The Hives - We Rule the World (The H.I.V.E.S.)

The Hives played a part in my life at two very distinct points in time. At the end of 2001 they made a splash on MTV with the single Hate to Say I Told You So and the brilliantly named compilation album Your New Favourite Band. They played the Wedgewood Rooms in Portsmouth the following January and a bunch of us went and had a great time. Then I kinda forgot about them almost as quickly as I'd got into them. I can't put my finger on why; I think I was just getting into other genres and their slightly over-the-top rock 'n' roll wasn't my thing. In fact, I've always had a fairly short tolerance for bands who dabble in rock 'n' roll - it's fun for a bit, but there's no longevity in it for me.

In 2007 I was Budapest the same time as the annual Sziget Festival and, moreover, was there the day that Nine Inch Nails were playing. At that point I'd only seen them once and was incredibly excited to see them again (it wouldn't be the only time I'd see them at a foreign festival, as I went to Southside in Germany mainly to see them on what was billed as their last-ever tour). Earlier in the day, The Hives played on the main stage and I figured I'd watch them again. To my surprise, I really, really enjoyed them, much more than I remembered doing so six years before and much more than I was expecting. They did a bit that I'm sure they do at every gig, where they pause in the middle of a song and hold their positions for far longer than is actually funny (and then even longer still). It was fun.

The following spring I found this 10" single in my local HMV whilst in town with my housemate. It was only £3 and I was still impressed by how much I enjoyed them the previous summer. At the time I knew it was a fairly unnecessary purchase - I wasn't ever going to be a collector of their music and three of the songs were remixes - but I went with it anyway. The single itself is fine, but has far more in common with New York electro-punk than The Hives ever did (think !!! or Q And Not U). It's not what I listened to The Hives to hear, but has some good moments and that slight arrogance that had appealed to me back in the day. The Pharrell Williams production credit should have been a warning sign that it wasn't going to be entirely my bag, but I didn't see that in the shop. My opinion of the remixes, as regular readers will have come to expect, are low. The two remixes of We Rule the World are similar to the point of being basically indistinguishable. The remix of Tick Tick Boom has a bit more going for it, but I suspect it was a better song to start off with - the vocals are more familiar, and the singers voice was always one of the highlights of the band.

After buying this record, The Hives fell off my radar again. If I saw they were playing a festival again, I'd definitely go along and watch, but I doubt it'd reignite my enjoyment of them as much as it did at Sziget.

Format: 10"
Tracks: 4
Cost: £3 new
Bought: Virgin Records, Cardiff
When: 09/03/08
Colour: Black
Etching: none
mp3s: no

Billy Talent - Fallen Leaves

I wrote about Billy Talent a few years ago with this post about a shaped-7" of Devil in the Midnight Mass. They were never a band I was hugely into, but I do seem to have a lot of their 7" records (three, to be precise). I'd enjoyed Try Honesty from their first album (which I eventually bought, around the time the second one was out) and found myself buying all the singles from the second, despite never hearing the full album.

Fallen Leaves was the third and, thus, the last I bought. I think I knew by this point that I wasn't going to be a huge fan of the band, but it was £1 and I enjoyed the clear picture disc. I found this around the time it was released in my local HMV, a few weeks after buying the shaped picture disc in Paris. The song is catchy enough but a little repetitive. The b-side is a live recording of the same song (lame) from MTV, but sounds terrible. I know picture discs aren't known for their quality, but this is really bad. Still, you can't argue with that price.

Format: 7", picture disc, insert
Tracks: 2
Cost: £1 new
Bought: HMV Lancaster
When: 19/02/07
Colour: Picture disc
Etching: none
mp3s: no

Billy Talent - Red Flag

Red Flag was the first Billy Talent release I bought. A few of the singles from their first album had been plastered across MTV a summer or two beforehand, so I knew the name and knew what they sounded like. About a month after buying this, I bought a cheap copy of their debut album. I never heard any of the subsequent albums.

Red Flag has a huge chorus, as you'd expect from the band, but the extent to which I find the singer's voice annoying was stretched on this song. I knew what I was getting into, so that's on me really. The b-side is a demo of what I assume is an album track. It's an ok song, but only a fraction as catchy as the single itself. I went on to buy a few more singles from the second album, but I think they were never really going to be a band for me, so that's about where I left it; everything I own by them was bought within a five-month period, after which I was done. That says a lot.

