Okay! Tomorrow I head to Mexico City and won’t be back to blogging until Wednesday. It is a short trip. I’ll be attending an Okama Flannel Boy gig tomorrow as I mentioned on my previous post, so hopefully see you there! Until we see each other again here are 5 new pop finds from around the web!

Slow Pulp: I feel I’ve been finding more and more Wisconsin bands in the last few months. Maybe there is an exciting scene there now? Slow Pulp hails from Wisconsin and their latest work is a 4 song EP titled “Big Day” which sounds great! The band is also touring soon and will even cross the border to Canada. And I hope to catch them at the Bowery Ballroom in June though I must say I don’t like much the other bands playing that gig…. argh! Oh well, check them out!

Pin Ups: “Spinning” is the latest track by the Brazilian band formed by Ale Briganti, Ze Antonio Algodoal, Adriano Cintra and Flavio Cavicholi. It is out now as a digital single on the one and only Midsummer Madness label. I hear a lot of Velocity Girl on this track and of course that is a good, very good thing!

Torrey: now we head to San Francisco where Ryann, Kelly, Eric and Chase have jut put up on Bandcamp their first 6 songs. “Sister” is the name of this sweet jangly EP. I see them tagging themselves as Swedish Pop, not sure if anyone of them is a swede, but the music itself could pass by a late 90s girl fronted Swedish indiepop band, easy!

Manic Sheep: all the way from Taiwan, this cool sounding shoegaze band! Their latest work are two songs, “Deep Dusk” and “Sedona” which sound terrific! The band has been going on for a while, but this is the first time I stumble upon their music. They do seem to have quite a following in China as I notice they are touring it extensively!

Ogikubo Station: who are these people? Who is behind this band? The one track I can listen on the Asian Man Records Bandcamp sounds amazing! It is called “Would I Break My Heart Enough For You” and I don’t know what sort of release this will be. It is slated for June 14th but doesn’t say if it will be in physical or just digital formats. It does sound very promising!

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Almost at the end of this challenge. Today is the turn for the letter V. It is the turn of Viola Crayfish!

This is a great band that I discovered through the 1989 compilation “Diamonds and Porcupines” that was released by the superb German label Beat All the Tambourines (TAMBEAT 3) who had released Most Wanted Men and The Bachelor Pad 7″s as well as the great “Beat All the Tambourines” comp that I have mentioned on the blog in the past as it included the amazing band Love Set. On that comp the band had contributed the song “Love is More than Weather”.

This compilation featured lots of top bands from the time like The Wedding Present, The McTells, Pale Saints, St. Christopher among others. This 12″ comp was originally compiled by two German fanzines, “Run! Mr. Diamond” from the city of Lüdenscheid and “Hedgehogs & Porcupines” from Emden.

It would take many years for me to listen another song of theirs. It was thanks to the best German label of our time, Firestation Records. This year they released the compilation “The Sound of Leamington Spa – German Edition” (FST 165) and in there they included the track “Besser Scheitern”. And that’s not all, the booklet included some important information about the band.

For starters we know the band had two lineups. The 1988 one featured Stefan Klauner, Folker Eckebrecht, Bernd Vogel and Lars Vogel. The 1992 one had Frank Klimek instead of Stefan Klauner who sadly passed away that same year.

The small bio tells us a few interesting bits too:
“The band was formed in 1987 by Stefan Klauner, Folker Eckebrectht, Bernd Vogel and Lars Vogel in the hinterland south of Bremen in the north-west of Germany. The main influence might have been The Velvet Underground, the Postcard “Sound of Young Scotland” – and of course all kinds of other music. But always in order to write another – and hopefully better – popsong as the one before. Which sometimes went quite well and other times not as good. All was done under the DIY concept with great amounts of not knowing too much but getting better all the time. There were local performances, some home-recorded tapes, some releases on samplers, a studio recording which we never considered to release, a play by John Peel  on Bremen 4, the idea of singing German, some new band members and all finally stopped in 1993, but not really.”

The band appeared not only on those two compilations. They first appeared on the 1988 tape compilation “Bremen-Tape ’88” released by Strange Ways Records (Tape Nr. 2) with the track “June Field”. I must say I don’t know any of the other bands on this tape, so if there are any other indiepop tracks on it, please let me know so I can investigate!

Then in 1990 they appeared on 3 compilations. The first was “Let’s Have a Picnic and Barbecue Some Corrupt Not Self-Programming Dee-Jays” double LP comp released by Noet Lachten Records (NOET 10). The band would contribute the song “Sweet Soul Decay” and appear alongside bands from Holland, Belgium, Germany and England. The second was the first ever release by Blam-A-Bit Records, the cassette compilation “Instants of Pleasure” (BLAM 001). The band would contribute the track “June Field”. The third was on the “Hat Das Schaf Die Blume Gefressen Oder Nicht?” a tape comp released by Blam-A-Bit (BLAM 003) too. On this one the band contributed the song “Sweet Soul Decay”. This is a superb tape by the way, would love to listen to it completely someday.

But there is something that is nagging me. There is listed on Discogs a 2011 CD called “Far Out”. This 8-track CD included the songs “Reset/Recicyle2”, “Far Out Café”, “Life Hack”, “Love is More than Weather”, “June Field”, “Best Before”, “Schaum (L’Ècume de Jours)” and “Sommer Endlos”. I am guessing this was a posthumous release of old songs, but can’t say. Maybe they were re-recordings?  It is not a retrospective either as many of their songs are not included. Well the fact is you can stream the whole thing on Bandcamp.

Then I find a website for the band. Here I see that the band has been playing on and off. After the 1992 lineup I see that between 1993 and 2000 the band was just Folker Eckebrecht and Lars Vogel. In 2013 they added Marco Ahrens on drums.

Then I stumble upon a Soundcloud for Lars Vogel. Here there are some more Viola Crayfish songs like “Meteor”, “Magic Roundabout”, “Ein Tag Für 10 EURO” which I believe remain unreleased.

I also look on Youtube. I see a song called “Revelation” from 1988 and it looks that it was part of a demo tape called “Viola Crayfish”. What other songs were on it?

Then two videos of live footage! Here we see the band playing at the Polyester in Oldenburg on April 12 of 2008. There are videos for the songs “June Field / Love is More than Weather” and “Schaum (L’Ecume de Jours)“.

And finally I found more about that 1988 tape on a blog called Tape Attack. Here I see that the tape was called “Nordsee” and included “June Field”, “The Outside-Inn” and “Wear that Tupper” on the A side and “Postcard”, “Revelation” and “Velocity Days” on the B side.

Fantastic finds! Now, was that the only demo tape the band put together or were there more? Will Firestation release a retrospective compilation? Were the band members involved in any other bands? Would be great to know more about this Oldenburg band. Who remembers them?

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Listen
Viola Crayfish – Love is More than Weather