I just recently found out about the Spanish band Sundae (thanks to a tip from Joel Felipe) and felt they deserved a mention here. They have a really nice sound, definitely more shoegaze than indiepop and very heavily influenced by The Radio Dept. (which is an influence I can get behind). The vocals remind me of Javier Aramburu’s old group, Family, which is probably the highest compliment I can give. Also turns out I know one of the members, Cris, from his past group (Shizuka) and record label (Bubbletone Discos). Good to see he’s still making great music.

Their song “Arte y Ensayo” is so far my favorite track and you can listen to it below. The band just posted their freshly mixed demo on their myspace page. I’m really looking forward to hearing more from them in the future.

Listen to Sundae - Arte y Ensayo

www.myspace.com/sundaeordie

The Lavender Faction “Ride” 7″ is one of my favorite early 90s shoegaze/noisepop singles. Rumor has it that Ride based their band name from this song after seeing The Lavender Faction perform it in Oxford (I believe I read that in This Almighty Pop fanzine), although Wikipedia says the band chose the name after a graphic design piece Mark Gardener created for a typography class. Who knows…

The “Ride” single was released on Lust Recordings, Stephen Joyce’s follow up to the fantastic Woosh fanzine and label. Lust released a number of other fine singles between 1990-91 featuring Aspidistra, Feral, The Keatons, Mr. Peculiar, St. James Infirmary, and a few more from The Lavender Faction. I’ve owned (and sold) many over the years, but the “Ride” 7″ has remained on my shelves. Definitely worth tracking down and usually costing just a few dollars. I wish I kept the 12″ version.

Listen to The Lavender Faction - Ride

www.twee.net/bands/l/lavenderfact.html
www.twee.net/labels/lust.html

The Singing Ringing Tree were a mysterious Scottish guitar pop band from 1986 consisting of Colin Fullerton (on vocals), Jack Hamilton (on guitars), and David Mulholland (on keyboards and percussion). They released one lovely 7″ single on their own Singing Ringing Records that came with 3 inserts and 2 stickers. I wager one of the members worked at a print shop by the look of it.

The A-side “The Hanging Tree” is fantastic and one that I deejayed on many occasions. The flip “Breaking The Backs” is a little too “tv theme song” sounding for my taste, not to mention suffers from being too long for it’s own good (running over five minutes), but it was the 80s afterall.

Listen to “The Hanging Tree”

Listen to “Breaking The Backs”

Here’s all the inserts:

There are two other singles by Singing Ringing Tree, but I think it’s a different Singing Ringing Tree, if you can believe. They are “Good Day Good” b/w “Generally Dancing” on Sample (SAM1S) and “Tales From Europe” b/w “A Promise” on Sample (SAM2S). I’ve only seen them briefly on eBay and sold for more than I could afford. Turntable Revolution posted “Good Day Good” on his Imeem account, listen here.

By request for King Rodrigo Maranan.

Send No Flowers were a Liverpool band from 1981 to 1983 featuring Lyn Sangster (on guitar and vocals), Jake Wakstein (on drums), Paul Sangster (on bass), and Timmo O’Shea (on guitar). They had songs on two compilation cassettes (“Adventures In Reality” and “Index #2″) before signing to the Praxis label (the label that also released The Balcony). It appears they released just one 7″ “Playing For Time” b/w “Wall of Convention” and “One More Day” before calling it a day. Lyn Sangster and Jake Wakstein both went on to form the fantastic Play Hard Records band Kit and Paul Sangster went on to play sessions in The High Five.

Other notable things… Robert Blamire (who played bass in Pauline Murray And The Invisible Girls) co-produced the “Playing For Time” single. I also read that the drummer of The Wild Swans, Alan Wills, played with the band during live performances.

Listen to Send No Flowers - Playing For Time

Speaking of Kit, here’s a nice review by Neal from The Hellfire Sermons. I’m planning to do a post about Kit’s “Unshakeable Faith” LP soon.

Liverpool’s Hey Marsha formed in 1986 with George Wilson (guitar & vocals), Steve Pettitt (bass & backing vocals), Steve Sefton (drums & backing vocals), and Kathy Morrison (keyboards). They released their first recording “Everbody’s Friend” on the legendary “Modesty Kills” compilation LP, the debut on the Audio Visual label (Run by Ken Kelly who was in Get That Smile and Innervision). Their next release came in 1988, a 4 track 7″ single called “Optimism” (also on Audio Visual), features my favorite track “My Optimism Flamed,” which you can hear below.

The follow up “In A Living Hell” 12″ was released two years later in 1990. The band became a three piece with bassist Pettitt replaced by Steve Jarrett and drummer Sefton by Damian Walsh leaving only original member George Wilson. Their sound also changed and unfortunately not for the better (losing their way like most good 80s bands did in the 90s).

I’m not sure if there were any other Hey Marsha releases, but do pick up their “Optimism” 7″ if you ever see it. The rarer “Modesty Kills” LP is also quite nice to have and I’m planning on writing a separate post about that one soon.

Listen to Hey Marsha - My Optimism Flamed

Discography:
“Everbody’s Friend” on Modesty Kills LP, Audio Visual (AVA 001), 1987
“Optimism” 7″, Audio Visual (AVV 001), 1988
“In A Living Hell” 12″ Audio Visual (AVV 003), 1990

Anyone know what AVV 002 was?

www.myspace.com/audiovisualrecords

It’s nice when you can make new discoveries in your own record collection. This single by The Maps is exactly that. I purchased it about 5 years ago at a record swap meet based entirely on the artwork and hadn’t played it in years. So when I was looking through the collection for things to post about, I thought I’d give it a shot (yes, thanks to this blog I’m actually listening to my records). Wow, “I’m Talking to You” is surprisingly great! Not sure I even knew what I had when I bought it.

