London 28th July 2017

Organ Fanzine

New Musical Express

There’s no such thing as bad press. But there is such a thing as bad photography. Presented here for your enjoyment are some pre-debut album NME cuttings from 2005 – 2007. They should probably have been included in some earlier articles here and here. It was an unwritten rule to always have a bassist in shot and for me to have a large face. And flowers. Lots of flowers. And hair. Beautiful, sweaty stupid hair. Of course, in the World Of Silvery progress was slow. I’m not sure we managed to capitalise on these little mentions in any real way and we certainly didn’t have anyone saying ‘Nah what you wanna do now is..’ but we were happy to quietly cut them out and stick them in a scrapbook, which up until that point only had flyers, nice pictures from Fortean Times and the odd Organ review stuck in it. Ticking off all these little boxes in our minds as we went along. There were some letters page mentions too but I can’t find them. ‘Eccentric, charming and smart’ in an ideal world should’ve read ‘Dangerous, sexy and swaggering’ like it did with almost every other band at the time. But I guess that’s what made us different. Joe was very pleased that pretty much his first note played on stage with us was captured in an NME live review photo. I think at the time he thought he’d joined Queen or something. Which with hindsight is funny because within a few months we were playing our own ‘picnic by the Serpentine’ in a big top at Wireless in Hyde Park. Things were changing fast. Fast-ish.

These Questions Go To Eleven

(Originally published in January 2009 on an American music website. I’ve just had a look and see it’s no longer there so here it is for you to enjoy again! As always, with some added annotation because I can’t leave anything alone).

1.  What music did your parents play in the house while you were growing up? I only really remember two records that I kept coming back to again and again when I was little, Queen’s Greatest Hits and Jeff Wayne’s War Of The Worlds. Both got played to death by me on my dad’s massive old Sanyo music centre. And massive headphones too. In those days I would never tire of repeated listens all day. They’re both quite an introduction to pop music, and it’s brilliant to think that as a kid I thought all music was that ridiculous.

2.  Who is the best artist we have probably never heard of? Definitely Cardiacs. I guess basically they’re the English Pixies, punky, loud, complicated, but capable of extreme beauty and artful lyrics. But where The Pixies go back to the American blueprint of surf riffs and bluesy chords, Cardiacs reference old music hall and typically English imagery like the seaside and horses. Their mainman Tim Smith is easily up there with Bowie & Lennon, at least on the sheer quality of his output for the last 30 years. I think he’ll be remembered as a real maverick genius when he’s gone. And they influenced everyone, from Blur to Radiohead to Faith No More to Arcade Fire.

3.  What record did you used to love, but now can’t stand? **** *** ********** *** by *********.

4.  What song do you want played at your funeral? ‘I Am In Love With The World’ by The Chicken Shed Children’s Theatre, and ‘Tiny Tears’ by Tindersticks. In fact almost anything off Tindersticks’ Second Album, if they don’t cry because I’m gone, they’ll weep at the music.

5.  What is your favorite b-side? I drive everyone mad by my love of an obscure b-side. There’s many early Blur and Britpop era ones, but I think those early Suede b-sides were amazing. ‘Where The Pigs Don’t Fly’ just nicks it I think, mainly down to it reminding me of walking my dog in the late summer ’92.

6.  Which medium do you prefer: vinyl, cd, or download? Another great question… and after much thought, I’d have to say tape. The format I grew up with, and it’s still the tape versions of albums I pine for when I’ve not listened to something for a while. I dabbled with MP3s and they serve a purpose, but they need to sort out nice packaging for them. That said, it was having a vinyl release that really made the whole band thing ‘real’ to me… the one format you can’t make in your bedroom. (Note – my favoured listening now is WAV and FLAC through the laptop, hopefully sourced from the earliest Japanese pressing of an album I can find)

7.  What artist would your fans be surprised that you like? I think people that know Silvery will know that we’re fans of a lot of different things, from classical, through some 60s lounge and easycore collections to bad 90’s pop. But maybe the music I like that is most far removed from what we’ve released so far is Ottowan. Remember them? ‘D.I.S.C.O’ and ‘Hands Up’ are amazing.

8.  What musician would you choose to cover one of your songs? Easily The Beatles, just to see what the most famous band on the planet make of it. And I’d coin it in. Or maybe a female… Tori Amos does wonderful covers of songs originally sung by men. Hearing her do a piano led ‘Ghosts’ would be wonderful, as I think it’s a bit based on her.

9.  Who is the most overrated artist? I never really got into Bob Dylan or Leonard Cohen, but that’s more down to me being lazy (as of March 2017, this hasn’t changed – although reading it back, I’m not sure that I actually answered the question). I think only newer bands suffer from the overrated tag in its purest sense and I could reel off quite a list of them. But I do like how the POP machine works so if a band flukes getting a load of hype, good luck to them.

10. What musician or band do you wish you’d seen play live in their prime? As much as I’d love to say Sparks or Queen in ’74 or Bowie in ’72 I have enough bootlegs of them to keep me going. So I’d say Jacques Brel. When I listen to him, I can listen to nothing else for a long long time.

11. What non-musical influences do you have? Loads! We’re always asked about the whole Victorian London thing… that comes from my love of H.G. Wells, which leads onto an interest in Fortean phenomena like ghosts and Ufology and JFK. I was obsessed with early diesel locomotives when I was young so we have a couple of songs about them and occasionally try to sound like them too, and I have a decent grounding in philosophy so that occasionally pops out in some of the more puzzling lyrics. (Thank you KC for the questions).

