1990s - TL:DR (That's Long, DID Read)

Play For Today – Current Playlist 8th February 2017

The world is not making me very happy at present (my thoughts on all that are covered to an extent here, so I won’t go on about it) – but I am still enjoying music at least, so here’s a selection of things that are currently sounding good to me:

Diamanda Galás and John Paul Jones – The Sporting Life (Mute, 1994) – I always find it surprising that a vocalist as completely extreme and melodramatic as Diamanda Galás can be as straightforwardly moving as she (sometimes) is – pretty pop by her standards, but a great album, with John Paul Jones creating perfect settings for that amazing voice.

Apokrifna Realnost – Na Rekah Vavilonskih (AnnapurnA Productions, coming March 2017) – I would never have expected to love an album of archaic ritualistic/devotional music clandestinely recorded in Macedonia in the late 80s; but there you have it. It’s unsettling & deeply beautiful.

Teksti-TV 666 – 1, 2, 3 (Svart Records, 2016) The Finnish guitar-overlords are credited with playing a weird amalgam of punk, rock, shoegaze, krautrock etc; and I suppose they do, but the songs on this album are, underneath the noise and strangeness, pretty catchy indie rock that I wouldn’t expect to like but really do – it’s a great album.

Sauron – The Baltic Fog (Wheelwright Productions, reissue 2017) – I wrote at length about this great Polish black metal release for Echoes and Dust, so won’t say much here. But it has all the atmosphere you’d expect from mid-90s black metal and some good tunes.

Heavy Tiger – Glitter (Wild Kingdom Records, 2017) – Very easy to like Swedish rock that is (lazy comparison) like The Ramones meets The Donnas with added glam attitude (plus good songs)

Blake Babies – Innocence & Experience (Mammoth Records, 1993) – On the whole I prefer Juliana Hatfield solo, but this compilation of the Blake Babies is pretty great.

David Bowie – Station to Station (RCA, 1975) – One of my favourite albums, this just seems to get better and better. Even if it just consisted of the supremely creepy title track & Word on a Wing it would be one of the best things Bowie ever recorded.

Makaya McCraven – In The Moment Deluxe Edition (International Anthem, 2016) – There’s so much amazing music in the 28 tracks here, plus literally some of the best drumming I’ve ever heard; superlative, brilliant jazz.

Tom Waits – The Heart of Saturday Night (Asylum, 1974) – Unsettling times sometimes call for comforting music, and this warm, funny, poetic and melancholy album is one of my favourites.

If I Could Kill Myself – Ballads of the Broken (self-release, 2017) – If you are unconvinced by (or just despise) depressive black metal this will probably not change your mind. Lo-fi, raw and revelling in the miserable characteristics of the genre, it’s not (and I assume isn’t meant to be) subtle, but has atmosphere and good tunes aplenty.

Play For Today – Current Playlist 25th November 2016

After many delays, another week, another playlist…

1. Kristin Hersh – Wyatt At The Coyote Palace (Omnibus Books, 2016) Review here!

2. Stench Price – Stench Price EP (Transcending Obscurity Records, 2016)

3. Baby Tears – Succubus Slides (Choice Records, 2016)

4. Bethlehem – Bethlehem (Prophecy Productions, 2016)

5. The History of Colour TV – Wreck (Cranes Records / Weird Books, 2016)

6. Lush – Gala (4AD, 1990)

7. A Tree Grows – Wau Wau Water (Rufftone Records, 2016)

8. Kristin Hersh – Sunny Border Blue (4AD, 2001)

9. LL CoolJ – Radio (Def Jam, 1985)

10. Rachel Mason – Das Ram (Cleopatra Records/Practical Records, 2016) Review here!

11. Ela Orleans – Circles of Upper and Lower Hell (Night School Records, 2016)

12. Eric Dolphy – Out To Lunch! (Blue Note, 1964)

13. Wu-Tang Clan – Wu-Tang Forever (BMG, 1997)

14. Paul K – Omertà (2016)

15. Christine Ott, Tabu (Gizeh Records, 2016)

16. The Raspberries – The Raspberries (Capitol Records, 1972)

17. Isasa – Los Días (La Castanya, 2016)

18. Daniel Land – In Love With A Ghost (2016)

19. Miles Davis – Jack Johnson (Columbia, 1971)

20. Matriarch – Revered Unto The Ages (self-release, 2007)

Difficult, But Fascinating: The Gail Carriger interview

Preamble to the Preamble…

Following the success of steampunk icon Gail Carriger’s recent novella, Poison or Protect the new novel in her Custard Protocol series, Imprudence is out now and Gail was kind enough to answer some questions for me. If you are already a fan, you may wish to skip all the waffle and go straight to the Q&A below. If you want to know why I wanted to interview her in the first place, read on.

