I recently wrote a rather lengthy blog post regarding Ride’s second album ‘Going Blank Again’.

The release of this album in 1992 marked the end of indie music being interesting for a good few years, most of the experimentation seemed to happen in dance for much of the 90′s whilst guitar music became all about record sales.

With the likes of My Bloody Valentine reaping the rewards for their legacy, which is now regularly talked about in the same way people once spoke about the Velvet Underground, you’d think Ride would take the opportunity to celebrate their achievements with another tour.

You can read the blog post by clicking here.

I was very pleased to see the launch of a local project which has been funded by the Arts Council to get John Peel’s record collection online.

Like most people my age John Peel educated me not only on the best new bands around, but he also taught me about a stack of obscure music I’d never have heard without him.

You can view the first stack of records now online by visiting The Space.

Sennen release their forth album this week. For those of you with Spotify access you can now listen to the album there.

It’s nearly a decade since they formed and I am pleased to have worked with them for most of that time through releasing their records and building their website.

In that time they’ve had glowing reviews from virtually every music publication out there yet they’ve still not had the success they deserve.

‘Lost Harmony’ is a much better album than 2010′s ‘Age of Denial’.

Tracks like ‘Learn to Love The Dark’ tap into that sense of failure we all feel when you reach thirty and realise you are not in the same place you dreamed you would be as a kid.

The photo above was posted on Twitter from a friend in Japan and shows how they are far more popular overseas than in the UK.

Am 80% of the way through rebuilding a website with a responsive design at the moment. The one thing that can be time consuming when you start switching the site over is that the images and videos don’t change size to suit your new layout.

If you’ve got a lot of videos on your site, rather than having to go through the whole site, using a jQuery plugin called FitVids is a life saving moment as it resizes all the videos from YouTube and Vimeo for you and makes them responsive too. I can’t recommend this enough. For more info visit fitvidsjs.com.

Back in the day they clearly got it all wrong I felt by charging a fiver a year just to send a message, they then went completely mad and decided to put the price up just as people were leaving. At least the site worked okay even if it was ugly, unlike MySpace which was also ugly and had more bugs than a hospital ward. You can view the new site design by clicking here.

With The Stone Roses, Happy Mondays and Inspiral Carpets all touring this summer I thought I’d take a moment to look back on the original Madchester era. Pre 1988 it was unthinkable for any ‘indie’ band to be making dance music let alone having a remix, only New Order could get away with such behaviour. After the success of Happy Mondays ‘Wrote For Luck’ and later ‘Fool’s Gold’ by The Stone Roses everyone decided they had always had a dance element to their music. This mix features many of the remixes of that era from late 1989 to 1992.

Here’s the tracklisting:
Bobby Gillespie – Interview
Primal Scream – Loaded (Terry Farley remix)
James – Come Home (Andrew Weatherall remix)
My Jealous God – Everything About You (La Locomotive)
Cud – Magic (Farsley Mix)
Blur – There’s No Other Way (Move Mix)
The Wonder Stuff – Circle Square (Paranoia Mix)
Happy Mondays – WFL (Vince Clarke remix)
The Stone Roses – Waterfall (Justin Robertson remix)
Real People – Window Pane (Extended remix)
Inspiral Carpets – The Is How It Feels (Renegade Soundwave robbery mix)
New Fast Automatic Daffodils – Big (Baka)
Flowered Up – Weekender (Weatherall’s Audrey Is A Little Bit Partial mix)
Pop Will Eat Itself – Cicciolina (The Future Diva Mix)
The Bridewell Taxis – Whole Dance Nation

Spring is in the air and the days are getting longer, which is great news as life no longer becomes so much of an endurance test and and it’s loads easier to find pleasures in life. Therefore it’s time for a look at the releases that are currently floating my boat….

Factory Floor – ~(R E A L L O V E) (Optimo Remix)
First up, we’ve got one of my fave bands of last year with what could be the best tune of the year. Imagine Lil’ Louis meets Nico and you’ve got some idea of what to expect, an industrial psychedlic house track. Woah! Factory Floor are one of the loudest bands around and I hope the manage to build on what have been a few greats records with a corking debut album…

Pains of Being Pure at Heart – Belong
Next up, one of the best live bands around at the moment with the title track from their second longplayer. ‘Belong’ starts off sounding like ‘Waterfall’ by the Stone Roses, then bursts into ‘Cherub Rock’ by Smashing Pumpkins with vocals by Stephen Pastel and backing from St. Winifreds School Choir. If that hasn’t put you off you’ll bloody love it. I’m still unconvinced the new album is a patch on their first but I’ll have give it a little more time….

