Well, you know for someone like me this is totally evocative- listening to the Objeks again, I could almost be in the Vault listening to Negative Conversation; the recordings are authentically true to their live performance. And that speed-and-sincerity thing, exemplified by Again and Again's Wrong Again.
And that running bass-line in Poison Girls' Cat's Eye. We were inventing our own way to play instruments rather then kowtowing to what the music industry wanted. The music industry for us was the people who came to our gigs, many of them in bands themselves. It was a tidal wave of activity; you would move through one song to another without noticing, barely catching them on recordings.
Ah! Here's Air Conditioning by The Lillettes: they played this at the Punkbrighton Alldayer last October and it sounded just as good.
Renaldo and the Loaf have reinvented electronica in their Frankenstein's laboratory, where someone has been listening to reggae and insisted that it has a place here in this mix of the song Scottish Shuffle! I think this is my favourite track.
There's a version of Commander Lonely by The Chefs, a song that I wrote while in a rather dismal frame of mind.
I think a lot of bass players on this compilation were probably borrowing the same Ampeg amp, which was rolled generously from town to town and gig to gig. We had all been listening to The Monochrome Set, you see, and secretly coveted Andy Warren's sound (and his cool, but we couldn't manage that at the seaside).
The only thing that's missing is Smeggy and the Cheesey Bits's Stephen Was A Mod.
Oh, and Fan Club, too, but I gather they were hard to track down. Pete is a street person now, and Dave works as an office cleaner. A couple of years ago I played the Komedia with the Horns and Dave had been cleaning an office and found a copy of the Brighton Evening Argus with my picture in it and a blurb about the gig. He phoned the venue and I put the treasures on the guest list, and they both turned up for the gig. I was delighted to see them and we had a fantastic chat.
I had a tape of their beautiful song Moonbeam unitl they came to a party at my house in Camberwell and ran off with it. I do still have their vinyl 45, Night Caller, which is a Velvet Underground-ish romp through the dark streets of Brighton, and also an ancient red and green cardy which they dug out of one of their many bin bags of clothes and gave to me one night when I was round there for a cup of tea.
Out on Chuck Warner's label, see www.hyped2death.com
1 comment:
Hi Helen,
Andy doesn't remember but it is a sweet story thanks for telling me! x
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