Day 532
Days of Television: a nice new discovery! This time all the way from Singapore! Aman Sidhu’s solo project has just a few songs on Bandcamp but they are really nice. Very well crafted dreamy indiepop. Their latest song is titled “Ghost Eyes” and I suggest giving it a listen.
Letting Up Despite Great Faults: so good to hear a new song by the Austin, Texas, shoegazers! The song is called “Gemini” and it will be part of the band’s forthcoming album which I believe will be titled “IV”. There’s no info when it will be released but this sounds great.
We Melt Chocolate: didn’t know there was an Italian shoegaze band that loved The Nightblooms. Well, they have released an EP with the Argentinean label No Me Escucho Records which is titled “EP 59#1”. Of course, they cover The Nightblooms song “59#1” and it is a fine rendition! The other two songs are live versions of their own.
Film School: another single that is a preview of a forthcoming album. “Said Your Name” by the dreamy Los Angeles band Film School is to be included in the album “We Weren’t Here” that is coming out on vinyl on September 24th. Lyrics available to sing along.
The Ashenden Papers: if Rose Melberg is involved in a project, you know it is going to be good. The Ashenden Papers is the solo project of Jason Dezember from Concord, California. His latest release is “Summer”, a two song digital single (“Left on Henderson” is the 2nd song) and it is really lovely and jangly. Rose participates doing backing vocals. And again, this is really good!
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Time ago I wrote about the band Bookemdanno. Remember? If you don’t I’ve made it easy to do so. I’ve linked to it.
John Done (guitar and vocals) has an extraordinary voice that almost defines the roomthirteen sound. John previous incarnations include front-man with Suburban Daze and Ink. John also joined local pop outfit Yootha Joyce where a long term fraternal relationship was cemented with Mitchell. John also shared lead vocal responsibilities in the band bookemdanno.
Yeah John Done. I am back to the Soundcloud page he put together and checking out other projects he was involved with. Suburban Daze is the band I wanted to discover today and share with you as their songs are indiepop of course!
Based in Manchester, I believe Suburban Daze was the first proper band John was in. Later on he would be in Ink and then in Bookemdanno.
On the Soundcloud page we find a nice list of songs by Suburban Daze. Are they all of the band’s recordings? We find the songs “Blue Skies”, “Friends”, “Northern Town”, “Suburban Daze”, “Save Me”, “In My Dreams”, “Ocean Blue”, “Slug” “All I Know is This”, “Safe Sex”, “Weekend”, “Franco”, “Salt”, “Don’t Bring Me Down”, “Looking for the Answer” and “Got To Know You Better”. Lots of songs. Enough for an album!
Only one of the songs haa a little more info. “Blue Skies” was written and recorded by John and Paul Walster at Shipwreck Studios in Glossop. The vocals were by John and the all instruments by Paul Walster. Was Suburban Daze a duo then? Paul Walster was also on Bookemdanno as far as I know…
I find then an interview with Mark Revell about his band The Trend, a mod band that was around in the late 70s and got back together in 2016. There he mentions a song called “September Daze” that was included in the band’s latest album. It mentions that Stephen Scott, the band bassist, was in The Trend and afterwards he was in Suburban Daze. “September Daze” was written as a tribute to John Done who sadly died a few years back. I didn’t know that…
And then something quite cool on Youtube, live footage of the band. The band is playing live in Manor Park in Glossop in 1994. The song they are playing is called “The Cosmic Kid (Magic Bus)”. The guitar is much rockier than in Soundcloud. So is it the same band? Geographically and the name it makes sense it is. Who could confirm? I think it is the same band… but with a different sound!
And lastly the Manchester Music Archive has a gig flyer where we see that Suburban Daze played on Sunday 22nd of 1991 at The Witchwood.
Sadly this was all I could find about Suburban Daze. They were played in a Mixcloud featuring Glossop bands. But no more info there. Did they release anything? Appear on compilations? Who were the other band members? Hopefully we’ll find more info about them soon.
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