Primal Scream – Screamadelica
In some ways you have to feel sorry for Primal Scream, from 1990 until 2002 they made some really, really, really good records with Vanishing Point, Exterminator and the often overlooked Evil Heat. The last two albums though were a major step backwards especially Riot City Blues which offered nothing, it just seemed a really lazy album lacking in any originality or even songs, I always wonder why the band have to make these poor Garage Rock albums everything few years (1989′s self titled and 1994′s Give Out and Don’t Give Up) when they aren’t very good at it, it’s opbviously where their heart is but makes for a poor listening experience. Currently though the band are touring their 1991 album Screamadelica and enjoying a huge surge in popularity.

I remember when Screamadelica was released I initially dismissed it as a compilation of their recent singles with a few filler tracks (although the singles were amazing) but I still lapped up the live shows of this era. Glastonbury ’92 and the miners benefits to a half empty Sheffield Arena were two gigs that I can remember alongside the traditional Brixton date every album they release. After a few years the anorak in me forgot what were singles and I now listen to the album as whole. Last week saw the release of a box set with 4 cd’s, vinyl and a long overdue release of the VHS video on DVD. There’s not many box sets I would buy these days but this was one I couldn’t say no to. I did consider the recent Ride reissue of ‘Nowhere’ but decided against it because

• a, it’s too expensive.
• b, there’s no new material included.
• c, the whole package looks cheap compared to the Screamadelica box set.

Anyway, below is a clip of the band playing ‘Damaged’ from 1992. Anyone got any other footage from this era?

The Primitives – Never kill A Secret EP
Discussing new releases by The Primitives in 2011 wasn’t something I anticipated a couple of years ago. I loved their early singles and their debut album ‘Lovely’ is near perfect but after this they quickly seemed to lose their identity and become just another major label band. After they reunited in 2009 Fortuna Pop! (the coolest label in the world at the moment) have stepped in to release their first new record in 19 years.

The ‘Never Kill A Secret’ EP includes new tracks ‘Rattle My Cage’ and the title track alongside a couple of cover versions. Now before I heard the EP I wasn’t interested in the cover versions especially as one is of a Toni Basil (yes, the same Toni Basil) number, but for me this turns out to be a highlight. I do like a bit of Northern Soul and The Primitives don’t dissappoint with their cover of ‘Breakaway’ in which Tracey Tracey surprised me by hitting all the right notes. I couldn’t find The Primitives version on the net to share with you today, so here’s the original.

For those of you hoping to hear one of the new tracks by the band, here’s the video for ‘Rattle My Cage’.

Yuck – Holing Out
Finally today I give you a band who have from some quarters been getting loads snide remarks, not from me. I’ve really enjoyed their debut album with a mixture of Dinosaur Jr. meets Teenage Fanclub meets Yo La Tengo. Who cares if they are a bit pop and are were once signed to a major record label, I’m too old to care about stupid rules like that….

Until next time….

1992. This was the year Reading went BIG!!! I first went in 1988 and it was utter rubbish. We all went just to see The Wonder Stuff whom i loved back then, but the rest of the bill was terrible (Bonnie Tyler, Meat Loaf, Starship!). The following year they addressed the line-up issue and had New Order and the House of Love play. Then in 1991 Nirvana played on a cold windy Friday afternoon (I dismissed them as Dinosaur Jr wannabes at the time) and within 6 months they were the biggest band on the planet and things started to change….

Nirvana’s 1992 headline slot is regulary quoted as “the greatest ever performance” at the festival, well it definitely wasn’t. I remember standing there bored and they weren’t even the best band that day, Kurt’s guitar sounded weak, he didn’t even play lots of stuff correctly and it all looked a mess, they just couldn’t match the hype. 18 years on the dissapointment of just how weak they were is still etched in my memory, listening to the recent release of that same performance as a live album and it sounds so different, I wonder if it has been partly re-recorded, it certainly didn’t sound like that through the PA.

