The Music - The People

Who remembers The Music? For a short while, they were the hottest new thing. It was 2002; Britpop was long dead and indie bands had begun crossing over with dance music. It was the perfect scenario for a band like The Music to rise to prominence.

This is The People EP, a four-song 12" featuring one of the highlights from their debut album. As a song, The People stands up quite well - you can see why it was very popular at the time - it's upbeat, something you could dance to or sing along to. The singer had a very distinctive northern accent, one that would have been very familiar to people who had lived through The Verve and the other big indie bands from the north in the 90's. But it's also quite a smooth voice and complimented the songs well.

The other songs on the EP are fine, but you can see why they weren't album cuts. I found this 12" about a year after it was released in Soho for £4. I had a bunch of their 7"s and thought it'd be a good addition. Plus, I think at that point I was still quite enjoying the band. Needless to say, this record hasn't had a lot of play in the last 10 years or so, but it's aged far better than I expected it to have.

Format: 12", picture sleeve
Tracks: 4
Cost: £4 new
Bought: Soho
When: 07/03/03
Colour: Black
Etching: none
mp3s: no

The Paper Chase - Someday This Could All Be Yours, Vol. 1

I'm a big fan of The Paper Chase - in the 11 years I've been listening to them I'm yet to find a band that sounds remotely like them or has excited me in the same way, which is both awesome and a shame. They've since called it a day and the main driving force behind the band, John Congleton, appears to be focusing on his pretty successful career as a producer. It's sad, but they released a lot of good music along the way so I can't complain too much.

I've always planned to complete my Paper Chase collection but once I had everything on at least one format I kinda stopped. It wouldn't be a tricky one to complete I think but I've simply not put in the effort. When I saw this copy of their final album in Music and Video Exchange in Soho I was torn; I knew I wanted to buy a vinyl copy at some point, but did I want this slightly dog-eared copy? I'm certain there are copies in way better condition that I could have bought for a broadly similar price, but it also pained me to see this copy sat in the racks gradually getting more and more battered. I knew I had to buy it really, but part of me will always me slightly annoyed at the tatty sleeve. I'd like to call it "well-loved" but ultimately I know it's more to do with the effect of endless Londoners flicking past it.

Someday This Could All Be Yours, Vol 1 will always be an odd record in The Paper Chase's work - the volume one that never had a volume two. I remember when it came out someone pointed that a curious thing happened on the album that doesn't really happened on any other Paper Chase album - one song finishes and there's a gap before the next one starts. What counts as normal on any other record makes for the strangest thing on a Paper Chase record. Unlike the previous albums, Someday... feels like 10 songs while the others were continuous pieces of music. That's not a bad thing, but I think the theme that holds the album together becomes less apparent because of it.

All of The Paper Chase's albums are great (in my opinion) but over the years I've found myself turning to God Bless Your Black Heart and Hide the Kitchen Knives the most, but that's not to say the other albums aren't excellent too. Someday... holds up well amongst the back-catalogue and has it's fair share of excellent songs - Your Money or Your Life (The Comet), What Should We Do With Your Body (The Lightning) and This is a Rape (The Flood) make for a particularly excellent trio.

Format: 12", insert
Tracks: 10
Cost: £8 second hand
Bought: Music and Video Exchange, London
When: 23/05/14
Colour: Black
Etching: Side A: "We're all aboard the Titanic" Side B: "We're all aboard the Titanic"
mp3s: no

Manic Street Preachers - La Tristesse Durera (Scream to a Sigh)

Gold Against the Soul was a great album. It took me a while to get into it when I was younger, but it's probably the Manics album I go to most these days. It has many highlights, and La Tristesse Durera is certainly one of them. The version on this 12" is the album version, but it sounds different somehow. Maybe it sounds better on vinyl, or maybe I'm just playing it much louder than normal. Either way, it sounds excellent; fresh, despite being 20 years old. I picked up this slightly-knackered second-hand copy in Selectadisc in London (before it became Sister Ray) nearly ten years after it came out.

