I was a big fan of Cyclefly when I was 15. I can't remember how I first heard their music but a combination of events happened in a short period of time that made me a fan: I heard a song somehow (maybe on the Radio One Rock Show? Maybe on a Metal Hammer or Rock Sound free cd. It was almost certainly the song Crawl Down, one of the highlights from their first album), Kerrang! Magazine had written about them a couple of times, and it was announced that they'd be supporting Bush on their tour of their third album, The Science of Things, which a bunch of us had got tickets for. I enjoyed their set that night and eagerly awaited their debut album, Generation Sap, coming out. I rushed into town to get it on the first day it came out; I remember being particularly excited to buy a band's debut album on the day it was released (in the hope that one day they'd be huge and I could say "I got their first album the day it came out". 17 years later and I've never found myself boasting of that out loud…).
I picked up a bunch of their singles over the following months very cheaply at some record fairs and was very excited to read on their website that they were working on a second album, at the time called Tales From the Fish Bowl, or something like that. Then things went very quiet until 2002 when they announced the new album would be called Crave. They played some shows ahead of the release and I saw them in The Joiners with a band called Cortizone. I enjoyed the show a lot, and grabbed a setlist at the end, that has lived inside this 7" for most of the last 15 years.
The most curious thing about the setlist is that they start and end with this single, No Stress. I've never known a band to do that before - play the same song twice in their set. It was a bold move, and I think worked - Hugh commented on how catchy and familiar "that song they played last" was, not realising it was familiar because they opened with it. Anyway, the big talking point about the new album was that they somehow got one of the singers from Linkin Park to do guest vocals on a song - it was 2002, so this was big news. But for whatever reason, that wasn't a single. In fact, I think No Stress was the only single they released from that album. They didn't seem to get as much out of that Linkin Park collaboration as everyone thought they would.
The notion of No Stress needing a "radio edit" now seems incredibly ambitious - I strongly suspect these guys never made it anywhere near mainstream radio, at least not in anyway that would require a radio edit. It's been a long time since I last played Crave, so I can't put my finger on in what ways the song is edited, but it's by-the-by really. It's still a catchy song - it builds up nicely throughout and does that thing where you think it's over, then it builds up some more. They always did that well. It's a little known fact about Cyclefly (because very few people would ever care) but they had almost uniformly terrible b-sides (and I should know - see above. There was one I quite liked called Kyle, but that was about it). Small Idols is no exception to that rule. What it was about that band that meant they thought it'd be a good idea to write slower, quieter songs, I'll never know. I don't think anyone who enjoyed that band at any point was in for songs like this. Hats off to whoever kept these from getting on the albums.
A few year later I was at university and wearing my Cyclefly t-shirt, browsing through some second-hand records in the square and some guy came up to me and admired my t-shirt. I think that incident, in 2004, was the last time I spoke to anyone about Cyclefly. They certainly never made a lasting mark on music, but there was a time when I was genuinely incredibly excited about that band, so that's something. I started this blog to write down my memories about all my records, and try to appreciate the ones I've neglected. It's also nice, it turns out, to remember the bands that history will probably forget. It's easy to forget a band like Cyclefly, but they did make a mark on me once upon a time.
Format: 7"
Tracks: 2
Cost: £1.50 new
Bought: Virgin Megastore, Southampton
When: 10/04/02
Colour: Black
Etching: none
mp3s: no
