Acrobatic Champions - Inbuilt Psychedelia (1986) C60

Here's the last I have of Mr. Mercer, another one of those I would have released on my Do Easy label but for being skint and having lost all enthusiasm for underground tapes at the time. I didn't actually even ask for this one. He just gave it to me as a compilation of previously unreleased material, even though I hadn't got around to doing anything about releasing Strange Days, his previous tape. All I can remember is that he'd been recording a tape called On the Beach in the college sound studio - all on TEAC using Eno's old EMS suitcase synth and with a bit of a Gira influence on his vocals, fucking excellent and maybe the best thing he'd ever done, I thought - and that was going to be a Do Easy tape, and then suddenly it wasn't and he gave me this instead, and I disliked the title due to my hatred of Pink Floyd; and then nothing happened until last week when I digitised it, and here we are.

With hindsight, this may be the best thing I've heard done by the man - given that I never had a copy of On the Beach: moody soundtrack or ambient work which pisses all over Lustmord, quite frankly, and does a lot of those things which would allow Nine Inch Nails to buy Charles Manson's old house some years later.

World of Alun seems to have been some sort of dig at the late Alun Jones, the former Apricot Brigade drummer who went on to play with the Dentists for a while. Whatever our boy's beef was, I expect it was most likely unjustified and I actually happened to think quite highly of Alun, so I was going to abbreviate the title to just TWOA or something, but ultimately couldnae be bothered. You can't really make out the words anyway, so I don't suppose it matters.

Download the eight tracks and cover by clicking on this link.

Tracks:
1 - Music for the End of It All
2 - Fish Head
3 - Pointless Song
4 - Another Pirhana After the Tape
5 - World of Alun
6 - Be Myself Again
7 - Marriage in a Western Town
8 - So Excited

Return to Index

More Dovers Stuff...

Every Sunday I stand before the shelf of about three hundred cassette tapes thus far liberated from the slightly larger collection still at my mum's place back in England, then pick a couple of tapes to digitise - usually something by the Pre-War Busconductors which no-one reading this is ever likely to hear, and something for this blog based on whoever hasn't had a tape on here for download in the last couple of weeks - just to mix it up a bit and keep things moving, alternating between lost classics and the stuff no-one but me cares about. This week I picked a Dovers tape and noticed that it contained half of a gig in addition to the usual rehearsal material. The second half of the same gig had been recorded on a different tape in the name of maximising space and avoiding ownership of too many cassettes with just a few things recorded on the beginning of side one. It seemed a bit mad to present a recording of a gig in separate instalments, so I've digitised the lot and rationalised the material into the equivalent of three cassettes (as listed below).

Download the tapes by clicking on the titles and following the links:

The Dovers - Rehearsals 7 & 8 (1988) C90.

Both rehearsals at my miserable bedsit in Glencoe Road, Chatham and recorded quietly so as to avoid enraging the stinking alcoholic in the next bedsit. Tracks 1 to 11 date from Sunday the 10th of January, 1988, and I think the rest were Saturday the 16th of January with this bloke called Andy Bibby sat watching, smoking my snouts, drinking my tea, and probably chuckling away in the background. One of these tracks slags off a load of Medway bands, but I'm not going to tell you which one so you'll just have to download it and listen to the lot if you care that much. Fatback is the Link Wray song, obviously.

Tracks:
1 - Callin' My Boots Dave
2 - Wanna Buy Me Some Boots
3 - Beat Me Black & Blue
4 - The Insect
5 - Misery List
6 - Batman's Personal Friend
7 - Wanna Buy Me Some Boots
8 - Callin' My Boots Dave
9 - Fatback
10 - Mammy
11 - Come Off Everybody
12 - Brown House Music
13 - Piece of Meat
14 - Pizza to Go
15 - Come Off Everybody
16 - Beat Me Black & Blue

The Dovers - Rehearsals 9 & 10 (1988) C90.

Our numbers expanded seeing as we had a gig coming up. Chris, our drummer from Total Big, was available once again to bash the skins, plus Martin de Sey was now living in the gloomy bedsit directly beneath mine, so it seemed like it might be fun to have him play bass. Martin was a founding member of the Cravats and had previously been in To The Max with Carl and Chris - and also Smilin' Paul Mercer of Apricot Brigade and Envy if anyone is interested. This rehearsal (the first eighteen tracks) was in the garage of Chris's dad's house in Kemsley on Sunday the 17th of January, 1988. I'm not sure about the date of the remaining three tracks, except that we were back down to just Carl and myself in the wake of the Sunset Strip gig and Carl had obviously just got hold of his Yamaha REX-50 effects thing. Many Years Ago is a cover of a Sexton Ming song - whom both of us worshipped as a God at the time - and I'm Not Telling You was just us mucking about with the riff from I'm Telling You by the Sceptres, which was Martin's previous band.