Format: 7", gatefold sleeve
Tracks: 2
Cost: £1 new
Bought: HMV, Winchester
When: 11/09/06
Colour: Red
Etching: none
mp3s: no

LostProphets - Last Train Home

Again, see here for the obligatory prefix on the band. Last Train Home was the second single from the second album, and came out a couple of weeks after the album did. I bought the album, but have so few memories of it that I barely remembered owning it. I was 19 and the appeal of a band like this was wearing off. On top of that, these songs now feel miles away from the debut album and the version of the band we'd got into. I don't remember thinking that at the time, I just didn't enjoy them so much. I think they released further albums, but I stopped paying attention shortly after buying this record.

The appeal of this 7" was almost certainly in the b-side - an acoustic version of Shinobi Vs. Dragon Ninja from the first album. For £1.50, I was mostly just curious about how that'd sound. To save you all the wonder, it sounds bad. I've always been a sucker for acoustic versions, but this just doesn't work. The riff holds up ok, but the changes into the chorus just jars. They've tried to cover it up with some faint strings, but it sounds wrong. Since I'll almost certainly never listen to the band again, it seems rather fitting to leave it on such a dud.

Format: 7"
Tracks: 2
Cost: £1.50 new
Bought: HMV, Lancaster
When: 16/02/04
Colour: Black
Etching: none
mp3s: no

LostProphets - Burn Burn

I wrote everything I need to say about LostProphets in this post about their debut album - please refer to that. I'll get this over with quickly.

Burn Burn was the first single from their second album and I bought it when it came out, not long after starting university. It was quite different in sound to the debut - less going on and felt like whoever produced it wanted them to be a very different band to the one they were on the debut. I wonder how this song would have sounded had it been on the first album. The b-side is a demo, and sounds horrendous on flimsy 7" vinyl, but had more going for it as a song than the single, I felt. I have no idea if a non-demo version of it ever appeared.

Format: 7"
Tracks: 2
Cost: £1.80 new
Bought: HMV, Lancaster
When: 03/11/03
Colour: Black
Etching: none
mp3s: no

Him - Buried Alive By Love

Him were always terrible; I knew that even when I bought this record, but when I was 16 I thought their logo was kinda cool, and so having it on a shaped picture disc was too good an opportunity to miss (plus, even the notion of a shaped picture disc seemed cool at the time). I think I also hoped that they'd end up being huge, and that a shaped picture disc of their logo would be worth something. That, obviously, didn't happen.

When I was 15 we went to see Alice Cooper for Hugh's 15th birthday. On the way in there was a person handing out promo cassettes (yes, cassettes) publicising Him's newest album, Razorblade Romance. It had snippets of four songs, including their cover of Chris Isaac's Wicked Game. I can't remember thinking much of the other songs, but I enjoyed the cover, having vague memories of the original. I'd also read a few bits about the band in Kerrang! Magazine and toyed with the idea of getting their album and becoming a fan. However, I never found a copy for a good price and quickly realised that they were probably shit, and that goth-rock wasn't a genre I wanted to be a part of. I dodged a bullet really.

However, in that short period of thinking they could be an interesting band, I did become quite fond of their logo, which adult-me knows to be thoroughly ridiculous. That, combined with the fact this record was only £1, made me decide to buy it. If, I reasoned, the music was terrible, it's not much to spend on an interesting shaped record purely the sake of looking at it. As it happened, the music was terrible, so I'm pleased it wasn't expensive. I've not spent that much time looking at it over the years, having filed it away it amongst my 10" records. The a-side has an objectionably catchy chorus, but the b-side is pure drivel.

Format: Shaped 7" picture disc

Tracks: 2

Cost: £1 new

Bought: HMV Winchester

When: 07/05/03

Colour: Picture disc

Etching: none

mp3s: no

Incubus - Talk Shows On Mute

This single is from Incubus's fourth album. In hindsight, I should have stopped after their second, but I've never been very good at that. I think for most people, when a band releases an album they're not into (let's call it Morning View) they stop listening to a band, assuming they've "gone shit". I've always been willing to give bands the benefit of doubt, which usually means buying the album after the shit one too. In almost every case, this has been a mistake as, invariably, the next is even worse (let's call it A Crow Left of the Murder). I'll never learn, but one day it'll pay off and I'll be glad of it.