The preamble proper; whys & wherefores…

Up until the 1990s, I would always have said I liked vampires, werewolves and ghost stories. But although my love of horror, science fiction and fantasy has never diminished, the post-Anne Rice* world, with its endless teen soap opera-style angst-ridden ‘nice’ vampires and increasingly formulaic genre conventions left me cold and I tended more and more to re-read favourite authors from the past (or, in the case of HP Lovecraft, read the works of his associates) rather than pick up anything new. That was until I first read Gail Carriger’s debut novel Soulless a few years ago. Sadly, I don’t remember where I first heard about it (online, I assume), but from a quick read of the first few pages, I was hooked, and welcomed vampires, werewolves and ghosts back into my life.

*No slight whatsoever intended towards Anne Rice herself, or her excellent novels; as well as an incredible storyteller, she revolutionised the horror genre at a time when all of its other revolutions seemed to be towards a more one-dimensional, graphically violent approach. Not that I mind that in itself.

Soulless wasn’t Dawson’s Creek with vampires; the supernatural characters were, as with most modern/post-modern fiction, given a similar complexity to their human counterparts, but Carriger goes further, weaving the supernatural/natural worlds together in an ingenious yet extremely logical and historically-informed way. Part of what makes this so successful is that she placed her characters in a parallel version of the Victorian era, creating a society where vampires and werewolves, without sacrificing their predatory nature, exist alongside their mortal contemporaries as yet more finely nuanced layers in the already-complicated social hierarchy of Victorian Britain. If the Victorian era represents the height of the British preoccupation with social class and proper manners, these become even more crucial in Carriger’s world, where the correct way to interact with social superiors/inferiors includes people, possibly on both sides, whose politeness is the only thing preventing them from drinking your blood/eating you.

The author’s masterstroke (Or ‘mistressstroke’? Should be right but has inappropriate connotations and too many ‘s’s, so masterstroke it is) was placing into this brilliantly realised world, one of her greatest creations to date, Alexia Tarabotti; intelligent, wilful, tough, of fairly-good-but-slightly-shaky social standing (aristocratic, but a spinster, and more interested in science than fashion) and born without a soul, the contrast between Alexia’s dramatic, fantastical and romantic adventures and her own prosaic, practical-yet-impulsive nature makes Soulless (and its sequels) as lightheartedly funny as they are action-packed and dark.

With The Parasol Protectorate series and the ‘young adult’ Finishing School series complete and her latest series The Custard Protocol well underway (volume two, Imprudence is published this summer, on July 19^th) as well as a stream of short stories and novellas, Gail is intimidatingly busy (not to say prolific), but nevertheless gave up some of her valuable time to answer a few questions.

Far more information can be found on her excellent website, and she is also especially fun to follow/engage with on Facebook and Twitter. But enough ado…

lovely portrait of Gail by Vanessa Applegate

The Interview…

With your website, blog and personal appearances, your fans have quite a lot of access to various facets of your personality, but to what extent is the public Gail Carriger something you create versus (or as well as) being ‘the real you’, if that’s a question you can answer?

There’s not a lot of difference between the two, it’s more a matter of what I focus on talking about publicly. Because I am so open and all over the internet, I tend to keep my relationships, close friendships, and family out of it. After all, they didn’t ask for that kind of exposure. I don’t talk about politics, and I rarely talk about the nitty-gritty of writing or offer writing advice, there are others out there who do this more eloquently than I ever could. I also don’t talk much about the mundane of everyday life: my policy is that if I don’t want to read about it, why would anyone else?

As the last question suggests, your fiction is part of a wider world/lifestyle that your readers get involved into varying degrees, but do you have interests that you wouldn’t consider incorporating into your fiction?

I don’t think so. It would be hard to keep the things I love out of my writing for all time. There are things that haven’t come up yet, but I wouldn’t rule them out.

Gail in Steampunk regalia, by J. Daniel Sawyer

You (fairly) recently announced you will be self-publishing alongside publishing the usual way, should fans expect a big (or any) difference between the two?

Well my self published stuff will be confined to novellas and short stories under 40000 words. So that’s a big difference. I suppose it might feel a little more unfettered. I’m not limiting myself to anything typical about any genre that I’ve worked in before. I figure all bets are off. I’m taking on anything I feel like from full on romance, to light BDSM, to LBGT relationships front and center, to class relations, to darker themes with less comedy. It’s still all me though, that oddball bend toward silliness that people expect will likely never go away.

Victorian writers like Dickens and Trollope often wrote their novels in monthly installments, which seems a very high-pressure way of writing but lends itself to a great deal of detail and fast-moving action, does that kind of writing have any appeal for you?

Yes, but I don’t think I could do it given my current travel schedule and traditional publishing commitments. I always fancied writing Alessandro as a serial. Another big problem is all the contract workers. That kind of process needs a dedicated available team of developmental editors, and copy editors, and proofers, and formaters. Not to mention a killer outline for all the installments up front. (Because you can’t go back and fix and error at the beginning if already published.)

A related question, writers in the Victorian era often became associated with particular illustrators (like Dickens and ‘Phiz’) but at some point the idea of illustrations in grown up (I would say ‘adult’, but the connotations!) fiction went out of fashion, do you think the cover artists for your books have shaped readers’ ideas of your characters in the same way that those Victorian illustrators did for the writers of that era?

