Day 413
Almost Charlotte / Bluff: many of you may remember that I interviewed the classic indiepop band Almost Charlotte on the blog. They hailed from Brighton and after their demise they became Bluff. Well, there is a compilation CD that is essential for indiepop lovers available now on Moments of Pleasure Records. It contains all of the recordings by both bands! I repeat, essential.
Nah…: it is not common for me to beat the limited releases. This time around, I was able to secure one of the 50 copies of the new CD “Airy Day” by Nah… The Dutch/German combo has self-released this new EP that has four songs, “Airy Day”, “Walking in the Sun at Midnight”, “Wellen der Liebe” and “Dagen Van Gras, Dagen Van Stro”. It is cool to see them singing in their own languages, even though we just have to imagine for now, as we can only preview the title song!
Morellas Forest 1988: Their name sort of confused me. Thought it was a band from the 80s! Well, there is this one song called “Sweet Charity” on Soundcloud that sounds good to me. This song will be included in the upcoming album “Tales” that is being released on May 14 via Velvet Blue Music.
My Lucky Day: so I have tried to find myself a copy of the band’s CD. Sadly shipping from Japan is crazy at the moment. To send a CD to the US it seems to be around 25-30 dollars. That’s a bit too steep. Feels wrong. And I thought US shipping prices were bad. I believe it has to do with the pandemic. But it’s been a while and you would think prices would be normalized. Anyhow, I shared a link to their Bandcamp last week, today I bring you the beautiful video for “Sunny Day Highway”
Lisasinson: and lastly a few weeks ago the Valencia, Spain, all-girl combo published “Perdona Mamá” on Elefant Records. This album was released as a 10″ vinyl and is limited to 500 copies. It has 9 infectious, catchy, pop songs in Spanish including their great hit “Barakaldo” (which should have been a 7″).
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I believe there are many bands called The Village. So I’ll make it clear since the first paragraph that today’s band hails from Ireland, from Waterford to be more precise. I discovered this band through The Fanning Sessions Archive blog. That seems to be the usual when it comes to Irish bands, right?
From the Fanning Sessions post we know the band was a four-piece formed by Paddy Jacob on vocals, Mick Heery on guitar, Paul Condon on bass and Paul Moyser on drums. Here they have shared a RTE Radio 2 Dave Fanning session the band recorded on November 19th 1985. This time around they recorded four songs, “Life is a Stranger”, “June in Me”, “Fear of Time” and “Sacrifice”. You can listen to all of them in that post. But that’s not all, they also link to a TV appearance of the band!
Indeed, there is the band performing the song “Mental State” on the RTE show “Visual Eyes”. This appearance dates from 1986. A comment there has a funny anecdote, saying this footage was actually 100%. He says: this is 100% live,think this is the 5th take if i remember correctly 4th take went well until the drummer farted on the cameraman underneath him.
The other great resource for Irish bands is Irishrock.org. Here we find that the band formed in 1984 and made their Dublin debut at the Underground in 1986. That same year they released a single.
This single is listed on Discogs. It was released by BUS Records (BUS 30). I am not familiar with this label but I can see they’ve released a lot of 7″s up until 1994! The songs on the record were “Mental State” on the A side and “In My Vision” on the B side. Both were recorded at Cooleycall Studios and produced by Paul Spencer from the band Billy Roach Band.
Irishrock.org mentions a song “Prisoners of the Heart”, but they can’t remember where was it released or even recorded. Another interesting bit is that the band’s PR was done by Eoin Ronayne who was the manager of Neuro. It seems Paddy Jacob was a roadie of this band.
It seems the band was featured in a documentary called “051”. This documentary film was about the Waterford scene. It is on Youtube, here is part 1 and part 2. I found Mick Heery on Part 2 around the 11:20 minute mark. But around the 7:10 minute mark you can see the band playing live at The Bridge. A comment in this same link it mentions that Brian Daniels, keyboardist of The Village passed away.
The band reunited in 2006 for a one-off gig and I believe in 2019 they did too. I found they even have a Facebook page! I find flyers of gigs. So we see the band played at the Bridge Hotel in Waterford, at Katie Reilly’s with Toy with Rhythm and The Flat Tops, at the Waterford Savoy on November 4, 1984 (this one you can listen in its entirety on Soundcloud!!),
And that’s it. The band didn’t release any other records, but it does look like the band had a following and made an impact in their scene. I am sure many Irish fans remember them. Would be great to know their story someday!
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