Day 64. How is everyone holding?
Weekend again. Halfway through May. Days start to go fast.
New finds here:
The Beths: the superb New Zealand band is releasing a new album very soon. It will be called “Jump Rope Gazer” and will be out on July 10 on Carpark Records. This is not all, the band has put together a video for the song “I’m Not Getting Excited” that sounds and looks great! Definitely we can’t miss this one!
Chavales: the latest on Elefant is a digital single by this duo formed by Daniel Rodriguez from Mallorca and Javier Paredes from Extremadura. Influenced by La Mode, Estación Victoria and The Human League this new song is terribly catchy, makes me think the label wants to continue placing their music on all the Spanish Netflix series. I wouldn’t be surprised if this song “Ey, Que Estoy Aquí” happens to follow that route!
The Wolfhounds: “Electric Music” is the name of the new album the legendary band will be releasing on July 3rd on the very fine A Turntable Friend Records. The album will be available on LP and CD and will have 9 songs total. Right now we can preview the first track on Bandcamp. It is called “Can’t See the Light”.
Ballboy: another classic band. The Edinburgh based band has been publishing some live sets during the time of Pandemic. I am not sure when where these recorded but this new live set includes the songs “Godzilla vs. the Island of Manhattan (With You and I Somewhere in-between)”, “Olympic Cyclist” and “Oh Lord”.
Flannel: my friend Tomohiro has remastered two of his songs, “Little” and “At Least I” and they are now on Bandcamp. These are timeless songs, beautifully crafted pop. Dreamy and sweet. It is always a good time to rediscover him!
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The Office from Belgium. First time I’ve heard them. Stumbled upon them on Youtube and thought the song “That Girl Too” sounded cool. But who were they? Did they release more records? I honestly don’t know. Need to do some research.
Then I stumbled upon more songs, “Your Loving” and “Liverpool”. Actually “Your Loving” might be my favourite one! Wow! What a track! I really need to find more.
It turns out these two last songs, “Your Loving” and “Liverpool” were A and B sides respectively on a 7″ released in 1986 by Colour Records (CR 615). This was actually the first record the band put out. What a sound really! Definitely influenced by, no surprise, the Liverpool pop scene of the time.
The 2nd 7″ was the one with “That Girl Too” on the A side and “Girl Scouts” on the flipside. This record came out in 1988 again on Colour Records (CR 804). This label put out a bunch of records mostly in the 80s. It was founded by Marc van Beveren in the city of Gent. Did the band hailed from there as well?
The 7″ had some etchings on runout according to Discogs. The A side said “Enjoy it – The Office” while the B side said “The Hit?……..”. Happily this 7″ has scans of the sleeve on Discogs and I notice that on the back sleeve there are a bunch of brands that sponsored the release! Even big names like FIAT! Other ones were Cafe Barfly, Atlas Reizen, Piet Lair, AnHyp, LP Center, RAF and Bossuyt. I suppose all of these were local businesses. And these businesses were based in Waregem, not in Gent. So, does it make more sense for them to be from Waregem? I would think so!
Then on the labels I finally find a name, that of Frédéric Maenhout! Interestingly enough he would later be part of a band called The Candy Dates who I’ve been meaning to write about! Small world! But what other band members were in The Office?
The band appeared on four compilations too. The first dates from 1987, an LP compilation called “The 2nd Belgian 6T’s Boom Vol. 1” where they appear with the track “Your Loving”. This release came out on Waterloo Sunset Records (WSR004) and 007 Records. That same year this same song would appear on the LP comp “From Behind the Bushes” released by Mad Colour Record (MCR 001). It seems this release was actually a co-release of their label, Colour Records, and the magazine Mad in Belgium. It makes sense.
Lastly their track “The Daze” appeared on the LP compilation “The Belgian Garagemania Vol. 3” in 1988. This LP was released by Boom! Records (Boom 3). and Waterloo Sunset Records (RUSS 106).
In 2008 the Belgian label Coincidence Records put a band called The Office on a digital compilation called “2 Years of Coincidences” with the track “Ultimatum”. I am not 100% sure if it is the same band. So I will need some confirmation. Other bands in this comp are techno and electronic bands. And the years don’t match. Who would know?
As you can expect not much more info about the band. So I really hope someone can answer all my questions!
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Listen
The Office – Your Loving
