Day 116. It has been a lazy long weekend for me. So not much news, but here are some good finds from this past weekend.
Pop Filter: Australia keeps putting out terrific guitar pop bands. The latest one I’ve discovered is Pop Filter from Melbourne. They actually will be releasing an album on August 21st and will be titled “Banksia”. Three of the songs from the 11-track record are available to preview, “Big Yellow Van”, “Laughing Falling” and “Romance at the Petrol Station”.
The Radio Dept.: The superb Swedish band is back with a 7″! This record has “You’re Lookin’ at My Guy” on the A side and “Could You be the One” on the B side. Both songs are really good! The vinyl is limited to 500 copies and there are even t-shirts if you like that as well!
Blue Tomorrows: this Portland band has been recommended in the blog before, so we know a bit what they are about. The three girls behind the band craft breezy and poppy tunes and their last effort, “Violet Shine”, is no exception. A nice summery single.
Dreams of Empire: the Brighton band is also back with a new digital single. It is a cover of the song “Reflection” originally written and recorded by Intermere, the side project of Andrew from Dreams of Empire.
Rosehip Teahouse: another digital single, it seems that’s the trend these days… and it is also a very good single of course. This Cardiff project has just unveiled in their Bandcamp the song “Regretting It”. A nice lo-fi bedroom pop song.
—————————————————————–
Recorded at Boberg Studios in Hamburg, in December 1984, the “Love in the Afternoon” mini-album was the only release the band put out. And then, German friends tell me if I am wrong, they disappeared into oblivion.
The mini-album was actually released in 1985, with no label. It was probably a self release as it had that famous “SRT” as a label and catalog “SRT5KL406”. It included 7 songs, four on the A side: “Letting Go”, “Stand Back”, “Love in the Afternoon” and “Persuasion”, and three on the B side, “The Other Side of Midnight”, “The Feeling is Love” and “Rio Verde”.
The band was a duo, formed by Herbert Behrens on keyboards and Andrew Clark on vocals. Was it a German-British duo perhaps? I ask because of their names. Or American? The sleeve doesn’t give us any other details. The front cover has a photo of a woman (who is she?), and on the back a photo of the band.
Looking for more information, after really liking their track “Persuasion”, I find that Herbert Behrens, also called HerbieB, was born in Hamburg and actually started his music career as a drummer. Then he would move to the UK and there he toured and recorded with his band Java Jive. Does this mean there are other recordings by the band? Recordings made in the UK and not in Germany as the album?
He studied at the University of Buckingham and after finishing returned to Germany. Afterwards he would move to Mallorca in Spain where he would launch his solo career as HerbieB recording at least one demo CD I believe sometime around 2004.
And what about Andrew Clark? I couldn’t find any information about him. It looks like at some point they just disappeared from the face of the Earth. The record, I haven’t found a copy for myself yet. I think only 1,000 copies were pressed.
But did they play live a lot? It is mentioned they toured the UK. Who did they support? Or maybe who supported them? Would be good to find out. Who remembers them?!
::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
One Response to “:: Java Jive”
I was at university with them but did not know then but have some publicity material reusing to the album Love in the Afternoon