Papa Wemba - Peel Session 19/8/1992

Hmmm.....seems this blog has taken on a Midlands bias of late, so let's get virtually peripatetic and expand our horizons with a trip to Paris via the Democratic Republic of Congo.

If you're not looking forward to Later with Jools Holland (even though Dexys are supposed to be appearing) and have taken to reminscing about the days when Andy Cameron graced our screens at Hogmanay prancing about in his McEwan's lager-drenched kilt and jabbering jocko gibberish until Big Ben intervened, then why not see in 2013 with Papa Wemba.

The first of two sessions Wemba recorded for Peel, eight songs in total were taped, split equally for broadcast among Peel and Andy Kershaw. In typical Maggot Caviar fashion, three songs are missing, but hopefully the five tracks presented here will get you into the party spirit before real mundanity beckons.

Happy New Year, dear reader.

Track list:

1. Madilamba

2. Maria Valencia

3. Zero

4. Ombela

5. Lingo Lingo*

*broadcast on Andy Kershaw's show.

Yeah Yeah Noh - The Abattoir, Leicester 15/12/2012

So, christmas has been and gone once again in the blink of a turkeys eye. The leftover cheese straws (which nobody of sound mind would even contemplate eating, yet somehow an extra large packet always ends up in the house every christmas) are going soggy in the back garden for the consumption of our feathered friends, which will ultimately lead to emergency call outs to your local window cleaner before the new year kicks in.

You're sitting comfortably in your newly acquired-for-you Peacocks socks watching something you don't want to watch on television, secretly hoping an overlooked present lies waiting to be discovered amidst the befallen needles from the christmas tree. Should it fail to materialise, let this here offering be that lost present instead: Yeah Yeah Noh's homecoming show in Leicester just under a fortnight ago.

 Strange to think that last time Noh & The Gang played in the city I was still a few weeks shy of legal drinking age. I had a ticket for this show, but last minute work commitments rendered me unable to attend. Thankfully, Mr. P. Symons of the second biggest L was on hand to capture the pink and green juicy fruit-flavoured trip of the psychedelic jackanory on no less than three different state of the art secreted contraptions. Four new songs were proverbially unveiled to the beautiful and in awe flower children present, as well as cosmic regroovings of their pop hits from yesteryear.

Set list:

1. Prick Up Your Ears

2. Temple Of Convenience

3. Bias Binding

4. Shooting From The Hip

5. Another Side To Mrs. Quill

6. Automatically Saturday

7. Superimposed Man

8. Starling Pillowcase

9. Let's Start A War

10. Cottage Industry

11. Up On The Downs

12. See Through Nature

13. Stealing In The Name Of The Lord

14. Blood Soup

15. encore break

16. Up On The Downs

  

If you haven't been following the John Peel Record Archive, not to worry - they've saved the best til last.

Introduced by Sheila Ravenscroft, a short documentary with Derek and John detailing their meteoric rise to global superstardom and practical advice on how to successfully pack a drum kit into the boot of a Ford Cortina.

The Capitols - Burberries, Birmingham 31/3/1987

Persistant rain, flood warnings, waterlogged public access areas, cold, skint, nothing to look forward to on telly bar Emmerdale and repeats of the Magic Roundabout - must be christmas time in the UK then.

If, like me, you've reached the age whereby an overbearing sense of doom is cast over your yuletide spirit if you haven't received at least two pairs of socks as gifts, console yourself with this excellent live recording of short-lived Brum quintet The Capitols. Both sides of their lone single are performed, alongside tracks from their equally lone Peel session, plus a few lost gems that may or may not exist  elsewhere other than this recording.

Many thanks to Mr. P. Symons from the shires of Leicester for the recording, and Mr. L. Thacker of Brumagen for the photo.

Set list

1. Lousy Day

2. Who Can Tell

3. ?

4. ?

5. I Want To Be Alone

6. Falling Again

7.  Everytime

8.  Better World

9. Rude Awakening

10. Born Yesterday

11. Piss Off

12. Lovers Leap

13. Young Girl

The Nightingales - Sheffield University 6/12/1985

Tis the season to decry bah bloody humbug. However, if I may momentarily rouse myself from my middle-aged irascibility, and offer you another groovy Gales live show, comprising a set almost exclusively of material of the then yet to be recorded In The Good Old Country Way album.

