Don't Calm Down
Those of you based in the UK will know that Liverpool is European Culture Capital this year and to celebrate this (whatever it actually is) I thought I’d stick up a quick little post in honour of our friends up North. I considered basing it around the city’s most famous sons, but you can probably get all The Coral songs you like elsewhere.
For some reason the late 70s and early 80s saw a Merseyside music scene born that, whilst not as commercially successful as the Merseybeat bands of the 60s, spawned many great bands in its own right. The rock family tree is pretty tortuous so I suggest the interested amongst you visit here to start with. This will give you a short article about the now legendary Crucial Three – a band famous for not actually recording anything (they were only together for about six weeks), but rather for their members who all went on to form astonishing bands. These were Julian Cope (The Teardrop Explodes), Ian McCulloch (Echo And The Bunnymen) and Pete Wylie (Wah!).
Click on the links and you’ll soon be lead all over the shop of this bizarrely productive period – for instance, if you click on The Teardrop Explodes you’ll then find that the band originally featured David Balfe (who later set up Food records of Blur etc fame), who also co-owned the Zoo record label with Bill Drummond, later of The KLF – who at that time played in Big In Japan, which also featured Holly Johnson (Frankie Goes To Hollywood) and Ian Broudie (The Lightning Seeds)… and so on. Give it a go - it’s great fun and almost certainly better than listening to Ringo Starr’s latest tune Liverpool 8, which rather heartbreakingly is absolute shite.
And now for three monumentally classic hits from the bands that came out of that Crucial Three.
You want more of course. Echos here, Teardrops here, Wah!s here. Ringo... no.
Crisp Debris
Labels: crucial three, echo and the bunnymen, no ringo no, the teardrop explodes, wah
posted by Tiny Dancer at Wednesday, January 30, 2008
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3 Comments:
Three great bands.
I also love Wah!'s "Seven Minutes to Midnight." A very exciting song.
This is what I'm talking about... thanks for introducing me to TSE and Wah!
Hey guys, thanks for the comments! Hex conduction hour – I’ve only just started getting in to The Teardrop Explodes myself and have now been playing their Greatest Hits on repeat for about 6 weeks… some really cracking tunes on there, I recommend you buy it. As an aside I have a fantastic book by Julian Cope called The Modern Antiquarian where he goes around Britain checking out all the stone circles and megaliths… it’s beautifully packaged and really rather scholarly, plus you get some brilliant pictures of Julian and his wife standing next to completely unimpressive two foot high stones looking wet and cold on the Orkneys somewhere.
Erik – I replied to your comment ages ago but it seems it didn’t go up properly! I was roundly chastised this weekend at the Podcast recording for not having replied which was the first time I realised. My struggle with technology goes on…. I also love Seven Minutes to Midnight (is it just me or does it have a similar ‘feeling’ to Magazine’s ‘Shot from Both Sides’?), however my version is live – does anyone know if the live version is the only one available or is there a studio version?
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