The Maps were a Boston post-punk band featuring Judy Grunwald (later in Salem 66) on vocals, Robert C. Valentine on guitar and backing vocals, Daniel Salzmann on bass guitar, and James Clements on drums. The “I’m Talking to You”/”My Eyes Are Burning” 7″ was self-released by the band in 1979 and remains their only single.

Listen to The Maps - I’m Talking To You

More written on the band can be found here: http://www.geocities.com/nemsbook/m/maps.htm

The Thieves Like Us “Play Music” LPs just arrived and I’m super excited. We’ll put these on presale on shelflife.com sometime next week, official release date is March 10. I must admit the album sounds utterly fantastic on vinyl! We’re also now doing the cd version for North America to be released sometime in April and a new 4 track 12″ EP will be coming towards the end of May.

I just saw that the video for “Lonely Boulevard” by Celestial was posted via Music Is My Girlfriend. It’s my favorite song from the album. A video for “Try to Understand” is also up.

www.myspace.com/ourcelestialmusic

I’m flying to New York tonight. It’s my 11th (or 12th? - lost count) year I’ll be working on the web site for the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show. Stress and long hours aside, I’m really looking forward to be back in the city for a few days — get to visit my old “haunts” (man, what’s up with Etherea closing? sucks!), check out some new veggie restaurants (like blossom), and catch up with friends. It’s also Laura’s first trip east, so it should be a lot of fun.

I’m really most excited at the fact that we get to see The Pains of Being Pure at Heart, The Depreciation Guild, and caUSE-co-MOTION! show on Saturday night! New York friends I’ll see you at the show! I’ll bring some new Shelflife badges to hand out.

If all goes well with the weather, I’m back in the office on Thursday next week and my regular blog posts will resume soon after. In the meantime you can follow me on Twitter if you’re really bored (or if you want to hear about the dog show).

I leave you with… The Sound Movement - A Million Lost Dogs

Autumn Parade are a band I’ve loved since the 90s, but have always been a big mystery to me. They have that Manchester/Creation Records sound falling somewhere between early Primal Scream and The Stone Roses (or maybe The La’s and The Lightning Seeds? The singer totally reminds me of someone, but I can’t place it). Their only output (that I know of) was two songs on a Beachwood comp cd/lp called “Expo 1″ in 1992. Songs are credited to (John) Hamlin… and that’s all I know.

A few years ago I got in the habit of making my own “fake” releases for my iTunes library. Mainly for bands that never had proper records come out. The artwork you see above is from that, my own “Julia Blue EP”. So I thought I’d share these songs in this format and we can pretend that this is one fantastic 12″ release.

Autumn Parade - Julia Blue
Autumn Parade - White Sand
(requested to be removed by artist)

So now questions…
1) Does anyone know anything else about Autumn Parade?
2) Were there more releases or songs that never got released? I’d love to hear more from them.

UPDATE:
There’s now an official Autumn Parade myspace page here: http://www.myspace.com/autumnparade

The two tracks from above are available there plus two other unreleased songs, “Phased” and “Skylight.” Both are excellent!! Their myspace page also answers my two questions. Pity their LP “Indian Summer” was never released.

p.s. Those interested in tracking down the “Expo 1″ comp, more info can be found here!

We’re getting ready for more eBay auctions (most likely to happen in March, I’ll keep you posted). This 7″ by Grover was pulled as a “let’s see if we still like it” single and one spin later was put right back in the collection. “Prospect Street” totally brings me back to 1994 when I listened to mainly Versus, Hood, Henry’s Dress, Boyracer, Beatnik Filmstars, etc.

Grover were from Bellingham, WA and featured Chi-hui Yang on vocals and guitar, Chris Wolf on bass and vocals, and Brian Bressler on drums. Their debut 4 track 7″ “Dave Approaches Infinity EP” was released on Gritty Kitty records in ‘94. They also had a split 7″ with Crayon also on Gritty Kitty. Remember Crayon?

Listen to Grover - Prospect Street

Homer released their debut single “Lucky Thirteen” in 1995 on Platform Records. The song was produced by the legendary Hugh Jones (who produced all of the great early Liverpool singles from The Teardrop Explodes, Echo & The Bunnymen, Icicle Works, etc).

For this single the band consisted of Tim Keegan (started Departure Lounge, collaborated with Robyn Hitchcock, Kid Loco, Tahiti 80, Blue Aeroplanes, etc) on vocals and guitar, Andrew Claridge (from Garageland) on guitars and vocals, Patrick Hannan (from The Sundays) on drums, and Jake Kyle (also Departure Lounge) on bass. The band released another single called “Superkeen” in 1997 and the acoustic album “Grow Your Own” in 1988. Homer was also the back-up band for Robyn Hitchcock from 1995-1997.

The band split in 1998 when Departure Lounge formed. Keegan is still writing excellent pop songs (think Lloyd Cole and Robert Forster) and touring with Robyn Hitchcock.

Listen to Homer - Lucky Thirteen

Copies of this single can be found here for various prices.

www.myspace.com/timkeeganmusic