David 2004 – 2006 (Or Thereabouts)

Next in the ongoing (and slow off the mark) SILVERY 10 Year Celebrations: a contribution from a pivotal Silvery. Young David Williams – electric bass and trusty confi-dandy:

2004: THE CALL UP ~ My tour of duty with Silvery began with a text: “COME TO BACKSTREET AT 3PM. THEN WE CAN BE QUEEN.”
James, the Task Commander, had given me a demo CD a week or two earlier with 6 songs on, along with a baffling sheet of chord progressions and a clunky bass guitar, which sounded a bit stout and looked as though it was made in the 1840s. It was spring 2004. I’d been in London about 6 months and hadn’t worked out what I wanted to do with it. James and I met working in a bookshop and bonded over the grim slog and the absurdity of it all, and the mind-wrecking loop of useless film soundtracks the bosses insisted on putting on, all day, every day.

Those first demos, recorded as a 3-piece (Orman, Pull, and a drummer called Giuseppe), were good enough to win over this sceptic. I’d tuned out of guitar pop bands at some point around the turn of the century when I became old enough to see the UK indie scene for the haircut competition it always had been.

But that first demo CD was so confident, so well defined and so singular. It rocked foremost – I knew it would be a hoot to play live. Camp, but deadly serious, delivered with a frantic, shrill energy, and with a visual aesthetic to match. Songs referencing the ghostly imprint of bygone London, Fortean phenomena, stinging rebukes to lazy people and wasted potential. Many of the songs were already there – apart from the odd arrangemental tweak, all they really gained in the intervening years was muscle. Each had a little trick, and an unpredictably memorable tune. They were detailed little worlds unto themselves – “perfect, but miniature”. They already sounded like a manifesto. There was Squadron Leader, with placeholder lyrics. An instrumental ‘Devil in the Detail’. ‘The Nod’, and ‘A Penny Dreadful’ pretty much fully formed. A scrappy take of ‘A Man Has Disappeared in the Sky’, and best of all, a white-hot version ‘That Which Is/That Which Is Not’. The whole thing was worked out. (I think this is testament to my one fingered keyboard playing. Still available for hire – Ed)

The deal was that it was James’s band. His songs, he was the director. I could write my parts but he could tell me to change them if they weren’t what he was looking for. Fine by me – I had a guitar duo called Little Hands Clapping to serve as an outlet for my own compositions. It was a bit like joining the Jimi Hendrix Experience. I was signed up to what James had in mind and willing to work at making the band sound as exciting as it could be.

At my first rehearsal the band complimented my cherry red DMs and showed me ‘Star of the Sea’ and an embyonic, verse/chorus arrangement of ‘The Nishikado’. James gave me a fine bandsman’s jacket to wear and told me off for playing too funky.

Giuseppe was a fantastically loose, noisy drummer – you had to watch out in rehearsals because he was prone to breaking his sticks and you’d have to dodge flying splinters. He had a hyperactive style – he could only be counted on not to play a simple, steady beat, and to speed up, slow down, and break up the rhythm mid-bar. With two fuzzed out guitars, the sound could get messy, so I took on a sort of Noel Redding role, keeping it solid and simple at the centre as all hell broke loose around me.

The set took shape. James showed me ‘Murder Holes’. Later we invented a dance craze to go with it, and a year or two later treated Brighton to a furious display of “murderholing” at the Pav Tav in Brighton, after we played the Freebutt. Explaining the song’s unorthodox structure, he revealed IT’S ALL SHAPES. And it was. All the songs were. They had an internal logic mapped out on the fretboard. I learned ‘Sparks and Fire’ off a tape with older demos and live versions, and wrote a sexy new bass part, which James let me record for the second album. The first time me and Giuseppe played ‘Ropes and Sails’ (which always, always went with ‘S&F’), we were instructed to play as though on a deck of a ship, looking out over a bay. So that’s what we aimed for.

My first public act as a member of Silvery was to emerge from a cupboard which served as a dressing room in the Hope and Anchor. My second was to clatter into a mic stand as I mounted the six-inch high stage. Over the next two years I carved out a niche for myself as “the clumsy one”. Accidentally unplugging my instrument was a speciality, though I also did a mean line in tripping over cables and whacking my mic with the head of my guitar. Once I got carried away tossing flowers into the audience at the Bull and Gate and pelted a big bunch directly into a girl’s face. Topping it all, on my last-ever gig in front of 1800 people at Koko, I executed a geometrically perfect scissor kick before slipping on a slick of bubble machine fluid and ending up on my arse in a tangle of limbs and guitars with James.

‘The Nishikado’ could have that effect. At that first gig Guiseppe came in a beat late, turning the entire first verse inside out. James had talked me into providing backing vocals (“I just need a bit of noise behind me”) but I’d never sung live before, didn’t have much of a voice and struggled to co-ordinate singing one rhythm and playing another, unless I was just thunking along on the root notes. Which, most of the time, I was. I was suffering from a throat infection and lost control of my voice – though the minidisc recording revealed that trying to follow James’s part I’d actually nailed a perfect fifth in the chorus. Never managed that again.

That summer, I discovered the power of the oom-pah bassline. Tried it first in the chorus of ‘Devil in the Detail’. James and I fell about laughing, so that sealed it – it was definitely in. I put that in as many songs as I could manage, and it helped nail the marching band, fairground feel we knew the band needed.

Then Simon joined. By the end of the first rehearsal it was difficult to believe he hadn’t been in the band all along. He was instantly integral to the Silvery sound with his plinky-plonky piano parts, off-beat organ vamping, and, a little bit later, swirling War of the Worlds FX.

The five piece Silvery didn’t last long – two or three gigs I believe. After a promisingly loose, electric showing at the Dublin Castle in August, that October (I think?) we played a bizarre gig in a reverberant hangar of a venue supporting David Devant. We were well drilled by this point, and played a pretty safe 2004 style set, made memorable by the novelty of playing in a space big enough to have useable monitors, and thus being able to hear ourselves properly. I remember a distinct lack of energy – partly nerves, probably, and partly because the place was just about empty when we went on, filling up with puzzled thirtysomethings over the course of our performance.

