Last month Bluetrain’s retrospective CD titled “Some Greater Love” was released on the Plastilina label. This is an historical piece of indiepop. An artifact, that if you don’t run now, you won’t find copies. Our Japanese pop friends are taking them by storm. It seems they are huge fans of Jo and Danny’s band. Talking with Uwe from Firestation, he says that it’s probably because of the Dreamworld compilation that Vinyl Japan released many years ago. On that “Whaam! Bam! Thank You Dan!” compilation, released in 1995, there were a couple of songs by Bluetrain and Go! Service. That could be it. Another interesting fact that Uwe shared with me is that during the late eighties, early nineties, there was the rumour that a German label called Pastell was going to release an album by Bluetrain… seems it never happened. But, what did happen, was a Bluetrain tribute band in Japan and this CD in Peru! Who would have expected!
Bluetrain were formed from the ashes of Go! Service in 1986 (Go! Service also released a 12″ on Dan Treacy’s Dreamworld Records). From Surrey, Bluetrain were originally – Jo Bartlett, Vocals and guitar, Rudy Carroll Guitar and vocals, Danny Hagan, Bass Guitar, and Kevin Morey, drums. This is possibly the classic line up, and played regularly at indie clubs such as Room at the Top above The Enterprise in Chalk Farm and The Buzz Club in Surrey. They supported label mates The Mighty Lemon Drops, 1,000 Violins and the TV Personalities in London and the South East and toured Scotland, supporting The Pastels. The band went through a few line up changes, most markedly when Rudy left and was replaced by the American Mark Nemetz. This line up release ‘Some Greater Love’ on the Abigail’s Birthday Party cassette / fanzine release, which came with a free lolly!
The tracklist of Some Greater Love goes like this:
01. It Makes Me Realise (from the Go! Service 12″)
02. Real Life (from the Go! Service 12″)
03. I Just Don’t Know (from the Go! Service 12″)
04. Wheels Go Round (from the Bluetrain 12″)
05. Land of Gold (from the Bluetrain 12″)
06. Parade (from the Bluetrain 12″)
07. Because of the Dollars (from the Bluetrain 12″)
08. Some Greater Love (from the Abigail’s Birthday Party cassette / fanzine)
09. Decline
10. You Bring Me Back to Life
11. Reason to Be
12. Twenty Years
So as you can see there’s a couple of unreleased tracks. Even more, there’s included in the CD some multimedia. There’s the promo video for “Land of Gold”, there’s an interview and live performance on the tv show “Time Out”, and last, but not least, a live gig in London 11/08/87. The liner notes on the lavish white & blue 6 body digipack are courtesy of Danny Hagan, the bass player of the band. And the songs have been remastered, sounding better than ever! I’m very proud of this release as you can tell.
A special thanks to Mark from The Mayfields that helped me get in touch with Jo and Danny, if it wasn’t for him this CD would never have happened. Also be around, there will be an interview to Jo very soon on this blog.
::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
