30 Songs- an indiepop odyssey- songs four to six

So now you see why I never promise you all new content on a certain date- real life intervenes (in the shape of an energy-sapping midweek trip to a meeting down South, I will spare you the details) and I just don't have time to even to copy and paste, never mind go out into the front garden during the hours of daylight to take pictures of old seven-inch vinyl singles with my vintage digital camera that doesn't really work all that well either inside or when it's not sunny.  Still, better late than never, eh?  And I promise- promise!- that songs seven till nine of this trawl through one man's halcyon indiepop youth will follow next Friday- hot on the heels of what is coming up right now.  Without any further ado, then, here are songs four to six ....

Song 4            Fuzzbox                      What’s The Point?

I say Fuzzbox, but of course this quintet of violent-haired Brummie lasses really called themselves We’ve Got a Fuzzbox And We’re Going To Use It, and for a few short months in 1987 it seemed their curiously engaging brand of electro pop, the shambolicness of whose execution made early Talulah Gosh look like the Birmingham Symphony, was about to take over the world.  Tragically good sense prevailed and the Fuzzbox girls went back to playing on their bontempi organs and scrawling their schoolgirl-crush lyrics in marker pen on West Midlands bus-shelters.  A sad loss.

Song 5            Colourfield                   Thinking of You

Terry Hall left the chart-busting Specials, dissappeared off the face of the earth for a couple of years, then reappeared on Saturday Superstore with a new female vocalist (who he had met a bus-stop or something) and this mournful, plinkety-plonk offering, the sort which gets into your head and refuses to leave for twenty years.  Treat this apparently throwaway melody with the respect it deserves!

Song 6            Specials                       Friday Night Saturday Morning

  ‘I hope the chip shop isn’t closed, because their pies are really nice’.  Terry Hall (for it is that man again) is evoking the end of a typical weekend night out in his native Coventry- but it could have been Liverpool, Nottingham, or Newcastle in the early 80s, as unemployment soared and a nation’s dissaffected youth sought solace in drinking, brawling, and late night steak and kidney puddings.  Friday Night Saturday Morning was the B-side of the more celebrated Specials ‘State of the Nation’ address, the number one hit Ghost-town.  The B side, I say!  These boys were so talented they had songs like this to throw away, apparently.

Comments

[Alan Bullimore]

I managed to get Walkman from Argos for £ 11.25, and would love a copy of the selections. Bit of a West Midlands theme going on here I detect ? I have a great Vindaloo compilation 'Baker's Dozen' (?) which includes a fine version of 'Rockin' with Rita' by the Fuzzbox gels. Look forward to tomorrow's 45's.
Head to Toe.