Then, with zero fanfare, Giuseppe went back to Italy. The band played a final, confrontationally ramshackle drummerless gig to a rammed Hope and Anchor, with a set dominated by untested songs (‘Charge of the Light Brigade’, ‘Will Self’, ‘1994’). Cues were missed. Middle-aged people danced. James roamed the audience with his inaudible acoustic guitar. Islington scratched its head. Howard decided he’d had enough. We all felt a little bit silly and had a word with ourselves about what to do next. For the remainder of 2004 there wasn’t really a Silvery, so much as a little handful of us that wanted to have a band.

2005-06: OVER THE TOP ~ “Let’s do ‘1994’ again”, said James. “That one’s got ‘HOPE’ written all over it”.
Stinking Backstreet Studios, winter 2004-05. Repairing the band was proving to be harder than just slotting one component into the space left by another. Alex, our new drummer, was very tight from the get-go, but at those first practices he was a little… tidy. It took a little while before he acquired the fluidity and frankly Popeye-muscled oomph you hear on the albums. We’d lost that power and weight a band gets when it’s been rehearsing and gigging regularly for months. And with guitarist Howard gone too, the jaw-clenching racket of the ’04 lineup had been greatly diminished.

But rebuilding from the chassis up presented opportunities, too. For one thing, James could bring in all the songs Howard hadn’t liked very much, which broadened the set nicely. ‘1994’ sounded great straight away, always punchy, crisp and with a cheeky swing. ‘Orders’ came in too, and we worked up full band arrangements of ‘Will Self’ and ‘Quaire Fellow’. Those two came to be dominated by Simon’s inventive keyboard tones – running his organ through a multi FX and distortion pedal for extra edge.

I bought a fuzz box for the bass too, which enabled me to take over the intros to ‘Squadron Leader’ and ‘Devil in the Detail’, and kick the noise levels up during bits like the freak-out section in ‘Sparks and Fire’. The best example of that is the live cut of ‘Seven Seas of Rhye’ – I might as well have been riding a motorbike around the stage. Loved it.

With James handling more lead guitar duties with wonky aplomb, and Alex growing in confidence by the week, the band was gigging by the end of January. I’m amazed now at how far we moved, from basically a standing start, in the first six months of that year. We cut about half a dozen demos in February, laying down the drums and guide bass on James’s trusty four-track in Backstreet. Then we reconvened at the studio where Simon worked to overdub everything else over the course of a Sunday afternoon, giddy on free sweets. The songs came over better than in the fog of live performance, but overall the results were disappointing – more like working models, lacking the tightness and thrill we were looking for. Still, the version of ‘That Which Is’ (swamped in fuzz bass) won Silvery’s first airplay, from Steve Lamacq shortly after I left the band. There was an early take of ‘Foreign Exchange’, with a shorter outro. The version of ‘Will Self’ saw the first appearance of the “Silvery monks”, the droning bass baritone choir who still can be glimpsed hovering in the background of modern-day Silvery recordings.

We practiced every week, no excuses, and played one proper gig every month, with flowers and uniforms and everything, which we would make an effort to get people along to. Between those we’d slot in midweek support slots at rubbish venues to try out new songs, revive old ones, or just experiment with the setlist. It toughened us up. No-one on any bill we ever appeared on could match us for sheer rabid eyes-on-stalks energy. I’d feel physically bruised going into work the next morning.

It was easy to lose control – to get swept away in our own whirlwind. Or, just take the stage too drunk to get the details right, especially if we were playing towards the end of the evening. “A Silvery gig should be like a well-drilled performance of HMS Pinafore,” James said. “But it can end up sounding like the Muppet Show”. Keeping the bass tight wasn’t a problem, because Alex’s snare and kick work was endlessly interesting to lock into and play off against. But all the chaos and adrenalin, and the scrappy PAs, made it really hard to do justice to the ensemble vocal sound we were aiming for. I always regretted that. Hated singing badly in front of people I knew. I’d dread the chorus of ‘Revolving’, because I couldn’t reach the notes James sang (a lot of the songs were devilishly high), and could never find the right pitch if I tried to go a fifth or a third below.

The singing was the only aspect that we didn’t really drill. Rehearsals were four hours long. The volume in those brick-walled railway arch rooms was nauseating. But the practice allowed us to learn little tricks and embellishments to give the gigs a greater sense of occasion. In the first gig with Alex, during the outro to ‘Devil’, the band dropped out abruptly as Simon played a few bars of ‘Hava Negilah’ in a carousel organ style, before we all crashed back in, in unison. ‘Orders’ grew its familiar fanfare intro and triumphant conclusion. ‘Sparks and Fire’ gained a poignant music box prelude. ‘Murder Holes’ was prefaced by an oom-pah instrumental version of the theme to ‘Screen Test’. We’d also throw in Mancini’s ‘Baby Elephant Walk’, and fooled around with some songs from the Bugsy Malone soundtrack. ‘Animals are Vanishing’, ‘Action Force’, and ‘Revolving’ all became staples in during the first part of the year. Later on we added ‘Warship Class’, and toyed with ‘Identity’.

I assumed a sort of Sergeant Wilson role, to James’s Captain Mainwaring. I tended to know the new songs first, from bedroom practices with James, especially when he stayed at my house for a few months. I remember running through ‘Murder Holes’ for the first time with Alex while James went out to make a phone call, and helped explain ‘Warship Class’ with its tricky time signatures, pauses and key changes. James and I both had jobs that enabled us to goof off and email constantly during the day, so we often talked about bringing in new things, or tweaking old things, or plotted setlists and talked about what worked and what didn’t at the last show.