At the risk of contradicting myself and going back on my word for a second time, this will definately be the last Gales live show posting of 2012. In fact, I'll go as far to say there will be no more Nightingales posts until March 2013. At the very least. Y'hear!

Set list:

1. I Spit In Your Gravy

2. Square Circle

3. How To Age

4. power failure to stage

5. band returns/explaination/tuning
6. What A Carry On
7. Comfort And Joy
8. It's A Cracker
9. Down In The Dumps
10. Part Time Moral England
11. The Headache Collector
12. short encore break

13. This

Terry & Gerry - Peel Sessions 1984-85

The elusive debut John Peel session, recorded 11 July 1984 and broadcast on at least two occasions during the summer of that year. Mysteriously not listed on the Keeping It Peel site, here for your aural delectation, dear reader, not only in its entirety, but in pristine-ish audio quality too!

Presumably, thanks should go to an unknown listener who may have requested the session for broadcast on 6 Music's Live Music Hour, presented by Chris Hawkins. Naturally, yours truly simply had to stay up until 4am to capture it (and still managed to get up at a reasonable hour to bring it to you all oh so swiftly!).

Five songs in eight minutes, not even Napalm Death could manage that!

Track list

1. Hello

2. Clothes Shop

3. Butters On The Bread

4. Wolfman's Request

5. Wait Until You're Older

ICA, London 5/10/1984
1. The Good, The Bad and The Usherette  2. Wolfman's Request  3. A Thousand Towns  4. Cars.  5. Hello  6. Butters On The Bread  7. TV Song  8. Dennis and Brian  9. Wait Until You're Older  10. Pizza, Pies and Junk  11. Clothes Shop.

This excellent short-lived Brum combo would go on two record two more sessions for Peelie in 1985, recorded exactly six months apart. There is scant info on t'internet on this criminally underrated group, but a brief outline of their history can be found here.

 

24/3/1985

Banking On Simon

Kennedy Says

Armchair Terrorist Song

A Sea Shanty For The Gravy Boat

 

 

24/9/1985

Reservation

Fashion Rodeo

Ballad Of A Nasty Man

The Last Bullet Of The Gun

 



 

Victorian Parents - Silence Follows (LP 1981)

I vowed to upload this extremely rare Polydor album by this great lost Lichfield four-piece several moons ago when writing about their debut single in a previous post. Here - finally - it is.

Three decades on from it's initial - and only - release, the album is still brain-bogglingly difficult to categorise. At times displaying prog-ish influences of early seventies Floyd or Hawkwind; others suggest traces of the psychedelically-inclined new wave groups emerging at the dawn of the eighties. On Self-Indulgence, lead vocalist Steve Johnson sounds uncannily like Wilder-era Julian Cope to my ears.

The guitar sounds/textures the VPs created still sound unique and fresh today - even appearing to synthesise synthesisers - possibly a nod towards the New Romantic scene that was breaking through into the mainstream the year this record came out. Only one single, All American Hero, was lifted from the album, curiously backed with the same version of Another Waste Of Time that had graced their self-financd debut.

While neither release made much impact in commercial terms, Polydor were keen on making a second album. Although several songs apparently were recorded, the title of their debut album proved somewhat portentous, and no further releases materialised. One track, Second Thoughts, posthumously appeared on a four track 12" compilation ep, Those That Fell, on Local Records in 1983.

Despite successful tours in the UK and Europe, either as headliners or supporting The Comsat Angels, and an appearance on the Old Grey Whistle Test, the band parted company with Polydor. A mere 13 months after their promising and innovative lone album was unleashed onto an apathetic record buying public, the Victorian Parents decided to call it a day in December 1982.

It's tempting to say as a 13 year old wannabe (i.e. deluded) hipster that I rushed out and bought the album on the first day it hit Bradshaw's (a TV rental company that also sold records) in Lichfield. Truth is, I borrowed it from the local library, and had it preserved on a Curry's no quibble guarantee ferric cassette for years. It wasn't until sometime in the early nineties that I got hold of my gold-embossed promotional copy you see before you now. Purchased from the late great Plastic Factory shop on Corporation Street, Birmingham for the bargain, and simultaneously insulting, price of a quid.

Track list:

1. All American Hero

2. On The Border

3. Self-Indulgence

4. Dead Red Grass Of Home

5. Uncommunique

6. No Response

7. Wasteland

8. My Advantage

9. Endless Wire

Recorded & mixed July/August 1981 at Woodbine St. Studios, Leamington Spa.

Produced by VPs/John Rivers.

