Family of Noise - Rough Versions (1996) C60

Bit of a dud this week, I'm afraid, but no-one's forcing you to listen to this shit and maybe it will sound as amazing to you in 2019 as it apparently did to me in 1996.

Yes, 1996: I'd just left Academy 23 (or possibly UNIT - can't remember what we were called at the time) because learning all those progressive rock symphonies was beginning to feel a bit too much like homework and I was getting tired of playing other people's songs, not least because I thought mine were better. I was going through a bit of a pre-mid-life crisis crisis and trying to reinvent myself as something less ridiculous, and thusly decided there was no good reason why cunts shouldn't be learning to play my fucking songs for a change. The clock was ticking, so I placed an advert in Melody Maker calling out for musicians with the intention of Family of Noise becoming something which played gigs and got paid. I got a few replies, more than I expected, and made up a demo tape to send out to the authors of those responses which hadn't obviously been prank calls. I was going to reinvent myself as some sort of hybrid of Courtney Love and Marc Almond and these were to be the songs you will be playing, I told my potential minions, should you be good enough to join my amazing band.

The first guy was an Elton John style keyboardist and an American then living next door to Emma Thompson. He said my tape reminded him of Fad Gadget, which seemed fair enough, and he was probably the gayest man I've ever met. He was also massively talented and way out of my league, so I suspect had replied more for the sake of making friends with other weirdos in a foreign country.

The second guy was about fifteen and lived in Chatham with an older, seemingly long-suffering girlfriend. He raved about Hummingbird and then strummed and sang one of his own songs, proposing we might add it to the set. It was called Morphine and suggested not so much that he'd had experience of the drug, but that he listened to a lot of Nirvana records. I reversed from the flat giving a series of positive McCartney-esque thumbs aloft signals, got back to London, then phoned the poor cunt and told him I'd changed my mind.

Finally I met Gareth who, so it turned out, lived around the corner from me. He was already in a band, specifically a popular Queen covers band as their John Deacon, and I don't think he'd been particularly impressed by my tape, but something I'd said had apparently given me away as a fellow Doctor Who fan (this was before it came back to the screen and was shit in 2005), so he got in touch mainly out of curiosity, and we never formed a band but have been pals ever since.

The universe was trying to tell me something, and that was to not bother forming a band. With hindsight I realise that the universe was probably right. While these tracks aren't entirely without their qualities, I couldn't really sing and the lyrics of which I was once so proud are unfortunately spattered with all sorts of faintly ludicrous references intended to make it sound a bit edgy and dangerous, which it actually wasn't.

The first four were from New Golden Age; I don't think My Remaining Eye ever appeared on anything; Hummingbird and The Girl Who Has Everything were eventually recycled as War Drum tracks; New Breed became UNIT's This Hour's Mine, which is a bit of a sore point; Cenotaph, my token dalliance with martial industrial bollocks, turned up on some UNIT tape I haven't got around to digitising (and probably won't bother); and Shit Factory (which was massively influenced by Third Door from the Left and was recorded in Lewisham with the involvement of the late Andrew Cox of Pump and MFH) ended up on War Drum's Year One tape which I haven't bothered digitising as most of the tracks were from other tapes. Also, the original master is a C54 which truncated the end of Shit Factory. As this tape is a compilation, and not so much a straight digitisation as a reconstruction from the original source tapes, there didn't seem to be much point in truncating the last track for the sake of authenticity, so it's the full version.

Download these ten ill-advised tracks and cover by clicking on this link.

Tracks:
1 - Song of the Snake
2 - New Face in SE13
3 - New Golden Age
4 - Tin Men
5 - My Remaining Eye
6 - Hummingbird [inst. version]
7 - New Breed
8 - The Girl Who Has Everything
9 - Cenotaph
10 - Shit Factory
 
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v/a - Paranoia is Awareness (1982) C90

Regardless of anything else, it really has to be said that Larry Peterson knew how to put a compilation together. A Sudden Surge of Power, which he released on his own Cause for Concern label, remains pretty much my favourite of its kind, and frankly it still pisses over better publicised tapes from the same era, notably the undoubtedly decent but somewhat overrated Red Sand. I'll put A Sudden Surge of Power up here at some point in the not too distant future, but in the meantime, here's Paranoia is Awareness - Larry's first compilation, maybe not the classic that was the later collection, but a fucking good showing nevertheless.

Because I'm a generous old fucker, I've scanned the A4 booklet which came with the tape, so that's included as a series of JPEG files in the folder which comes with the download. My copy was customised by various members of the Apostles and the Assassins of Hope, adding sarcastic commentary to their own respective pages before Larry got the thing to the safety of an envelope with my name and address written on it, so although I've cleaned up all the scans as much as I could so as to get rid of yellowing, coffee stains and so on, I left the thoughts of Chairman Martin as they were because it seemed right to do so.