We recorded a second batch of demos in June – finally doing justice to ‘Devil’, and laying down representative (but not much more) versions of ‘Murder Holes’, ‘Revolving’, ‘Action Force’ and ‘Animals are Vanishing’. It sounded pretty good, more controlled than the “Scooby and Shaggy being chased around a big top in a hurricane” live shows. But we were better than those versions within weeks. We blew that session by trying to do too much. Recording and mixing in the same day was always going to be a recipe for madness – especially when two members of your band are employed in the recording business. And, we hedged our bets, rather than concentrating our efforts on getting the essential stuff right. Single take versions of ‘Penny Dreadful’, ‘The Nod’ and ‘Foreign Exchange’ got finished off at the studio where Alex worked. Later on we remixed ‘Action Force’, with a pitch-shifted chipmunk voice on top of the chorus to lighten the overall tone. That ended up being my part, live. I could do three sorts of singing: unison, snotty call and response, or helium squeals.

The “showcase” gigs got bigger and better – we played a packed, steamy Buffalo Bar (supporting Devant, again) two days after the July 7 bombings – for a band so plugged into the spirit of London it felt like an important time to be out and about and kicking ass. Next was the Metro Club on Oxford Street, then the Purple Turtle in Camden, and the Marquee on Leicester Square. Those performances were fierce. Later, when I saw 2008 era Silvery with Joe on bass, I was jealous of how good they sounded – way beyond when I had been in the band – particularly the harmonies, while Joe’s playing glued everything together much better than mine had. The set was almost identical to 2005-06, and the mature band gave a much clearer account of itself, and was much more likely to win over more first-time listeners. But it didn’t have the everything-to-prove, nowt-to-lose ferocity we had 2005-06.

Rumours got out that we were in possession of a tape of **** ******* and **** **** having sex. It was a very 2005 rumour. They were a couple for a bit. While ******* was a rock star. Back when he was thin and everything. Anyway it went round ********* fan forums, then got picked up by the celeb gossip circular Popbitch. Given the profoundly unsavoury characters surrounding ******* at the time it put us in an awkward position. But there were upsides to having our every move watched by a load of desperate crackhead gangsters. Within a couple of weeks we were being offered gigs at Koko. We did two, either side of Christmas 2005. The first was an opening slot, and went rather well. The second was one off headlining, and was bloody mental. Before we went on, we did a little show at Tommy Flynn’s, just up the road. Alex pattered on a snare, Simon played on a toy keyboard, and me and James sang. It remains a mystery how we got out alive.

I can’t explain the thrill of the curtain going up, bobbing people spread out in front of me, and a theatre of balconies stacked on balconies up into the gods. Feedback, abstract organ noises, and Alex throwing himself into the marching drum intro to ‘Orders’. Most of the kids hadn’t heard us before – and they went nuts anyway. In the writhing crush down the front, a couple of girls in stripy top shouted “we love you”. They seemed very, very young. The gig rattled by in a blur, but by this point in the year we weren’t playing bad shows – we couldn’t miss, I guess, not when we were that juiced. Backstage was depressing – a lot of seedy, coked up old bastards and vacant Topshop kids.

Koko stood out because of the scale of the thing, but in truth, with every gig feeling increasingly crucial, we developed a standard “best of” set, and as a result the shows across the back of 2005 and into early 2006 became much of a muchness. Dragging the same material around London for another year while we got signed, and then for another two off the back of an album seemed a rather humdrum prospect. Bigger-time managers and promoters came along to see us and hang out, and they were repulsive. I didn’t much fancy the prospect of a becoming a face around the London rock scene – and it was clear we would have to do exactly that if we were going to get noticed more. Nambucca, on the Holloway Road, was buzzing, but I never had a night there that didn’t leave me feeling sad, lonely and bored.

I just preferred a night in at home with the missus. It became obvious that Silvery was destined for bigger things which I didn’t much like the look of – “I understood the reasons but the system gave me Horrors”. I didn’t want to hold anyone back – so between some quietish midweek gigs in early 2006, and with a distinct sense of anticlimax, I quit. I might have been in good company as an ex-Silvery, but it was depressing to think I’d become like the people who are treated with such contempt in ‘Murder Holes’, or ‘Orders’, or ‘The Nod’, trading in excitement and romance for a more certain, ordered life. Silvery powered ahead without me. In summer 2006 they filmed a video to ‘Devil in the Detail’ with the recording we’d made a year earlier, that summed up everything that was fun about the band.

The band had “HOPE” written all over it. Amid another bassist hiccup that autumn, I came back for three gigs on a strictly temporary basis, to keep the momentum up. It was all fun, no pressure, and culminated in one final hurrah headlining Koko. We hired matching suits – I got a pillbox hat (pictured) – and blew the roof off the place. At the end, during a celebratory coda to ‘You Give A Little Love’, we dropped hundreds of multi-coloured balloons into the crowd. It was a beautiful moment, and a proper way to bow out. But it was time for another, stronger component to slot into my place. The band would become tighter, grander and more successful after I left – but I think it’s fair to say that a little part of the reason Silvery made it to that point was because years earlier, the four of us had built up one hell of a head of steam.

Over To Our 2002 Correspondent

Editor’s note: Originally published June 2011. Adam Barnes was an old school pal who was part of my bandular experiments through University and eventual Pete N Carl adventures in Islington as Britpop died around us. I say died, by this point it was positively putrid. Previous incarnations included some fantastic names – namely THEME and SCISSORS (more of them here soon) and few gigs. Infact no gigs. Little changes, innit? In fact, most of our lack-of-bassist-gig-cancelations would’ve been solved if we realised then that guitarist Barnes should switch to bass and be done with. So a couple of years of floundering and pissing about with very hard Scottish landlords leads us to…

‘SILVERY AND MY PART IN THEIR DOWNFALL’ by Barnesy (Electric bass and quizical eyebrow 2001 – 2003)

Glam plus ska racket
Many stops remain awkward
Flyers did their job

(Silvery haiku)

And so the story begins…
In truth, I can’t remember the precise reason for joining Silvery. The band was pitched to me, and this was confirmed by the initial demo, as a primarily glam band with ska bits, a smattering of Sparks and heavy on the Victoriana imagery. Couple this with curious name, which wasn’t a plural noun as was the vogue at the time, and the foundations were shaky.

