One more band discovered on Blue House Records. After discovering the bands As Is, World Service and Tender Lugers, this time around I started listening to a collection of recordings titled “South of Somewhere” by the band Gods Kitchen and I was happily impressed.

This is well done guitar pop, and through the 20 songs of the collection you start to discover many great tracks.

From what I understand this collection was put together to be released on CD back in 2012. I haven’t seen this CD ever but it is listed in Discogs.

From the small writeup on Bandcamp, written by James Partridge of Blue House Records, we learn that the band lasted for a long time. I see two dates, 1991 and 2001. I suppose the band was around 10 or more years then.

The band was formed by Shane Kirk, Stephen Dean and Gibbon. They were the mainstays. On some recordings I see the names of Steven Mears (tracks 1 thru 5), Stephen Constable and James Partridge on backing vocals (tracks 6 to 17) and Paul Read on backing vocals (track 17).

I should probably mention what tracks are these. The 20 tracks are in order “Still Sad About Us”, “Evangeline”, “Walk”, “Put Me Down”, “North of Nowhere”, “Stop that for a Start”, “Brilliant Blonde”, “The Boy Who Loved Aeroplanes”, “Black Rain”, “Muswell Hill”, “Here Come the Rain”, “Before You Go”, “Mine”, “A Long Weekend”, “The Right Party”, “Come Into My Room”, “Stretch Armstrong”, “Told Her at the Time”, “My Baby’s Street” and “Drugstore Truck Drivin’ Man”.

The first 5 songs date from 2001, then the next five from 1991. Tracks 11 to 17 date from 1992. Track 18, “Told Her at the Time”, is a live rehearsal while track 19, “My Baby’s Sweet” is another live rehearsal recording, this one from 1992. The last track, “Drugstore Truck Drivin’ Man”, is a cover of The Byrds.

From what I read all of these recordings come from tapes. I suppose these were live rehearsal tapes and also demo tapes. How many of the latter did they put together? I assume there are also more recordings that didn’t make this cut.

It is then worth noting that Shane Kirk was on two other bands who I mentioned in the first paragraph of this post, As Is and World Service. Th. I have written about them. The latest band he was in was called This Much Talent.

And this is quite a find, I didn’t find it previously when I wrote about Shane’s other bands. There is a Google Book called “Turn ’em all on, then turn ’em all down…“. I am not sure if Google shows the complete book, but it starts with writings from 2013. The book was published in 2020. So maybe it doesn’t cover the older bands? Would be good to know.

And that’s all I could find.

I’ve written 4 posts now about Blue House Records bands, I hope we get in touch with someone who knows them. Would be great to learn more.

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Listen
God’s Kitchen – Still Sad About Us