Fish Hildas - How I Itch To Stitch My Pitch/ Big Fat Gun

Indiepop weirdos with strange and peppy meandering sound

Label: Fishdisc
Year of Release: 1987

Lazy journalism and received wisdom would have it that NME's "C86" compilation, which launched the scene of the same name, was solely filled with lots of cute but awkward kids playing clumsy songs on cheap guitars about shyness, lost love and The Velvet Underground. In reality, the cassette was a much more rounded consideration of the underground independent scene at that point in time, and also featured the hard, angular music of A Witness, Stump and Bogshed (among others) whose sounds could be amusing, confusing, disorientating and seemingly more inspired by Captain Beefheart or Gang Of Four than Orange Juice or The Smiths.

While it's a fascinating listen, there are inevitably some jarring stylistic changes as a result, and very few bands whose style seemed to act as a bridge between both camps. It's a genuine shame that The Fish Hildas hadn't had a record out by that point, then, as they're possibly one of the only bands who you could imagine being on tour with either Stump or The Pastels and pleasing both audiences.

Their only release was this single on their own "Fishdisc" label, which begins with mystical puffing flutes, jangly guitars and despairing, gnashing vocals, and just when you think it's locked itself into a direction or groove it then goes skidding at another angle, before throwing in a cornucopia of synthesised strings and glockenspiels and slowing to a halt before grinding forward again. It's possible to hear the influence of The Associates, The Pastels and The Incredible String Band here, which seems like an odd and unpalatable pot-pourri of styles - but it somehow manages to get away with it.

The Brilliant Corners - Brian Rix/ Teenage

"Not another YouTube update!" I hear you cry incredulously, and my answer is "Yes, I'm afraid so". I was originally going to post this much later on this week, but it's unbearably hot outside, and I fear that if I dig any vinyl out to upload it will simply melt to the turntable. And also, I've been struggling to unearth any facts at all about the single and artist I was planning to upload today, so I'll put it on hold for a bit on the offchance that there's some titbit of information out there somewhere...

But back in the here and now, let's take a look at Bristol's Brilliant Corners, shall we? Unsurprisingly, they were loved and despised throughout the eighties in almost equal measure. One regional magazine I wrote for gave a compilation of theirs nought out of ten on one occasion, and the resulting copy read like the gnashing fury of a man who had been locked into a very bad student comedy revue.

The jangly/ shambling/ C86 scene (call it what you will) may have been many things, but the fans did tend to take their feyness and sensitivity rather seriously, which is why I found the Corners so downright refreshing. Rather than hide behind their fringes and sing about holding hands with girls whilst reading Penguin paperbacks (or insert a preferred stereotype here if you want), their lyrics celebrated their awkwardness with humour. "Brian Rix" has one of the best lines in eighties indie history - "We fumbled around in front of the budgie/ she started to laugh - what was so funny?" followed by one of the most ridiculous choruses ("It's just you remind me of Brian Rix/ when you pull down your trousers it sends me in fits") Eddie Argos would kill for this song. And this video, in fact.



It just about scraped the Top Hundred in 1986, which considering how damn hard it was for indie bands to chart in those times was no mean feat - but then behind the scoffing mockery also lay a top pop song I still play now, over twenty years after its release.

Also worth a view is 1988's "Teenage", which doesn't really show a great deal of progression, but follows the same ridiculous theme exceptionally well.



How well you get on with many of their singles really does depend upon your tolerance levels for humour or at the very least sledgehammer wit in music. For me, lead singer Davey Woodward was the prototype for every self-depracting indie humorist to come out of the British scene since, whether that is Eddie Argos or, spinning further back, the likes of the Sultans of Ping (who I have to confess do irritate the hell out of me). Whether you would like to hang him from the gallows for that or buy him a beer is up to you.

As an aside, I could add that I had a housemate in the nineties who knew him, and said he was managing OK with lots of royalties from Japanese sales. I hope he's still getting the odd windfall here and there to this day.

The Popguns - Waiting for the Winter

Label: Midnight Music
Year of Release: 1989

It's hopefully obvious by now that I have an enormous soft spot for a lot of eighties indie music, but in retrospect I'm not keen to join the hoardes of anoraks who will readily declare of most of the output: "They should have been huge!" No, they shouldn't. There was something so anti-mainstream, anti-eighties and even anti-stardom about most of the bands of the time that them being "huge" would have been contrary to their stances. It would have confused the poor dears. A lot of indie bands in the eighties were contrary sods, forever bemoaning the fact that daytime Radio One would never play them whilst simultaneously doing all they could to kick against everything Simon Bates held dear. Frequently, they sounded like the geeky school outsiders desperately trying to be mates with the captain of the school football team whilst also claiming that they were happy to be different.

