Want to start this post sharing a gig I wish to attend in Sheffield. Two great bands, The Suncharms and All Ashore will be playing the Record Junkee on June 16th. Those in the area or close by (or why not, far away) that an attend, do so. I’m sure it will be brilliant!
Surfin’ In The Subway presents Sheffield legends The Suncharms. Returning to play live in their hometown city for the first time since 1993 this gig is unmissable for fans of jangly indie and shoegaze! Originally active between 1989 and 1993 their sound is characterised by a juxtaposition of gentle melodies and hushed vocals with relentlessly noisy guitars, producing an overall sound that bridges the gap between the noisier end of indiepop and shoegaze. Support comes from Sheffield band All Ashore! featuring ex-members of Velodrome 2000. Their buzzsaw pop and jangly overtones will have you grinning your chops off! Tickets are £6 adv and will be £8 on the door. On sale from Thursday March 1st at this link http://
Now, onto the 4 bands that are left on our Indietracks review: Rebecka Reinhard, Tekla, Whitelands and The Sunset Beach Hut.
Rebecka Reinhard: might be the only one of the bands at Indietracks that on their Facebook page I don’t see any of my friends being fans. That is quite interesting. Rebecka grew up in Sweden and now lives in London. She is a singer/songwriter. Folk music of course. Now, let’s see how it sounds. Her latest songs seem to be the 5 tracks that were included in her “Cherry Trees EP”. So I’ll have a listen. Hmm. First song is “Pisces” and I’m a pisces. So I want to like it. But it is too fragile, too soft for my taste. I need some nerve, some action. Some pop. Will I find it in the other songs? Not really, but it does get close on “Like a Dream”.
Tekla: I thought it was the name of a band, but it seems it is a person called Tekla Szersynska from Manchester. I found a SoundCloud and I have a listen of the songs “The Brightest Light”, “Dressing Up Box” or “Climbing Frames”. And I sadly got bored by them.
Whitelands: more acoustic guitars, I suppose for the train or chapel stages. Their latest work is a 4 song EP on Bandcamp titled “Old News” that was released on February 18th. I’m not that interested in this sort of folksy music, so can’t say much, it is not bad, but doesn’t say much to me.
The Sunset Beach Hut: a band from Shrewsbury, let’s see how it sounds. Guitar pop, but with a hipster twist I’d say. With an eye on indie, another on the mainstream. Their last song on Soundcloud dates of just 4 months ago and is called “Comfort”. When I say mainstream, you’ll understand me when you hear the vocals and choruses. That’s the kind of music I expect on the radio. It is not bad at all, I think within its style this must be good. But not really what I go for when I attended Indietracks. I like my classic guitar pop, with jangly, chiming guitars, and that sort Englishness in its vocals. For some reason, I feel here the vocals are very US influenced? Or am I the only one seeing this?
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70s ‘Budgie’ Jacket: this jacket got it’s name from the TV series ‘Budgie’ featuring Adam Faith, always had the rounded collars. The ‘real’ budgie jacket was two tone cotton. Quite light and thin. It had side pockets too.
Or perhaps they named themselves after the Felt song of the same name?
More archaeology on indiepop records that are missing from my collection. In this case all of Budgie Jacket releases. I can’t believe it. I thought I might have one or two of their 7″s but a closer look into my collection, as I have them sorted out alphabetically, showed me I don’t own any. I hope then that I can fix this in the near future of course.
My first encounter with the Japanese band was through compilations. They did appear on many, Discogs lists 10 of them. There might be more even, I wouldn’t be surprised. But why don’t I start in order. If I am to do that, it seems there was a tape titled “Kiss Our Thought Goodbye?” that was their first release, dating from 1991. It looks like a demo tape. Might that be the case? It has no label, and has that photocopy DIY look. Maybe. There were 6 songs on it, 3 on each side. On the A side there was “Heaven Can Wait”, “Sugarmaple”, “Ain’t Nothing New Under the Sun” and on the B side we find “International Velvet”, “Different Strokes for Different Folk” and “My Girl Friday”. Many of these songs were to be re-released later on.
1992 would see the band at its busiest. Starting with compilations they contribute the song “I’m Waiting for the Day” to the cassette compilation”Around the World Again” that was released by Elefant Records (ER-020). A fine indiepop compilation that I hope to hear sometime as there are many unknown bands for me like The Napkin’s Thorns, The Mellow Gravy or Mercenary Tree Freaks. Were they any good? Another appearance that year was on the “Whoops!” tape released by Houpla (HOUPLA01) in France. Another fine compilation with The Tables, The Cudgels, Acid House Kings and more.
More from 1992, they appear on the “Around the World” tape on Elefant (ER-016). So yes, they appeared on both volumes of this tape compilations. On this one they have the song “Wik From You”. Also on Elefant, on the label’s first release “La Línea del Arco – La Banda Sonora 3″ (ER-01) they have the song”Three Card Mountie”. I hope to hear all these songs someday!