Add a 4 hour round trip to each rehearsal or gig into the bargain and the fact I didn’t own a bass or requisite amplifier and it makes no sense to this day. Still, these were lean times. The great bass player famine of 2001 had hit the capital hard and we all had a duty to do our bit.I’d like to attribute it as a favour to a mate or something of that ilk. But even that somehow doesn’t go far enough.

So, I understood the concept of root notes, octaves and playing something irrelevant to the song and this proved to be more than sufficient for Silvery purposes. Turned out that my initial inauguration was to end with a gig to be broadcast on local radio. 8 songs, 2 weeks to learn ‘em and one rehearsal with 2 unknown quantities of band members I had never met. Things were looking up.

To be fair, the less said about my debut Silvery gig, the better. First on the bill and below a Coldplay (circa 2002) covers band. Debut gigs don’t come much worse. Christ alive. The gig was a right howler from my perspective. I think I bumbled through ‘Revolving’ with dignity intact but that was all. Suffice to say, I never forgot to pack colour co-ordinated shoes for a gig ever again. In my defence, the gig was a charitable one. Alas, we were not considered to qualify for any funding.

By rights, there should have endeth my tenure. But it did not. The reason for this remains a mystery to this day. Gigs followed thick and fast. An intense rehearsal regime of once a fortnight and at weekends ensued. This would surely have been too much for all but the hardiest of rock n roll marines.

Irregular rehearsals took place at Backstreet Studios in Holloway (don’t look for it, it’s not there now) on the basis that Orman had once heard a rumour that Suede used it and David Devant & his Spirit Wife had been confirmed as using it. Relatively inexpensive to use, an amusing guy on the front desk and an manly odour of mould, honest sweat and 1000 cigarettes per hour burning in each room sealed this as the Silvery HQ.

No gig was considered to be too small or unalluring. The darling of early manhood – the Camden toilet circuit was stormed and fell. The Bull & Gate. Check. Too much scholarly ink has been spilt on the whole flowers incident and I do not propose to repeat it here. Suffice to say we rocked like “a dog on a stick” England 5 Germany 1. Stick it to the Bosh only to return to the scene of the victory to face posters featuring Howard on stage.

The Hope & Anchor Islington. A gig worthy of recall. A coach load of Scousers had descended upon the big smoke for a day to celebrate a birthday and a gig at the H&A. These kindly merchants kindly donated their second billing to a much worthier cause only to turn out to be a second rate Robbie Williams tribute act (the cunts) whose musicianship and showmanship is charitably described as ill foundedly confident. The ghost of the early Jam had surely taken it’s cue to bugger off up the Postman for a quiet pint.

They left, we took the stage and they took the audience. We proceeded to win over the remaining bar staff with a storming drunken set included a never to be repeated back to back rendition of the mighty ‘Toads’, One without keys and one with. Great gig, great photos. We were on our way. (I think you’ve confused two H&A gigs here Barnes – my birthday one with the Scousers was rammed – the first one supporting McFly was the empty one. Ed.)

The Dublin Castle Gig begins in my recall as any gig should. Crap sound check, token argument with sound guy, knowing sneers directed at other bands followed by a swift exit and pints at another pub down the road. This time out enabled frenzied set list writing, repetition of forgotten chord sequences and flyer distribution. Your basic format which can only be learned and perfected through hard graft. This is an art form , a ritual, akin to the Japanese tea ceremony. A thing of great beauty. The greatest oversized Victoriana flyer in the history of rock were proferred up to the great unwashed by Muzz on account of his being the handsomest silvery. Ice to the Eskimos? I do believe that we actually left the high street with more flyers than we started with. The obvious solution left flyers for the nights gig evenly distributed between post boxes, pub tables from the high street to the Castle, forming an alluring Hanzel and Greteleseque trail right to the stage. Hearty promotional groundwork that remains unrewarded to this day. That went well then. Today, if you look closely, and have luck, maybe you will find one of the several. The discounted door price is unlikely to still be good, but Silvery are likely to be playing.

We returned to venue and argued with sound man again. A thin skinned gent who took exception to being told how to do his job. Surely this was his job? If not, he would be on stage or just fuck off right? Instructions on leaving the vox low in the mix were simple, lucidly explained and promptly ignored. An amateur error on his part, this was easily over come by Orman cranking the guitar amp slightly between after and during each song combined with standing farther away from the mic and whispering. Surprised we did over 10 minutes there.

‘Devils’, soon to be lyricised and christened ‘Devil in the Detail’ was debuted this night. No issue with such a cretinuos mix given the camp vocals. The chord progression, unlearnt by myself had been addressed with a chanting all the way down the high street and had cemented. Still got the recording of that. Tight as fucking arseholes mate. Deemed only fitting to close the set the Rocket From The Crypt influence was not entirely becoming or representative of the bands sound at this time. Still, the released version of it contains the bass line (i.e. bass notes) virtually undisturbed from this rendition but without the greatness of the bass on the ska bit. And what on earth is that key change about? That was never meant to be there. Actually, most of the songs from the official release debut record were in place in my day, in varying stages of completeness. And most of the second album. What we lacked in polish and keyboards was made up for with rawness and a lack of keyboards.