Talk Shows On Mute was from A Crow Left of the Murder, an album I'd bought a few months beforehand, which means I knew the song wasn't very good. However, it's quite likely that when I saw this 7" in my local HMV I couldn't remember exactly which song it was; playing it now, it is remarkably unremarkable for a single. It's unmemorable for a b-side, let alone a late-album filler track, so how it ended up a single I don't know.

How it ended up in my record collection is an easy mystery to unpick - it's on coloured vinyl, and has a live version of Vitamin, a song from the era of them being the band people wanted them to be. That said, the bongo solo emphasises that they were just preppy dicks really (something I should've noticed much earlier). Somewhere in there, apparently, is a cover of Hello by Lionel Richie, but if there is it's just a verse and hard to pick out. Side B is basically just one song, so implying there are two on the sleeve seems a bit misleading.

Format: 7"
Tracks: 3
Cost: £1.50 new
Bought: HMV, Lancaster
When: 07/06/04
Colour: Yellow
Etching: none
mp3s: no

Plan B - No Good

I continued buying Plan B records long after the point when I should have stopped. This is a prime example of one such record. The LP had been out a whole year and I found this 12" of No Good in my local HMV. The song was one I was familiar with from the 7"s and it did little for me - in a lot of ways it was the exact opposite of the Plan B I'd got into; a guy rapping over an acoustic guitar. It wasn't a surprise that the album had gone that way - it was probably going to sell more records, sadly (although I wonder if that wasn't the case in the end).

Anyway, I got this one afternoon in Lancaster. Term had just finished in my last year and I was heading back to Winchester for Glastonbury, before returning to Lancaster a week later to get my final results and get drunk a few last times before leaving university permanently (as it happened, I couldn't get my results when I went back because my result was on the border of two grades, so I had to wait another few weeks. Still, it was fun going back for those last few nights of carnage. I've never returned to Lancaster). Knowing I was going to spend 10 hours on the train over a week, I went to HMV to buy some dvds to watch on my laptop, and found the Die Hard trilogy boxset for a very reasonable price, which certainly made the train journey much less painful.

I also found this 12" and decided to pick it up. I don't know why - it's certainly by no means an essential purchase. I think I'd been in the habit for the past four years of buying whatever vinyl I could get my hands on up there that I felt I had to. It's rather fitting that my last purchase up there was so terrible, in a way.

Like I said, the single itself does little for me. Therefore, it should come as no surprise that the two remixes do even less. The second in particular is just mindless in what the remix adds. Chase & Status were pretty popular at the time, but I couldn't see the appeal. It wasn't my thing, I guess. Where Ya From? was another album-track, but here with added vocals by JME and Skepta, which might be of interest to some people, but really means very little to me.

Format: 12"

Tracks: 4

Cost: £3.60 new

Bought: HMV Lancaster

When: 28/06/07

Colour: Black

Etching: none

mp3s: no

Plan B - Live at the Pet Cemetery EP

No More Eatin' was one of the few good songs on Plan B's debut album that hadn’t been knocking around for years on EPs (so here's an EP with it on). I have very strong memories of seeing him play this song at Reading - most of my memories of seeing him play are from the first time at Roskilde, but this is one of my few memories of the other times I saw him. I also saw him at Fabric, which was the least memorable - the only stand up out moment was a friend being shocked that he was rapping about EastEnders.

As a treat (of sorts), we get two new songs, something there weren't many of around that time. The first, My Life, seems to be an attack on the criticisms he must have had about the album. It's nice to hear him angry - it works. I also wonder if it's the closest we've had so far to a song that wasn't written in the third person. Broke takes that further - seems he decided to turn that tap on for a bit. I never heard his subsequent albums, so maybe this was a sign of things to come.

Format: 7", picture sleeve
Tracks: 3
Cost: £2.70 new
Bought: HMV, Lancaster
When: 30/10/06
Colour: Black
Etching: none
mp3s: no

Plan B - Mama

This 7" really adds very little to my record collection. In fact, it's definitely one of the most unnecessary vinyl purchases I've ever made. It's something of a comfort that it was only £1, from back in the day when you could buy 7" records for just £1. On the other hand, for £1 you usually got at least two songs, but here we are treated to just one song and an etched b-side - and not a very interesting etching at that.

Mama was one of the singles from Plan B's debut album, Who Needs Actions When You've Got Words - an album that relied heavily on the songs he’d released on EPs and various smaller releases ahead of the major label debut. On top of that, it just wasn't a very good song. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that Mama was one of my least favourite Plan B songs. Between the shitty lyrics about crack pipes and that terrible chorus it really did nothing for me. It was too R&B musically and too cliched lyrically - there was nothing to enjoy about either part. I was disappointed by the album in general, and this was the pinnacle of that disappointment. There's really no need to own that song on a 7" on it's own.