There's a full selection of treats as the three b-sides too. Patrick Bateman is probably the most Guns n' Roses the Manics ever sounded - riffy, glossy and screamed vocals (the GATS-era must have been hard on James' vocals but it also contains some of his finest moments). It ended up being years after I bought this single that I saw American Psycho and made the connection. Without knowing the book or the film, the lyrics are even more shocking.

The third song is a live recording of Repeat which they hammer through at break-neck speed. Finally we get the b-side to their impossible-to-find, first-ever 7", Tennessee (I Get Low). This would have been even more exciting had I not bought one of the many bootleg copies of the Suicide Alley 7" on eBay a few months beforehand. I wouldn't normally buy a bootleg, but I wanted to hear those two songs badly (more on this when I write about that record). The recording is comically bad, but excellent at the same time.

Format: 12"
Tracks: 4
Cost: £7 second hand
Bought: Selectadisc, Soho
When: 07/03/03
Colour: Black
Etching: none
mp3s: no

Dub War - Dub Warning

Now we start to get into the more interesting Dub War records! Possibly most interestingly, this isn't the first copy of Dub Warning I've owned either. You may remember from my previous two Dub War posts that my friend Tom introduced my friends and me to Dub War. We'd played the two albums (and the remixes) endlessly but hadn't realised there was a scattering of other records they'd put out. Well, back in the day I used to go record shopping in the second-hands of Bournemouth and Boscombe fairly regularly, a habit that fleshed out parts of my record collection very cheaply. There were certain letters of the alphabet I'd go to first (which was pointless because I'd always look through them all eventually), and "D" was one of them. I hoped to pick up the Dub War LPs at very best. One day, I was amazed to finally see the name "Dub War" on a record, even more-so because it was a Dub War record I'd never heard of. I was so surprised I spent ages looking at it just to make sure it wasn't some other band called Dub War.

I knew that Tom's birthday was coming up and, at that time, he was way more obsessive about Dub War than I was, so I decided to give it to him for his birthday. When I was a kid I was always baffled by my parents saying Christmas was more fun for seeing how happy their presents made us, and I never really got that until that day. I knew Tom was going to be over the moon. He'd not long bought a turntable too, so the fact it was on vinyl was all the better. I was so excited about this present that I stopped in the first phone-box I could find to phone our friend Nick and tell him about it (an actual phone-box! This was in the days before mobile phones and phone-boxes basically being toilets). Anyway, Tom's birthday soon came round and he thought it was excellent, so I was pleased.

A year or two passed, and a similar feeling of stumbling across a Dub War record in a second-hand store occurred, but this time I instantly recognised the sleeve (in the same Soho record shop where I bought Therapy?'s Babyteeth). It was a good find, because I'd come to want a copy of Dub Warning of my own (and this one was in even better condition than Tom's).

Dub Warning is a nice little record. The opener, Original Murder, went on to become Mental on Pain, but with some slight changes ("We don't want no" rather than "Mental, it's really mental" in the chorus). Crack is an unintentionally amusing song about the dangers of smoking crack ("Don't smoke crack / It's gonna make you whack"). The highlight though must be Dub War where Benji's vocals get to soar in a way they hadn't yet. (Also, I only just noticed the Blade Runner sample at the start of Words of Warning.) The cover is a picture of the air-raid siren that Dub War (and, later, Skindred) used at the start of their shows. All in all, a pretty excellent find, especially considering I had to find it twice!

Format: 12", picture sleeve
Tracks: 6
Cost: £4 second hand
Bought: Soho
When: 09/04/03
Colour: Black
Etching: Side A: "Jeff was ere" Side B: "Dange is ere"
mp3s: no

Therapy? - Babyteeth

Running with the theme (British bands I got into when I was at school), here is Therapy?'s first mini-album/EP. The second gig I ever went to was Therapy? in Southampton University in February of 2000 (the first, for those interested, was Feeder in the same venue four months earlier and the third was Pitchshifter, relating back to yesterday's post again). Hugh suggested going to see them having, I assume, read about them in Kerrang! magazine (which was pretty much the only way we discovered bands back then). I think just the two of us went, having borrowed two of their albums from the library so that we at least knew some songs. We had The Yo-Yo's and Clutch supporting and I remember Clutch being particularly good (and the drummer going through a snare on a solo). Somewhere I still have my Suicide Pact, Your First Therapy? t-shirt, although time hasn't been it's friend.

