Day 569. A week since the release of our latest 7″ by Stars on Fire. Today is Bandcamp Friday too, if you happen to be around that site, please check it out here!

The Photocopies: who knows anything about this Michigan project? From what I understand they used to be called Aniseed Twist, but I had never heard of them either. They have some cool songs on their Bandcamp, all digital singles, clearly influenced by classic 80s and early 90s indiepop. Fun.

Moonlove: a really nice discovery, this Kent, Ohio, band from the 80s. Their sound is really good and you wonder how has this been in obscurity, they should be more known. The label Concentric Cirlces is releasing their recorded output as a 12″ LP on November 15. Pre-orders are up now for this record that includes 10 songs and a 12 page booklet. Would be fantastic to interview them.

Crystal Meadows: two songs from Greenfield, Massachusetts. project Crystal Meadows. That’s all I have been able to find about them. It has the feeling to be a solo project, but I cant say. The two lovely jingle jangly songs are “We Can’t Get Away From Here” and “Sophia”. Check them out!

The Lil’ Hospital: I always loved Kevin Alvir’s The Lil’ Hospital. The band used to make this perfect mix of lo-finess, quirkiness and tweeness. This was pop made with punk attitude. So it is great to see “I Wanna Be Well” on Bandcamp. These 11 recordings date from 2003 and they are essential to understand those early 2000s, when CDRs, Soulseek, mailing lists, and more were part of our lives.

Midsommar: and we end this week with a dreampop band and their latest digital single. Yup, hailing from Warsaw, Poland, Midsommar has just released the song “Summer’s Over” that will be part of their upcoming EP “The Dream We Had”. Nice.

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I went on to for a band called The Juniper Chute. I wanted to write some songs with a bit more balls to them so for the first time I wrote them all on an electric guitar. I then asked Hugh Whitaker, Eddie and a friend called Matty to form a band an we did a handful of gigs. The sad thing is that it was only intended as an experiment. I was sick of being in a band. I’d spent 2 years of my life trying to get the Penny Candles signed and got nowhere. Neil O’Brien offered us a gig at one of their venues. It was only our second show. In the next few months, after that show, I got rung up by every major record label in the country chasing me up. I was so disillusioned that I never returned the calls. The band members all had other commitments so it was never intended to be a permanent thing, so they drifted off and that was that.

Many years ago I interviewed Nick Langley about the fantastic band The Penny Candles. When I asked him what happened with him music-wise after the demise of The Penny Candles he told me that he was in the Juniper Chute.

A few weeks ago I reached Nick trying to see if he would be interested in doing an interview about The Juniper Chute. I emailed him but my email bounced. It seems the email I had for him doesn’t work anymore.

I don’t have any other contact information for him. I honestly thing The Penny Candles are one of my favourite bands that still doesn’t have a proper retrospective album. I wanted to do it, but I don’t think Nick was much interested. Maybe it can happen with another label. I don’t know. At that time I was in touch with him I hadn’t listened to The Juniper Chute. Now thanks to Chris Warkup’s Soundcloud page I discovered many songs by them. And I fell in love with yet another Hull band!

Thanks to this page, we know that the song “Me and Mrs Jones” appeared on a compilation tape called “Now That’s What We Call Hull” that came out in 1992. The band appears on the A side, it is the 4th song between two great tracks, one by Promise and another by Fog, both bands featured in the blog not too long ago.

I found another song by them on Youtube. It is called “God Knows” and from what the uploader says, it was a signature tune by the band. The sound sadly is not that great.

Looking for more info, as it is very rare to be honest, I find that the band played the Tower Ballroom, in Hull, on February 4, 1992. That day the bands on the lineup were Joyce Victoria, Fog, The Juniper Chute and Intricate White.

Sadly this is all I could find online for the band. Would be great to know more about them, how come they never released any records, and also, most importantly, find out how many more songs were recorded.

Anyone from Hull remembers them?

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Listen
The Juniper Chute – Mr & Mrs Jones