Kenickie C/D

I heard a single from the second album, and it was rub.

But the first Kenicks album is an underrated classic. Millionaire Sweeper is one of the best songs the Shangri-Las never recorded. They really left a hole in music which has not yet quite been filled by anyone else. And that's sad.

listen /download 'and that's why' and see what i mean.

even the first line of the comeback single goes
'i'm in pieces/does no-one see it?'. yeah, dead sad.

is GET IN the most under-rated of the 'britpop dream turns sour' lps?

having said that, i'm not sure i own a copy of "get in" any more, and it's certainly not as good as the first album. i remember it being a bit over-produced.

One more reason to like them; they have my name in their's.

"I Would Fix You" is brilliant enough to almost reduce me to tears - it's just that lovely - "Don't Falter" finishes that job easily, mind.

Anyone got a comment on Lauren's solo EP? She did do one, didn't she?

yes, called 'Take These Flowers Away From Me' or something along those lines. I've heard three of her solo tracks, two (I think) were off the EP. I Fell Out Of A Tree was sort of OK, If You Phone was quite good, and In The Bleak Midwinter (off XFM's Christmas EP from a few years back) was a bit more of a curiosity than anything else.

Search: "Millionaire Sweeper", "Private Bukowski", "Come Out 2 Nite"
Destroy: probably "Punka"

it was only Emmy. i think they were (are?) called the Pictures.

What I really hate about bands with girls in usually is that they're always going on about the fact that they're girls doing music (Le Tigre, Sleater Kinney, all the riot girrrl stuff). You don't see blokes doing that do you? Kenickie's albums made me feel like I was one of the gang, and they didn't care whether or not the blokes accepted them or not.

Search: Robot Song, Acetone, their cover of "Letter To Memphis", their final b-side "Hooray For Everything", and pretty much everything else, including radio interviews.

Destroy: "PVC" and "Rebel Assault".

As far as I know, Rosita only released two singles: "This Is Tonight"/ "Live It Down" on 7", and "Santa Poca's Dream". I think there may have been a promo floating around with some other songs for a promised album.

Lauren's EP wasn't all that great, but search out her cover of James Taylor's "Mexico" that she did for The Evening Session, and "Ian", a wonderful song that deserves better than its fate of a RealAudio stream recorded from a Scottish radio station…

http://s4.yousendit.com/d.aspx?id=3DARN28EZS3HC1DTSSA5XDH16D

Which is why it's a blessing she's on the radio these days! (XFM, on the dial in the London area, on digital in the UK somewhere.. streaming on the web probably) I enjoy her banter more than the records most of the times I tune in (over satellite). Which is to say she's really damn good at it.

Had another listen to my terrible taped copy of 'At The Club' the other day. Absolutely kills! The intervening years have only made this sound better and even more exuberant and poignant (damn, Lauren & the gang's lyrics SO on point and evocative). Both accomplished and thrillingly amateurish.

I didn't instantly spot that as being a PIXIES cover! Just assumed it would be some 50's girl group standard. Sublime!

Agreed on Lauren, although she can be quite amusing on cd:uk and making faces at Richard Madeley.

please explain?

god yeah, if ever a band were in need of a peel sessions album, it's these lot. i still have a microcassette* somewhere, containing my stammering, awestruck, drunk, i-bloody-fancy-you-lauren-but-my-girlfriend's-LITERALLY-RIGHT-THERE interview with the Kenickie girls. johnny wasn't there, for some reason.

*http://geizhals.at/img/pix/98615.jpg

http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/B00001ZTVU/qid%3D1134563172/203-4138457-3503908

oh! i am fule. and yes, a ysi would be wondrous indeed...

I suppose I am not alone, or unusual, in this.

Mind you, she'd love it even more now...

Anyway, the Peel Sessions!

Oh, I did play "Punka" to Alice last night. She loved it. Well, that was an easy one.

Anyone still have that recording of "Letter to Memphis"?

I'll try to remember to repost it tonight, if nobody else does it in the meantime!

Thanks!

what was letter to memphis?

From upthread, seems to be a Radcliffe session track, unreleased otherwise. Pixies cover, is that right?

