The BV’s 7″s should be available now (or shortly) at Rough Trade in the UK, Hands and Armas in France, Jigsaw Records in the US, Stone Records in Japan and through us, the label, and also through the band. I hope to be able to get the records to more stores in the coming days and weeks, but as I said before, if you can ask your local store that also helps.
Now, I need to get to work on future records. I have two retrospectives taking shape, but the 7″s are moving much slower. I do think though that next year there will be news about that.
Now what are the latest finds?
Rei Clone: cool and noisy sounding band from Denton, Texas, who have just put up their latest single on Bandcamp. It is called “Wave” and sounds superb. They have made a video for it too! They are formed by Abe, Zach, Charlie and Johnny. Good stuff!
Strawberry Punks Vol. 2: I reviewed some time ago the first volume and it was great. Now the second is as good. Five Indonesian pop bands are featured once again: Hill Street Connection, The Lousy Pop Group, Lazy Eye, Turks & Caicos and The Sensitive. It is available to stream now thanks to Dismantled Records from Jakarta.
Turks & Caicos: this band was featured in the compilation I just talked about. But they also have a Soundcloud where you can check the pretty pretty song “This Town”. I really hope to find more songs here next time I visit. One song by them is not really enough!
Lonely Cookies: I believe this is the band name of this Chinese band. Their label, Wild Records, is based in Wuhan. Is the band too? What I do know is that they have an EP called “Eastlake Swimming” that has five songs of upbeat and catchy tunes. Kind of strange that this wasn’t released on Boring Productions though! But great to see more indiepop coming from China!
Elenin: more from Indonesia. Now from Don’t Fade Away Records from Jakarta. Three noisy songs by Elening. They are “Kalam”, “Massa Masa” and “Technyancolor”. Will this be released in physical format? It is really impressive the quantity and quality of Indonesian pop at the moment!
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I was checking out some of the flexis released by the Sound Affects magazine from Sweden. In the past I had featured some bands/songs that appeared on them like Dream or Pleasurehouse. But I haven’t listened to them all of course. Today I was checking a double sided flexi, the ninth that appeared alongside this iconic and legendary Swedish magazine.
This flexi (SAF 009) included 4 songs. Two on each side. The A side had The Dambuilders from the US with the song “Teenage Bum” and TV Pop Crisis with “Cloud Chamber”. The B side had the soon to be famous The Wannadies with “My Home Town (Midem Mix)” and Rapid Teenagers’ “Storebrosan”. It was released in 1990 and came accompanying the 7th number of the magazine.
The song that caught my attention today happened to be the second on the A side, “Cloud Chamber” by the Swedish band TV Pop Crisis. Who were they? That was the first question I wanted to solve.
Discogs sheds some light listing a demo tape. There is no release year sadly but we do know a few things. There were four songs on it, “He Brings the Money”, “Cloud Chamber”, “Easy” and “Love Chain (Tender Return)”. These same tracks appear on both A and B side. The tape came with two flyers. On one of them we know it was recorded in July 1989 at Studio Urania by Jörgen Sangsta. I believe they dedicate this tape to someone called Tina.
The second flyer kind of describes what to expect from each song. It also gives us a name, Johan Holmlund, and an address in Gothenburg.
This are great hints to uncover the mystery. But Discogs also points us to two aliases of the band. Fly and Easy.
Fly being a band that released an album in 1998 with Dolores Recordings called “Green Lights”. And Easy, well, you must know Easy right?
If not, well, Easy was an indiepop group that had members from both Gothenburg and Jönköping that released the classic “Magic Seed” album in 1990 (which has just been re-released by the A Turntable Friend label) plus another handful of albums and a string of singles. A pretty well known band. And this all makes sense. Easy also recorded “Cloud Chamber” for that first album.
Now, something pretty interesting then is that on the tape of TV Pop Crisis there is a song called “Easy”. Did they name themselves after this song? Could be. Another question, were all the members of Easy in TV Pop Crisis? We do know that Johan Holmlund was. What about the rest?
There is also another compilation where they appeared event though Discogs lists this as a different band. On “Swedish Exotica (Volume 2)”, an LP compilation released by Thee Temple Ov Psychick Youth Scandinavia (TOPYSCAN 008) in 1989, the band appears with “Easy”. Here we strike gold. We find the band members names for TV Pop Crisis!
Rickard Jormin on bass
Tommy Jonsson on drums
Tommy Eriksson on guitar
Johan Holmlund on vocals
Now knowing all these names I know all of them were in Easy. So TV Pop Crisis evolved to Easy. But why the name change?
Well I found an interview with Easy on the Ljudmatta blog were they explain the whole issue:
Why did you change your name? (Easy was called first Tv Pop Crisis)
When we got a record deal with English Blast First / Mute, they thought TV Pop Crisis did not fit the music we played and we were not entirely satisfied with the name. So Lars Aldman on the radio program Bommen organized a list competition where you had to submit your nomination suggestions. The fact that we had some self-distance can be seen afterwards as we look at the list of names candidates who were left to the end. I mean the name The Orienteringsdöden probably did not work so well … Or that the work name of the first album was “Mariebo-Råslätt, deferred due to rain”.
Something else that caught my attention from that interview is that it says that the band members moved to Gothenburg mostly because they needed to do their military service there!
The well known Café Kristina label’s first ever gig was with TV Pop Crisis in 1990.
Of course every single piece of writing about TV Pop Crisis is actually about Easy. I mean, that’s fine. They were exactly the same band. But my curiosity right now is about that first period, when they were named TV Pop Crisis and released that demo tape I mentioned. Did they release any others? Was it easy for them to change their name? To accept the demands of a big label? How long did they keep their original name? Did they ever use it again?
What do you remember about TV Pop Crisis?!
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