Okay, I hear our friend Cris is mastering now the next Cloudberry Cake Kitchen release. Then we are figuring out now our next 7″ and this past weekend I finally had some time to work on the fanzine, at least send all the bands, I wanted to interview, questions. That is important as I will be away in Mexico City starting this Saturday. I will be going to work there so I should have my computer with me and will be able to update the blog I think. We’ll see. In any case here are a bunch of cool new finds from over the weekend!
Dayflower: this is amazing news really. Our latest 7″ was Dayflower’s “Sweet Georgia Gazes” and now it has a video! It is terrific to see images accompanying this terrific song! The video was directed by Keith Allott with the help of Paul Daniels and Bill Newsinger and with actress Jess O’Brien. We still have copies of the 7″ just so you know!
The Know: this moody shoegaze track called “Hold Me Like You Know Me” is the latest by this husband and wife band from Los Angeles. It was released just last week and aside from the lyrics that are posted on Bandcamp we don’t have more info about it. Will it be released somewhere? Will it be part of an album or something? Who knows. Just know it sounds good!
Soma Lake: more shoegaze! This time from Mexico’s Stupid Decisions label. They will be putting a six song mini-album by Soma Lake on January 13. We can only preview the first track, “When We Were (Angels)” which sounds very good. Also I like the artwork, very Cloudberry blue.
Tom Boyle: it has been a while since I heard the Spanish band from Getxo, Tom Boyle. More than a year. And their comeback is quite a surprise! A quirky rendition of “Burbujas de Amor”, the mega-hit of Juan Luis Guerra, a Dominican bachata/pop star from the 80s/90s. I think this is very cool!
The Hazy Seas: not too long ago I discovered this terrific Chicago pop band! heard their song “Heavy Heads” and was hooked. And that was it. But now they have a proper release, a self-titled album of 8 tracks of superb guitar pop! It is available now on tape and they also have some t-shirts for sale. Really really enjoying this.
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The Prayers, that Scottish band that I love. Whatever happened to them? I discovered them quite late, when Egg Records started their restoration programme in the early 2000s. Oddly enough I didn’t manage to get a copy of the release they put out then, the retrospective CD “Everything but the Rubber Cat”, but I did end up getting the 7″s released in the 80s. It’s something.
The story starts with Egg One, the first release on Jim Kavanagh’s Egg Records. It was a 7″ with two songs by The Prayers. The A side was the magnificent “Sister Goodbye” and the B side had “Under the Deep Blue”. The 7″ came out in October 1988 after the songs had been recorded in March that same year.
EGG 002 was the “A Lighthouse in the Desert” 12″ sampler. Here the band appears with the track “Puppet Clouds” that was produced and engineered by Nick Quail from Playing Soldiers. Other bands on this record were The Church Grims, The Bachelor Pad and Remember Fun. The song was recorded in Autumn 1989. It is also worth mentioning that the German Edition 59 Records would re-release this as a mini-CD (EDL-051) in 2010.
Then in November of 1990, the band released another 7″, this one being EGG 004. The A side was “Fingerdips” and the B side was “Head Start”. These were recorded in December 1988. This 7″ also had a 12″ version where the two songs, “Fingerdips” and “Head Start” appear on the A side, while on the B side we find “Puppet Clouds” from the sampler and “Sister Goodbye” and “Under the Deep Blue” from the first 7″. This was EGG 005.
In 1991 Egg would release a tape with the four songs included in the 7″s on a split tape with The Bachelor Pad. The Prayers would appear on the B side. It seems more like a promo tape but can’t say much about it even though it appears listed on Discogs. It has no catalog number.
As I mentioned, in 2003 Egg Records reappeared in the indiepop scene. They released a bunch of great compilations of long lost bands. The fourth in that series (EGGREST 004) was “Everything but the Rubber Cat” that included the 5 songs we know from the early vinyl records but added 5 more: “Feet (demo)”, “Daze (demo)”, “Sister Goodbye (demo)”, “Under the Deep Blue (demo)” and “Puppet Clouds (demo)”.
Thanks to this compilation we learn that the band was formed by Hugh McLachlan on vocals and guitar, Colin Murray on guitar, Andy Muiry on drums and Bob Gregory on bass. we know too that most of the songs are credited to the whole band but “Sister Goodbye” and “Under the Deep Blue” to McLachlan and Murray only. The demos were recorded as follow: “Feet (demo)”, “Daze (demo)” and “Puppet Clouds (demo)” in the spring of 1989, “Sister Goodbye (demo)” in October 1987 while “Under the Deep Blue (demo)” in November 1987.
The band through the years have appeared on many compilations. Back in 1991 they had their song “Puppet Clouds” in the tape compilation “Beneath the Valley of the Magnetic Monster” released by Hypertonia World Enterprises (HWE 050). This was a compilation put together in Norway by J. R. Bruun. That same year Elefant Records from Spain released “Egg Records compilation” (ER-008), a sort of sampler featuring many bands from the Scottish label. The Prayers contribute “Sister Goodbye” and “Under the Deep Blue”.
In 1992 the band appears on the tape comp “Garden Party” (ALIEN α) released by the French Aliénor Records. The band shows up with “sister Goodbye”.
Then we jump to 2003, for the CD comp “Egg Records: an Introduction To 1988-1991”. the first of the Egg Records releases during their “restoration programme”. They have the songs “Sister Goodbye”, “Puppet Clouds” and “Fingerdips” in it.
In 2006 appears the CD compilation “Souvenirs from Egg Records”, the 15th release in the Egg Records restoration programme (EGGREST 015). “Sister Goodbye” and a track we hadn’t heard before, “Forevers Over”, appear on this CD.
Then comes Cherry Red and their arsenal of boxsets. First their song “Puppet Clouds” on the “Still in a Dream: A Story of Shoegaze 1988-1995” in 2016 and then “Sister Goodbye” on the “C88” boxset from 2017. A year later, 2018, “Fingerdips” is included in “C89” and lastly this year, 2019, “Head Start” appears in “Big Gold Dreams-A Story of Scottish Independent Music 1977-1989”. Seems Cherry Red will be releasing all of their songs, one per year?
And yes, the only name I found was that of John Connor, their bassist, on a Youtube comment.
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Listen
The Prayers – Sister Goodbye