Format: 7", picture sleeve
Tracks: 1
Cost: £1 new
Bought: HMV Winchester
When: 12/07/06
Colour: Black
Etching: Laser-etched lyrics
mp3s: no

Plan B - Sick 2 Def / No Good

Sick 2 Def was another song I remember from Plan B's incredible Roskilde set in 2005; it's arguably the pinnacle of what he was doing back then – acoustic and mind-blowingly dense raps, more intricate than a lot of rappers would dare to try. The third verse is of course the real party-piece, where he raps a story in reverse about a man getting stabbed because the attacker heard a Plan B song. He credits Nas with doing it first, but makes it his own. It's hard to not stop what you're doing and listen to the carefully told reverse story reach it's crescendo. I'm still impressed by it, even 12 years after first hearing it.

No Good is to Sick 2 Def on this 7” what Kidz was to Dead and Buried on the first 7" – annoyingly produced rather than acoustic, but still with interesting raps. The raps themselves pale in comparison to Sick 2 Def, but almost any song would, so I guess using a song that sounds entirely different is the best trick to make them stand apart without that comparison.

I don't know exactly when this 7" came out, but I found it in my local HMV when I was back from Australia for Christmas. I was pleased at the time to add it to my collection – I suspect I would have gone to some effort to get a copy had I known it was coming out. Of course, now, I'm less fussed, but it is worth the money alone to have that incredible acoustic rendition of Sick 2 Def.

Format: 7", gatefold sleeve

Tracks: 2

Cost: £2.50 new

Bought: HMV Winchester

When: 09/01/06

Colour: Black

Etching: none

mp3s: no

The Used - The Taste of Ink

One of the first thoughts I had about The Used was that they sounded a bit like Refused. Writing that now, I know it to be a thoroughly ridiculous statement; I struggled to write it just then, it's that ludicrous. However, the first song of theirs I heard was A Box Full of Sharp Objects - I caught most of the video on MTV when visiting my uncle. There were certain similarities between that video and the video for New Noise (or so I remember) and it was a promising single. At the end I saw that it was by a band called The Used and make a mental note to check them out.

The following spring they'd released their album and second single, The Taste of Ink. I'd bought Hugh's copy of the album from him (for £10 - I must have been planning to buy it myself, and I imagine he was keen to offload his fairly quickly, so I think I paid pretty much what he paid for it) and then a few weeks later picked up this 7" for £1 in my local HMV. I was still enjoying the album then, so it seemed like a good purchase. As a single, it's surprisingly catchy still. That said, I'm not sure why I'm surprised - it's so smooth and over-produced that it was basically pop, and by it's nature pop is catchy. The b-side, Just a Little has a shamelessly tribal drum beat at the start and a very heavy break before another very smooth chorus; it's a strange combination that doesn't quite work (hence the song not making the album, I guess).

Not a single I've played a great deal over the years. I saw the band twice over the years - Reading 2003 and Leeds 2007 - the first time I was underwhelmed and by the second I was long over the band.

Format: 7"
Tracks: 2
Cost: £1 new
Bought: HMV Winchester
When: 10/03/03
Colour: Black
Etching: none
mp3s: no

Mew - Am I Wry? No

Mew released a single called She Came Home For Christmas in 1997. Somehow, in the early 2000's I stumbled across the video for it on MTV and thought it was nice (although it's now been at least 15 years since I heard it, so I wonder what it sounds like now). Looking at Discogs, it might be because ...Christmas was also on Frengers, an album that collected some of their earlier releases and was released in 2000.

Anyway, I kept the name in my mind as a band I should check out. In 2003 my local HMV happened to stock a 7" of their newest single for a very reasonable £1, so I bought it one morning before college (along with a cheap cd of Minor Threat's first demo tape - quite the odd pairing of purchases). Am I Wry? No did much less for me at the time than I remember She Came Home For Christmas doing. In a sense there was a comparable grandeur - only here it was in the songwriting, rather than the song itself; they squeeze a lot into that song, possibly at some detriment to it. The b-side is a live recording of Behind the Drapes from the same album, which I remember preferring to the a-side. The gentle backing vocals just hovering behind the lead singer later in the song always appealed to me. It was a much simpler affair, but nice.