Songs appeared with an alarming regularity. Always fresh, never to be repeated (but often reworked) and not always working. The songs were fresh at this point which always helps. Ok so I could only make rehearsal once a fortnight but this was no issue. Rehearse the hell out of it on Sunday and it would be in the set the next Saturday night. No one listens to the bass anyhow. Salad days. A demo CD completed by Orman in the summer was presented – dubbed “Theme: The Musical” contained a batch of songs which would also make the cut for these records. The demo was produced over a 2 week period during the annual Orman summer holiday where he locked himself in a room with a 4 track tape machine ‘The Nod’ as I recall was worth the last 2 summers work alone at the time.’1994′ and ‘Two Halves Of The Same Boy’ also came from these sessions.

Most of the surviving recording from this time were simply done at Backstreet. There was one session at a recording studio, which is probably the reason we continued to do things ourselves. The plan was simple. Record as many songs as possible as quickly and as cheaply as possible. I suspect that this theory gained credence as a knee jerk reaction to the infamous Hoxton incident of 1997 but that is another story. As an ethos, lo fidelity became us.

A studio in a non distinct seedy area of London (of which there are no shortage) was booked for an ambitious 4 hour slot on a week day evening. Much cheapness. £100 is the figure that springs to mind which in today’s money equates to about £100 give or take. As ever, my contribution/responsibility was to leave work early, jump on a train trusty plank in tow and be prepared for the worst. Oh and chip in despite being mugged for the ever increasing train fare. The mostly German sound engineering contingent seemed less interested in gaining valuable work experience than setting the studio record for the most bodies in the control room. This was not our concern, although their lack of English soon became just that. The drums were set up in record time and the record button was pressed. We continued to play uninterrupted for the best part of the 4 hours.

The genius of this plan was in its simplicity. The money was spent, nay invested, in a none too lavish live-ish recording, primarily to get a decent drum sound. Words and additional squelchy noises were to be added onto this via James’ 4 track at his leisure. Simple in theory. And we played a blinder. With no singing to put the band off, several versions of a few songs were committed to tape.

What had been forgotten in the excitement and became clear as the kit was being packed away and the fruits of the session played back through the monitors was that the intense compression remained in place rendering the sound not unlike a toy drum kit.

Never a band to be put off by such trivial adversity, the demo process went full steam ahead. Not a sterling success in terms of the outcome but more a process. That’s lo-fi innit? I still have copies of a few of these kicking around today. The songs are solid, the production not so much. They do retain a certain charm and yet another reminder that in this life, you get what you pay for.

Personal faves from my tenure which have as yet to rear their heads was an instrumental surf/ska instrumental ditty called ‘The Hollow Earth’. This had been rehearsed up but never played live with our line up. I suspect it was considered a throw away ditty not worthy of further consideration but contained a kick ass ska bit and riff and the juxtaposed parts worked well together. (Yep – a cool song. Nostalgia Ed.) ‘Uncatchables’ is worthy of mention too. A stalwart of those early gigs, present and correction the first demo tape the song is a strong contender for best ending of all time. Album number 3 is being recorded whilst I write. You never know if any of these may make the cut yet.

If I learned anything from my time in Silvery, surely it was this: record everything. No matter how poorly played or recorded. And maybe make some contacts – that would have helped. Still, we knew better than that at the time. If we could have done anything different, it would have been parting with a few quid and getting a decent demo out. Scratch that, that was what it was all about. The lo-fi ethic. Not for want of any artistic statement so much as being tight for the sake of it. More photos would have been a good thing though…

That’s quite enough of that. Back to the studio for sport.

Toy

(March 2011 – republished untouched) I didn’t start this blog to share other people’s music, but I’m making an exception here – firstly to learn how to do it, but also because Bowie fans have waited for this album for 10 years: The great lost ‘Toy’ album. Recorded in 2000 with Tony Visconti, Bowie digs back into his 1960’s catalogue for material (beautifully, from when they first met). It’s a slushy, slow album in part and I’m not a fan of his 00s singing but there is something very powerful about hearing him as an old man singing words he wrote in his youth. It’s been said SILVERY sound most like the 60s Bowie stuff, and I can see it, so that’s good enough for me. Enjoy:

Uncle Floyd / Afraid / Baby Loves That Way / I Dig Everything / Conversation Piece / Let Me Sleep Beside You / Toy (Your Turn To Drive) / Hole In The Ground / Shadow Man / In The Heat Of The Morning / You’ve Got a Habit Of Leaving / Silly Boy Blue / Liza Jane / The London Boys

EDIT: the link got downloaded about 4000 times (!!!) and then removed. While I’m here, I found this – the thing I wrote the day Toy was leaked that ended up pinched wholesale by the Guardian (and is usually the basis for every item about the album). As usual, don’t know why I wrote it. Maybe to relieve the boredom of a shit job. The cover shown here was made by me and features a still from the ‘Rubber Band’ video. I think it’s cool and apparently so do a few others as I’ve seen this dotted around the web as the official cover. Result. Anyway:

Midway through 2000, David Bowie recorded a collection of songs for a project he entitled ‘Toy’. At the time it was much discussed in certain circles and was met with some surprise as it was said to consist of new versions of old songs he hadn’t acknowledged since the 60’s – among them, his first single from 1964 (As Davie Jones & The King Bees) ‘Liza Jane’ and previously unheard material such as ‘Hole In The Ground’ (a Space Oddity era curio) and ‘Shadow Man’ (a much bootlegged Ziggy era out take). As well as a smattering of new songs that were said to be in keeping with the era Bowie was to be reunited after nearly 20 years with Tony Visconti, the man with whom he arguably had his most success, artistically and commercially. The album vanished from the schedules as Virgin declined it’s release, prompting Bowie to set up his own label and license recordings through Columbia, paving the way for what is regarded his Noughties rebirth with Heathen and Reality. Albums much rooted in the rediscovery of his muse that the recording of Toy brought on. The leaking of albums online has become a regular occurrence in the music business, much to the annoyance of those who payroll the recording and promotion of musical product. This article isn’t about the philosophy and law regarding the subject, but a simple case of where did this come from and is it any good?

