A flexible slice of indie-pop history, this – the Sha-La-La label was the precursor to Sarah Records; they released a number of flexidiscs that were generally sold with fanzines. They all had fantastically evocative, two-colour wraparound sleeves, which tended to use imagery that was much the style of the time (and the genre): 1960s/1970s-esque pictures […]
Month: August 2010
ALLEN CLAPP: A Change In The Weather (7″, Four Letter Words 004, ?)
This record – as a package – is a little thing of beauty. Some aspects of it that appeal to me are: The sleeve: it’s a type of standard seven inch single inner sleeve, elevated to the status of The Cover by way of some really nice, what look to be hand-stamped (or perhaps screen-printed) […]
EVERYTHING BUT THE GIRL: I Don’t Want To Talk About It (12″, Blanco Y Negro NEG 34T, 1988)
The concept of ‘perfect pop’ is a long-standing one amongst indie kids. It’s a term often thrown back at critics of songs, almost a defense mechanism: ‘yes, it’s very badly-recorded, but it’s perfect pop!’, ‘I know it’s Girls Aloud, and they’re completely manufactured, but it’s just a perfect pop song!’, and so forth. It’s a […]
THE GO-BETWEENS: Before Hollywood (LP, Rough Trade ROUGH 54, 1982)
Item number one, inspired by the selection of this record 2345. As I fired up the random number generator to select a record for this post, I noticed that the number of records in the list of possibilities now stands at 2,345. That number must surely have some kind of numerological, Kabbalistic meaning? I bet […]
TALKING HEADS: Remain In Light (LP, Sire SRK 6095 NP, 1980)
I have a strange relationship with Talking Heads. They’re one of those bands that I feel I should really like, because they – at least the context of endless name-dropping by music reviewers the world over – tick several of my ‘this is my kind of thing’ boxes: ‘edgy’, slightly angular music weirdness art-school sensibilities […]
LOIS: The Trouble With Me (7″, K IPU 40, ?)
No release date is given on this record, but I think it came out in the very early 1990s. Lois Maffeo was an intrinsic part of the more indie-pop end of the nascent American Riot Grrl scene of that time, and part of the excellently-named Courtney Love, who for ever after would need to be […]