Perhaps a little. Cover art is important, but more to encourage people to pick up the book than to give them a visual clue into the author’s imagination. Most of the time we aren’t even consulted, so it’s entirely marketing. (Not true for me, luckily.) I doubt that cover art has as much impact on imagination as illustrations did.

In some ways the ‘virtualisation’ (ugly made up word!) of books/growth of digital formats (and online retailers) means that fewer readers pay the full cover price for a book, but conversely means that some people will pay more for small/special editions (like the Subterranean edition of Soulless that I still need to buy). As someone who grew up in the papery book era (I’m a couple of years older than you and assuming – perhaps wrongly – that you were not a technologically precocious child who only read books via a Commodore 64 from floppy discs) what are your thoughts on all this for the present and future of literature – good, bad, or just different?

I’m one for different. I like the changes going on right now. And I am lucky enough to have options because people want to read my stuff. A whole cornucopia is open to me which, twenty years ago, wouldn’t have been possible. I can write novels for my publishing house, write short works with side characters and self publish those, and I can arrange side deals with boutique publishers, like Subterranean, for high end limited editions. I don’t like it when my work is pirated or stolen, but every new technology has a price of admission and there is not going back now.

Your books have so far mostly been in series’, but at what point in the writing/planning process do you know that a novel will be part of a larger structure?

Depends on the novel. I didn’t know Soulless would be a series until contract negotiations and I didn’t know how long that series until half way through the third book. I’m not sure how long the Custard Protocol will be but I’m writing it as couplets so each two stand alone but also tie in to the others (likely 4 or 6 total). The Finishing School, on the other hand, was always going to be four books, and I had the arc planned from the beginning.

All the novellas are entirely stand alone, although they seed to each other and my full length works, because I can’t help dropping cookies and scattering favorite characters through everything I write. Depending on how well they sell (read: worth my time to produce) the novellas are loosely gathered into three collections all of them steampunk comedies of manners.

The Delightfully Deadly novellas are espionage romances spun off my Finishing School series, and could go up to 7 stories. Poison or Protect is already written and in production, and the other 6 just in note form. I’m using my Supernatural Society novellas to tell LBGT romances. I have 2 planned, one written, and some possible shorts. And the Claw & Courtship novellas all feature werewolves. I have 2 mapped out with a possible third and a short story. Basically, I’m using the novellas to write whatever I want when I feel like writing it, so I am leaving my options wide open.

Your novels would (or, thinking about novel-to-movie adaptations could) make good movies, would that be something you would welcome?

I think it would be very exciting, but I’m also realistic about the chances that anything would ever happen. The Parasol Protectorate books have been optioned for television, but that is all so far.

What are you most excited about right now?

Going hybrid and bring out the first novella, editing the second one, and writing the third. I’m super absorbed by cover art, fonts, and everything that goes along with the packaging of a book. I’ve never done it before and it’s really fascinating. Difficult,but fascinating.

Do you have any plans to come to the UK in the foreseeable future?

Nope. Like a vampire I only go where invited and I haven’t been asked in a while. I’d love to come back, I always enjoy visiting but I usually need some kind of event to draw me over. If I could afford it, I’d come every few years, I miss it there.

another great Vanessa Applegate photograph

Need more Carriger in your life? There’s a wealth of excellent information on all things Gail on her wiki and her fun vintage fashion (and related stuff) blog is here

Soft As Snow (But Warm Inside) – “shoegaze” 1988 – 1993

First a note: this is not an exhaustive exploration of the (for want of a better term) shoegaze genre. It’s extremely subjective, being based on my own memories and tastes c.1990-2 and therefore has some glaring omissions (unaccountably I never really heard much of the Cocteau Twins. More accountably, I didn’t like Catherine Wheel very much) and takes no account whatsoever of neo-shoegaze or the careers of the bands mentioned below after the period covered.

small but perfectly formed…

Nowadays, when even the format of the album is under threat from the ability to download single songs, EPs (always a lesser format) seem ephemeral or even pointless. It was not always so, however; although posterity has made Just For A Day and maybe even Whirlpool and Ferment into ‘classic albums’, those who were around at the time will remember that virtually every shoegaze album was initially regarded as a disappointment upon release, and all were completely eclipsed by My Bloody Valentine’s genre defining/destroying Loveless when it finally emerged from its long gestation (or what seemed at the time a long gestation; compared with m b v (finally released in 2013), Loveless seems almost hastily thrown together).

That the genre is ideally suited to the format of the EP partly has to do with style; although no two shoegaze bands sounded as alike as their contemporary detractors claimed, it’s true to say that effects-laden guitars, wistful vocals and hazy, dreamy atmospheres predominated – and these things are on the whole more effective in small doses. Likewise, the subject matter of the majority of these bands was enigmatic and allusive rather than forthright or obvious – understanding lyrics (or even singing along to them) is by no means a prerequisite for good music, but it does give an album a focal point aside from the overall sound; in the majority of shoegaze records the vocals are an integral part of that sound and often the lyrics are barely audible.

EPs, singles and even mini-albums were therefore the ideal way to experience the style:
and all of the key (and minor) bands in the scene produced their best work over series’ of three or four-song 12″ records, right from the dawn of the style.

