Sunday 13 January 2008

The Motorcycle Boy : Big Rock Candy Mountain

https://www.flickr.com/photos/japaneseforms/164731297/

The Motorcycle Boy 
Big Rock Candy Mountain / Room At the Top
Rough Trade (1987)
RT210

The Motorcycle Boy formed following the demise of Meat Whiplash -An Edinburgh-based band formed in 1985 and named after a Fire Engines B -side. Meat Whiplash signed and released one Jesus & Mary Chain-produced single on Creation before recruiting lovely blonde Alex Taylor from The Shop Assistants and changing their name to The Motorcycle Boy. The name originating from that of a character in the Francis Ford Coppola movie, 'Rumble Fish' (1983). A character, by the way, played by Mickey Rourke If I remember well, Rourke; still good-looking, was on a roll rolewise at that time. 'Rumble Fish' was also the film that launched Matt Dillon's career. An strikingly visual film shot in black & white and colour with Dennis Hopper in a supporting role and a soundtrack scored by Stewart Copeland (The Police). Dillon went on to star in the fabulous Gus Van Sant movie 'Drugstore Cowboy' among others whereas O'Rourke's career plunged into almost total obscurity only to re-emerge in some excellent cameo roles; such as that of the 'Bookie' in Vincent Gallo's 'Buffalo 66' and particularly in the recent cinema adaptation of Frank Miller's comic book; 'Sin City.' I seem to know more about the movie than about the band, I'm afraid. The Motorcycle Boy; the band that is, later signed to Rough Trade and released one single before moving on to Chrysalis where they released two singles and one album. The band finally called it a day in 1990 after releasing another couple of singles on the Nymphea Pink label. I don't really remember much about this group apart from the fact that Alex Taylor joined them and that 'Big Rock Candy Mountain' got rather good reviews -may have been Single of the Week in NME but I'm not sure. It's also the only disc I ever bought by this band; I probably only picked it up because of the fact that Alex Taylor had joined the band as I quite liked the Shop Assistants at that time.

Saturday 5 January 2008

The Royal We / 1990s


https://www.flickr.com/photos/japaneseforms/2167918829/
Not been able to do much posting in recent times. I've been busy setting-up home but the lack of posts is more due to the fact that all of my discs are still in storage. Worse, they'll probably remain there for a good while yet. Anyhow, I recently picked up this split, tribute single by two young Glasgow bands : The Royal We and 1990s covering Orange Juice's 'Poor Old Soul' and Josef K's 'Sorry for Laughing' respectively. As my turntable is also in storage I haven't been able to listen to this as yet. However, and this is why I picked it up in the first place, the artwork, by Stuart White, is great. You can check out all of the artwork here. According to the information -printed on the inside of the fold-over sleeve- both sides were recorded in May 2007 and the disc was mastered by Norman Blake (Teenage Fanclub). Some copies may still be available at Monorail or at Hitherto.

Both bands have had albums recently released on Geographic and Rough Trade

The Royal We

1990s