Total Big - It's Enormous (1986) C46

If you've been following this blog, you'll probably at least be aware of Total Big as a group for which I attempted to play guitar back in my days as a younger man when everything was better than it is now. If not, or if you feel you need a refresher course, please refer to other tapes listed in the index. In brief, my friends Carl and Chris had just left - or possibly been forcibly removed from - a band called To the Max which had featured both Martin de Sey and Paul Mercer, who are both represented elsewhere on this blog - except for Martin, possibly. Can't remember. Anyway, the aforementioned Carl and Chris had found To the Max a bit more rigorously structured than they liked and were keen to form a band more in tune with their own tastes / sense of humour. They vaguely knew I had a guitar, had no idea whether or not I could play it (I can't), and decided that if the worst came to the worst, I could probably knock out one-string riffs because it had worked quite well for the Cramps. Thusly didst they turn up at my place one Saturday and inform me that I was in a band. I didn't like to disagree, so we set up, went ahead, and this noise is what came out. It's a bit of a racket, although for what it may be worth, my guitaration exceeded their expectations in so much as that I could cope with bar chords in pursuit of a vaguely punky New York Dolls impersonation.

We rehearsed a lot, although really it was more like mucking about to see what would happen, and the only jams I recognise are the fruit preserve, Paul Weller's group up to and including the Setting Sons album but no further, and what happens to traffic at rush hour, so this isn't fucking jamming, it's us mucking about. After four or five bewildering but massively entertaining rehearsals, Carl and Chris made up this compilation for me, picking out things which sounded like songs, or at least like we might chisel them into sounding like songs - apart from My Baby Left Me, which I really feel we nailed first time. Having been given the tape, I drew a cover because that was the sort of thing I did. It's not exactly a greatest hits or the best of, but it's probably a better introduction - should you even require one - than all the rehearsal tapes I've already shared, and it's better than - off the top of my head - the entire Primal Scream back catalogue.

You're welcome.

 

Download the twenty-one tracks, cover and vague sense of regret by clicking on this link.

Tracks: 

1 - Rock Sandwich
2 - Keep Your Dreams A'Burnin'
3 - Armchair Maniac
4 - I Believe
5 - Robot Fun
6 - Big Smile, Baby
7 - I'm Not Losing Sleep
8 - Write It in the Air
9 - Instrumental
10 - My Baby Left Me
11 - For You I Have Nothing
12 - Reggae
13 - Simon Says
14 - When It Comes to It
15 - Cold Sore Herpes B
16 - Sofa Maniac
17 - Louie Louie
18 - Sister Ray
19 - Last Christmas
20 - Try So Hard
21 - For You

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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

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The Dovers - Rehearsals 1 & 2.1 (1987) C60

The Dovers were Carl and myself, which you will know if you've been following this blog. If you don't know, I refer you to the search function somewhere near the top of the screen, or the links to previous tapes on the left. Have a look around. It's not that difficult. This cassette is, as you may deduce, simply a tape of our first rehearsal, and some of our second - the rest of that one being on a different cassette. Sadly it doesn't really have a cover which is worth the effort of my bothering to scan the fucker, just the usual inlay card with song titles, so this week's vaguely related visual is a photograph of myself in sunglasses and Carl with dyed red hair accompanied by our friend Martin at some party or other. Martin and Carl were previously in a band called To The Max, and Martin was in the original line-up of the Cravats.

This tape was never released in any form, as is probably obvious, and will doubtless be of extremely limited interest to anyone who wasn't in the above photograph (except Martin), and if that's a problem, screw you - nobody's forcing you to download this stuff. It's my blog and I'll post what I want to post.

A brief history of the Dovers is to be found here, in the event that you couldn't be arsed to look for it during the first paragraph. The material on this tape is essentially Carl and myself seeing what we could come up with between us, having given up on the idea of recruiting new members following the Spinning Pygmies thing. Some of these songs were Total Big numbers. Others we came up with more or less on the spot. Both rehearsals were at Hollytree House in the village of Otham, Kent during the summer of 1987, and between the first and second session (which was specifically on Saturday the 22nd of August) Carl bought a Roland DR220E drum machine, so that isn't a live drummer you can hear on the final six tracks of the tape. It's minimal and pretty rough, being spawned by just the two of us with a fuzzbox and a crap tape recorder, but it still sounds good to me, particularly Counting Song - which is a work of genius by my reckoning and I have no idea why we never took it further.

Listen to me - I can count to ten!
Listen to me - I can count to ten!
If you don't believe me...

Brilliant.

Download the sixteen songs by clicking on this link.

Tracks:
1 - Callin' My Boots Dave
2 - Wanna Buy Me Some Boots
3 - Are You My Mother?
4 - Counting Song
5 - The South Bank Show
6 - Lessons in Glam
7 - Keep Your Dreams A'Burning
8 - He Believes
9 - Batman
10 - Do the Frug
11 - Here He Comes Again
12 - Baby Bankrupt
13 - Beat Me Black & Blue
14 - Do the Frug
15 - He Writes the Songs
16 - B.L.A.C.Clowns

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