Art attack

Simon Reynolds once wrote, "Rock has never really made up its mind when it comes to the a-word."

Neither has Edinburgh's FOUND, a band that delicately toes the line between pure pop and sheer experimentalism. Formed roughly five years ago at Gray's School of Art in Aberdeen, FOUND is repainting pop music's borders with an artist's brush and palette.

Their performances push boundaries as well, combining the peculiarly conceptual with the sonically challenging. Back in February, the quartet took part in RSA's Body Parts festival. Slips of paper were passed out and those in attendance were instructed to make tiny airplanes. A laser beam was set up, stretching across the room, and the crowd was then asked to hurl their crudely folded dirigibles towards it. In the background, FOUND layered bass and keyboard lines, as well as a live air traffic control broadcast being manipulated by laptop. The result was described as "glitchy textures and menacing, semi-industrial grinding sounds."

"The experimental is what excites me," said band member Tommy Perman when talking about the group's vision, "but with a pop edge, some nice lyrics, a wee hook."

Check out some of their tracks here, including the latest single, "Mullokian," a folksy little number jazzed up with robotic beats. Also, the group released an album, Found Can Move, back on May 29.

'Our one chance to be famous'

File under the category: "perils of a showcase gig."

Edinburgh's Jesse Garon And The Desperadoes, on tour supporting Shop Assistants, are warming up for a show in London. There's a genuine buzz for the relatively unknown opening sextet: Flattering write-ups ran in NME and Melody Maker; before the show, 200 were in queue, waiting to get inside the venue; well-known music scribes and folks from record companies are said to be in attendance.

Jesse Garon And The Desperadoes hit the stage to raucous applause -- and then turn in an absolute stinker. Pure, unadulterated keech, as the Scots like to say. "We hadn't realized this was our one chance to be famous," lead singer Andrew Tully said years later.

In the days after the catastrophic gig, interested label head Geoff Trade (Rough Trade) did nothing to assuage the feelings of the bummed-out band. "He told us to go away and write 20 new songs, throw 18 away, and then bring him the other two," Tully told Brian Hogg for his Scottish music tome, All That Ever Mattered. "We were stunned -- in the previous two years we had only written 12."

Jesse Garon And The Desperadoes never did join the Rough Trade coterie. After releasing three singles for Narodnik Records in 1986, the group jumped to Velocity (churning out three singles and an LP) and then later, Avalanche. The final release was the single "Grand Hotel," which came in January of 1990.

Hear it for yourself. Download: "Splashing Along" by Jesse Garon And The Desperadoes, which was the first single the band ever cut.

One more interruption to our regularly scheduled program

Like the floppy-haired Bryan Adams once crooned, "Please forgive me." (And please, forgive me for that lede, as well).

This will be my third straight post (and fourth out of the last five) that will not focus on a Scottish band. I was all set to offer up a track from the inimitable Jesse Garon And The Desperadoes, but shelved that entry at the last second. (Don't fret: The Edinburgh popsters will be making an appearance tomorrow.)

Instead, I wanted to pratter on about one of my most beloved songwriters, who’s divulged some rather candid personal information courtesy of his blog. Dan Treacy -- part-time punk, full-time indie deity -- revealed in a April 27 post that he's been diagnosed with multiple sclerosis and thrombosis, and that he will ultimately need a liver transplant.

A month later, Dan expounded on his health a bit, lamenting:

go away and leave me to my steroids and hardcore painkillers/
when i wanted drugs i couldnt get em..now i dont ,i am fucking force fed..

This is tragic news for a man who had just returned to the indie limelight, thanks to the February release of the first new Television Personalities album in over a decade: My Dark Places. Yes, the year had started so promising (read the entries from January, and see how lively and happy he sounds), but then life quickly turned sour, as it so often does for Dan. (Note the other mini-tragedies mentioned in his blog: eviction from his flat, ex-girlfriend troubles, Domino not paying for a new passport so he can tour. This poor old sod just can't win.)

Here’s hoping things turn around for Dan.

Hear them for yourself. Download three tracks from They Could Have Been Bigger Than The Beatles: "David Hockney's Diary," "Painter Man," and "When Emily Cries."

What's on the menu this evening, sir?

Overcast, dreich, lazy, stuffed on doughnuts, fingertips stained from reading the Sunday rag, stubble on the face, uninspired, groggy from staying up late last night when I saw Trainspotting was on the television. So, since a quick update is all I can manage on account of the litter, I decided I shall upload the tracks from my two favorite scenes.

Till tomorrow . . . .

Hear them for yourself. Download:

"Deep Blue Day" by Brian Eno. A trippy, ethereal ditty that blends perfectly with Rents' underwater plunge.

"Perfect Day" by Lou Reed. A song many have proclaimed as being one of the most romantic they've ever heard. Of course, it's used for a love of a different sort in this flick.

