Day 67. Not much news now. Just a reminder that the fanzine is out and you should all get copies. That’s it for now.

Very soon I should have more news I hope! This year is making everything slower than usual!

Finds from over the weekend:

Good Dog: Suse Bear is behind this band that will be releasing a new album on May 22nd on Lost Map Records. The album, consisting of 15 tracks, seems promising. Especially thanks the song “Floating”, one of two that we can preview at the moment. Some interesting facts about here are that she has worked with The Pastels and Tracyanne & Danny.

Jetstream Pony: Back in April I was telling everyone to check out “It’s Fine”. This was the only song available to preview out of their upcoming album. Well now there are two more that sounds amazing. They are “Trapped in Amber” and “Gone to Ground”. For sure this is looking like an album not to be missed this year, three songs that sound glorious. The album will be out on May 22nd!

eGgs: the French band will be back on June 26 with a new 7″ on Howlin’ Banana Records. On this terrific 7″, with a funny photo of a kid (maybe a band member?) dressed as a Power Ranger, there will be three songs: “Still Life”, “Life During Wartime” and “Guess What”. If you like to jangle, this is for you.

The Telephone Numbers: now a San Francisco band. Just discovered them and I am glad I did. The band has just released a 4 song guitar pop record called “Pictures of Lee”. It sounds really nice, like classic 90s American indiepop. Sadly it looks like this release is only available digitally.

The Finest Drops: and now we cross the Atlantic and head to Newcastle, UK. The Finest Drops just released their “Safe Like No Other” EP a few weeks ago and it sounds great. Four songs are included in it, “Safe Like No Other”, “Loss is Love”, “Lights” and “For Another Time”. Digital only.

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I didn’t remember but a quick search showed me that I had bought the sole 7″ single by Whipcrackaway back in 2009. 10 years later I am writing a post about them, of a 7″ that was released even before, in 1986!

To be honest I know very little about them. I know John Peel played the A side, “The Horses Tale”, as a clip from his radio show, dating from September 4th 1986, is on Youtube. But what else can we find out?

The 7″ was released on a pretty important label at the time, In Tape (IT 035).  This was Marc Riley’s label. Marc is much more known now as a BBC DJ. On this label he would release superb acts like The June Brides, Yeah Yeah Noh or Rote Kapelle.

The songs on the 7″ were “The Horses Tale” on the A side, and “Gingham Dress” and “Betrayed” on the B side. The music is quite poppy, but it definitely has a bit of what they called cow-punk at the time, some country influences. “The Horses Tale” is a fun song, with female vocals, that is catchy and all. But of course you’d think more USA than England if you didn’t know that the band hailed from the British isles.

The sleeve gives us band members and that’s always something to thank. We know on vocals were Ian Marlon Moss, Koyote Karen, Rhinestone Rhonda and Stetson Sue. On guitars there was Simon Taylor and Neil Moss. On drums we find Nick Kokotaylo. The songs were produced by The Box Team and were recorded at “Touch” in Denton and at “Box” in Heckmondwike.. A credit that I don’t understand completely is that Goldie played “Fury”. What does that mean? Other funny credits are included for example it says hair by Carl, meringues eaten by Jeff Brown, unbiased opinions by Family Abused by Stuart and Wendy.

The photo on the front sleeve is credited to Paul Keelagher.

“The Horses’ Tale” would also appear on a compilation album called “Just A Mish Mash” that In Tape (IT 47) released in 1987. This release even had a US version.

Then I stumble onto some important information on the German Shepherd Records Bandcamp. There is a release uploaded for a band called The Bears from Belle Vue Zoo. The interesting thing is that Ian Moss, guitar player in Whipcrackaway, had been in this band. It mentions that before The Bears from Belle Vue Zoo, he had been in a band called The DoDos. And after, he was in the band Oochikomis. After the Oochikomis he went to lead the band Whipcrackaway. After the demise of Whipcrackaway he wasn’t involved with music until he released a record in 1993 with the Stepbrothers, also on the German Shepherd Records. It looks, after checking all of these three releases on Bandcamp that he was based in the Salford area, close to Manchester.

Interesting enough, I would find that actually Ian Moss is the co-owner of German Shepherd Records. It is no surprise then that there are other releases here that feature him like the ones by Ian and Neil Moss or  Ian Moss and Talented Friends. But what about the other members of Whipcrackaway? Were they involved in any of the bands he has put out?

But there’s more. There’s a book by Stephen Dobson called “The Man Who Killed the Hamsters – a biography of Ian Moss” that was published in 2012. Here it tells us that the song was called not “The Horses Tale” but “The Horses Tail”! You can read how the contact between Ian and Marc Riley happened, and how the girls, Sue, Rhonda and Karen convinced Ian to be part of the band. It seems it was originally recorded as demo, and it was the re-recorded, but they still used the demo version for the single. The newly recorded track would end up in the compilation I talked about earlier. The other songs, the ones recorded at Hekmanwike had the help of Bill Clarke, who played for the George Hamilton IV band. We also learn that it was the three girls who wrote “Gingham Dress”. It does look though that the recording was a bit of a disaster and things didn’t get better, so the band ended up splitting soon enough.

Quite interesting!j

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Listen
Whipcrackaway – The Horse’s Tale