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
[dewplayer:http://www.shelflife.com/mp3-bin/b_lavenderfaction.mp3]

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”
[dewplayer:http://www.shelflife.com/mp3-bin/b_singingringingtree1.mp3]

Listen to “Breaking The Backs”
[dewplayer:http://www.shelflife.com/mp3-bin/b_singingringingtree2.mp3]

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
[dewplayer:http://www.shelflife.com/mp3-bin/b_sendnoflowers.mp3]

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
[dewplayer:http://www.shelflife.com/mp3-bin/b_heymarsha.mp3]

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
[dewplayer:http://www.shelflife.com/mp3-bin/b_maps.mp3]

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

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
[dewplayer:http://www.shelflife.com/mp3-bin/b_thesoundmoment2.mp3]