World Cup is on! Not much more to say today. Tomorrow my dear Peru plays Denmark and I can only think about that!

Pocket Knife: I saw my friend Jörg post about this band on Facebook, and me, thinking it was a new band, went to check them out. Well, it turned out they had released their album back in 2014, in August of that year. “Dying to Pretend” is the album I found on Bandcamp, and thought it sounded great. Where did this come from? Why wasn’t this in anyone’s radar? It does seem that the LP is still available and that’s a good thing. Would love to get a copy soon of this album by this Portland, US, band. Great boy/girl vocals and melodies!

Sound and Fury: the superb Chengdu dreampop band is back with a 7″ on the best Chinese indiepop label ever, Boring Productions. The 7″ was released on June 9th and include two great songs, “Coming Down” and “Heaven Song”. I have raved about this band in the past and I will have to tell you once again that this one is a record not to be missed!

Thin City: another release on the Boring Productions label was the lathe cut 7″ by this Glaswegian band. This is pretty impressive, a Scottish band on a Chinese label. If someone would have told me this was going to happen 5 years ago I wouldn’t have imagined it. But Jovi and Boring Productions keep surprising us. Two fun songs, “Rock City Baishizhou” and “The Loop”, by this band with ex members of Bricolage and The Sexual Objects.

Alpaca Sports: I was recommending the video for “Nobody Cares But Me” the other day but now I am aware that this song is also being promoted as a digital single. And a digital single with a B side which I’m listening now. It is called “Baby Pop” and it is really lovely, and thinking I may like it a bit better than the first song. A hard decision to make. But this one is brilliant! Hope it gets included in the album “From Paris with Love” that will be released later this year.

Ring Snuten: and perhaps my favourite find this week, because of the people involved, is the song “Natur/Natur” by Patrik Lindgren’s alter ego Ring Snuten. This song, co-written by the brilliant Roger Gunnarsson and Patrik, two of the most important figures in Swedish indiepop in the noughties, is such a cool synth-pop track. I can only hope they continue collaborating, because I want to hear more by them!!

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A beekeeper is a person who keeps honey bees. Honey bees produce commodities such as honey, beeswax, pollen, propolis, and royal jelly, while some beekeepers also raise queens and bees to sell to other farmers and to satisfy scientific curiosity. Beekeepers also use honeybees to provide pollination services to fruit and vegetable growers. Many people keep bees as a hobby. Others do it for income either as a sideline to other work or as a commercial operator. These factors affect the number of colonies maintained by the beekeeper.

Perth, Western Australia. 1989. Perhaps earlier. A band under the name The Beekeepers is formed by Mick Sim, Shaun Lohoar, Mal Secourable, Darren Leitch and Bernice Smith. They were going to release 2 records, 1 single and 1 EP,  and then disappear into oblivion.

That could resume the life of The Beekeepers, but I’m going to try to find more about them. Maybe find myself a copy of their records if I’m lucky. If not, listening to some new songs would make me happy. Let’s see what there is in that huge mess of information that is the world wide web.

As usual I stop at Discogs first. Here the two records are listed. The first one, which was self-released but did have a catalog number (BK001) had two songs, “Take Me Back” which was composed by Mick and “Why” which is credited to Mark Ghirardi and Mick Sim. Who is Mark Ghirardi? It seems he was the band’s manager. Strange, no? A manager that could write songs. Both songs were recorded at Planet Recording Studios and they were produced by Greg Dear and John Vilani, who also was the engineer. Greg Dear of course is a well known name in the Australian scene having being part of The Holy Rollers and The Beautiful Losers.

Something I don’t know about this first single is if the record had any art, if it had a sleeve or not. I couldn’t find any information about it.

It does seem like this first 7″ got some radio play and it caught the attention of a proper indie label in Australia, Zero Hour Records. The same label that released my beloved Pearly Gatecrashers. This label was going to put out, in 1991, a 12″ EP titled “Beefarm Road” (ZERO 401). The songs were once again recorded at Planet Studios with James Hegwill as the engineer and co-producer alongside the band. Here we know what each member played:
Darren Leitch – bass,  vocals
Shaun Lohoar – drums, percussion
Mick Sim – guitar, vocals
Mal Secourable – guitar, vocals
Bernice Smith – violin, vocals

According to a comment on the Discogs listing, a comment coming from the label itself, Zero Hour Records, 500 copies of the record were pressed. But here comes the sad part. More than 300 of them were destroyed by the label’s distributor Shock Records. Why? How did this happen? Why would anyone do this? Now of course my hopes of finding one become slimmer and slimmer.

Aside from these 2 records there is nothing else listed. No compilation appearances. That is odd I think as there was quite a healthy scene of tape compilations at that time. They must have been on one or two. Though it seems like they weren’t.

The band members do seem to have been part of other bands. For example Mal Secourable and Mick Sim had been part of a band called The Fate who released one album. Also Mick was involved in a band called Holocene that was based not in Perth but in Melbourne. This band released a string of EPs and two albums in the 90s and had also among their members people from Autohaze and Ripe, two great Summershine Records bands. And lastly I know that Shaun Lohoar was in The Favourite Game, Blueline Medic and Saidaside.

I keep looking for more information. It is said that the band did one national tour before disbanding just after releasing the 12″. But on Youtube I was to find a bunch of live footage of the band! Sometimes you just hit the jackpot! There are a bunch of songs of them when they played at Appealathon 1991, there is “Forever”, “There’s a Way“, “When You Smile“, “This City“, “Winter’s Gone“, “Forever“, “Take Me Back“, “The Zoo” and “Why?“.

Then there is a list of musical acts from Western Australia Wiki page where it details the years the band was active, 1987 to 1993. On this list The Beekeepers have a few more band members listed, Nick Tweedie, Alannah Hunt and Astrid Peterson. When did they join?

I keep looking for any other mentions of the band. There are not many. I see someone on a forum crediting Mal for introducing him to the Pixies. And then a comment on Youtube that is actually pretty interesting. It seems there was some news about the Beekeepers earlier this year! On January 5th the band did a one off show at the Monks Brew. Wow, there was a reunion! Was it the first reunion gig since the band split? How was it? Did anyone reading this went and saw them?

And that’s all I could find. It is clear that the band had more songs in their repertoire, not just the ones released on the records. Did they record them properly? Would love to hear any unreleased tracks. And when and why did they split? Had they been involved in bands before being in the Beekeepers? And what about that national tour? Whereabouts in Australia did they play. Perth at that time had a great scene, one that is covered in the book “Way Out West” by George Matzkov.

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Listen
Beekeepers – That Girl