Engineered by John Rivers.

Released by Polydor (UK) November 1981

POLS 1049.

Clinton Beale: guitar, backing vocals

David Phizacklea: bass, bvs

Roy Thomas: drums, bvs

Steve Johnson - guitar, lead vocals.

Jim Noir - Marc Riley Session 23/8/2012

Meanwhile, back in the 21st century....

Now if Brian Wilson had steered clear of under the counter sugar cubes, backstreet psychologists, and the Manson Family, then maybe he'd still be making music as quirky, poppy and deceptively simple as young Jimmy here.

After issuing a series of digital only eps via his online Noir Club in monthly instalments during 2011, autumn finally saw Noir release his first full length long player since his eponymous semapho...somaph...seraph....his second album back in 2008.

Jimmy's Show is available in an assortment of formats @ his official website. I'd heartily recommend the lemony vinyl edition.

Track list

1. Tea

2. Under The Tree

3. JJC Sports

A fourth track was recorded for broadcast on Gideon Coe's show; alas, I missed it.

Bogshed - Demos & Rareties 1985-87

Of course, all Bogshed songs, whether commercially released or out-takes slowly oxidising in long forgotten vaults, are rareties, considering they've never left the grooves they were originally preserved in onto the Satan's Frisbee format.

I first posted the La La La demos back in the summer, but having decided to close my rarely used Mediafire account last month, I subsequently deleted the post. Instead, I've collected all known (to me) tracks that didn't feature on singles, albums or Peel sessions on one handy, convenient post. Yes! Maggot Caviar is fast becoming your friendly One Stop shop for all your geeky needs; while I in the process am fast taking on the girth of your local Mr. VG.

This month marks the fourth anniversary of the sad passing of Tris King, so consider this post as a small tribute to a fine, underrated musician who left us some fantastic and unique music.

Track list:

1. Hold Up Your Hands, I'm Coming To The Market

2. Lodger Problem

3. Porridge In The Clothes

4. The Amazing Roy North Penis Band

5. Gathering Change

6. Too Many Personalities

7. You Are Now This

8. Packed Lunch To School

9. Fat Lad Exam Failure

10. Hand Me Down Father

11. Panties Please

12. Slave Girls

13. Spencer Travis

14. US Bands

15. Hand Me Down Father (Rouska version)

16. Runner On A Blunder

17. Stop Revolving

18. Your Science, My Sound

1-7 Burn In Hell (aborted Cherry Red comp cd)

8-14 La La La demos 1985

15 Raging Sun comp lp (Rouska 1985)

16 Imminent 4 comp lp (Food 1986)

17-18 withdrawn 7" single 1987.

Nerd note: I've omitted City Girls from the La La La demos as it's the same version as featured on their debut ep, Let Them Eat Bogshed.

And if that wasn't enough, here's another live set, this time from the Fulham Greyhound 8/2/1986.

 

The Nightingales - Fighting Cocks, Birmingham 1982

At the risk of spoiling you all, this will be the last (he says) Nightingales post for 2012.

Nice early concert and quite decent sound recording too. Four of the songs from this set did receive a limited commercial release on the scarce What A Scream compilation cd from 1991, possibly to pay off some unpaid studio bills after Rob Lloyd's failed attempt at superstardom. But then again, possibly not.

Many thanks again to Mr. Wazzer for the recording.

Set list:

1. Start From Scratch  2. Give 'Em Time  3. It Lives Again!  4. Under The Lash  5. The Crunch  6. My Brilliant Career  7. Joking Apart  8. Inside Out  9. Use Your Loaf  10. Which Hi-Fi  11. The Hedonists Sigh  12. Parafin Brain  13. Elvis, The Last Ten Days

The Capitols - Peel Session 24/3/1987

Just when you thought it was safe, here's another Nightingales-related post.

Short-lived quintet featuring Tank and Maria from The Gales whose output consists of one 7" single and this here session.  After T&M departed to concentrate on Rumblefish, the band became The Cantels, releasing a 4 track 12", I Want To Be Alone, in 1988. At one time they traded under the name The Sue Capitols. Other than that, I know nothing about 'em.

First TX 6/4/1987

1. Every Time  2. Who Can Tell  3. I Want To Be Alone  4. Falling Again  5. Born Yesterday

Many thanks to Mr. Thacker for Born Yesterday, and for providing the missing tracks to The Nightingales final Peel session from 1986, which you will find here.