Not much news this week. I had an uncle visiting over so was out and about int the city but I’ll try to get you some interesting Cloudberry news this week. A good thing though is that for the first time there will be Cloudberry stickers. So starting next month all orders will be getting them!! Exciting right?
Here are a few new finds tho!
Palm Ghosts: the very fine Nashville band is releasing a new record called “Wide Awake and Waiting” on February 7th! It sounds really really good! The question then is will this be released physically? I hope so. The 6 songs shine. They are terrific. There is even a video made for the opening track “Wide Awake and Waiting”!
The Tubs: the band that has two ex-Joanna Gruesome in their ranks has released a great 7″ on Prefect Records. To promote it they have also made a promo video for the track “I Don’t Know How it Works” which you shouldn’t miss!
акульи слёз: this Ufa, Russia, band has been featured in the blog in the past, and there is a good reason to have them again. Their newest song “малость” is very very good! Female vocals, a melancholic vibe and the mystery, at least for me, of what they are saying! It all works perfectly together.
Flyying Colours: “Big Mess” is a beautiful mess of guitars and melodies that swirl. This song is now available digitally through the labels Poison City and Club AC30.
The Spires: the Ventura, California, three-piece have released a new digital album called “LOOK”. It has 9 songs but it is not really a new-thing per se. This is a collection of lost songs, alternate versions and covers (there’s a Magnetic Fields one) through the years. Worth checking this out.
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Another fine sounding band I found through the WokingSoundscene Soundcloud is Blue Velvet. And actually for Blue Velvet they had many songs uploaded.
We find “Guiding Light“, “Salvation“, “Shot Yourself Down“, “Note Turned Blue” and “Gold That Shines“, this last one perhaps my favourite of them all. Were they all from the same tape? From compilations? Let’s find out then!
The band was around 1989 to 1991 and was formed by Patrick James Sullivan on lead vocals, guitar, harmonica and e-bow, Graham Judd on guitar, Sid Stovold on guitar and backing vocals, Ady Evans on bass and John Metcalfe on drums. They were based in Aldershot.
In 1989 they released their first demo tape, “Believe”, which included three songs, “Salvation”, “Gold That Shines” and “Don’t Dare the Devil”. One of these songs, “Gold That Shines”, ended up in the compilation tape “Farnborough Groove Vol. 1”, the first compilation of the Farnborough Groove series, in 1991.
That same year we’d see Graham Judd leaving the band and Jim O’Neil joining to play keyboards. With the new lineup the band recorded a second demo tape, “On the Eve of Tomorrow” that included 8 tracks. Which were they? I believe they were “Sudden Change in Faith”, “Shot Yourself Down”, “Guiding Light”, “Falling Star”, “These are the Towers”, “It Only Takes a Lifetime”, “Raining” and “Rollercoaster”. All of these songs were recorded at Ghost Studios between November and December of 91. The Farnborough Groove series would again pick one of the songs, “Shot Yourself Down”, and include it on the 3rd of their compilation series that featured up and coming unsigned bands from the area, “Farnborough Groove Vol. 3”.
At some point they also combined their two demos on a single tape, picking songs from both releases. In this tape they had four songs from 1991 on the A side: “Sudden Change in Faith”, “Shot Yourself Down”, “Guiding Light” and “Falling Star”, and four from 1989 on the B side: “Salvation”, “Gold that Shines”, “Note Turned Blue” and “Don’t Dare the Devil”.
On the Facebook page of WokingSoundscene I find too that the band used to cover The Wonderstuff’s “Wish You Were Here” as well as some gigs they played: at the Aldershot West End Centre supporting Mega City Four and Ned’s Atomic Dustbin on March 2nd 1990, the Georgein Ash Vale on February 20 1990, Cricketers in Westfield on February 22 1990, at the British Legion on August 30 1991, at the Four Horseshoes in Camberley in 1991, at the classic venue the Bull & Gate in 1989 and supporting Bradford and Frantic at the Buzz Club, the club the our friend Jo from Bluetrain used to run!
According to Soundcloud it seems that their song “Note Turned Blue” appeared on a 1991 compilation called “Parafornia” but I haven’t been able to find any information about this comp.
I find out that in 2009, Blue Velvet’ Graham Judd and Patrick Sullivan and some members from another Aldershot band called West One, combined their efforts and performed as Velvet West on August 29th of that year. They played many of their classic songs like “Note Turned Blue”.
I wonder too if they had been involved with any other bands. It seems that gig was a one-off. And what about the other two members of the band? What happened to them?
It is pretty interesting that they played alongside important bands in the late 80s and early 90s, but for some reason I don’t think their name is well known for indiepop fans. Would be great to find more details about them! Who remembers them?!
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