The first inkling that the loyal had that Bowie was opening up his back pages was the appearance of 1966’s Can’t Help Thinking About Me on a VH1 Story Tellers concert in 1999 (recently officially released) and during a BBC concert he aired versions of the same year’s The London Boys and I Dig Everything. While being quite out of the blue, they offered fans the first chance to hear these long forgotten tunes live (none had survived in his live set past 1968, although The London Boys was said to be in the running for a slot on 1973’s homage to swinging London ‘Pin Ups’). Parallel with these surprise resurrections, talk turned to what Bowie would be doing for the fast approaching 30th Anniversary of the release of the Ziggy Stardust album in 2002. He had already turned down use of his own music in 1998’s pseudo-Ziggy biopic Velvet Goldmine as he said he was working on his own similar project. Nothing came of the mooted film and stage show, but he talked excitedly of unearthing some songs from the era he’d never finished. Songs with such names as Black Hole Kids – perhaps it was on one of these trips to his vault he rediscovered such gems as Shadow Man, or the old B-Side Conversation Piece which he rerecorded for Toy.

While his 60’s singles are no strangers to being ruthlessly repackaged by Decca (the first time, brilliantly, was a couple of months after Starman hit Top Of The Pops in ’72, and almost once a year since then scooping up new confused Bowie fans everytime) they remained far from his sphere of operation. Even a effort by NME to rig a phone vote to get bona fide hit single ‘The Laughing Gnome’ (another well timed reissue in 1973) on the set list on the 1990 ‘Greatest Hits’ tour fell on deaf ears (bar a couple of lines jokingly sung during a press conference) So why reactivate the material for a fully fledged album? Firstly, it’s worth pointing out that the seam of nostalgia that runs through Bowie’s work must have hung heavy over the project – and the fact he was back working with Tony Visconti must have sparked memories of them both slaving over some of these same tracks on later 60’s BBC sessions where they forged their friendship. I’m more of the thought that they were simply seeing how they worked together without committing new songs to the experiment. Either way, the sessions must have turned out well enough for it to be offer up for release (indeed, over the next couple of years after the aborted release, some of the tracks would appear as bonus treats on singles and the next album Heathen). Although it wouldn’t be the first time Bowie simply woke up one day and had a rethink, as he has done littered throughout his history.

Toy was recorded purely digitally by Mark Plati, after initial sessions at Sear Sound, New York and featured Bowie’s touring band who had been put together to tour 1999’s ‘Hours…’ album after his decade long association with band leader Reeves Gabrels ended – including long time bassist Gail Ann Dorsey, pianist Mike Garson (who’s first sessions with Bowie were in 1972) and Earl Slick (veteran of 1974s Diamond Dogs and 1983s Serious Moonlight tours). Tony Visconti’s role was to add string arrangement to the material and provide addition production, as he had done on their original incarnations. A 15 piece orchestral was grafted on and lifts the material from what threatens to turn into dirge and provides some beautiful moments. However staggered the gestation of the album, it got forgotten as Bowie licked his wounds from its rejection and started work afresh on ‘Heathen’, reworking two of the new tracks (Afraid and Uncle Floyd (which was retitled Slip Away)) and cutting up the Toy album for use as exclusive downloads and B-sides. Indeed, the most complete version of Toy available on disc until last week was a European version of the 2002 single Slow Burn, featuring 4 tracks from the sessions.

Now, a decade later (a decade which has seen Bowie all but retire from the public eye) the album suddenly appeared for sale on Ebay by user stuarta001 (in a garish Lego sleeve and burned onto a Taiyo Yuden CDR). It sold after 19 bids for US $102.50 / £62.98 and was shared as 256kbps Mp3s on the Mind Warp Pavilion torrent site shortly after, suggesting that was the quality of the rip that was initially found. Some say that it is an early mix taken from guitarist and producer Mark Plati’s previously stolen laptop, others think it a shrewdly leaked and timely full stop to Bowie’s career – indeed, the power of the album comes from Bowie’s frail voice breathing new meaning into the words he wrote as an unknown teen. A brilliant full circle to a career that has only been ground to a halt after heart attacks (Bowie suffered 2 in 2004) and a wish to give his second child the childhood his first never had (‘Moon’ Director Duncan Jones, while never leaving his father’s side during the 70s, only really became the focus of his dad’s affection during the 1980s when he was given sole custody after divorce from first wife Angela). While the 14 track disc is missing a couple of tracks (the aforementioned Can’t Help Thinking About Me and Karma Man (slated as being the album’s closer on early reports on Bowie’s website) it adds a couple that were understood to have been axed – Liza Jane and The London Boys – tagged onto the end, perhaps as additional tracks for potential b-sides. The opening extended sample from the Uncle Floyd Show on the opening track of the same name suggests these mixes are close to completion, as do the string arrangements, although the rather flat mix also suggests that they haven’t been mastered or perhaps mixed properly yet. Comparisons to some of the tracks that were previously released shows a great difference in performances and sonic spacing, although it is difficult to narrow down if these changes were done after these mixes were finished and given a final rejigging before release two years later, or the changes were made during the later Toy sessions, prior to its completion (IE there is a later master).