1992 will also mean the start of the band’s relationship with two labels, Anorak and A Trumpet Trumpet. On the French label Anorak Records, they were included on a tape compilation titled “Teeny Poppers” (SHOUBIDOUWA 01) where they had their song “Gone Too Far”. On the Japanese A Trumpet Trumpet on the other hand, they appeared on the 3″ CD compilation “Television Personalities From Japan” (TT001) where they had the song “Sweet Loving”. On this same label the band had two more songs on a tape compilation called “The Birth of the Untruth”(TT003) where they appear alongside a band that has been featured on the blog, “The Love Mushrooms“.
That year was also going to be the year when Budgie Jacket was to release their first proper record, a 7″ vinyl with three songs on A Trumpet Trumpet Records (TT002). The 7” opens with the wonderful “I Don’t Care About Time I Don’t Want to Surmise” on the A side while on the B side there’s another brilliant track “The Wax Won’t Get On Your Wick” and “The Birds And the World” which I haven’t had the chance to listen yet. I’m thoroughly surprised by their ease in creating pop melodies. The guitars are great too. Indiepop in its pure form. I’m happy listening to these songs! This 7″, that came with postcard and poster, also introduces us to the people behind the band:
Kunihiro Isami on bass
Tetsuji Kamata on drums
Keisuke Hatsuda on guitar
Shogo Matsuda on vocals
The record was engineered by Yoshiaki Kondo who owned the studios GOK Sound and produced by the band and Masashi Naka who had been involved in the band Losfeld.
In 1993 the band continued appearing on compilations. On the German label Pico Records’ LP comp “Smash Tinkle – International Pop Underground Compilation”, the band appears with the song “International Velvet”. This same song, “International Velvet”, and “Puppet Hooligan” appeared on a French tape compilation called “Gloomy Biscuit 1” that was released by the Gloomy Biscuit fanzine. Here the band appears next to another two bands that have been featured on the blog, Tricycle Popstar and Bulldozer Crash.
That year their music was going to cross the Pacific to the USA. They were to release a 7″ titled “World’s Famous EP” on the Urbana, Illinois, label Parasol Records. Four songs were included, on the A side: “A Lot of Lovin’ To Do” and “When the First Rain Fall” and on the B side: “Streetwise” and “Lions After Slumber”. For this record we notice that Mami Otomo is credited with backing vocals. Mami had been involved with other important Japanese pop bands like Bridge, Chicago Bass and Maylove.
Their last 7″ was released in 1994 on the French label Ad Libitum Pop !? (Ad Lib 2). “My Girl Friday”, with artwork by the band Maylove, had three songs. On the A side, the title song “My Girl Friday”. On the B side, “A Lot of Loving To Do” and “Heaven Can Wait”. All songs were recorded at Studio Shatou.
A release that I can’t find on Discogs but does show up on Twee.net is the “Wheels Go Round” CD compilation released by A Trumpet Trumpet in 1993. On this comp Budgie Jacket appears with a love at Budou-Kan version of “Gone Too Far”.
There are two other releases listed on Discogs but they don’t have any date for when they were released, both on Anorak Records, which you can read an interview on the blog too. The first is a tape called “Anorak Demos” were we see 4 bands (Meek, The Almanacs, Maylove and Budgie Jacket) each with a bunch of songs. Actually it is Budgie Jacket the band that includes more songs, 8! They were “The Man I Love”, “Heaven Can Wait”, “Blue Juice”, “Afternoon Ritual”, “I Don’t Care About Time I Don’t Want to Surmise”, “Streetwise”, “The Wax Won’t Get On Your Wick” and “Luck From You”. It is said that this was a promo tape. The other Budgie Jacket release on Anorak Records was a self-titled tape (SHOUBIDOUWA 02). On this tape the band had 19 songs!! Maybe they were all of their recorded output? I wonder. On the A side there was “Love Hewitt”, “Bitter End… So Why”, “Blue Juice”, “The Wax Won’t Get On Your Wick”, “Genius Move” “Waiting for the Day”, “Sugarcoat”, “The Man I Love” and “Afternoon Ritual”. The B side had “A Lot of Loving To Do”, “Lions After Slumber”, “When The First Rain Fall”, “Streetwise”, “Gone Too Far”, “Luck From You”, “I Don’t Care About Time, I Don’t Want to Surmise”, “Sweet Loving”, “Bizarre Image On Screen” and “Black Bamboo Building”. Oh! How much I would love to listen to all these songs!
I start checking in which other projects the bands had been involved or credited. For example Tetsuji Kamata and Shogo Matsuda had done photography for the “Snapshot of Your Sweet Mountain” album released by the band Snapshot on Escalator Records in 1993. Keisuke Hatsuda had played guitars & keyboards, as well as writing songs, for Maylove. It is also worth noting that it is Keisuke who had been behind the fantastic label Motorway Records.
For me it is quite interesting that there is not much more information on the web. Even in Japanese. I do find one blog where the writer remembers the band but in a personal view, without many details. It is a fact that the band hailed from Tokyo, but aside from that I can’t seem to find anything else. There are a few uploads of their songs on Youtube. Not many for a band that was important at the time, in the early 90s, in the Japanese scene, a band that reached out to Germany, France and Spain, appearing in compilations in those countries. I know it is hard to get in touch with Japanese bands, but I’d definitely would love to interview their members. Hopefully that will happen in the near future!
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Listen
Budgie Jacket – Gone Too Far
