Vinyl Destination

Love the photograph on this cover. Who is that, Julie Christie or somebody? It looks like somebody from a 1960s/New Wave-type movie, probably sheltering in the rain after skipping down a Parisian street with her umbrella twirling. Or something. Perhaps it’s one of Eggs? I don’t know. I don’t really know that much about Eggs. I came across them first on a compilation tape made for me by somebody called Karen (I think) who I used to correspond with in the early-to-mid 1990s. She was involved in the fledgling UK strand of the Riot Grrl movement – I first got in touch with her through the fanzine ‘Die Right Now’ that she used to write – and she furnished me with knowledge about a whole lot of exciting and interesting bands.

TeenBeat, like K Records and Simple Machine Records, despite all being around since much earlier than the ’90s, were peripherally connected with Riot Grrl in as much as that they had a very inclusive roster, and released records that may not have had any kind of specific feminist/anarchistic agenda, but that quietly affirmed the idiocy of anybody having a problem with women making music.  Many of the roster’s bands simply happened to include women. (I must be honest – I don’t think Eggs do contain any women, but that’s immaterial). TeenBeat also had a pleasingly random and creative approach to releasing their records. They seemed to put them out in a pretty scattershot fashion, making it seem like they were just sitting around, and then heard a good demo, got it worked up into an album or single, and put it out right there and then. No grand plans or marketing ideas. I remember one single they put out particularly – their one hundredth release, I believe – being a fantastic ‘7″ album’ made up of one-minute long songs by all kinds of excellent bands including Bratmobile, Blast Off Country Style, Tsunami and indeed Eggs. One of Karen’s compilation tapes included the entirety of this ‘album’, and I listened to it a lot. (I’ve since bought my own copy – no home taping killing music going on around here…)

This record was bought some years ago, mail order directly from TeenBeat. It’s always exciting receiving a package of music from another country – somebody somewhere far away packaging things up, taking it to the post office, and then that package travelling halfway across the world to end up on my doormat is a cool concept. In this instance, the package included a handwritten note of thanks from Mr TeenBeat, Mark Robinson. Robinson was (and possibly still is) the main man behind the band Unrest – a band that I seriously loved back then and still now – so I got a minor thrill finding this note in amongst the records that I’d ordered.