Anyway, that was the extent of my dabbling with the band Mew. However, in the 14 years that followed I'd occasionally see their name pop up, often from friends I wouldn't have expected to be fans. Recently, Frengers was reissued for Record Store Day and lots of people got very excited. It's nice that the band grew a large and obsessive fanbase whilst I wasn't paying attention. That's much nicer than finding out that they faded away to obscurity.

Format: 7"
Tracks: 2
Cost: £1 new
Bought: HMV Winchester
When: 16/06/03
Colour: Black
Etching: none
mp3s: no

Jane's Addiction - True Nature

The second single from Jane's Addiction's reunion album, Strays, was True Nature. Despite being the opening track, it wasn't as strong as the first single, Just Because. Perry basically mumbles the first verse, which is a strange way to sing, given his voice can do incredible things when he tries. The b-side is a live recording of a far better song, Been Caught Steeling. There's nothing terribly wrong with True Nature, but it's just a very standard Jane's song.

Shortly after starting university I found this 7" in the local HMV, presumably around the time it was released. It wasn't a necessary purchase, but vinyl was hard to come by back then, so I bought what I could. The live recording was the main appeal, since the picture disc itself is pretty hideous. The cover looks nearly identical to that of True Nature and it makes you wonder if they just did one photoshoot for the whole album (perhaps that was the maximum amount of time they could spend in a room together). Even stranger is the reverse, which is basically a flyer for the tour they were doing. I've known the idea that singles are a way to advertise the album, but I've never known them as a way to adverse a tour before.

Format: 7" picture disc
Tracks: 2
Cost: £1.80 new
Bought: HMV Lancaster
When: 27/10/03
Colour: Picture disc
Etching: none
mp3s: no

Jane's Addiction - Just Because

Twelve years after they released Classic Girl as a single, Jane's Addiction reunited and released their fourth album, Strays. A week ahead of the album, they released the single Just Because and I remember it being plastered all over MTV that summer. I bought the 7" in HMV the day it came out and went into town the following Monday with the sole purpose of buying the album. That day ended up being a far more significant day since the MVC in town had a sale on, which meant hundreds of pretty niche albums were £4. I bought a couple of albums I knew I'd enjoy, but also chanced £4 on a band I'd never heard of called The Paper Chase. Without too much hyperbole, that album started a chain of events that introduced me to so much incredible music that I can't even begin to describe (although I did try to here). I remember thinking at the time that Strays was a fine album, but that took up very little space in my mind compared to how excited I was about The Paper Chase. I'd spent a few years loving older bands like Jane's Addiction, but their reunion actually threw me into a whole world of other music, such that they'd seem drastically less exciting. It was something of a turning point.

2003 was before a lot of bands started doing the whole reunion thing, so it was much less of a cliche back then. On top of that, Just Because was actually a great single - it certainly gave you the idea that Strays could be great. It wasn't, of course; few reunion albums are. I've not listened to it a whole lot over the years, but I remember thinking there were too few risks - there were no ten-minute songs (let alone back-to-back) and nothing shocking (excuse the pun). Even the artwork was boring. But Just Because was an exiting single (and the video with all the flashing lights helped), so I got into it a bit. The b-side is a live recording of a song that also made it onto Strays, Suffer Some, which is, without being too critical, a very run-of-the-mill Jane's Addiction song.

Format: 7"
Tracks: 2
Cost: £1.35 new
Bought: HMV Winchester
When: 14/07/03
Colour: Black
Etching: none
mp3s: no

One Minute Silence - I Wear My Skin

Just before OMS released their third album, they released I Wear My Skin as a single, which I eagerly bought, so that I could hear a bit more of the album ahead of its release. As a indication of what I was like back then, three days later I had my long hair dreadlocked into 30-or-so very thick mats of hair. It was the early 2000's and I was into metal; it was acceptable at the time.

I Wear My Skin was a much stronger single than We Bounce and, if I remember correctly, great fun to jump around to at their shows. The break before the final chorus and the outro are particular highlights. The b-side is a non-album track, something of a rarity around that time for the band. It starts off too messy, but comes together and has quite a huge chorus. With a bit of re-working, it could easily have been an album track (and would have actually been better than a couple that did make it on there, as far as I remember).

Format: 7"
Tracks: 2
Cost: £1 new
Bought: HMV Winchester
When: 24/06/03
Colour: Black
Etching: none
mp3s: no