If we can ignore Nirvana and perhaps reflect on the rest of that weekend and have some perspective if things are actually any better or worse now than they were 18 years ago.

Thanks to YouTube here’s my little review of some of the acts from that year.

FRIDAY

PJ HARVEY

Confession time, I missed this set but thought it’d be rude not include a clip of hers from this years Reading. I had seen Polly play Glastonbury a few months earlier and I was still annoyed with her for pulling out of some gigs she was supposed to play supporting my old band as she was going to sign a record deal with Island records instead. I mean, get your priorities right luv.

PUBLIC IMAGE LIMITED

I remember being a bit bored watching PiL. He seemed to be living in the shadows of his past glories. In reflection I regret not being more enthusiastic about this set, but youth was on my side and I wanted to listen to some floppy fringed indie rubbish instead.

THE CHARLATANS

Now The Charlatans were a band I followed heavily, I saw them so many times in 1990 and after that they struggled for a couple of years to find direction. I remember being so frustrated with them when they played Reading this year that I actually wished they’d just split up and put everyone out of their misery, I am pleased I was wrong. After this the band put out some great albums but this period of adjustment after their initial success was painful. Their set at Reading ’92 was dark and lacked any real passion. Tim Burgess came across as a Mick Jagger wannabe and compared to Ride’s performance or Primal Scream’s Glastonbury ’92 headlining slot this was weak. I still like The Charlatans. Note to self: buy tickets for their forthcoming tour.

THE WONDER STUFF

I remember being really hacked off with this lot by now. Having followed them since I first saw them supporting PWEI in 1987, they had gone from 2 minute pop songs to REM wannabes in 5 years and I was not happy. Miles Hunt had become everything he hated. They were hanging round with celebrities, making bland records and it all seemed a bit fake. I met the fiddle player once and he was a really nice bloke, but musically they’d have been a lot better band without him. If only they’d split when the Bass Thing left in ’89 they’d be seen as legends now. Reading ’92 made me wanna puke if i’m honest, I walked away in such a huff (as if it’d make any difference!!!) and vowed never to see them again. I didn’t until they did their 20th Anniversary gigs in 2008 and they were still rubbish despite the fact they were playing their only decent album.

SATURDAY

THE FARM

This is as bad as any festival performance can get. The Farm were shockingly bad, they were a poor mans Happy Mondays. They were the kind of rubbish Simon Cowell would sign just because he’d know he could get a couple of hit singles out of them. They had paint thrown over them during this performance. Normally I’d criticise such behaviour but the person who booked this lot probarly booked the whole 1988 Reading festival. The people have spoken.. “Get ‘em off!”

SMASHING PUMPKINS

When I watched Billy Corgan and his band on a sunny Saturday afternoon this year I had never heard a note by them before. They were astounding, the guitars were so loud it was great. I turned to my friends after the last note was hit and said “they’ll be headlining in the next year or two” and I was right. This was the best I ever saw them, maybe it was because i had no expectations. I also think they were were a band who’s album got progressively worse every release.

MANIC STREET PREACHERS

My wife loves this lot, they were the first band she ever saw live. They made me laugh a few times when they were a four piece. Their appearance on The Word was hilaroius and now we were going to see just how bad they were on a stage. I’m amazed they managed to keep going, they were always a poor mans Birdland to me. At this stage it seemed as though they were a 2 piece band with a couple of pantomine punks dancing either side of stage.

EMF

Another band who you wanted to hate but somehow they won everyone over, which is strange seeing as their only decent song was their first hit. EMF were more interesting in interviews than they were as recording artists. Their set at Reading was actually pretty enjoyable, Ride and Public Enemy were still to play that evening so I was excited at what the evening was to hold and EMF were a good warm-up to that. Aren’t they still going?