The architects of shoegaze

Through the early/mid 80s, The Cocteau Twins were undeniably key in establishing a guitar based, semi-ambient sound and, simultaneously The Jesus and Mary Chain made feedback and sheer noise a part of the overground rock/pop scene. Some aspects of the sound that became shoegaze can be traced back further, to the post-punk scene (notably The Cure, still very much a vital part of the music scene in the late 80s.early 90s), but it is really these two bands that should be considered the real architects of shoegaze. In their wake came the 80s indie scene in gene
ral, with bands like The House of Love and The Smiths, who would influence pretty much all UK indie one way or the other from around 1984 onwards.

Baby Talk…

‘Shoegaze’ proper really kicked off in August 1988, with My Bloody Valentine’s You Made Me Realise EP.
Although MBV had been releasing records since ’85, until You Made Me Realise, the band’s sound was far more traditional, with a jangly 60s, post-Smiths, C86/twee quality very different from their aggressive, feedback and effects-laden mature sound. 1987 single Strawberry Wine is a case in point; essentially it is very similar to a song like Thorn from the You Made Me Realise EP; both songs are fast-paced indie pop, characterised by Kevin Shields and Bilinda Butcher’s vocal harmonies, Colm Ó Cíosóig’s dynamic, aggressive percussion and layers of guitars. On Strawberry Wine, though, the guitar sound is the chiming, jangly, Byrds-influenced sound then popular in the UK indie scene. On Thorn, the underlying track is not that different, but on top of the base layer of strummed guitars, the melody is formed, not by a 12-string Rickenbacker-ish sound, but by the highly peculiar vacuum cleaner-like mechanised howl of Kevin Shields’ heavily distorted guitar. Even if Thorn wasn’t a better song than Strawberry Wine (but it is), the guitar adds not only a unique sound to the song, but it also intensifies its stormy, melancholy atmosphere. This was a key feature of shoegaze that all of the best bands brought to their music; not only was the voice another instrument, the guitar was another voice.

MBV followed up You Made Me Realise uncharacteristically quickly with their debut full-length album Isn’t Anything. Iconic though it is, it demonstrates exactly why the EP is the format of shoegaze: even a relatively short 40-ish minutes of disorientating, backwards-sounding, intense and mysterious hazy intensity is a bit much without the voice of .a singer like Elizabeth Fraser bringing it all together. Anyway, the impact of You Made Me Realise was pretty immediate; by October ’89, one of the first new young bands made its debut: Lush, with their Scar mini-album.

Lush

With Scar, Lush not only established a distinct musical identity based around the opposing forces of Cocteau Twins-esque fragility (enhanced by the – typically – ‘ethereal’ vocal harmonies of Miki Berenyi and Emma Anderson) and prickly, punky bitterness, they also created an instantly recognisable aesthetic. 4AD – always the most coffee-table-book-friendly indie label – should have been a natural home for the shoegaze scene, but in fact Lush and Pale Saints were (I think) the only shoegaze bands aside from The Cocteau Twins (always somewhat aloof from the ‘scene’) to benefit from the label’s invariably evocative artwork and Creation became the shoegaze label. The six songs on Scar were uniformly excellent, but the production (by John Fryer, with the band) was serviceable but lacked sparkle, something rectified on the band’s next (and best) release:

Mad Love EP (1990)

This EP exemplifies the best of the shoegaze scene; four excellent songs, no fillers (and it is surprising how many bands couldn’t record an EP without at least one lesser song), each song catchy and atmospheric but no two very alike.
This time round the production was in the hands of the Cocteau Twins’ Robin Guthrie, indie royalty, and of course the main architect of the kind of pretty noise (and it is worth remembering that, despite their ‘niceness’ most shoegaze records included the kind of abstract noise that was definitely not a normal part of chart music) that Lush were working with. Alongside three new songs (all better than anything on Scar) there is a sparkling rerecording of Thoughtforms, the somewhat leaden sound of the Scar version replaced by something more scintillating.
Later that year, the band released Sweetness and Light, their most commercial, hook-laden record, the poppy a-side backed with two even more lighter-than-air songs, both pretty good. At the same time, it was becoming clear from interviews and TV appearances that the band were not quite the fey, angelic characters they mostly sounded like on record. By ’91 the shoegaze scene was, if not in decline, at least on a plateau, and Lush’s singles Black Spring and For Love were far patchier than their previous work. There were still great songs, but what had been ethereal had started to become watery and unmemorable and the band’s tougher songs jettisoned the shoegaze idiom for something more proto-Britpop/mainstream indie-rock-ish. Which is not what I am writing about.

Luckily, 4AD seemed to notice this watershed and released an album bringing together all the band’s work up to Sweetness and Light. Gala, especially in its lavishly packaged LP form, is all you need to know about Lush the shoegaze band, and one of the great monuments of the genre.

