluff”, and it’s great! Was it the first time you went into a recording studio? How was that experience?

Thanks you for the compliment. That is very kind of you. That was actually really the first time we went to a studio and the recording took ages. We also paid for the whole thing ourselves, because Oliver never had any money to pay for the studio.
Recording was difficult for us, because suddenly we had to play very exact and precise. Two things that didn’t really fit to us. I remember we had a few fights and I also remember sitting in the mixing and didn’t hear any differences. We recorded the record in one day and had, I guess two days of mixing, which didn’t interest me at all, because I could never hear any difference.

++ Your second 7″ was dedicated to “Louise Brooks”. Why? Were you a big fan of hers?

Henning from DIE FÜNF FREUNDE was always in love with Audrey Hepburn and me, I was obsessed with Louise Brooks. She had the most astonishing career, being one of the most beautiful women of her time and when she had enough of acting she worked as a salesgirl in New York. She also was a heavy drinker and married a millionaire, just to divorce him only a few months later. She just didn’t care what others were thinking of her. She even had a one-night affair with Greta Garbo and she at that time we recorded the record was my ideal of the woman I wanted to be in love with and because I had just read her biography LULU IN HOLLYWOOD, I convinced the others to pay tribute to her by naming the record after her.

++ On this record you released maybe my favourite songs of yours: “The Sound of Love”. Care to tell me the story behind this song? It’s so good!

I wrote that song because I loved TALULAH GOSH so much at that time and wanted to do something with a similar energy. Also Jens and me always talked about the perfect pop song which in our opinion had to be under 2 minutes. That’s actually why it’s so fast and has no C-part. Sandra was suffering so much playing the drum part that fast to keep the song short and if you listen carefully, you hear how much she is struggling to keep the tempo straight. I still love the song and I think it’s maybe one of the best songs, we ever recorded. It’s a sweet and simple pop song. Carol von Rautenkranz maybe had the biggest influence on the song. He totally understood what the songs needed and kept it very pure and simple. He also had the idea to tweak Britta’s voice for the background singing of the song.

++ Have you seen the “Happy” video made by a Japanese fan on Youtube? It’s really fun!! Why didn’t you make a video back in the day?

I like it a lot and am still proud of that video. I don’t know the story behind it, though. Btw. I just watched the women’s football finale and the Japanese women played brilliantly against the USA.

++ What about the artwork of both 7″s, where did you get those photos?

Jens is the master mind behind the art work. He can definitely tell you more, if you ask him.

++ Oh! and what about this… is there any secret formula to make short songs? Seems nobody can do so these days!

I don’t know, we had so many ideas and songs we wanted to play, but for example at a concert we always played with one or two more bands which left us with maybe half an hour of stage time. We actually only tried to play as much songs as possible. Also we were still influenced by Punk, where the songs can be very short as well. Especially Jens listened to a lot of Punk music. And any song longer than 3 minutes was Hard Rock and lame. An exception was playing some noisy wall of guitar sound for ages at the end of a song, just like MY BLOODY VALENTINE or THE WEDDING PRESENT. That was fun to play.
Actually at that time lots of it was sort of ideology. Short songs like in Punk music, also THE JESUS AND MARY CHAIN never played a concert longer than 30 minutes – and we liked that idea a lot. A while we only played 10 songs and whenever we had a new one, an old song had to go, so we always only played the best songs we had.

++ You moved to Budapest, right? Why was that? Didn’t you miss much being in the band?

I started studying directing and screenwriting at the film school in Budapest. I didn’t give up playing music, though. With two class mates from film school we formed a band called RADIATING HAPPINESS and I played solo as ELSEWHERE for quite a while. I had written tons of songs during that period, but never recorded anything which is a shame. I still regret that.

++ When and why did the band split? What did you all do after?

The split up is a sad part of the story and I think I rather not talk about it, especially because when we met for rehearsing for this one gig at the 10 year Marsh-Marigold festival, there was suddenly this guy singing the songs I had written and sung. After I had left the band, they had continued with a friend of Jens, singing and when we rehearsed I felt like I had to beg for singing my own songs. That was sad.

++ What do you think of Kristallin’s tribute song “The Legendary Bang”?

Great song, great band! I wish them all the best!!!

++ Is there any chance that the band will ever reform? Maybe even for a one off?

You never know, although I’d be quite surprised. If we might play again, I promise we play “Sound of love”!

++ On the Twee.net there is a Legendary Bang CDR listed as “Noisepop Helden aus Flethsee”, what was that about?

Flethsee is the hometown of Jens.

++ Are there any unreleased tracks of the band still? Have you ever thought of putting together some sort of retrospective compilation?

Jens is working on something, I suppose. But there are no unreleased tracks as far as I know.

++ What are you doing these days? Do you still play music? What other hobbies do you have?

I write screenplays for movies and television and direct commercials and movies. With Henning from DIE FÜNF FREUNDE and CAMPING we were thinking of recording a bossa nova version of a LEGENDARY BANG song, let’s see what comes out of it.
For my movies I like writing music or working closely with the composer on the soundtrack. I also still have a few songs that are waiting to be recorded once. Maybe with the new techniques like Garage Band. Let’s see 😉

++ One last question, and I need some suggestions here. I think I’m going to Hamburg later this year and I want to visit another cool town around and I already knew Lübeck. Is there any other nice town worth a visit around there?

Come to Berlin and we have beer together!

++ Thanks a lot Péter! It was great fun to interview you! Anything else you’d like to add?

These were a lot of questions. If I think of anything else, I write to you.

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Listen
The Legendary Bang – Sound of Love