Over the years that followed I picked up a handful of Therapy? albums with varying levels of success as far as my enjoyment went. For £3 I picked up the cassette of Nurse in a second hand shop in Boscombe which I still play now (on the rare occasion I'm near a tape deck) and still enjoy (especially Teethgrinder). A few years later I found this album in one of the second hand shops in Soho (along with a Dub War EP and on the same trip as the Blood Brothers album I wrote about the other week).

There may only be seven songs here, but they're all classic Therapy? noise-rock. Like Pitchshifter, they were doing something different with their music and not just playing straight-up metal, but where Pitchshifter embraced it, Therapy? let it slip and, in my opinion at least, let that edginess go. The plus-side however is that if you pick up an early Therapy? album there's always going to be something exciting going on. Highlights here are Meat Abstract (it would be years before I'd see Blade Runner and recognise the sample at the start), Animal Bones and Loser Cop. I think I might go and dig out that Nurse cassette now too...

Format: 12"

Tracks: 7

Cost: £3 second hand

Bought: Soho

When: 09/04/03

Colour: Black

Etching: Side A: "Ooops wrong planet" Side B: "Scare the hippies"

mp3s: no 

Silverchair - Neon Ballroom

It was my sister who introduced me to Silverchair; there were only a handful of bands she got into before I did when we were younger, but Silverchair was one of them. When I was 14 or 15 I went on holiday to America with my family and my sister bought a handful of cds, benefitting from the good exchange rate. In amongst them was Adrenaline by Deftones and the first three Silverchair albums - Frogstomp, Freak Show and Neon Ballroom. I went on to buy the other two albums they released, but in so many ways those first three are the classics. I loved how different each album was from the one before it (no doubt the huge musical changes were due to the young age they recorded Frogstomp at), but Neon Ballroom struck the perfect combination of the angst of the first two and the pomp of the final two.

The first half of the album is huge, and Emotion Sickness and Anthem for the Year 2000 sound incredible with the volume way up (I have the house to myself and I'm blasting this record). The second half isn't bad, but it doesn't have the huge songs of side 1. Black Tangled Heart and the almost-punk Satin Sheets were also favourites back in the day and still hold up fairly well now.

I picked this LP up in Selectadisc in Soho (before it became Sister-Ray) while I was passing through London on the way to Winchester from Lancaster. I had an hour to make my connection in Waterloo so figured I had time to swing by some record shops, which I did, just about (there's no guilt in rushing around London because everyone does it). I was amazed it was only £6. Even today copies are going for £20-£30 on eBay. It's in practically mint condition too (a slight mark on the sleeve and the inner isn't quite perfect). I'd been a fan for a long time so was pretty pleased to find it on vinyl.

I only saw Silverchair once, but it was incredible. I had tickets to see them in 2002 but Daniel was taken ill and the tour was cancelled. Luckily that meant I got priority booking when they rescheduled the dates for 2003 and got tickets for the first of four shows in Shepherd's Bush Empire. Unfortunately this show was the night before my maths A-level exam, but got away with going by telling my parents the exam was the day before. I passed (only just) and they still don't know to this day. The Live From Faraway Stables cd/dvd is a pretty good representation of the show I saw that night. We had no Frogstomp songs, but Emotion Sickness and Anthem pleased me plenty.


Format: 12", gatefold sleeve, inner
Tracks: 12
Cost: £6 second hand
Bought: Selectadisc, London
When: 06/10/04
Colour: Black
Etching: none
mp3s: no

Frightened Rabbit - The Midnight Organ Fight

I don't make a habit of buying music by bands that I've not listened to before, but I do find myself doing so on occasions. This record was bought on one such occasion.