Ride

The month before Lush’s Mad Love went on sale, a young band from Oxford released their self-titled debut EP. Ride is not as perfect as Mad Love but it established a sound that was more pop-oriented than My Bloody Valentine, but with a heavier, noisier guitar sound than Lush. Ride balanced the unabashedly indie-pop sound of Chelsea Girl with the heavier Drive Blind (with its psychedelic, flickering guitar part strangely reminiscent of the intro to Status Quo’s ludicrous 1967 psych-pop classic Pictures of Matchstick Men) and the more reflective All I Can See and noisy Close My Eyes. The band’s sound was defined by the gentle harmony vocals of Mark Gardener and Andy Bell, whose voices bore a passing resemblance to that of MBV’s Kevin Shields, but where his voice often stayed buried, semi-coherently in the mix, Ride put their harmonies in centre stage.

In the summer of 1990, Ride released the eminently summery Play EP. Again, the band showcased a heavier indie rock sound, softened by the mellow Englishness of the vocals, but never as wispy and insubstantial as the scene’s detractors sometimes claimed.
The Fall EP was released in September and was another strong release, but although I remember a Melody Maker journalist claiming slightly later that the shoegaze (the then-derogatory term was coined around this time) bands were sapping their strength by releasing streams of EPs instead of saving their strength for an album, Ride were one of the few whose debut full-length (Nowhere, released a month after Fall) was actually stronger than the EPs which preceded it.
By the time Nowhere was released, ‘shoegaze’ was at its height, with critical reactions from the music press (in those days a little more influential than now, especially on the UK indie scene) outweighed by support, especially from Melody Maker.
Ride were also wise in that they (more or less) jettisoned their shoegaze sound at the right time, the more 60s-pop/prog influenced Going Blank Again proving to be their biggest selling album. But before they moved on, the band released their most perfectly realised work, the Today Forever EP, four contrasting but still definitely ‘shoegaze’ oriented songs.

Slowdive

If Ride were more strident and rock than Lush, then Slowdive were everything shoegaze’s critics hated about the scene: mellow, melancholy, dreamy, slow (of course), fragile. But that’s not all they were: their self-titled debut, released at the end of the autumn in 1990, was a seriously noisy release, for all its snails-pace tempos. The beautiful foghorn guitar of the title track was closer to the sound of My Bloody Valentine’s (as yet unreleased) magnum opus Loveless than any of their peers, and the way the delicate female/male vocals of Rachel Goswell and Neil Halstead drift through the massive soundscapes of guitar noise was distinctly different from the other bands of the genre. 1991’s Morningrise EP was another near-perfect EP but Holding Our Breath, released not long before debut album Just For A Day suggested, despite the presence of one of their most popular songs, Catch the Breeze, that the band had painted themselves into a corner; the distorted noise and feedback of the first EP had been smoothed into something altogether cleaner and more melodic, but without the stormy atmospherics, the sound of Just for a Day sometimes veered uncomfortably towards a kind of ‘Shoegaze Moods’ new age muzak.

Unlike Ride and Lush though, Slowdive’s second LP Souvlaki, released in 1993 after the death of shoegaze, was probably their strongest work.

Other bands
Shoegaze was not a vast scene, but at its height, EPs more-or-less in its style(s) proliferated almost weekly. The following are a few bands who excelled on EPs:

Curve – Blindfold (1991), Frozen (1991), Cherry (1991)

Curve appeared fully formed in 1991, with the slick and accomplished Blindfold EP. Despite very positive reviews, there was a certain amount of suspicion of the band in the indie press because the duo – Toni Halliday, (probably the shoegaze pinup, though not my personal one) and Dean Garcia – had links to various mainstream pop artists, having worked with Eurythmics and having attempted a mainstream pop career as State of Play in the 80s. Curve were important, though, in that they brought electronic elements and dance beats to the shoegaze genre, not to mention the only (to my knowledge) appearance of a rapper on a shoegaze song, namely JC-001, who appears – surprisingly successfully – on Ten Little Girls. Curve’s first three EPs were consistently strong, but their debut full-length Doppelganger (1992) was the archetypical disappointing shoegaze album, partly, as with Slowdive, because more than four or five songs in the band’s style becomes something of an endurance test.

Chapterhouse – Freefall (1990)

Chapterhouse bore the brunt of the music press’ disaffection with shoegaze, and indeed their discography is on the whole one of the weaker ones of the scene. Freefall is probably the best of their EPs, although lead track Falling Down (a Curve-like funky dance/shoegaze crossover) has not aged as well as one would like. For the best of Chapterhouse see the list at the bottom of this article.

The Boo Radleys – Adrenalin EP (1992)

It’s hard not to hate The Boo Radleys for Wake Up Boo etc, but all of their early EPs (and their debut album Ichabod & I) are all worthy of investigation. Adrenalin features Lazy Day, one of the finest shoegaze-pop songs of the period, the perfect marriage of pop hooks and blurry noise, and satisfyingly short too.

Moose – Cool Breeze (1991)

Moose, like Chapterhouse, seemed to come along just as the music press was growing weary of the shoegaze genre, but the three EPs they released in 1991 form a body of work with a very distinct personality and charm. Cool Breeze is the best of these, four perfect, sparse and autumnal pop songs, simple but inventive. Somewhat surprisingly, the band’s debut album XYZ was good too, despite an unexpected segue into mellow Americana.

