I was aware that last Friday The Dubious Brothers played a reunion show in London. Of course I missed it. Last Thursday a favourite Spanish band of mine, of my teenage years, Los Planetas, played in Lima, Peru, and I missed it. Who played in NYC? No one. Okay sure, some bands must have played, but nothing of that caliber.

This city is fantastic, don’t get me wrong, it has everything you can ask for. But when it comes to indie bands that play guitar pop, well, there are a handful. And aside some big name shows like Slowdive last month, we don’t get many bands to come here. We only get them once a year at NYC Popfest of course. Then the rest of the year is kind of dead.

CMJ might bring some good bands, but then like this year, they make the indiepop bands play at inhuman hours like 3pm. Everyone is working at that time.

So that’s the state of things and the year is about to end. There were great gigs this year, there were great travels too. Definitely Slowdive was a great gig, same as My Favorite at NYC Popfest or The Royal Landscaping Society at Indietracks. Next year my festival/indiepop time will be reduced to NYC Popfest and will skip any festivals abroad. Indiepop is perhaps not at it’s highest moment and it’s always the same bands playing. I think I need a break of that. I want to hear new sounds.

The label will enter it’s 8th year of existence and I’m hoping for a couple new releases. But first we’ll catch up with everything that’s been promised. I know, I know, things have been slower than usual here. But believe me I have not much to do with that. There’s been a lot of apathy around the indiepop scene and it’s pretty hard to shake it off.

There’s been some band announcements yesterday for Madrid Popfest, as always it’s shaping up nicely. Definitely seeing Sloppy Joe will be a treat for all the Spanish fans. What a band. I remember clearly how much I loved their gig at Indietracks some years ago, then hanging a bit with them with Stefan and Danielle, and later taking photos together with Paul from City Giants too. Great guy Hitoshi! I feel nostalgia for those days.

It feels like I don’t get to meet many “new” people at Indietracks, NYC Popfest, or the like, anymore. Is our scene reducing?

Long are the days when we’d have 20 people in our lunch or dinner table. New and old friends. Joking and splitting the bill. Days in London having thai food with Matthew not being able to figure out if the waiter is a waiter or a waitress, or having a whole basement in a pizza joint for ourselves. Or what about that Olde Jerusalem Inn in Nottingham enjoying our fish and chips on a bright summer day before Indietracks. Seems like these days are long gone.

And I feel nostalgic about all this. What about Londoners now feeling nostalgic about the Buffalo Bar. It’s been announced that it will close pretty soon. And then what? Some people are trying to organize and get enough signatures to try to save it. Seems like a difficult thing to pull.

I’ve been so many times to the Buffalo Bar in my visits to London. I believe the first time was in 2010. It was the second day of London Popfest. I remember The Garlands played. Tommy was on the drums then, and Sarah was doing backing vocals. It was a bit of a different lineup! Pata was still in the band. Maria, Einar and Christin never left. I think I had just met Christin in person the day before. And I remember Remi and me just shouting, “Christin”, “Christin”, giving her our ‘support’ every time we could haha. Perhaps we were making her nervous. It was a lovely gig. Somewhere I must still have the setlist of that gig. First time the band ever played abroad too.

That same night The Sunny Street played. How beautiful. Still one of my favourite bands of the period. Sadly they didn’t get all the recognition they deserved. Remi is one of the most talented musicians I know in indiepop, and I hope one day their albums are rediscovered and cherished as they deserve.

Horowitz played too that night. My memory is a bit fuzzy like their songs. It was the first time I was seeing them live too. I can’t forget any of this. That day I met so many people too, like Mikael from Dorotea, and earlier my friend Annika from up up north in Lapland.

I think that night Karin played some records too. And then I think the whole night went crazy when Daniel started DJing. Damn, that was one of the best indiepop dancefloors ever. It must have been the first time I danced to The Haywains’ “Kill Karaoke” ever! It was way too much fun. I think we all left when the bar was about to close. Perhaps when Rory was kicking us out.

Since that first time I must have been at least another 5 times to the Buffalo Bar to see gigs. I can’t speak for the Londoners, but it’s definitely a shame that it is closing. It always seemed that it was one of the few places that was keen to have indiepop gigs and not make it too difficult to organizers. And that is something we don’t get much here in NYC.

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So Hang David. Who? Who is this David?

I don’t know much about Hang David. They were definitely from the UK. And as far as I know there were two releases, both on the Vacant label.

I haven’t yet gotten their releases but from what I know it’s the first release the one most indiepop collectors go gaga for. I’ve only heard one song from each 12″ and I kind of can see why. The song from the first release is way more jangly.

The song I’m talking about is “Another Day” and it’s a beautiful guitar pop piece! A true obscure nugget. For some reason it reminds me to a lot of Australian bands from the 80s like The Sometimes, The Palisades, etc, etc. It has that sort of innocent and naive feeling to it that I love. Could have easily been part of the Summershine catalog.

This song as I was saying is part of their first release. It was the first release on Vacant (catalog HANG 01) and was released in 1990. The other songs in the record, all B sides, were “Ride”, “Where You Are” and “Here”. It was recorded in November 1989.

We get to know, thanks to the sleeve, that the band was formed by Alex Culpin (bass), Dave Frisby (drums), Ben Durling (guitar), Matt Berry (guitar), Bob Cook (keyboards) and Nick Leese (vocals).

The second release came on the same label, must have been their own label, and was catalog HANG 02. This record came out in 1992. The name of the maxi was “Awry” and included one A side, “Head”, and three B sides that were “Like Stars”, “Nery” and “Oceanic”. This record seems way much easier to track down.

The last piece of information I could find was that there was a promo video for “Head” that was released in 1993. It was directed by Jonathan Braman, Andy Pellet and David Frisby. You can watch it here.

Aside from that, I couldn’t find more information. Perhaps someone out there remembers them? I would love to hear the rest of their songs, and learn if they had more unreleased material, especially from that jangly period. This song “Another Day”, is definitely a winner!

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Listen
Hang David – Another Day