RIDE

My favourite band of that era. Ride were a frustrating band to love, they seemed to want to do the opposite of what their fans wanted to hear. Their initial EPs and debut album were amazing, I’d go so far as to say they were perfect, but after that the band seemed to chase success rather than let it just happen. As with all bands, this is when it all seems to go wrong. Don’t get me wrong ‘Going Blank Again’ (the album they released in the spring of 1992) was good, but tracks such as Mouse Trap (as seen below) and Time of Her Time were weak. Saying that if the band carried on making tunes like this they’d have been huge during ‘Britpop’, instead they made Carnival of Light which didn’t suit their vocals. Despite my criticisms, this performance was the best time Ride ever played. Everything was perfect, it was also the last great show they played in my opinion. I saw Ride so many times in their short career and after this they were always a shadow of themselves.

I remember critics at the time saying no one watched Ride as they were all in the tent watching Suede, critics lie! Ride had possibly the second biggest crowd of the weekend behind Nirvana. After this performance the band were at a crossroads, they could have gone on and become the biggest band in the UK, instead they chose the other path.

So what made this performance so special. The lights were fantastic for starters, the band were so tight after a long US tour and the set was a perfect mix of new and old songs. In two short years Ride had become one of the headline acts and pulled it off perfectly.

PUBLIC ENEMY

The fact I couldn’t find any Public Enemy from Reading on YouTube is shocking, they were amazing and easily the best band of the weekend.

SUNDAY

PAVEMENT

I don’t mind Pavement, but there’s just always something else (or better) to listen to. I bought one of their albums but have still never listened to the whole thing. 18 years ago my attitude to them was pretty much the same. They were ok, can’t remember much about them. I always think of Pavement as the Oasis it’s ok to like, so many bands have ripped them off and you see all the kids walking round our city in their check shirts thinking they are so alternative (coz they like Pavement) and looking down their noses at kids who listen to mainstream indie. Pavement are mainstream indie.

BJORN AGAIN

There’s not a lot to say about Bjorn Again, they were invited by Kurt Cobain as he was a massive Abba fan. They were good fun at 3pm standing in the mud and they covered ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’.

THE BEASTIE BOYS

The one thing I remember about The Beastie Boys set was the mud slinging. In front of the stage were groups throwing mud around and it was a lot of fun to watch, a bit like the bottles in 1988. I also remember how experimental they were as a band and should of been much higher up the bill.

At the point of this performance the band were still very much ignored by the press, despite 1989′s ‘Paul’s Boutique’ album being critically acclaimed, the press had ignored them since their 1987 debut. Their latest album ‘Check Your Head’ paved the way for the huge success of the following album ‘Ill Communication’ which sent them back to the top of the charts again in 1994. Within a few years the band were headlining the Reading Festival. Just like The Charlatans the band persevered and were richly rewarded.

I’ll be honest I’m only adding The Beastie Boys to this review (18 months after I originally wrote it) after hearing the very sad news that MCA (Adam Yauch) has left this earth. When I originally wrote this piece there weren’t any videos of them from the festival online, below you’ll now find the entire set which someone recently uploaded.

L7

Now watching this lot was funny for all the wrong reasons, still can’t tell you any of their tunes except for the hit. During this performance one of the band threw one of her used lady towels into the audience much to everyone disgust. A month or so later she dropped her knickers on live TV. Wonder what she’s doing now?

TEENAGE FANCLUB

Ride could learn some valuable lessons from the Fannies, the “if it ain’t broke you can’t fix it” rule definitely applies. 18 years later they are still making some of the best records around. This was their second Reading performance following the release of Bandwagonesque. They played on the same stage in 1991 but didn’t have the same back catalogue and had now moved into the spotlight since not only signing to Creation but also for being one of Kurt Cobain’s favourite bands. If my memory serves me well, Captain America (Eugene Kelly from The Vaselines latest band) were invited to play for a bit during the Fannies set as the second stage/tent was shut in the afternoon because of all the high winds and rain.

MUDHONEY

I remember this set very well, the excitement was really in the air by now as they played. “Were Nirvana going to turn up?” seemed to be question everyone was asking. I’d seen Mudhoney a few times before, but tonight on a muddy, rainy Sunday evening they seemed to be on fire.

NIRVANA

I’ve never been again, so Nirvana were the last band I ever saw at the festival… and here’s Everett True’s 5 minutes of fame. It was all downhill for the rest of Nirvana’s set.

On reflection, I reckon the Reading Festival these days is probarbly loads better than it was back then. I’m just a lot older and would hate being stuck in a field for 3 days with a load of teenagers…