Drop Nineteens – Winona (1992)

Labelmates of Moose (on Hut Records), Boston’s Drop Nineteens were (I think) the only US band to fully embrace the shoegaze sound, and their single Winona is a melancholy, droning-but-catchy classic.

CODA
Some songs of the period that would make an excellent shoegaze compilation (with the disclaimer than not all are technically shoegaze songs):
* My Bloody Valentine – Thorn

* Ride – Vapour Trail

* Lush – De-Luxe

* Slowdive – Slowdive

* Cocteau Twins – Heaven or Las Vegas

* Chapterhouse – Breather

* Curve – Ten Little Girls

* Boo Radleys – Lazy Day

* The House of Love – Christine

* Pale Saints – Half-Life

* Drop Nineteens – Winona

* The Wendys – Pulling My Fingers Off

* Moose – Suzanne

* Cranes – Thursday

* My Bloody Valentine – When You Sleep

* Slowdive – Souvlaki Space Station

* Ride – Today

* Lush – Thoughtforms

* The House of Love – Destroy the Heart

* Curve – The Coast is Clear

* Pale Saints – Throwing Back the Apple

* Codeine – D

* Moose – Untitled Love Song

* My Bloody Valentine – Slow

Independence as a State of Mind: the Bosque Records story (1988-2001)

Romantic intro…

Records (even really bad ones) are mostly just what the word suggests: a unique record of a specific performance, made on a particular day or days, by people in a particular room or rooms, who were in whatever mood they happened to be in at the time.

Record labels are, at their best, a time capsule of an era (or, if they go on long enough, time capsules of eras; see for example the lavish Rise and Fall of Paramount Records box sets), bringing together and preserving these voices and sounds and making them accessible for as long as the technology exists to play them.

Naturally, the more focussed or niche (or just small) a label is, the stronger the time capsule quality is; which brings us to Bosque Records. Although the big names of the 90s Scottish indie scene (Primal Scream, Belle & Sebastian, Teenage Fanclub, Travis, Shamen etc etc etc etc) are well remembered by posterity (or else are actually still around), they were simply the most visible/commercial/successful elements of an extremely vibrant and wide-ranging scene, which had its roots in the punk era and evolved throughout the subsequent decades in a variety of unpredictable and sometimes whimsical ways.

At the less commercial end of the spectrum was Tom Worthington’s Bosque Records, initially based in Edinburgh (rarely noted for its music scene) and then Glasgow (always noted for its music scene). In the period 1988-2001 Bosque released a handful (twenty-something) of distinctive, often powerful releases by artists as diverse and idiosyncratic as Dominic Waxing Lyrical, Gilded Lil, Starstruck and Trout. A small output perhaps; but it fulfils the ideal that (presumably) all labels start out with; you can pick up a Bosque release, be it punky, experimental, bluesy, dancey, with the confidence that you will hear something different, something interesting, something unique. And that is a real achievement.

In some ways, Bosque was documenting the end of an era; changes in the music industry, along with (and partially caused by) the birth/growth of the internet and the (temporary, as it turned out) death of vinyl records meant that the indie scene of the early 21st century would be less local and often less experimental, thanks to the appearance in the mid-90s of ‘indie’ as a term denoting a specific style/genre of (mainly guitar-based) music.

The original meaning of indie was in fact exemplified by small labels like Bosque; truly independent, devoted to whatever music their owners wanted to release, regardless of style and fashion or commercial potential. Indie releases from the 80s and 90s have their own special charm; like the music itself, the hand-drawn logos, the artwork and design have a resolutely non-corporate appeal, an expression of freedom and the non-elitist sense that art isn’t something precious or pompous, and that it has everything to do with your life.

Tom was good enough to share his reminiscences (and pictures; please see his Flickr albums for proper photo credits) with us;

When and why did you decide to start a label?

“I was in a band in Edinburgh, named Hee Haw and we had recordings that we wanted to release. In 1988 we first put out an 8 track cassette ‘Splash your head’ that sold quite a few (200?) so logically we thought that we would next do a vinyl record which was the 5 track 12” ‘WrigglEP’ in 1989 (bosc 006). Of course we should have done a 7” or 2 x 7”s but we had ‘label support’ from Fast Forward who persuaded us that the 7” was wrong for us and the ‘market’. And we were impressionable so that is what we did. It was alright, Peel played it and we sold a few, gigging as much as we could.”

Where did the name Bosque come from?

“Bosque (my spelling) is/was a word in common parlance in Forres, Moray, the town where I grew up. It means, roughly, excellent or sound, as in mighty. There was a Bosque cassette compilation in 1994 that featured The Manxish Boys, Pink Kross, Starstruck, Gila Monster, Policecat etc. This was called ‘Humpy Bosque’ (bosc008c) which suggests that it is an incredibly wonderful thing – which it kind of was. The name was of course awkward and annoying, always requiring to be spelled out to people, B O S Q U E.”