That's right.

http://www.sendspace.com/file/z6pbnb

Audio quality isn't the best, I'm afraid, but:

http://download.yousendit.com/C7510C6543425618

Hah. Oops. Well, two links! :)

Yeah, I just read that it was a radical take on the song's arrangement, so I wanted to hear it...fidelity be damned. Thanks!

The two fat birds were minging but Lauren Laverne was worth a shag. The debut album was fucking terrible.

-- Kenickie Suck, Saturday, 23 October 2004 14:03

lol, meathead

anyone missing kenix might like the hussy's (yes that unnecessary apostrophe is part of the name). their album 'super pro' for all its vocal autotunery is full of great pop songs..

http://www.myspace.com/thehussys

kaitO (the uk band) always kind of made me think of kenickie if they veered over to gnarly noisy post-punk and kept some of the tunefullness.. wasn't lauren's favorite band the fall?

argh it took me ages to get a hold of a copy of "get in" and now i've gone and lost it

xpost "was", check the interview w/ Mark E, on Youtube. And a subsequent one w/ Lauren about "least successful intereviews you have done"...

MES isn't being particularly difficult. she just keeps firing questions, doesn't give him time to answer properly.
it's a problem with a lot of TV interviews. she's usually better than that. maybe she was nervous.

Yes, it's the post-Paxman curse; interviewers who aren't content with interviewing and feel this need to make a name for themselves, and who consequently never shut up and seem incapable of listening.

clive anderson is the worst because he's too impressed with his own jokes

God, for years CAnd interiewed people with arms tightly folded like he was in a straitjacket. Way to create buffer/uncomfort zone.

i love kenickie. i miss kenickie. they were the same age as me so the records made perfect sense - the first one where i was just getting to spend a lot of time going out on the town and falling over and loving it, the second a little sadder, a little wiser, a little softer. all the stuff about "we've got our gang and/i know we'll always be friends and" is so poignant in retrospect. 'at the club' was kind of easier to love because you can take it on any terms you like, but anyone who disses 'get in' in its entirety must have a pebble for a heart.

great great OTM post; i hope this band is never forgotten. and i hope lauren decides to sing again sometime.

lol just realized twas me who started this thread

there are probably lots of bands doing essentially the same damn thing as the 1st album but do they have (a) song/s as godlike as "how i was made"?
any kenickie-esque recommendations are very welcome; must have huge hooks and awesome breathy-sexy-into-twee-ish vocals..

do have a listen to the hussy's i mentioned a little upthread - their album was one of my top three from last year

i'm on it, thx!

Yay!

DVDs/ ReMasters! Somebody!

yeah!

Nope.

YEAH!YEAH!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XFqzOXFEhkM

In that first bit where the EMI guy appears, he could literally be describing any band at all.

Aw, poor lauren she looks whacked. I saw them on that tour, sad it broke them up really.

gareth from los campesinos has been tweeting all day about how obsessed he is w this band

I was there at the Manchester leg of that tour - god knows why they moved it from the Hop & Grape; it looked like they were playing a cavern. Amazing version of "There Is A Light That Never Goes Out", though.

Spot Phonogram's Kieron Gillen in Part 2 during his David Kohl phase!

<3 <3 <3

I think reading this thread made me dream about Lauren Laverne last night. Like all my dreams, however, it was deadly dull. I just dreamt of reading a news story that Laverne would be quitting all TV work and radio presenting to pursue a career in acting.
(Unless someone can confim that this is actually true...)

http://www.myspace.com/georgewashingtonbrown
http://www.myspace.com/thecornshedsisters

So awesome that "come out 2nite" was the number 1 of John peel's festive 50 in '96.

"magnatron" is the best track from get in, so hooky

Just found a vinyl copy of At The Club recently, still sounds as great as ever.

Weeknights is probably my favourite song from Get In, it's quite a dark album in places. Magnatron is a great track it would have surely been the third single if they had got that far.

There's a couple of youtubes around Kenickie's last tour.

They start all "yay! I can't believe this is my job!!"

It ends all "I'm bored with this" and "you know, I don't regard all my life being in Kenickie" etc.

Has there been a poll of all the tracks off At The Club?

i still love 'at the club'

the drummer vs tumblr

http://fireandmiracles.tumblr.com/

i am surprised by how much i too still love 'at the club'.

i'm not.

its ace.

