15.07.2023
Into the missive!
Forget the crabby miserable bastard of toxicity that he’s sadly become… this is primo Van.
Yes yes yes… I’ve heard it all before, Astral Weeks blah blah blah.
In no shape or form, in my barely functioning brain, is Astral Weeks anything but a fantastic album.
I know it’s marmite for some, but I’m one of those sad gets that loves it.
But!
It’s not my fave of his ( gasp! run up the windows, lock the doors, bring up the drawbridge shock! )
Shoot me now, I don’t give a fuck.
This album isn’t my fave either.
I don’t have a fave Van album. From Them Again right up to his own “Blood On The Tracks” of Veedon Fleece, I love them all.
If you’ve never rung out fucking loud the country soul of this particular shot of beauty or the sharp as knives live album It’s Too Late To Stop Now whilst perhaps being a little tipsy, then you haven’t lived.
Basically, he was on fucking fire.
I love this album, but I’m going for the title track here.
Why?
Because I can.
I pick this one purely because it has a Stonesy quality to it.
And it has a killer pedal steel swoon, and I’m a huge sucker for a pedal steel swoon any day of the week.
It blurs lines of musicality between the sharp tongued cynical take down of whatever surrounded him at this point.
Maybe he has always been a miserable swine?
Who knows?
It’s a builder… it adds layers, always just at the absolutely right second, it’s depth never getting out of control, every part as succinct at the end as when it’s introduced.
It’s the end of the working week, late Friday night – early hours Saturday morning Seven and Seven drink of a song.
Blurry eyed soul of the highest quality.
Let it all wash over you.
Now I’ve got myself in a quandary this week brothers and sisters, because I also want to point out a great wrong in Van The Man’s plan.
Hear me out.
He’s obviously a fickle beast.
He’s for some reason got it in for Tupelo Honey, which perhaps is his weakest in his high period cannon, but it’s no slouch.
He’s also disowned Veedon Fleece, which is absolutely cosmically wrong on so many levels, but before I go all David St. Hubbins here, I’ll leave it at that.
But what I don’t get, dear readers is this.
Cast back two albums from this, His Band and The Street Choir.
He makes a huge error by selecting the absolutely wrong version of I’ve Been Working.
Dylan often did this, much to the chagrin of many working on said rekids.
But I’m gonna stamp my foot down here and just say…
“Van, you fucked up here, mate!”
A myriad of versions exist, dating back to the Moondance sessions, which sounds like fucking Funkadelic in places!
Eddie Hazel could have sat in on that session for all I know. Check it out on the expanded reissue.
But here, alongside my track of the week, is a bonus.
The extremely lithe and very soulful blast of funk of the best version of I’ve Been Working that really really really should have made the album because it shits over the platter version from a great height.
Again, from the expanded edition as an extra, it’s one of the great mysteries of known musicdom, why it wasn’t used.
Once you’ve flapped yer ears to this weeks selections, don’t forget to gander in Mr. Bolton’s Curiosity Corner for another file on something I’ve probably forgotten about due to the old Swiss cheese that exists in my bonce.
Quite possibly the greatest non English speaking album ever made that encapsulates so much.
RIP JANE BIRKIN
Have wild and wonderful weekends y’all
RH X
MR. BOLTON'S CURIOSITY CORNER "Rock fans fight as band plays!"
This week’s rummage has turned up one of my favourite flyers…
Sunday 26th August 1990… Loop are scheduled to play the Reading Rock (as it still was…) Festival in the UK. Taking to the stage shortly after Thee Hypnotics and The Telescopes had warmed up the afternoon crowd and before Tack Head and later the Pixies would round off, what would turn out to be a marvellous and sweltering weekend. Tickets were purchased plans were laid etc. etc… blah blah blah but that’s a story for another time.
Word had filtered through that Loop were playing a ‘secret’ warm up show in the town on the Thursday night… obviously not one to be missed. The venue for said warm up transpired to be the local ‘Our Price’ record store…
I’d booked the Friday off work to head to the festival proper but was working on the Thursday so after a few frantic phone calls and bunking off early, a mad dash was made to steal my mothers car to ‘pop out for a bit’, quick detour to pick up my girlfriend then a hasty journey down the M40 to Reading.
