Nothing To Be Done

While there's so much c86/ Glasgow guitar bands in the internet wind at the moment I thought I'd chuck some Pastels into the mix. I'm no authority on the group- I have a few bits and pieces but never followed them in any really committed kind of way. When they're good, they're really good. Baby Honey is my favourite, a 1984 single and 1987 album track but I've posted it previously and I wanted to post Truck Train Tractor, a 12" from 1986, but don't seem to have an mp3 of it, at least not on this hard drive.

Instead here's the opening song from 1989's Sittin' Pretty album, a crunchy, shambolic number with twin vocals split between Stephen Pastel and Annabel Wright. I always think this one sounds like Dinosaur Jr, a similar lurch and drawl and a squealing guitar part splattered across the middle eight. 

Nothing To Be Done

Honey

Back in June I posted a new single from Death In Vegas. Honey is a slow burning, pulsing techno track graced by Sasha Grey's seductive vocals. I'm still playing it now, still finding it one of those songs that gets right into me and makes me feel alive. In September it gained a video, mainly close ups of Sasha's face while she coos that she would die for you.



The Los Angeles photographer Blake Little covered people in honey for a series of pictures and a book called Preservation. Being draped in honey might be rather nice but it must have taken ages to get clean afterwards. More here.

Honey is a bit of a theme in art and music- warm, sticky and sweet, an everyday luxury. More honey?

The Los Angeles photographer Blake Little covered people in honey for a series of pictures and a book called Preservation (including the one above). More here. Being draped in honey might be rather nice I would have thought but it must have taken ages to get clean afterwards.

Jim and William Reid's Honey, like their Candy and Cindy, was a love song to a girl or a drug (or both). Here they are on The Tube, introduced by Paula Yates on Friday night in 1985, still with Bobby Gillespie playing the snare drum. Black leather, pale skin, feedback.



Earlier this year I posted another Scottish band's tribute to Honey, The Pastels whose Baby Honey is a wonderfully shambolic B-side from 1984. 

Baby Honey

There are plenty of other honeys on my hard drive- not sure that's a sentence that is going to keep me out of trouble- Johnny Burnett's Honey Hush, Lee Hazelwood's Silk 'n' Honey, Orange Juice's Simply Thrilled Honey, Martha Reeves and The Vandellas (We've Got) Honey Love, Duke Reid's What Makes Honey? and Prince Fattie and Hollie Cook's Milk And Honey but this one seems to round this off the best. Spacemen 3 were into honey (of course they were). It was the opening song on their 1989 album Playing With Fire, an album I have revisited a lot earlier this year. Honey is a Pete Kember song that opens with a blast of wobble, some descending chords and plucked guitar notes. The whispered vocal arrives a minute in and everything is stretched and phased, pleasantly distorted. 'Honey won't you take me home tonight?' Pete asks, 'the night is warm and the stars are bright'. Pete's meditation drifts on, blissfully and before fading out just before three minutes. 'Surely there ain't nothing we can't do'.

Honey

Baby Honey

More 80s Creation for you- this one from The Pastels, a gloriously amateurish racket and a genuine indie classic. This is the 12" version from 1984, coupled on the A-side with Million Tears and Surprise Me. They re-recorded it for their 1987 album Up For A Bit With The Pastels but this one is better by far.

Baby Honey

Stephen Pastel runs Glasgow record shop Monorail. He was there when we shopped there at the International Bloggers Convention back in May last year. He doesn't look that different from the picture above despite there being about thirty years between the two.

Dungarees

I used to have a pair of dungarees. In fact, if memory serves, I wore them to Spike Island. With a Brazil football shirt. No photos exist you'll be pleased to hear. A danger with dungarees was the straps coming undone when sitting down- as happened to me when getting ready to get off a bus. The whole bottom deck nearly saw me with my dungarees round my ankles.

For no particular reason (and I wouldn't imagine they were ever dungaree wearers, certainly not after toddlerhood), here are The Pastels.

Baby Honey