The inclusion of the booklet also means I don't need to spend too much time telling you about these artists. You should be familiar with the Apostles, Matfield & the Pond and We Be Echo if you've been following this blog, and Third Door from the Left were the group of which Kevin Thorne was a part before he started recording as We Be Echo. The track here is actually an excerpt from a Third Door from the Left live tape released by Cause for Concern, one which I might put up here providing it hasn't been reissued by Vinyl on Demand (I still haven't got around to checking, although I know Frank did Face the Firing Squad on vinyl). You will no doubt recognise the Nocturnal Emissions tracks which first appeared on their classic Fruiting Body album which you own, or you should own, and if you don't, get the fuck away from me. I think Plastic Bag were pals of Nigel from Nocturnal Emissions as they had a mailing address around the corner in Camberwell and used to put out a zine called Apocalypso a Go Go, of which one issue was full of extremely naughty pictures and another was a special on Nocturnal Emissions. They also recorded some great harsh electronics as Brides of Christ II. Finally, I seem to recall seeing Nervous Legion mentioned in the cassette column in Sounds a good year before Dave Henderson started the whole Wild Planet thing, so I have the impression they were something significant which vanished off the radar just as I was becoming aware of this sort of stuff. I'm sure Larry told me that the guy behind Nervous Legion committed suicide, but I could be getting my wires crossed. Terrorist, as it appears on the tape, seems to end with the sort of repetitive scratches which suggest it may have been taped from a 7" single (can't be heard here due to my cleaning up process), which is intriguing; so if anyone knows anything about Nervous Legion, I'd love to know more. I've always thought those two Nervous Legion tracks were the bollocks.

Download all thirty-five tracks, cover and twenty-page booklet by clicking on this link.

Tracks:
1 - The Apostles - Redifusion Refugee
2 - The Apostles - Escaping Again
3 - Matfield & the Pond - Toxteth
4 - Matfield & the Pond - Paem Wyrd (theme)
5 - Matfield & the Pond - All My Toys
6 - Nervous Legion - Terrorist
7 - Nervous Legion - Gas
8 - NCP - Wild Thing / Johnny B. Goode / Standard Punk Song
9 - Assassins of Hope - Prisoner of Law
10 - Assassins of Hope - Rejection
11 - The Cause for Concern - Some Suffer
12 - Tom Castle - Adric
13 - Red Herring - Newman's New Trees I (advertisement)
14 - Red Herring - EZ Chew (advertisement)
15 - Tom Castle - This Place is So Rewarding
16 - Red Herring - Extranose (advertisement)
17 - Red Herring - Newman's New Trees II (advertisement)
18 - Tom Castle - You Stop Me (Doing What I Want)
19 - Red Herring - Newman's New Trees III (advertisement)
20 - APF Brigade - Dreaming
21 - APF Brigade - Burnt Offering
22 - APF Brigade - 1805-1945
23 - Third Door from the Left - Live at the Ship
24 - Nocturnal Emissions - LD50
25 - Nocturnal Emissions - Routine Surveillance Exercise
26 - The Event Group - Seward Rap
27 - Michael Jones - Uncle & Auntie Bastard
28 - Michael Jones - Delicious Enemy
29 - Michael Jones - Dance of the Wild Brains
30 - Michael Jones - Drinking Like Mad
31 - Plastic Bag - In the Corridors of a Train
32 - Swinging 3-Man Junta - Untitled
33 - Swinging 3-Man Junta - Larry is a Rock Star
34 - Alien Kulture - The Burden
35 - Tom Castle - Doors of the Mind

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Soul Providers - Calli Yei (1998) C90

I'm not sure there's much I can say about this third Soul Providers tape which hasn't already been said either here or here. Ed, Steve and myself recorded this whole thing live onto tape in my front room on the last day of October, 1998 - which I suppose would have been Halloween. I suppose we should have made something of that, but never mind. Aside from a couple of minutes of me testing the levels right at the beginning, this pretty much works as a single track, and can hopefully be listened to as such. Anyone who has been listening to these things as I post them might also note that this one sounds more expensive than previous efforts. Either I had just borrowed some new fancy effects box and was shoving everything through that, or maybe we were just getting better at it, whatever it was.

Trainspotters might like to note use of a certain drum pattern at one point, a drum pattern which older boys and girls will possibly remember from either Third Door from the Left's Under Attack or even Cabaret Voltaire's Nag Nag Nag. The (admittedly not very interesting) story behind this is that back in the mists of time I asked Kevin Thorne of Third Door from the Left whether he had bought Cabaret Voltaire's old drum machine or something, but it turned out that Stephen Mallinder had done him a cassette of rhythms for his general use, and so Kevin very kindly ran me off a copy. So there you go.

For what it may be worth, the name Shoulder Lion - which I enjoyed for its Dadaist potential - came from an amusingly (to me) poor translation of Acolmiztli, the name or possibly title of a Prehispanic ruler of the Mexican city of Texcoco which appeared in some library book or other. A more accurate translation might be Lion of the Acolhua People, except miztli means feline rather than any specific type of feline, and the name of the Acolhua - one of those cultural groups who have since been erroneously identified as Aztecs - includes a term referring to a shoulder, or which can be taken to stand for the same, but otherwise doesn't directly translate without an essay's worth of explanations.

Download the tape and cover by clicking on this link.

Tracks:
1 - Set Up
2 - Shoulder Lion part one
3 - Shoulder Lion part two


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