The town was already heaving with festival goers and parking was a bit of a nightmare… with the clock ticking we dashed to the shop, arriving just in time – squeezing through the throng and getting inside literally as the door was shut… We squeezed in at the back, pressed up against the window, managing to grab a flyer off a rack by the door.
Over the years I’ve collected loads of Loop flyers, some (much) better than others… but this is one of my favourites. I love the wonky hand-drawn LOOP logo and the crap underlining, the half-arsed attempt at the Our Price logo… I can imagine some disinterested record store lacky being told to rustle up a flyer and get it on the photocopier to drum up a crowd in the hope of shifting a few copies of A Gilded Eternity, the shadow of Artie ‘Kick This Ass for a Man’ Fufkin looming large.
But this was no Spinal Tap-esque poorly attended in-store appearance… it was fucking rammed…
I don’t know if I remember much of the ‘show’ to be honest… I think we got there mid-way through, and could see bugger all… it was all a bit of a whirlwind and over pretty quickly. I remember a bit of jostling but certainly no fighting in the streets… I can say with almost absolute certainty that no shoppers were threatened! It must have been bloody hot in there though… judging by the load out pics (courtesy of Clare Cheung) and the warning for fans not to try to cool off in the River Thames.
Sadly we didn’t get to hang around either… I had to get my mum’s car back! And then get ready to turn around and head back down to Reading the next day…
So we probably did a three-hour round trip for 20 minutes of Loop and a crap flyer! But of course it was worth it!
Years later the photographs of the gig were unearthed (by Tracey Hearne) on an Our Price staff Facebook page!… and I managed to unearth a news report as well… It doesn’t look quite like the Altamont of the Home Counties that the headline might suggest, more like a Boxing Day sales skirmish with added ‘psychedelic heavy rock band’. And nice to see a Dreamgrinder T-shirt on display…
So… that just about wraps it up, a short blog for a short hot gig, and all in praise of a crap flyer…
Till the next time, brothers and sisters.
(photos 6, 7 by Clare Cheung)
MR. HAMPSON SAYS...
Reading Our Price…
It’s our Beastie Boys at Rough Trade Covent Garden moment.
I bet plenty say they were there… and they probably were.
Record shop in stores weren’t as ubiquitous as they are nowadays, you maybe turned up at one to sign something, but unless you had the acoustic value of Leonard Cohen, bringing a full drum kit and guitar backline into a very narrow shop was unheard of.
Bands get fucking stages and lights these days! It’s like Coachella.
I remember being asked to do it and laughed for about an hour before I said OK.
I probably thought it won’t happen as I finished of my last Croydon Carrot of the night, so no need to get stressy.
The flyer pretty much encapsulates how it actually ended up.
Everything about that flyer speaks of that night.
Picasso had Guernica…
we had the imagination of someone hunched over the formica table in the break room, armed only with a lukewarm cup of tea, some stale custard creams and a sharpie and ruler.
Driving all the way to Reading from North London was surprisingly longer than I anticipated and I had a ticket for The Young Gods at The Mean Fiddler and hoped to high tail it back to the smoke.
Obviously, it wasn’t going to happen.
The fight thing described in the paper is utter bullshit, as Mr Bolton points out.
But there were a fuck load of people trying to get in, where none the racks in the middle of the store had been moved. You do the math as they like to say in the USA.
We set up in front of the pay counter at the back and we’re pretty much about half way up the shop as it was…
As I lit my 30th Marlboro of the night, I knew this was going to go south as soon as we plugged in to “sound check”
Full LOOP volume.
Small store.
A couple of hundred people outside looking like they do at the start of the sales at Selfridges, faces pressed against the glass doors in some sort of weird frenzied anticipation.
Well, we can laugh about it later…
I have no idea of what we played but it didn’t last long.
The throng was now inside. Surprisingly not that chaotic.