WE ARE SPIES, WE WILL KILL YOU SHA-NA-NA-WHOOOOOOOO

also: "HE'S SAYS I'M SWEEEEEEEEEEE"

lauren laverne is definitely one of the co-owners of the word "sad"

Marie du Santiago does not get enough recog.

spooky, listened to At The Club this morning on the way to work, was glorious

If only Girls Aloud had done a version of OWalrus"

is "kenickie suck" way up above that Calum shitrag?

Unlikely, he'd forgive anything from a 'fit bird'

Also, while I'm tang issue with long-gone ilx peeps

What I really hate about bands with girls in usually is that they're always going on about the fact that they're girls doing music (Le Tigre, Sleater Kinney, all the riot girrrl stuff). You don't see blokes doing that do you?

Hmm yeah funny that i wonder why

At The Club still sounds perfect to me. I still like the second album a lot too.

I have so much goodwill for Laverne's sometimes-annoying media presence based on these two albums and "Don't Falter".

She used to do holiday cover on the 6music breakfast show when I had a weekly slot there and was just really fun and smart to work with. Loves the daylights out of her music.

Tonight, in preparation of doing my taxes and in need of some aural wallpaper, I decided to put on a record I've shunned for a while. It happened to be At The Club, an album I warmed to around 1999 whilst firmly ensconced in a Velvet Goldmine/Pulp/Roxy Music (read: anything screaming Glamorous! And at least vaguely immoral!) phase. It's a shimmering, shimmying, bit-too-late for Brit-Pop (man, the ladies really got the shaft on Brit Pop, huh? Elastica did ok, but pound for pound, that debut album trounces anything ever put to tape by Blur, Oasis, or even Pulp for that matter, and sure, they dropped the ball Roses-style, but they still never seemed to get their due despite all that), forgotten semi-classic.
I don't think about Kenickie a lot. I used to listen to the album quite a bit, but I just let it wash over me in a glittering stream of yeah yeahs and eyeshadow. It was good getting-ready-to-go-out music, all excitement and carefree extravagance, and in a year when I did a LOT of getting ready (and little actual going out, if I recall correctly), it fit perfectly. Listening to it in a 2005 context of 1040As and Adjusted Gross Income was a different scene, and I even got a little wistful for my admittedly crappier former lifestyle of poorhouses and bad, bad nights, but in the present, sitting in the still comfort of my centrally-heated home I now see what makes so much sense about Kenickie.
Every once in a while there is a band of females (or mostly females) that rocks it in a really female way without being caricatured about their gender (I mean being really consciously "girly" which always smacks of insincerity -- though boys can and do play at that too and it's just called "twee" or something) and without even really acknowledging it in any way, making the fact that they are women simultaneously hugely important and not really a big deal. Kenickie is that. Their songs aren't really about being female as much as they are just about being a club kid, going out and looking good, being drunk, but a lot of essentially feminine elements are always present in the form of, well, what they're wearing and who they're doing.
They were cheeky and pretty good at press, well-dressed and attractive, and of course the songs are almost all very good. Lauren and Marie trading off vocals, neither one Isobel Campbell weak or Courtney Love snarly or take-your-pick whiney or screamy or any hackneyed thing that commericially successful "women in rock" so often exemplify, but just people, just singing like people that happen to be girls. Lyrics, while sometimes obviously not a strong suit (or strong concern, maybe) often verge into classic territory and the guitars, and the drums (Ronettes "Be My Baby" drum intro so played out at this point, but Kenickie are SO allowed this), are all just...right. A cocktail of street light, skin tight, nightlife.
And the goddamn glamour of it all.
You absolutely can't do taxes to it.
Search: "Millionaire Sweeper", "Private Bukowski", "Come Out 2 Nite"
Destroy: probably "Punka"

― roxymuzak (roxymuzak), Tuesday, February 1, 2005 5:15 AM (9 years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

looooooooooooooooooovely post

"nightlife" has been on repeat consistently for days

agreed!

I have to say "The people we want" is one of the best "Track Two" album tracks ever, because the words are 'important' whatever that means.

just checked, Robot Song is still devastating

the bgvs on "people we want" own it

yes.

interesting stuff here Kenickie fans

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nzsRjRBYJ6U

also there's a tribute band doing the rounds, no shit.