What were your biggest influences when you started the label?

“Punk rock. Vanity self publishing. Desire to document. Validation. Independence.”

What is your favourite record label, if you have such a thing?

“I shall plump for Shimmy Disc. But also early Flying Nun. Ankst Records too – I so admired their thing and was always actively seeking a decent band that communicated in Gaelic. But to my knowledge no such band has ever existed.”

Was there a specific guiding principle/vision behind Bosque records?

“Initially no, not really, it was a collective necessity and a shared responsibility. But after the Hee Haw releases it became me and Mark Gibbons, and that’s where it got freaky, and free. We were so in love with music, our own and that being made all around us. We were passionately involved, music and art and poetry was all that mattered. We knew that we had to take complete control and somehow, that is what we did. After Mark & I moved through to Glasgow in 1995 he started to have more fun. He joined and recorded several other bands and became less and less involved in Bosque. It was mostly me then, in a cheap white suit, a bit stoned.”

You were involved in the Bosque Burlesque events as well as the records, was there a spirit of camaraderie between the label/bands/fans?

“Well yes there was. I mean not always, because we were purposely juxtaposing things and deliberately trying to integrate many strands of the cultures that we were interested in. The Bosque Burlesque shows were a good example of this approach. Bosque was always about widening things out, finding connections and introducing jarring elements that tickled our fancy. We were trying to be free. And straddle the medias. There was such a great scene in Glasgow in the mid 90’s. We hardly cared about the rest of the world, we had all the excitement and all the tunes right here in our city. It was, essentially, a very wonderful time. The grotty basements and the parks and the cheap bars were full of individuals experimenting with their lives, throwing all that they had against the wall to see what would stick (a Will Prentice observation).

< Minx Grill

Seemed like everyone made music, wrote zines, put on gigs, we were just very, very present. Really I was too involved to ever be successful at the label game. I was a little bit older than most of us and I found myself in some kind of welfare/surrogate uncle role for lots of lovely, amazing, needy people. But at the same time I was trying to be a responsible safe bet to London promo/label types, fuck that wasn’t very comfy for me. But someone had to do it…

But aye, looking at the photos I took of the Bosque Burlesque shows, just about everyone in the audience was in bands themselves – and lots of them still are! A lot of fun, so many stories…”

What are your favourite Bosque releases and why?

“I suppose that the Sativa Drummers / Rockaragnarok split 10” (bosc024) summed up the ethos pretty well – and it is a great record. Sativa Drummers were a collective of drilled, politically motivated ravers with drums who would turn up from over the horizon at every demo or radical event in the east of Scotland. Mark Deas recorded this record and marshalled a massing barrage of drums, with minimal tape loops that conjured up an Albini-esque finale. Rockaragnarok on the other side were associated with and even shared members and lives with the Sativa Drummers but played an entirely different, timeless plas-rock psyche that amazes me still. But I am proud of all that we released. I just wish there had been more.”

Are there any Bosque artists you feel deserved wider exposure?

“Pretty much all of them. Seriously. I honestly believe that when they were on form, Gilded Lil were one of the greatest rock & roll bands of all time – and Trout were punk rock incarnate. Starstruck were pretty incredible at times and I am extremely proud of it, even if I say so myself. And what to say of Dominic Waxing Lyrical? I hardly know where to start, but the good thing is that he has not stopped and that is perhaps in some small way, due to our documenting and validating his music and stance on life back then.”

<Gilded Lil live c.1998

Were there any bands around then you wish you had signed but didn’t?

“Lots, I had so many ideas, so much enthusiasm, but so little money. There were so many good ideas for records, it’s a wee bit painful to think about them. I was useless with the business and admin but was convinced all through doing the label that someone, some big label or distro or individual would support and bankroll me through a load of releases. I had the bands ready, and the ideas and energy. It didn’t happen though.

I very nearly got to make a record with Mr. McFall’s Chamber (trumped by Robert Fripp).

I would have loved to have made a record with the Country Teasers.

There was to be a Starstruck picture disc 7” on the subject of red hair that just never happened dammit.”

It felt like the UK indie scene really changed around the time of Oasis, when suddenly commercial appeal/mainstream success started to be a goal, rather than something to be suspicious of, was that how it felt from the inside?

“I don’t think I cared that much. That stuff was all so crass and bland to me. Starstruck actually had a run in with Creation records around this time. Dave from Fire/Paperhouse Recs wanted to re-release the 1991 Starstruck cassette album ‘It’s fun, it’s easy. It’s you’ (bosc005) on CD on his Seminal Twang label – which was a fantastic idea, we were thrilled. And he was keen, he got us to do some recordings for various compilations, flattered us, gave me beer money, put us on the guestlists and generally held out the prospect of looking after the band, he was just really enthusiastic. But then he got head hunted to Creation where it all went wonky. Although we went with him there (without having signed anything, duh) his priorities suddenly seemed to change to immediacy and cashing in on what had become indie as a style not independence as a state of mind. We were palmed off, were bottom of the pile and basically forgotten about, which was deeply frustrating and resulted in Saskia and I going into the Creation offices at Creation and removing the Starstruck artwork and tapes. Disappointing, extremely. But we never were going to fit into that scene. Maybe we never were going to fit into any scene… Thus the subtitle to the Starstruck ‘Moi et Beatrice Dalle’ cassingle (bosc009) in 1993 was ‘No Creation Now!’. It also includes our classy version of the Beach Boys ‘Surfers rule’ which we had recorded for a Seminal Twang compilation with Murdo from The Cateran and Margarita from The Fizzbombs/Rote Kapelle.”