The next thing I know ( curtains of hair didn’t really help with peripheral vision ) is a hand grabbing my guitar neck, I look up and a man with a big tit on his head is ordering me to cease and desist in a quite forceful manner.
It’s the pigs, man!
That’s when the record sleeves start flying in from the racks I mentioned earlier.
Game Over.
Boo Hiss!
Everyone is dispersed… are we to be sent to Reading Gaol?
Nah… but they don’t like the long hair.
Apparently, we were too loud and that’s why it was stopped… and maybe the hair had something to do with it too.
The man had beaten the kids, who just wanted to be free and have a good time.
I lit another Marlboro and wondered if we might actually get back in time for me to high tail it to The Young Gods show.
I was wrong. We’d gone to Reading by mistake.
RH X
By the way, the exceptionally tall man in the World Dom tee and drinking is Mr Shaun Conlon.
He’s a very nice man…. very tall. Worked at Mute, who luckily had high ceilings.
Hello Shaun if you are reading this… haven’t seen you in decades, but I hope you’re doing well.
Are you still very tall?
9.07.2023
Guten Tag Soundheads!
Wanna slice of supergroup featuring Dieter Moebius, AsmusTietchens, Conny Plank & Okko Bekker for your breakfast?
Come right in.
No selected tracks on this obscure classic on the legendary Brain label, you got the whole shebang today.
Sadly, never reissued on CD and pretty much ignored/ forgotten when it came out.
This is Moebius when he’d fallen out with fellow Cluster band mate Roedelius not for the first time, taking a break after Sowiesoso and Harmonia were not to be further than Deluxe, with Mr Rother forging ahead with his solo ventures.
Asmus Tietchens and Okko Bekker come in to play, with their customary oddness and shape shifting.
If you are not familiar with their work, both are masters of creating soundscapes that are off kilter abstract but thoughtful. No runny wishy washy “ambient” (yes, that’s the only time the A word gets mentioned here), they have both produced some great albums, which sadly again, a lot are out of print.
But very worthy of tracking down without too much fuss.
This one is pretty quirky, it ventures all over the shop.
From the wet and squelchy sounds that Moebius often made on his solo and collaborative records for SKY (think Rastakraut Pasta which came pretty much hot on the heels of this ‘un) to almost the distant planet space silence of Tangerine Dream era Alpha Centauri, Zeit and Atem.
It’s a mixed bag and maybe some of it is “very much of its time” but if you want left field obscurities from that era, this is def one that doesn’t make many lists.
A mint copy would set you back about £80 these days but there are still some floating around for £40ish due to not many people knowing much about it.
Before you leave, check out what Mr Bolton has in his corner today… I think we’ll enter through the round window.
Same time, same channel next week amigos
Chin chin
RH X
MR. BOLTON'S CURIOSITY CORNER "Do Party hard!"
When I was a kid, before package holidays were a thing, our family choice of summer holidays would usually involve a tug of war between my parents (nice country cottage in Cornwall) and us kids (Butlins or Pontins holiday camp). The usual compromise was the nice cottage with the odd day trip to Butlins…
If you’ve not come across traditional British holiday camps, they were the big thing in the 1950’s, a particularly British take on post-War Americana – self-catering, all-inclusive holiday, with all-you-can-eat buffets, beauty pageants, ‘knobbly knees’ competitions, packed-out swimming pools, and third-rate entertainment laid on by the camp ‘blue coats’ or ‘red coats’ depending on where you were.
Over time these became synonymous with cheap, shabby, run-down naff holidays… while we all jetted off to Benidorm instead.
Scroll forward several decades to 2002 and that enterprising chap Mr. Barry Hogan had set up All Tomorrows Parties (based on Belle and Sebastian’s 1999 Bowlie Weekend which he promoted) and along with ‘big fans’ of Loop, Mogwai held the first ATP Festival at Butlins in Camber Sands, on the South coast of England … taking advantage of the ready-made infrastructure and no-doubt cheap out-of-season rates.
Scroll forward, once again, dear Soundheads to 2013… and ATP was drawing to a close. To celebrate Barry was putting on two ‘End of an Era’ weekends to wind up the holiday camp festivals.