The story of Creation (part 6)

The Jesus And Mary Chain? Nothing more than basic white noise with a snare drum. Oasis? Haughty wankers with big eyebrows and a derivative flare. Teenage Fanclub? Big Star-worshipping, musical tailgaters. My Bloody Valentine? The thick, muddied sound of somnambulists with guitars.

Rubbish, all of it. In fact, Creation Records' one true, bonafide genius was The Legend!

His real name was Jerry Thackray and he hailed from Rotherhithe in London's southeast side. Jerry put his pants on just like the rest of us -- one leg at a time. Except, once his pants were on, Jerry made gold records.

He came to the attention of future Creation head Alan McGee in Jaunary of 1982. McGee was performing with The Laughing Apple at a venue named The Golf Club, and Thackray, a diehard fan of McGee's band, was in attendance. Well, he was pretty much the only one in attendance.

A friendship was forged and McGee eventually brought Thackray on board to record once the Scotsman officially kicked off his influential indie label. Pure pop brilliance then followed. "You . . . chunka chunka . . . acted glamorous. Or so it seems."

Hear them for yourself. Download the five tracks The Legend! released for Creation: "73 in 83," "You Were Glamorous," "Melt the Guns," "Sings the Blues," and "Arrogant Bastards." Five songs the listener will never forget.

Unearthing The Groovy Little Numbers

Tracking down a compilation such as AGARR Retro: Fun While It Lasted, Part II is a must for any nostalgic hipster with an affinity for Scottish pop. Chock full of hard-to-find treasure and out-of-print plunder, the comp features singles released by Stephen Pastel's 53rd & 3rd label.

Some of the artists on the LP went on to churn out rather substantial bodies of work: Talulah Gosh with Sarah Records, BMX Bandits with Creation Records. But for many of the featured groups, the output wasn’t so substantial. Take The Groovy Little Numbers, for example. The band released just two singles during its lifespan, both for 53rd & 3rd: "You Make My Head Explode" in 1987 and "Happy Like Yesterday" one year later. The latter track is featured on the aforementioned compilation and calls to mind contemporaries such as The June Brides, who deftly blended sunny horn sections with cheery guitar parts.

The Groovy Little Numbers were part of the incestuous Bellshill scene and featured notable musicians like Jim McCulloch (one-time member of BMX Bandits and later, The Soup Dragons) and Joe McAlinden (another one-time member of BMX Bandits, as well as an arranger and sideman for Teenage Fanclub).

Hear it for yourself. Download: "Happy Like Yesterday" by The Groovy Little Numbers.

(And a tiny bit of trivia: The "AGARR" in the compilation's title was used before the catalogue number of every 53rd & 3rd release. It stood for "As Good As (a) Ramones Record," which was the expressed goal of every title cut by the label.)

The story of Creation (part 5)

The name was coined by the New Musical Express, noting the tendency of the bands' guitarists to stare at their feet (or their effects pedals), seemingly deep in concentration, while playing. Some fans will argue another story, that shoegazing music was originally made with the intention of being listened to while taking heroin, and that the name refers to a passage from the book Naked Lunch.
Excerpt from Wikipedia's entry on shoegazer

Its highpoint for me being sometime in August 1991 at the Chapterhouse/Slowdive gig one sunny Saturday evening in the Town & Country Club, Kentish Town. It seemed at that precise moment almost every indie head in London was walking past the pub nearby with either a Ride, Lush, Slowdive or Chapterhouse t-shirt. The gig itself was a vacent swish of noise hampered by the bad sound in the venue. Didn't matter though -- it was that zeitgeisty feeling that counted, a "this is our time" mood filtered through the on stage feedback swirl. In fairness, there was a certain focus and purity to the whole scene that sorely lacking with Britpop. It felt cool to be into all this gorgeous noise. When Ride appeared babyfaced on Snub TV early in 1990 singing "Drive Blind" and Lush released the amazing Mad Love EP everything seemed possible for a short time. A new psychedelia was in the air!
Post by user David Gunnip on ILM

I'm crazy, but I'm not mentally ill.
Kevin Shields, My Bloody Valentine

If it inspires greatness in as many bands that inspired us at that time, I think that’s fantastic. I think there is still somewhere that it can go.
Mark Gardener, Ride

At the time, the shoegazer . . . bands were big, and they all just kind of stood there and didn't move. I always felt cheated going to see them; it's like I could've just bought the CD and saved about 15 bucks on the ticket.
Bob Vennum, The Bellrays

Shoegazer dorks are starting to annoy me.
Matt Wobensmith, publisher of Outpunk and head of Outpunk Records

I always thought of shoegazer stuff as like being inside an aquarium with reverberating sound.
Harman Jordan, Shipwreck

The legacy of shoegazing? For a few years, music got "all swirly." Then it stopped being swirly.
Post by user Curt on ILM

Hear them for yourself. Download:

CRE 055: My Bloody Valentine - "You Made Me Realise," (7"+12"+CD5), Aug. 8, 1988

CRE 072: Ride - "Chelsea Girl," (12"), 1990

CRE 092: The Telescopes - "Everso," (12")