[Crud note: I lifted the pre-1999 list from a Super Furry fansite which has disappeared offline – it’s recorded here for prosperity and will remain so until I die – the posters and videos are from various sources and I’ve added other gigs I know about – enjoy!]
Frank’s Dad – Colwyn Bay blues-rock band 1991-98 formed by ex-4Q vocalist Cumi Pants who became the drummer, & ex-4Q guitarist Gumption Liquid, Nick Williams (bass) & Ads (Ian Adams) (voc), who was later replaced by Bramah.More
As a teenage punk growing up in Denbigh, you would hear about these legendary bands who used to play in Rhyl, like The Toilets, VOTS, The Vaj, Amsterdam and The Cellophane Boys. Being, like 12-13 years old, the chances of actually seeing any of them play live were very slim.
So to get this info on them is priceless… A version of the band recently got together to record the song Lies to coincide with the 2019 General Election.
From his lair in France, the band’s Dr Steve Roberts fills in all the blanks of this short-lived band…
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[originally posted 13.07.21]
Where do you start explaining who Alan Holmes is? Musician, producer, artist, label chief, irritant, collaborator. First rising to prominence via John Peel sessions and persistent gigging with Fflaps and then Ectogram, Alan has also run the gauntlet with an almost endless list of bands. When not gigging, or producing singles for Gorkys Zygotic Mynci, he was a constant behind the counter at Cob Records store in Bangor. He also runs his own label Turquoise Coal.
Name: Alan Holmes
Best known for: A persistent avoidance of popularity bordering on spiritual purity.
Current location: Locked down in my shed
Where I’d like to be right now: Locked down in my shed
My music collection has a lot of: Records (NOT “vinyls”!), the presence of beauty and noise (often simultaneously), the absence of U2, Paul Weller and Oasis, incoherent filing and shelves to hold up the records.
Don’t judge me for: My refusal to give up and try doing something I might be better at.
Five albums that keep me alive and why:
Phil Newall runs Louder Than War Records and has also looked after several bands over the years, including The Membranes, Goldblade and Trip. An avid gig goer and huge supporter of underground music… Here’s the five that keep him alive…
Name: Phil Newall
Best known for: I guess that depends upon who you ask! But if you have played a stage at the Rebellion Festival, I may well have taken your picture.
Current location: Wirral
Where I’d like to be right now: Here will do just fine, but that’ll change, possibly by the time I type this answer! Touring Europe with The Membranes once again would be good, attending a gig, searching out vinyl in Berlin etc.
My music collection has a lot of: Cramps releases, lots, and lots of them – nearly all the official ones (if anyone has a decent copy of Human Fly with the glow in the dark sleeve or Surfin’ Bird with the Purple & Black sleeve), in fact multiples of them, and then an ever-growing mass of bootlegs & rarities. I’ve got everything The Membranes have ever released, I’m missing a few foreign pressings, a compilation, and some test pressings, but just about everything else I seem to have acquired; and then there is everything else which ranges from Marilyn Monroe to Merzbow via punk, post-punk, dub, doom metal, industrial/EBM, rockabilly etc.
Don’t judge me for: Confining the answer to music; a collection of mid 80’s Hi-NRG, mainly stuff written by Bobby O inc The Flirts who sounded like an all-girl disco version of The Ramones to begin with, Man Two Man etc and some Italo Disco! And possibly my biggest ‘crime’ – being partially responsible for releasing the first couple of Evil Blizzard albums!
Five albums that keep me alive and why:
I was certain you had asked me to compile a Top 10 previously – I checked and yes, back in 2020, so this may have some overlap.
My selection is all older releases, there are lots of great releases, even within the last month, but they haven’t had the time to fall into the question definition just yet.
Sex Pistols ‘Never Mind The Bollocks’ – As incendiary sounding now as it was the day it was released all those years ago, and yes this one was in my Top 10 selection; can’t see it ever dropping out of that.
Joy Division ‘Closer’ – ‘Unknown Pleasures’ generally gets all the plaudits (and was in my Top 10), but Closer was, I believe Joy Division’s finest moment, there is such depth in the song-writing, the lyrics are brutally honest (yet nobody noticed at the time) – an absolute essential and classic recording.
Devo ‘Q. Are We Not Men? A. We Are Devo!’ – An album that somehow combined the punk/new wave attitude with the electronics of NEU! And presented the entire thing as a concept, which when this came out was tantamount to a war crime!
Siouxsie & The Banshees ‘The Scream’ – a supremely rich album of contrasting textures, the abrasion that people thought punk was all about, combined with inventiveness, those McKay riffs, and a rhythm section that was drip-fed on the Velvet Underground and prime time Roxy Music, add to this Siouxsie’s distinct voice delivering those lyrics.
Suicide ‘Suicide’ – An album that alienated so many! An album that not just set itself apart from punk but signposted where punk would go; I reckon there is a serious argument that without this album post-punk, synthesizer music, and to an extent industrial music would not have evolved as it has.
But I also wanted to throw in The Slits ‘Cut’, Killing Joke’s debut, some Lydia Lunch, and obviously the entire output of Spam Javelin, but Crud’s humility prevented the latter!