Barry had been ‘haranguing’ Robert about reforming Loop and as Robert described it at the time, the offer to curate one of the End of an Era weekends was dangled as a substantial carrot.
In Robert’s own words: “ATP is the only place this could happen and be done well. Who else would offer the chance not only to play but also curate some of the bands alongside Loop on the day. It’s quite special to be able to do this and make it happen. Besides, Barry Hogan has pestered me for so long about this, it would seem rather unfair not to let him have his 5 minutes of fame getting Loop to play again.”
Stuart Braithwaite (Mogwai) reflecting on ATP, stated “That was a cool thing as well, of the bands that we’d been trying to get for years, we actually succeeded. Loop was a really big one. It was good that we got them in the end.”
I can’t quite remember where we first got wind of the End of an Era weekends. Probably through Soundheads.org… but to say it caused a frisson of excitement in these circles coming hot on the heels of the ‘Reformation’ news.
Emails were sent, plans were hatched, very old T-shirts were dragged from the recesses of wardrobes, piggy banks were smashed, and a weekend chalet was booked for me and me old merch man mucker, Martin Ward… I dug out the old emails from the time and came across one requesting that we get to share our chalet with one Mr. Dan Boyd… no recollection if that request was actually granted as our chalet seemed to be open to a rolling cast of homeless Soundheads, many of whom we’d barely seen for decades, and a few we’d only got to know since Loop split up.
Mr Hampson dropped by to say hello and I repaid him with a Margarita which, in my enhanced state, I’d completely managed to fuck up… and seemed mainly to consist of lots of tequila and lemon juice… lots of lemon juice.
Scott politely declined our offer of a Pot Noodle sandwich (for old time’s sake) which was a staple of our on-the-road diet when following Loop back in the day.
I really enjoyed digging this programme out of the depths of the cabinet of curiosities and trying to piece together the weekend (admittedly recollections are hazy)… but fuck me, what a line up! 23 Skidoo, Dirty Beaches, Fennesz, Fuck Buttons, Goat, Hookworms, Kan-fucking-dodo!, The KVB, Michael Rother, The Pop Group, Shellac, Slint and White Fence amongst others. topping it all off with Mogwai and then… of course, Loop!
Back where they should be, on a big stage, with a big PA and a big audience. A big, happy audience. With big fucking grins….
The show was of course immense. But that goes without saying. It was a magical weekend… I wish I could remember more of it! Or perhaps I’m glad I can’t, but hey we were only doing what we were told in the programme rules:
• Remember that these are our final holiday camp festivals, so make the most of it.
• Do Party Hard
• Don’t cry too hard on Monday morning.
Looking back I don’t think I took in much (any???) of the Loop Cinema that weekend… but perusing the programme now, I’m wondering why the fuck not – Badlands, Chinatown, The Day of the Locust, The Long Goodbye, Performance, and Vanishing Point. Some cracking flicks… and long overdue a revisit. Loop Cinema Club anyone?
It feels apt to wrap up this week’s Curiosity Corner with a quote from Barry’s programme notes:
“So many bands we have worked with have either been influenced by them or ripped them off and it’s time for them to dust off the amps and remind us how great they are!”
I don’t suppose anyone dared imagine that they’d still be cranking up the amps 10 years later, reminding us again and again just how fucking great they are!
3.07.2023
Hello Hello Hello Soundheads
So, this missive comes courtesy of a much misunderstood album Lodger, by a Mr David Bowie.
I fucking love Lodger, I make no bones about it.
OK, its not absolutely a minted classic in terms of Bowieness, but it is no lesser part of the “Berlin Trilogy” than either Low or Heroes.
Even if it wasn’t recorded or mixed anywhere near Berlin.
Eno was getting bored by this time and was making it known.
As Tony Visconti rightly says, Eno was an ideas man and actually didn’t actually “produce” anything on these three albums.
Red Sails sails into view via a good rate of knots from NEU!, and that’s always been made clear by the man himself.
He was fluttering around the kosmishe motorik Germanic from Station To Station via his left over plastic soul of Young Americans, but I think this album in general plays it up the most.
