Davey Henderson: RFD, Search and Destroy

I share in the gladness at picking up those Orange Juice reissues since I haven't seen them since and they are indeed great.

Destroy: anything with Jock Scott on it.

And it’s more than that again, because they clearly spent a great deal of time and effort on their packaging, on how their music was presented, and each proper Fire Engines release feels like an artefact / event in its own right. Their obsession with what they did as product continues to feel relevant and interesting, and is an issue too few artists with a pop agenda wrestle with. (I suppose it’s more common in ‘artier’ artists, in bands who wouldn’t dream of writing big pop classics like “Candyskin”) The way they seemed to break pop apart to look at the pieces but still end up with an identifiable pop-art thing remains genius.

For all that intellectual engagement with form, I never got the feeling that the Fire Engines did anything other than exactly what they wanted, that they were completely committed to the noise they were making.

One of my other current obsessions is brevity, and the Fire Engines did brevity better and best. Classic pop moment: Paul Morley bemuses Gerry Garcia by going on about the Fire Engines’ 15 minute live sets. There isn’t a single Fire Engines recording which goes on a moment too long. Having a sense of when something’s finished is a much underrated pop skill, and something untold bands could learn from.

Win always sounded kind of unhappy to me, uncomfortable in their own shiny skins. I could never really catch on to them. I don’t mind the Nectarine No. 9, I think they’ve made some scorching records, but…

I think I remember one of the Fire Engines saying in an interview that they were determined not to play chords, which seemed an admirably perverse thing to say (and a perfectly feasible, if restrictive, route to sounding unique). I also seem to remember reading Davey Henderson saying that his goal with TNN9 was to concentrate on taking the songs out of his songs (I’m paraphrasing badly, obv.) and concentrating on the noise they make. I can understand the choice, but it’s not one for me.

Is D. Henderson the only person to have had records released by Fast Product and Postcard?

Is that enough?

AlexT OTM about avoiding anything involving Jock Scott. I think he's been rambling on at every Nectarine No 9 gig I've been to, and I just don't get it. "A Sea with Three Stars" is excellent however.

http://discog.lesdisquesducertain.com/fastpop/

which mentions such oddities as Davey Henderson's post Fire Engines collaboration with Hillary from the Flowers, called Heartbeat. Anyone ever hear that?

after years of being unable to play the cassette version, i'm falling in love with Uh! tears baby (a trash icon) all over again.
what a fantastic album.
dated it may be, but damn, those songs are just so big.
had no idea about the ZTT side of things though as i have always thought it was an album that could have had the ZTT logo on it.
yet, the information here seems to imply the team up would never have really worked.
now, time to dig out freaky trigger and see if that one stands up as well.