Day 48. Went to the post office on Monday and posted more orders. Still a few more to go and also the ones for Spain. They are not letting me post any records to Spain. I am very sorry about this. I will keep on trying.

Things are a bit quiet at the moment. So some good new music finds would be great, right?

Talulah Gosh: this is quite a surprise. A few weeks ago there was a long lost Chills video surfacing on Youtube. This week it is Talulah Gosh’s turn! The video is for their classic “Steaming Train”!! The quality of the video is not great, but as a document of the band and the time, it is amazing to see this!

Cápsula de Sueños: the latest on Elefant Records is the new project of Paco Tamarit (from the superb Serpentina). The release is a 7″ with three songs part of the New Adventures in Pop series. On this new band, he partners with María Ferrando to craft some precious music!

Gum Country: and finally the “Somewhere” album is available on Bandcamp. You can pre-order the debut record by the Los Angeles based band now on vinyl. It is coming out on June 19th and will include 12 tracks. Again we can only preview the opening track “Somewhere” which is a killer song.

I Like Birds: this Japanese band released a tape on Galaxy Train not too long ago but sadly is now sold out. This tape mini-album was called “Ameiro” and had 7 bright songs. We can at least play them, all of them, on Bandcamp. And that’s what I suggest doing.

Verano del 83: and the Trujillo, Peru, band is back with a new 4 song EP. The band who is quite a rarity, hailing from a place where indiepop must be very rare methinks, craft some pretty upbeat indiepop in the vein of bands like Vacaciones or Las Ligas Menores. Welcome back.

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Tribbles are a fictional alien species in the Star Trek universe. They were conceived by screenwriter David Gerrold, and first appeared in a 1967 episode titled “The Trouble with Tribbles”. They are depicted as a small, furry, gentle, attractive, and slow-moving but rapidly reproducing invasive species. Though they appear infrequently on-screen, they have become a popular feature of the Star Trek universe, featuring in their own eponymous official card game, and even lending their name to a family of proteins which are associated with the biology of the fruit fly.

Do you remember the great US band The Ropers? Well, I’m not going to write about them today. I wrote about them a few weeks ago. But I want to feature a band that shared a 7″ with them many years ago: The Tribbles.

The year was 1994 when the American label, from Richmond, Brilliant Records (ant-09-si) and the German label, from Krefeld, Giant Pool Balls Records (ball002) released this split 7″. I believe in Germany the record came alongside the summer 1994 issue (#8) of Sunset Magazine. I guess in the US you just ordered directly from Brilliant or through your favourite mailorder, or even better at your record shop.

The Ropers were on the A side with the song “Sweet Lord I Know”. Just one song. The Tribbles had two songs, but on the B side. They were “Mercury” and “Liberty 5-3000”.  I haven’t read Ayn Rand but a quick search lets me know that Liberty 5-3000 is a character on one of her books, “Anthem”.

Aside from these two songs at least another was released. In 1993 the band contributed the song “In the Sun” to the compilation “Something Pretty Beautiful” that Brilliant Records (ant005) put out. Here they appear alongside a bunch of great US bands from that time like Small Factory, Tree Fort Angst, Veronica Lake and more.

The blog Wilfully Obscure wrote about the split 7″ many years ago, in 2019. 10 years before me. How proper. There is an interesting comment though on the blog from Tinsel Heart (is it by the Swedish band?) saying that The Tribbles hailed from Richmond, Virginia.

I can’t seem to find any names of people involved with the band. Nothing at all. It seems like they disappeared into thin air. True that they weren’t one of the biggest bands of the period, but I find their music really lovely. I would like to know more, what happened to them? Where they involved in any other bands? Are there more recordings?

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Listen
The Tribbles – Mercury