Some of the old guard are still in the studio, but Fripp has been replaced by Adrian Belew, and his sole instruction was to play to the tracks whilst never having listened to them at all previously. The tape rolls and he is off and running, no prep.
And right on cue, stacked in Red Sails comes this brilliantly bananas “solo” courtesy of him.
It is a marmite record for many. It can be understood that perhaps after the glacial spectra of Low and Heroes, this came in from such a different angle, that people perhaps felt a little let down.
But c’mon peeps, it’s fucking Bowie and the chameleon just change his colours again.
The disappointing records came after Scary Monsters.
Lodger deserves more love than it gets, nuff said.
So I’ll leave it there.
If you are unfamiliar with Lodger, give it a go.
It won’t hit you straight away, but repeated playing reaps rewards, you have my word.
Before you leave, join me in peeking into Mr Bolton’s Curiosity this week…
Over to you Sir!
RH x
MR. BOLTON'S CURIOSITY CORNER "The Clawfist Split Single"
The Plot Thickens
This week’s rummage round the cabinet of curiosity turned up both a rare/ limited release and one of Kevin’s eagerly anticipated missives. (2 SAE left!)
The envelope would have hit my doormat sometime early in 1991, revealing an eye-catchingly bright red and gothic styled letter announcing the imminent release of a split single with Godflesh on the Clawfist singles club.
Clawfist was the lovechild of one Nick Brown, long-time guitarist with the Membranes (who as I’m sure you’ll remember trivia fans, played alongside the Seers and Sun Carriage supporting Loop at ULU in May 1988). The label was set up and run out of Vinyl Solution records in Portabello, London between 1990 and 1995, and was the home of Gallon Drunk, The Family Cat, Bailter Space and Mambo Taxi amongst others.
(Incidentally Nick now runs Intoxica! in Kentish Town where, not unsurprisingly you can grab yerself a copy of the split single for the princely sum of £25).
In late 1990 Nick launched the Clawfist Singles Club, a series of 10 split 331/3 RPM 7 inches, released one per month and limited to 1,400 copies, with each band covering the other’s track.
The club kicked off with a release from The Bevis Frond and The Walking Seeds… Other releases of note (to me at least, when perusing the insert that came with the record) included Terminal Cheesecake/ God, the Television Personalities/ BMX Bandits and Coil/ Nurse with Wound.
You were supposed to sign up for all 10 singles but down to some wheeler dealing and canny negotiating, Soundheads could get their mitts on the Loop single as a one off.
The Loopflesh/ Fleshloop release (cat PIG7) was slated for May 1991, with Loop covering Godflesh’s ‘Like Rats’ and Godflesh covering Straight to your Heart’.
You won’t need me to tell you of the links between Loop and the ‘Flesh… they are myriad, and I may come back to them from time to time, on future rummages. Interviewed by Neil Kulkarni, in The Quietus, around the time of the Loop/ Godflesh shows at Heaven Robert said:
“We covered ‘Like Rats’ from Streetcleaner, an album that everyone in Loop was hugely into. That was fun to do–like I said, I never saw Godflesh as a metal band and that comes across in our cover, I think. Just a great song.”
Regarding the song that Godflesh chose to cover, Justin had this to say:
“‘Straight to Your Heart’ was the first Loop track I think I ever heard. I remember hearing it with Ben on a Peel session and we were both just like ‘holy fuck!’ So, when it came time to choosing a song to cover, it had to be that one.”
Anyway… back to 1991, Loop had gone on hiatus by then, and Robert had not yet joined Godflesh and Main were still a little way off, so Kevin’s letter caused a flutter of excitement in our Loop-starved house – limited edition… exclusive tracks… music to my ears, quite literally! – and a cheque for £3 (three bloody pounds!!! Including P&P!!!) was dispatched forthwith to Nick at Clawfist. And now we wait… (remember that!?) until sometime later, presumably in May, it arrived.
