The Static Waves were a fuzzy indie-pop-noise kinda band from the mid-nineties*, a member of which I was in touch with via the fanzine/mail scene of the time. As far as I remember, I’d had a couple of their demo tapes and then I was very pleased to hear they’d decided to release their own debut single, ‘Wear The Suit’. As is often the case with self-released records, the purist in me would suggest that the band made a few rookie errors by missing out on a few details:
- The wraparound sleeve opens left-to-right, rather than right-to-left. Now, it may just be me who finds this irksome, so I’m prepared to let this one go.
- Sound Of New York records was the band’s own label (and that’s to be admired), but they neglected to give this record a catalogue number. Shock! How can it be catalogued without a catalogue number?! The runout groove doesn’t help, it merely shows the pressing plant’s ID for the record – AH 24388, if you’re interested. However, if I remember rightly, the band may have been from York (in the UK), which would make Sound Of New York records a pleasingly witty label name.
- No release date is shown anywhere on the sleeve or the record itself. This is a popular oversight in my experience, but that doesn’t make it a good one, people. Look to the future! All I can now say is that this record was released ‘in the mid-nineties’ – not exactly watertight historical accuracy, is it?
- What, no inserts? I always find it a shame when a band’s released their own product and neglected to stuff it full of all kind of free bits and pieces of ephemera. Photocopies are cheap and everybody has a pair of scissors somewhere. Live the dream! Add some inserts!
These tongue-in-cheek points aside, excellent work The Static Waves; more bands should release their own records. I guess back when this came out there was pretty much no internet as we know it today, so releasing stuff had to take the form of physical products. Bands are releasing their own records ten-a-penny right now, they’re just coming out in the form of downloads and fancy technological jiggery-pokery.
Can’t beat a good real record, though.
*Oh, and it seems that the band were still going until 2006!
Hello – my good friend Kate Dansette forwarded me a link to this page, so I thought I would respond to this, as I was the bass player in The Static Waves!
1.) We were very wet behind the ears, and this was our first vinyl record – (I believe most of our knowledge on making htis record came from Slampt’s Fast Connection zine) we got the sleeves copied at a commercial print shop in York – this is the way they came back…… we didn’t have any input into this I’m afraid. It looks wrong to me as well.
2.) The label name was chosen because it was an acroynm of SONY, as well as us being from York. We were clearly teenage ironists, being from a staunch diy background, we just thought it was funny.
The record doesn’t have a catalogue number, because, well, we didn’t have a catalogue. We created the label solely to put this record out, and didn’t really look past that – we just thought “well, records have to be ‘released’ on ‘labels’ don’t they?” so we just kind of made a label for it.
3.) You’re right, and we hold our hands up to that. It wouldn’t even have crossed our minds…… or maybe even it was on purpose…… we always were quite into the idea of there being a bit of mystery about the records, and I personally still quite endorse that mentality – even though I’m responding to this, I think it good to keep some things back, the internet means everyone wants to be able to know everything about everything these days. I don’t like that.
I would make a strong claim that this record was ‘released’ in 1998.
4.) I think later on we DID put inserts in this record – but only when Sound of New York had accumulated a glut of ‘solo’ tape releases – giving us something to put on an insert. I remember there was some kind of tape sampler for the label called ‘In the Acid Cave Commune’.
The Static Waves were together for 10 years – and we do still all know each other, hang about together, we all still play in bands, and Dom even runs a record label still – Sea Records, although Sound of New York fell by the wayside when other labels were generous enough to release our further records.
Cheers! Guy
So cool – thanks for taking the time to reply, Guy, great to hear from you! Enjoyed reading the info, and it’s good to know you’re still up to musical stuff. What bands are you all in now?