I'd heard of the band in the way that you do but have no reason why you have. They were a name I was aware of but that was it. I'd not long started back at uni and one lunchtime flicked through the university paper for the first time. It was mostly shit, but somebody had written a piece about this album which I read still with no idea what the band sounded like. I can't remember what he said about it, but I think it was a positive review. It probably was. Anyway, a short time later I was in London on a Saturday afternoon looking to blow some money on new music and found myself on Berwick Street. Outpriced by Sister Ray, I was in the second hand shop by the market (the same place I picked up that Gowns EP - that shop has done me pretty well in record of bands I hadn't listened to!) They had a mint copy of The Midnight Organ Fight for £9, which is a bargain for an LP in there, so I picked it up. I'd only bought cds that day and knew I had to cycle back from the station in the rain, so I was worried slightly that I'd destroy the sleeve on my journey home, but it survived somehow.

I pretty much instantly loved the album. Musically its just the right side of epic and the vocals work perfectly. The thing that really got me though was the lyrics. I have never heard someone more pissed off and literal about it. He is a man upset and not afraid to tell everyone. The Midnight Organ Fight is definitely my favourite break-up album (Domestica, Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating in Space and You're a Woman, I'm a Machine are all good ones too). It peaks with Keep Yourself Warm as the height of bitterness. All the songs are fantastic though - The Modern Leper, Head Rolls Off, Poke and Floating in the Forth are all highlights.

I remember thinking afterwards that my old housemate Nicky would be really into them (he had previously got me into The Twilight Sad) so I recommended them to him. Not only did he already know them but he was convinced he'd made me listen to them in the kitchen of our old house. I still have no recollection of this whatsoever, but I guess somewhere in the back of my mind I'd stored some enjoyment of this band that only came out due to the one time I read the university newspaper and that store in Soho having a cheap copy on vinyl. I probably would have come across them in time, but its a nice series of coincidences that made me buy it. A few months later their third album came out and I enjoy that one nearly as much.

Format: 12"
Tracks: 14
Cost: £9 second hand
Bought: Soho
When: 28/11/09
Colour: black
Etching: none
mp3s: no

Gowns - Broken Bones

This one is a nice tale of how record shopping should work. Kind of; it has a modern twist. I guess I'd been working during the day but got fed up but for some reason didn't want to go home straight away. Maybe I was going out afterwards. Anyway, I had some time to kill so went to hang out in the record shops of Berwick Street. In Sister Ray (which in my mind is still Selectadisc) they put on an album whilst I was flicking through the new release LPs that caught my ear. The first song was incredible and had this woman singing bitterly about LA. In the past I've often wondered up to the counter to ask what was playing (on three separate occasions in was Nick Cave). I'm not sure why I didn't that day. Perhaps I was just feeling lazy. So I googled the lyrics (the "modern twist"!) and found out it was by E.M.A. who I'd never heard of. I look at Pitchfork everyday (rarely read it) and she'd got a lot of attention but it had passed me by. So I read about her (still in store) and found out she used to be in a noise/drone/folk duo called Gowns. Took this information in but thought nothing more of it for the moment. I didn't buy anything because I rarely can afford records in there and strolled down to the second hand store by the market.

Here, by some strange coincidence, I found the Latitudes session by the band I'd just been reading about. Their live show and this record had rave reviews and here was a limited edition record, second hand but in mint condition and on green vinyl, which I'd learnt there were only 300 copies of. So despite having never heard the band, just one song by half of them, I decided to buy it. I was getting some cheap as CDs anyway, and once my wallet is open I get quite spend happy. I'm glad I did. The first two songs are monster, growing, fuzzy noise pop. The first song on side 2, Marked,  is possibly my favourite, more immediate, catchy. A brief spoken word tune follows, and another grower to finish, a killer with crazy wailing vocals.

I had one other Latitudes sessions record before this (William Elliot Whitmore) so knew they did some pretty cool stuff. The list of bands they've recorded is pretty impressive and given the chance I'd buy plenty of others too. The artwork on the LP sleeves is the same across all of them, but absolutely lovely. The labels are then all different and poke through the die cut sleeve. I like it.

Months have now passed and I've not looked into getting any more of their records. I really should. I knew when I bought it they'd broken up and I'd missed the boat entirely. You can tell by the record that they'd have been mind-blowing to watch live. Still, I'm glad I at least stumbled across this one.

Format: 12", die cut sleeve, cd-sized inner
Tracks: 5
Cost: £10 second hand
Bought: Soho
When: 10/11/11
Colour: Transparent green
Etching: none
mp3s: no