Back in the day when a record was purchased, the physical entity formed a huge part of the experience for me… I could spend an age just taking in its physical form, poring over the sleeve, reading through any lyrics, dissecting the credits, taking it all in… And so, it was with this release.
It came in a clear plastic sleeve containing a single-sheet, hand folded (I assume because mine doesn’t quite line up!) cover, featuring a striking cut and paste image of a distorted woman’s face. (More Godflesh than Loop-style I thought but in keeping with the label’s ethos) and it came with a hand-cut photocopied insert advertising the singles club releases from April – October.
Closer inspection revealed that the single was A Porky Prime Cut (mastered by George Peckham – but pre-internet I had no idea what that meant!) and featured the runout message RATS LIVE ON NO EVIL STAR (with its mirror image on the B side).
It got played an awful lot back then and I’m pleased to say is in pretty good nick considering.
Obviously, we had no way of knowing then but listening to it know it’s a real pre-cursor to when Robert joined Godflesh, adding his distinct psychedelic guitar flourishes to the heavy as fuck Godflesh sound… happy days!
So, there we have it folks… the LoopFlesh single, in all it’s glory. Still sounding immense after all this time… if you’ve not given it a listen for a while, go dig it out, you won’t be disappointed… the LoopFlesh track is on CD 3 of the reissued ‘box set’, the Godflesh treatment of Straight to Your Heart is also well worth rooting out.
And if you’ve not got the original then you could always get on to Nick at Intoxica! The man who made it possible in the first place.
Till next time, Soundheads x
23.06.2023
Welcome back Soundheads!
I know, I know…
This should have started a couple of weeks ago (sigh)
But it’s here now…
So long Single Of The Week and welcome THE RH MISSIVE.
Incorporating a bit more, and stretching out the boundaries of not just singles but now Tracks of the Week and a new feature from the vaults of Supersoundhead Mr Adam Bolton.
MR BOLTON’S CURIOSITY CORNER (see below)
The man is a legend amongst Soundheads and you may have recently met him on the tour, doing the excellent sell of merch stand activity along with fellow Supersoundhead Mr Martin Ward
So, first things first!
The track selection this week is this very fine bit of strangeness and charm from Neil Young, via the mighty Buffalo Springfield.
By the time of recording only their second album, the ego war between Young and Stephen Stills had erupted and they were pretty much recording their own tracks separately.
Young had recruited young super studio whizznit Jack Nitzsche , who had made his bones with Phil Spector, and they trod the path of melancholy that soon Young would make his trademark, with this cut up of this, that and the other.
Tales of Native Americans intertwined with the sadness and loss of JFK, assassinated by the C*A or the Mafia perhaps?
Or just a lone patsy?
Will we ever know?
The grassy knoll knows… perhaps
But I digress…
So we begin with a very short fake live take of Mr Soul, beautifully grizzled out by drummer Dewey Martin.
It quickly jump cuts to a funeral march pace , wondering why said Mr President was gone and if everyone knew the significance of the loss.
It’s intertwined with the story of gross loss and abuse of the original Native Americans , a theme Young would return to (alongside Native South American peoples at the hands of the Conquistadors) and it holds a spellbinding to and fro of cut ups and beautiful sadness.
It’s only bettered by another Young piece on the album, Expecting To Fly, which quite possibly is the greatest and most beautiful thing ever committed to tape, Nitzsche flexing his spectral orchestral muscles in there to make it just magical.
I’ll let you lot follow the tale from here… but it’s one worthy of taking for far outness that’s not psychtastic phase overload.
Buffalo Springfield Again is absolutely one of the greatest rock albums ever made.
Everybody’s contribution is outstanding, regardless of egos.
It vies for my number two spot of greatest albums with Forever Changes regularly.
Exile naturally being number one, in case you’d never heard it from me before, heh heh.
But my top three is and always will be these slabs of beauty, that’s never going to change.
But then… we shouldn’t ever have to pitch albums against each other, even the stinkers.
After this, the Springfield just fell apart.
Last Time Around is barely worth the time, Richy Foray’s tracks being the stand out and Young’s I Am A Child.
The rest is basically contract filler, sadly.
