Light the fuse on the shoes
Posted: 09/11/2012 Filed under: Music | Tags: 2-Tone, Firework Shoes, Flipron, Fun Boy Three, Jesse Budd, Neville Staples, Rat Scabies, The Arch, The Comet Returns, The Specials, Tim Burton Leave a comment
Shall we have some Flipron? They’ve just brought out a new album, “Firework Shoes”, so we should, shouldn’t we?
I have been a big fan of Flipron since Rat Scabies played me some of the demo tracks they recorded at The Arch, his studio under Kew Bridge in London, way back in, oh, I guess it must around 1998, and I am amazed more people haven’t cottoned on to what a good band they are. Maybe “Firework Shoes” will do the trick. It’s produced by Rat and has Neville Staples, ex-The Specials and The Fun Boy Three, on a tune called “The Comet Returns”, which sounds like the theme music for “The Magnificent Seven” given the 2-Tone treatment. Ride ’em, rude boy.
Elsewhere, there’s all the musical weirdosity I’ve come to expect from Flipron. There’s psychedelic honky-tonk and fairground rock ‘n’ roll and kaleidoscopic avant-jazz and neo-bubblegum blues. There’s so much colour you’d think they were sponsored by Dulux. There are lots of darkly twisted tales and esoteric musings too, with frontman Jesse Budd out-Tim Burtoning even Tim Burton. “Available for weddings, trials and beheadings / Sporting occasions, autopsies, immolations / We’re low-life seeking elevation,” he sings at one point.
Anyway, we were going to have some Flipron, right? So if you would kindly press the little orange button below, we can listen to “The Big Red Button Must Never Ever Ever Be Pressed”. Lovely.
Flipron photos by John Coles
Won’t get spooled again
Posted: 11/04/2012 Filed under: Magazines, Music | Tags: C81, C86, Cabaret Voltaire, Melody Maker, Muzik, NME, NME Tapes, Robert Wyatt, Roy Carr, Savoy Records, Stompin' At The Savoy, The Mighty Lemon Drops, The Shop Assistants, The Specials, The Wedding Present, Uncut, Vox 8 Comments
If you bought the NME during the 1980s, you’ll no doubt remember some of the compilation tapes given away free with the paper throughout the decade. I’ve got a tall and wobbly stack of NME tapes sitting on a shelf somewhere, but I haven’t heard any of them for yonks – not least because I don’t own a tape player these days. So I am very pleased to have discovered Press Play And Record, a website with digital rips of many of these superb compilations.
The NME tapes were compiled by journalist Roy Carr, who’s never really got the credit he deserves for these spooled delights. Roy began writing for NME in the late 1960s and put together tapes and later CDs for all the IPC Media music magazines – Melody Maker, Muzik, Vox and Uncut as well as the NME – for around 30 years.
High heels, low lifes, perky popsters
Posted: 24/01/2012 Filed under: Music | Tags: Bekki Finnigan, High Heels And Low Lifes, Mista Mee, Rhoda Dakar, Terry Hall, The Specials 2 Comments
I’ve been playing this video a lot since I stumbled across it last week. It’s a song called “Who Cares Anyway” by London electropop duo High Heels And Low Lifes, and this is indie music in the true sense of the phrase. They don’t have a label or a producer or a manager or any of that. They are doing everything themselves. For now, at least. The girl is Bekki Finnigan, the guy is Mista Mee, and “Who Cares Anyway” is about every girl/boy relationship there’s ever been. It has some neat lines – “It’s the crazy things you do / Creating new issues / When all I want is some new shoes / And may I add, handbags” – and it makes me think of The Specials’ “I Can’t Stand It”, on which Terry Hall and Rhoda Dakar declared their undying irritation with each other. Not that it sounds even remotely like The Specials, you understand.
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