There were exceptions, however, and I'd like to think that Brighton's The Popguns were one of them. Shambolic they weren't - on the contrary, the majority of the songs they released in their years of activity between 1986-1996 are straight, hard hits of guitar based pop, mixed beautifully with lead singer Wendy Morgan's heartbroken vocals. It was note-perfect, exquisitely performed stuff, and when you stop to consider the other "indie" acts who entered the top 40 in the same period (Ned's Atomic Dustbin, The Darling Buds, and The Primitives for example) it's hard not to feel that they were robbed.

Their 1995 album "Love Junky" is a particularly brilliant piece of work, where Wendy Morgan performs at her strongest. Where other acts of their ilk frequently had very wispy, fey vocalists, one of The Popguns' strengths was to have a lead vocalist who was able to give the tracks added pathos and emotion. She is able to give seemingly the most innocent phrase just the right amount of spite, hurt or tenderness it deserves. For all these strengths, however, they never did quite cross over, despite the fact that some of the singles from "Love Junky" did break the daytime Radio One barrier - well, once or twice, anyway.

Their 1989 single "Waiting for the Winter" is probably their best 45rpm work, although the video is admittedly very low budget. It almost seems as if they took a toddler to the seaside with them to run around with the camera whilst they ran through the song. Ah well.

Stump - Buffalo

Year of Release: 1986
Label: Ron Johnson Records

Precious little can be said about the above song which hasn't been said already. Perhaps the only surprising thing left to mention about it is the fact that apparently the lyrics - which I originally read as being surreal nonsense - are actually supposedly observations of a set of large American tourists the band saw wandering around their hometown of Cork. Lines such as "big bottom, swing big bottom" were seemingly about their walking style, whereas "How much is the fish? Does the fish have chips?" and "How do I get off the bus?" are therefore presumably parodies of dopey tourist enquiries, or else actual questions which were overheard (and I've heard more absurd ones in Camden, trust me).

Stump did eventually sign to a major label, which seems utterly unfathomable now, the kind of thing that would never pass through the portals of EMI or Universal unchecked in the demographic and marketing obsessed noughties. It's not that they didn't deserve some sort of success, but their experimental leanings almost guaranteed a cult audience and little more. Still, as a great many people have since realised, "Buffalo" has both a musical and comedic appeal which is quite unique, and deserves to be rediscovered by a whole new generation. A lot of their other material is pretty damn good as well.

An anthology of their work was issued on CD by Sanctuary Records this year, which is worthy of a look.

The Pastels - Crawl Babies/ Coming Through

Track: Crawl Babies
Year: 1987



Track: Coming Through
Year: 1987

One of those "Cor blimey, they never bothered to make videos, did they?!" Youtube moments. It would seem that pop clips were made for both The Pastels singles "Crawl Babies" and "Coming Through", despite not even getting so much of a whiff of a stop, rewind and play on the Chart Show indie chart*. To be a reasonably well known indie band making videos in those days and not to get that treatment is almost an achievement in a way - frequently the only bands in the chart who had bothered to go MTV on our asses were New Order, Depeche Mode or Erasure, and so the choices were extremely limited.

The Pastels are so cultishly successful in the UK that I almost feel like cheating by adding them on this blog, but the truth is they've never really hit the Top 40 of either the album or singles chart, and in fact have never bothered the top 75. At one point they were a Creation Records band who were lumped in (entirely inappropriately) with the Jesus and Mary Chain, and another were known (either lovingly or mockingly) as a "twee, C86 band", then another as "mates of Belle and Sebastian", but none of it has ever actually seemed to do them any good throughout their long career.

I suspect that the central problem with the band is that whilst to my ears their looseness and Stephen Pastel's woozy, slightly Barretty vocals sounded quite appealing - akin, in fact, to at least a couple of bands on the "Wallpaper" psychedelic compilation I put on here a few entries ago - daytime Radio One and the general public just weren't ready for that sort of thing in the mainstream, especially in the eighties when they enjoyed the most publicity from the music press.

I interviewed Stephen Pastel ten years ago, and he assured me that he thought the Pastels could crossover into the charts, and very soon would be putting out some "hard hitting singles". He felt that with Cornershop at number one with "Brimful of Asha" and also Belle and Sebastian having a rabid army of fans, the time was right for a band like his. Despite a very pleasing collaboration with Jarvis Cocker in "I Picked A Flower", his scheme obviously came to nothing, and I can't help but think that's a shame. Perhaps there's time for them yet.

(*A quick check on the Youtube Chart Show databases reveals that the programme bypassed the chance to play "Coming Through" in November 1987 in favour of Nina Simone's "My Baby Just Cares For Me", which just happened to be out on an independent label at the time. I think we should all collectively tut as loudly as we can at this point).