The on again – off again relationship between Stills and Young still battles on to this day, with David Crosby only making things worse.
But he’s left us now, so I think the old dogs have finally just retreated to their own yards and maybe there is a reluctant peace finally.
The Springfield burnt bright for what amounts to a very brief period for all, but Again is simply sublime from start to finish.
If you ever manage to find the vinyl of this double album collection…
Grab it purely for the unreleased 9 min version of Bluebird, the Stills classic that flexes some series acoustic muscle.
Anyways, Again is fucking masterful and goes with my theory that a lot of bands made their best records when they were on the verge of breaking up.
Not all bands obviously, some were shite from the beginning.
So below we have our new feature…
MR BOLTON’S CURIOSITY CORNER
Let’s see what wonders he has to offer us today… as if by magic, he appears!
Welcome Mr Bolton!
Have righteous weekends amigos!
Toodle Pip!
Same time, same channel next week!
RH X
MR. BOLTON'S CURIOSITY CORNER "The Torched Flexi"
I’m sure most of us remember the good old days, pre-internet where we had to rely on old fashioned word-of-mouth, or sporadic mentions in the music press, or letters from Kevin (how many stamps did I send him, again?) to stay up to date with Loop-related goings on.
In the absence of Google, Discogs, Soundheads.org, or eBay a number of things (for me anyway) took on mythic proportions… whispered about at gigs, did they actually exist? Had anyone ever seen one? Sure someone at a gig told me that someone had seen one at a record fair in Basingstoke… and usually resulted in hours spent in WHSmith going through the back pages of Record Collector, scribbling down the details and hot footing it to the nearest phone box to hopefully get there before some other avid collector.
One of these mythic items was the famed ‘Torched Flexi’.
The ‘Torched Flexi’ did indeed exist… it had come free with a magazine called The Catalogue… so far so good. Problem was that The Catalogue, was a trade magazine ‘for the independent music trade’ published by Rough Trade to promote independent music, in particular, releases by the Cartel.
The Cartel was a co-operative record distribution organisation, set up by a number of small UK based independent record labels (Rough Trade, Red Rhino Records, Backs Records, Fast Forward, Nine Mile, Probe Plus and Revolver) to handle their distribution to record shops.
I hope you pop-trivia fans are paying attention… The Catalogue editor was one Richard Boon, ex-Buzzcocks manager, who ran the New Hormones label, before decamping to Rough Trade; it’s contributors included David Quantick, Everett True and one Geoff Muncey who co-owned Muncey Collins Management… Loop’s then management company. The ‘Collins’ of MCM was none other than Rob Collins… who went on to become MD of Cooking Vinyl, who we will all know put out Sonancy. Keeping up? good…
So, Issue 65 which came out in November/ December 1988 featured a Chapter 22 label spotlight. Loop, long-time friends with Pop Will Eat Itself, had signed to Chapter 22 to release the seminal Collision and the flexi was promoting the soon to be released Fade Out LP and the ‘Torched’ Flexi (Cat065) taken from the Fade Out LP came free with the mag. Chapter 22 had pulled off another coup and was, at this time, also home to Suicide!
So… one of my jaunts through Record Collector (or possibly a trawl through a record fair… the details are lost in the mists of alcohol) came up trumps and I managed to get my paws on the flexi. Result!
Sadly, more often than not the magazines had been jettisoned, as was the case with mine. But I had it – the Torched flexi. An interestingly square flexi-disc in a clear vinyl wallet… You don’t need me to tell you what it sounds like – to be honest I don’t think I’ve ever played it, but hey, that’s not really the point! – it’s Torched! The same mix as the album. Go listen to it… it’s fucking great!
As the years went by it irked me slightly that I hadn’t ever managed to get my hands on the magazine, so recently when the opportunity came up to obtain one from an old friend and fellow Soundhead, I leapt at the chance. It took a while due to geographical differences but finally it arrived along with one or two other goodies which I shall share with you in coming weeks…
And that fellow Soundheads is how, after 35 years, I come to finally have both The Catalogue magazine and the Torched flexi which I share with you today. Enjoy!