All considered, I think Toy is just a case of David Bowie doing the same as he has done roughly every decade – totally mixing it up to find his muse again (see his grunge project Tin Machine in 1989 / metal wailing on The Man Who Sold The World in 1970 / and bleak soundscapes during his so called Berlin period with Brian Eno) and, not for the first time, it worked. He dipped right into his 60s self and was able to come up with Heathen, and album that strongly suggested he was back on track as a classic songwriter. Just as Tin Machine washed him clean of his 80’s commercial peak for his 1990s adventures, and The Man Who Sold The World enabled him to Ziggy it up with Mick Ronson. As an artist who is so guarded with his archives and rarely looks back, it is odd that he has been so public about sifting through his distant past, but perhaps he is more comfortable doing that than allowing a full on archival release featuring the original recording and whatever ghosts they will stir up.

Technical info:

David Bowie: vocals, keyboards, stylophone, mandolin
Lisa Germano: acoustic & electric violins, recorder, mandolin, accordion
Holly Palmer: backing vocals
Emm Gryner: backing vocals
Sterling Campbell: drums
Mark Plati: bass, guitars
Gerry Leonard: guitars
Gail-Ann Dorsey: bass
Mike Garson: piano
Cuong Vu: trumpet
Earl Slick: guitar

Recording Engineer Pete Keppler at Sear Sound, New York
Additional engineering Mark Plati at Platis home 6th Street , New York
Production David Bowie & Mark Plati
Overdubs and Mix at Looking Glass Studios, New York
Mixed by Mark Plati
String arrangements by Tony Visconti

Christmas With Jet

December 2010: What better way to celebrate the Christmas season than with a heart warming and rather rambling discussion about ace 70s band Jet?
(It should be said before I start that I have total faith in the internet and that this blog entry will do its job. I am sending this missive through the twisty corridors of time so that someone at CBS in 1975 will find it on their desk one morning and read it and act sharp. “Dear CBS chappy, please release ‘Fax N Info’ by Jet as a single.” There. Simple.)

I’d say it’s unlikely you have an inkling as to who this band are – briefly, Martin Gordon (late of Sparks), Andy Ellison and Chris Townson (late of John’s Children – vehicle for Marc Bolan’s first pop adventures) Davy O’List of Roxy Music (Apparently) and The Nice (Da da da dada America). In 1974 / 75 they ended up dumped in the gutter by their respective Glam Rock brothers (and Eno) and got together and made an album under the name ‘Jet’. The album is excellent. It is ridiculous, cerebral, funny, rocking, and most of all, highly melodic. All the fat has been cut out and what’s left is a muscular 40 minute nugget of Roy Thomas Baker (yes, Queen’s producer) carved virtuoso pop. It has just been reissued on RPM as a 2 disc set including an hour of unreleased goodies.

So why am I writing about it? I found this album some 10 years ago as I consumed myself in all things Sparks (pre their resurgence in the 2000’s) and this was one of those ‘must have’ rare gems. I looked everywhere for it. And then suddenly it got reissued by Radiant Future and I bought it up, complete with its companion disc of out takes.

I’ll be honest, this little article might turn out to be a thinly disguised love letter to Martin Gordon, the bassist and songwriter in Jet. Unlike so many other pieces you’ll find on line not because he is the last remaining non-Mael from the team that made 1974’s astonishing ‘Kimono My House’, nor because he was in the not quite all conquering proto punks Radio Stars, nor because he did some keyboarding with pre Britpop drunkard-era Blur or even with Kylie. But because I think he might be the only surviving link to … I don’t know what. Was he one of Gilbert and Sullivan? Was he in the front row as ‘Iolanthe’ was debuted at the Savoy? Was he there defending the whole tone scale to the 1600’s Witchfinder General Matthew Hopkins? I like to think so. I also like to think he is one of the last true geniuses of the Glam Rock era we have left. This probably won’t make him too happy, but sod it. He is. And continues to be with his ongoing solo albums.

BBC DJ Mark Lamarr played some Silvery to Sparks once on his Radio 2 show and he said they were absolutely astonished by not only the singing, but also the madness of the arrangements. That’s good enough for me. But it’s Martin Gordon I wanted to impress. We had a brief professional liaisons about 3 years ago when he mixed a couple of our tracks for a single. It didn’t work out but I think those mixes are stunning. Mad, uncompromising and sound. But I think we all agreed it might be a bit much for a brand new band whose main pigeon hole was Martin Gordon-era Sparks to release something with his name attached. We discussed music and both agreed that we’re all pretty much buggered. I liked him a lot. Here we are pictured outside the Blow Up office in London.

Anyway. The Jet album. It’s amazing. I like the contemporary Sparks album ‘Indiscreet’, with all its little twists and fiddles, but its not really the album you’d lend to a mate other than to say “how’s this for an over long folly?” (I should know, I’ve made 2 already). You’d play the Jet album in your friend’s car and they’d keep having to pull over to laugh or keep asking to hear that bit again. And then they’d surprise you buy getting their own copy the next day. They’d do well to get this new 2 disc version (RPM Retro D882), flick through the Dave Thompson sleeve notes (and buy his books on Sparks and The Sweet), get some background from Martin Gordon’s comprehensive website, skip to ‘Whangdepootenawah’, ‘Cover Girl’, ‘Our Boys’ and the aforementioned ‘Fax N Info’ and then puzzle over why Jet are not mentioned regularly in the same breath as Abba (yep), The Sweet (uh huh) and even Queen (you betcha). Yes, I like ‘My River’ but it shouldn’t have been their first single – hence my hopes of this time travelling blog. ‘It Would Be Good’ is the acceptable face of Bovver Boogie (I don’t know what this is). Listen to how the bass line changes on the outro to ‘Fax N Info’. That’s walking home from the pub on Christmas Eve summed up in a repeating four note phrase. How was selling this band to the public cocked up for everyone? Actually, best steer clear of those sleeve notes – you’ll only get cross.

That’s it really. There will always be a place at my Christmas table for Martin Gordon. Right next to the space I keep for John Deacon and Steve Priest.

Seriously. Every year.