How far (if at all) do you think the label was shaped by being based in Glasgow? It definitely felt like Glasgow had a scene in a way that Edinburgh didn’t…

“Well Bosque moved from Edinburgh to Glasgow in 1995. Couldn’t be bothered with Edinburgh any more. Glasgow was absolutely the place to be. I was coming through twice a week anyway. Mark & I had both split up with girlfriends in the east and besides we had added a rhythm section to the Starstruck sound and they lived in Glasgow. So we loaded a van and hit the M8.

Mid 90’s Glasgow was grotty but kind of perfect. Bands would form, flicker and break-up in a day. 15 people would huddle in a bedsit to watch a VHS of a Cassavetes film. Folks would meet at the photocopy shop, start a new zine. We all forgot to eat. The 13th Note and Sleazy’s could be so perfect of an evening and sincerely we did not give a fig for the rest of the world, we had our own. We made friends for life. Very interesting when Richard Hell or Kim Fowley or The Make Up came to town – Glasgow gave more than it got. Amazing.

Of course I remained closely involved with my pals in bands in Edinburgh and felt obliged to introduce and promote their thing, first to Glasgow and then anywhere else that would have them…. This Edinburgh connection seemed like a trump card for Bosque, it felt important. But when I’m in Edinburgh I always want to get back to Glasgow to see what’s going on.

So yes, Bosque was shaped by Glasgow, but perhaps in hindsight it would have benefitted from a slight remove. But that’s not the story.”

Was running the label a financial struggle? Was it ever a full-time occupation?

“Well yes it was a struggle, eventually a bit of a disaster. It was so hard to even make ends meet and I never made any money to speak of, it all went back into the bands, their records, tours etc. But for a very long time I was so motivated and convinced of a beautiful outcome. The satisfaction was from being with fantastic, hilarious, talented people and making music and records. And between me and all the other labels, we did document an important and exciting time in Scottish culture. We did.

But yes I had to work through it all to pay my own way. And I sold furniture, records, all kinds of stuff, just to complete recordings and make the records that I believed in and was committed too. My enthusiasm knew no bounds.”

Was distribution ever a problem?

“Distribution was always a problem. We existed in a window of time where provincial rock & roll had little currency outside of our scene and the internet was but a baby. Post Fast Forward (1990 or so) there was no Scottish distro network to speak of so we were trying to deal with the London distributors and certainly for Bosque that was generally a highly dysfunctional & unsatisfactory relationship. These firms always seemed to be at it with us, but I freely admit that I was pretty dim about it all and not good at the language of bullshit or of playing hard-ball, both of which seemed to be required skills in manouvering within the London music industry. So probably most of our sales were at gigs, direct to shops and through the mail. But can I say that Paul Kearney is a lovely man!

As far as the web went we were actually really on it and did even attempt to live-stream a gig in 1995 as Mark & I and Saskia & Clare from Sally Skull were involved in Scotland’s first internet café then – but it all went tits up, which was another reason for escaping Edinburgh. We subsequently had a website and tried to work that but in the absence of streaming/downloads/secure server it was never a realistic way of running the label.

Sally Skull live, c.mid 1990s

My complaints about distro should not obscure the wonders of the myriad bedroom distros & the international pop underground which supplied the Bosque P.O. Box with cute letters containing fivers and ten dollar notes and IRCs and cheques in return for our vinyl – which meant that there was always a wee bit of money around for the essentials of life.”

Why/when did Bosque close?

“It all got very messy in late 1998/1999. Drugs and depression, death and despair. I had promised certain things basically the Gilded Lil album (bosc028), and I just had to hold on until that was released, which wasn’t until 2001. But I so very badly wanted/needed to get out, quit, take a back seat and get some rigour and honesty back in my life. It was a sad end to an extraordinary time. So very much energy had been put into the venture and there was not so very much coming back at me.”

What do you think of the Scottish/UK indie scene nowadays, do you still follow it?

“A bit. I go out and see bands in Glasgow sometimes. Lots, maybe even most of my friends make music, some of them have never stopped, I guess that they cannot and indeed why should they. There is still a lot of fantastic music being made in this country, particularly of course here in Glasgow. Great bands, labels, venues – loads of crossover into visual art, film and the written word. Exactly as it should be and, I am glad to say, it just don’t stop.”

Looking back at Bosque, do you have any regrets? Would you do it all again and if so what would you do differently?

“No regrets, fuck that. Never again. Onwards.”

Heartfelt thanks to Tom for taking the time to answer my questions! See many more great photos from his archives here

See the Bosque discography here