the vaselines

the dentists, dressed
sex clark five, strum and drum
bmx bandits, c86 plus

the dentists have a bit of a paisley underground pop thing going ("strawberries are growing in my garden") and a pretty great knack for la-la-la parts ("i'm not the devil") and they sound like pop kids stuck in the english countryside with a bunch of guitars and nothing else to do. they also sound a bit like guided by voices before gbv ditched their pop roots for rockist stardom.

the sex clark five are obsessed with the beatles, and zing back and forth between delicious 90-second pop ditties (which you'll be humming for the rest of your life) and 75-second psychedelic or droning throwaways (which are often great). the tunes, as often as not, are about "girls of somalia" or "sarajevo." the absence of any useful information in allmusic on their classic debut, strum and drum, is one of allmusic's great failings. the cd version has a million or so tracks, none of 'em listed on allmusic.

the bmx bandits actually included eugene vaseline at one point, and have also shared bandmembers with fellow scots teenage fanclub and the soup dragons (among others). they are sometimes silly ("kylie's got a crush on us," though that one's not on the cd i recommended) and sometimes deliriously in love, and always poptastic in that scottish pop fanclub sense.

yeah, i found that.

upon initial listening, i definitely hear some similarity to teenage fanclub.

a little bit of apples in stereo too, maybe?

yeah, that probably was implied above. they're from huntsville, alabama. but they are, for all other intents and purposes, lo-fi brits. or maybe they're hobokenites like the bongos. geography is a state of mind.

reasons why i really really really like strum and drum: "faith," "streamers," "girls of somalia," "valerie," "i love you less," their high two-part harmonies, their warped merseybeat blend of acoustic guitars and rickenbackers, the fact that they have a song called "get back yoko." for starters.

"fool i was" is indeed a good one. and, happily, it's one of the roughly 7,000 bonus tracks on the cd version of strum and drum.

I should dig it out and refresh my memory.

You're not alone. There are a few songs on there that I have absolutely no memory of, and I used to listen to this all the time.

My fave was "The Day I Was A Horse".

There was a period when they seemed to support every major indie band that played in Glasgow - on every occasion prompting a mass exit to the bar. Everyone was supportive because everyone thought Eugene was a good guy, but, sotto voce, everyone was saying, "What the fuck's he doing in that terrible band?" But everyone was wrong and Eugene was right it seems!

reunion yesterday in Scotland?

http://www.nme.com/news/vaselines/36456/

er, this is the link

http://www.nme.com/news/vaselines/36686

New York show was awes.

i am JEALOUS.

More info please! Capsule review!

absolutely fucking magical at southpaw last night. did every song you would want them to do (which isn't all that hard considering the length of their discography). voices both sounded excellent though i wish frances cut thru the mix just a tad bit more. band was tight and simple, all strummy electric gtrs and poptastic drumming. patter was hilarious. opened with "son of a gun," ended with "dum-dum." no new songs, though eugene started the encore with a spinal tap joke: "here's a new song ... a 20-minute jazz-funk odyssey ... he wrote it," or someting along those lines. then they played "you think you're a man." which was great.

odd, considering how many times i've listened to "way of the vaselines," that i'd never noticed how many songs on it are in 6/8 (or 6/4?) time.

did not even know about this until the night of when it was too late :<

!!! are they coming to the west coast?

dangggg

and i went to Boris instead,silly me.

Did you wear your loincloth??

i always do

<<!!! are they coming to the west coast?>>

they're playing the sub pop 20 festival this weekend in seattle. and i'm pretty sure that's it.

They're playing tomorrow from 6/7 - 8pm on Saturday at Marymoor Park in Redmond.

I think SP20 is now sold out for Saturday. Sunday has Green River, and may still have tickets left.

520 bridge closure + downtown Redmond bike race closing off downtown Redmond = GET TO REDMOND IN THE MORNING OR ELSE OH GOD

Playing London at the Forum March 27th!

!!!

Is Charlie Kelly still in them?

I once blasted "Molly's Lips" while a couple of friends were over. "Worst band ever!" they protested. Should I have kicked them out?

Apparently the backing band is made up of B&S members. Hmm.

No Charlie, no credibility

Every once and a while a new (to me) song will come along & really get stuck in my head. Now I'm not talking about the casual, hum-a-tune version of this phenomenon, but *hooks* embedded in the brain, cycling over and over again, demanding my constant attention. This is the jam that is currently occupying my headspace:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XOzt2YcAvMI&feature=related

Weird that you should say that because my bf recently made me a mix with this on and I've been listening it to it in the car but singing it in my head constantly. It's a good thing that I love it to bits. That said, the original is also A++ and I listen to it just as often tbh.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IiIJOB0GLW4

the orig is A+ in a different way tho

Ya def.

E: lol @ our continuing trend of random syncronicity

I was unaware that the song was a cover or even that Divine had a recording career tbh.

I think he only released one album but it had a couple great singles.

Rory Rides Me Raw is one of the greatest songs ever...

damn i was jus listening to them yesterday then today someone came up to me and started talking abt them and now this thread, its in the air, amazing musics for sure

spooky

its nuts i know

PLATE OF SHRIMP

SHRIMP

PLATE

Found about this just yesterday in connection to something I was working on:

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3414374/

Looked for a stream, and was able to watch it for nothing on something called Plex (if you're interested, just google "Teenage Superstars film" and a free option will come up).

Not quite as good as I'd hoped for--the contours of the story are every rock documentary ever made--but the Vaselines are in there a lot, also the Shop Assistants and the Jesus & Mary Chain, so worth watching. I'd forgotten that the Soup Dragons actually had a Top 40 moment.

oh cool, thanks for the tip. in the UK it wanted me to get a NowTV subscription but I just tried it in Opera with the VPN and it's letting me watch it

The film got me to order Eugenius's Mary Queen of Scots, which was still new on Canadian Amazon for under $15 (under $5 on the American equivalent--drives me up the wall). Hope it's good.