Tracks:
1 - I Wanna Be Your Dog
2 - He Believes 
3 - Hail Fellow Well Met
4 - Batman's Personal Friend
5 - Top of the Pops
6 - A.I.D.X.
7 - Louie Louie
8 - I'm Not Telling You
9 - Pizza to Go I
10 - Pizza to Go II
11 - Are You My Mother? I
12 - Are You My Mother? II
13 - The Breakthrough I
14 - The Breakthrough II
15 - The Insect
16 - Big Girl's Blouse
17 - Rock Sandwich
18 - Silver Machine
19 - Many Years Ago
20 - The Insect
21 - The Breakthrough (extended) 

The Dovers - Live Sunset Strip 27.1.88 (1988) C46.

It was billed as a duos evening, and we had been asked because we were ordinarily a duo. Typically there were four people in the band by the time the gig happened, although Martin had stepped in to replace Alan Mason who hadn't been able to make it after all. Alan had also been supposed to play with us at a gig at the Half Moon in Putney (or wherever it was) on Thursday the 14th of January, except that one had fallen through. Anyway, we played but not very well, or at least nothing like as "good" as it had been at the rehearsal. The other acts were Whistling Vic and Rocking Richard - featuring former Dentist Ian who particularly impressed me by puffing away on his pipe whilst drumming; and then Billy Childish and Russ Wilkins who put on a fucking astonishing performance - just two men with guitars, bellowing away and stamping their size fifteens to keep the rhythm. It was amazing.

I'm not sure who is singing on the final track. I suppose it's Carl, although there are mutterings about getting in a guest vocalist just before the track starts. We had talked about getting Andy Fraser of the Martini Slutz and Unlucky Fried Kitten in - which is probably why he's mentioned on the poster - but he reckons he was fitting a carpet at his mum's place that evening, amongst other things. Maybe it was Prez. Maybe it was me.

Tracks:
1 - (introduction)
2 - Hail Fellow Well Met
3 - He Believes 
4 - Beat Me Black & Blue 
5 - I Wanna Be Your Dog
6 - Keep Your Dreams A'Burning
7 - The Insect
8 - A.I.D.X.
9 - Are You My Mother? 
10 - I Wanna Be Your Dog

Return to Index

Apricot Brigade - Practice September 1985 + Demos (1986) C60

Apricot Brigade were Paul Mercer (guitar and vocals), Rajun Amin (guitar), Andrew Weatherall (bass), and Alun Jones on drums. They played live in and around the Medway towns and had a reasonable following. Alun Jones went on to play drums for the Dentists, to be replaced by me pressing the start button on a drum machine as the band changed its name to Envy, which is another story. I'm not sure quite what the creative dynamic was in Apricot Brigade, although a few of the songs were written by Paul, and as such exist somewhere in earlier form as the work of whichever name he was using for his solo material at the time - Killing Them, for example, was essentially a reworking of his own Tin Men. Paul gave me this tape either prior to my joining the band when they turned into Envy, or because I had asked for a copy of their demo or whatever. The rest of the tape was filled with material relating to his own solo work as No Fun KXK, three tracks recorded live at the Good Intent, and some instrumentals recorded as backing tracks for a live performance - also a truncated studio version of Tin Men.

So it's a cassette of odds and sods with Paul Mercer as the element common to all of the tracks. Personally I always thought he was an immense talent - although his greatest work (in my view) was probably the solo studio tape for which you have some of the backing tracks here - Not This Time and others - but I don't actually have that tape with me, so here's this one. In sticking this tape up for download I've broken my own personal code of at least asking people before I hand their shit out to strangers for free in so much as I've made no attempt to get in touch with Paul Mercer and ask him if this is okay, because he'd probably tell me to piss off on principal, so bollocks then. We fell out. I don't even know why. Apparently I think I'm cool, but I'm not, or something. Whatever.

Anyway, even with this in mind, this tape still sounds fucking amazing to me, and Jesus this line-up of Apricot Brigade were good!

Download the eighteen songs and cover by clicking on this link.

Tracks:
Apricot Brigade
1 - Killing Them
2 - Trust
3 - Pale Orchid
4 - All Our Tomorrows
5 - Howling Moon
6 - Dawn in the Hollow
7 - Parry
8 - Martha
9 - Pale Orchid

No Fun KXK
10 - Tin Men
11 - Heart Like Glass
12 - Camilla
13 - The Black Bridge
14 - Not This Time
15 - No Sound
16 - Tin Men
17 - Tabbs
18 - Memorium

Return to Index