No More Greboes Anymore

Unanswered questions:

- silly hats its most lasting legacy?
- relationship to Pigfuck?
- "rock that wasn't scared of drum machines" (M Sinker, the pub) - were the Young Gods grebo?

Unlike most ridiculous UK press scenes it was actually acknowledged by the bands, eg "Grebo Guru" by PWEI (not Grebo, I'm informed).

Melody Maker circa 1986: "Uh, guys, I'm told it looks like there won't be a significant scene coming from the US till at least 1988, so we need something to fill the gap until that turns up. Anyone seen people wearing any sort of daft clothing recently? No? OK - Crispin, get yourself down to Camden and interview anyone with a dog on a string, would you?"

my problem with grebo was that i loved carter and PWEI (although i came to PWEI very late, and never got a proper handle on them) but absolutely hated the associated imagery (eg the silly haircuts and shit T-shirts). in 1991 i was sporting a kind of post-phil-oakey look involving assymetrical hair and a long earring, and that didn't quite sit with the cider-fuelled mosh frenzy on the dancefloor at "jenks" in blackpool every friday night.

i was listening to carter in the gym this morning, oddly enough. if they hadn't had those haircuts, they'd have been HUGE ... :)

[1] except maybe ke1th w@ts0n.

not quite. a fair few TSTCI bands weren't technically shoegazers, most significantly Blur and Suede. But it depends how you define TSTCI - I always thought it was the London trendy Syndrome bunch, coupled with the "we always tour with each other" ChapterMooseDive home counties lot. Can anyone be more accurate?

I think Grebo = long greasy hair + acid + comic book mysticism + metal, hence Hawkwind are the Grebofathers. Maybe Alan Moore, too.

(The Scene that etc etc, fwiw, was more the bands who comprised the court of Blur at Syndrome - mostly shoegaze, but no exclusively so)

Alan Moore is grebo, yes!

hang on, wikipedia, i thought shoegazing = the scene that celebrates itself. hmm. am i wrong?

Nope, you're not wrong. 'The Scene That Celebrates Itself' was a label that someone (I forget who) on one of the weeklies (I forget which) used to talk about all the young, upcoming bands from the London/Thames Valley area who all used to go to each others gigs and dance at Syndrome. I think this name was coined in early 1991 and was talking about Lush, Moose, Blur, Ride, Slowdive, and Chapterhouse. The term 'Shoegazer' started out about the same time in one of the other weeklies, and largely overlapped, but was used more to describe a certain style of music/attitude (so it wouldn't have included Blur, but it would have included groups that were either based in other parts of the country or who didn't spend all their time partying with the scene, eg My Bloody Valentine, Boo Radleys, Catherine Wheel).

I've changed that wiki entry so it now says 'no it wasn't' at the end.

And Carter were great and are still.

(Can't believe no one said that.)

(Anyone can edit Wiki articles, that's kinda the point. Go to the I Love Comics board and look at the John Byrne vs. Wikipedia thread for Wiki related fun.)

Funny you mention that Ned - I amazoned 1992: Love album ($.93) and 30something ($1.99), received 'em last week, and am loving it. Now do I head further forward to Worry Bomb / Post-Historic Monsters?

Where oh where is Nicole when we need a voice of reason?

(mega-xpost while I dug out old Carter tapes to see what I could remember of "Worry Bomb")

or perhaps its name is PWEI before they discovered the sampler, I dunno.

I still have a sort of soft spot for Crazyhead's first 12", and GBoA's 1st 7", but I fear a lot of it might sound a bit lame after all these years. Who knows, though? Maybe not. If I want to listen to something w/that kind of sonic, uh, approach, I'll listen to Hawkwind or the leather nun. OK, just Hawkwind, really.

It was kind of UK Pigfuck-lite, I suppose, except it all took place years before Pigfuck, surely? I mean I remember seeing a bunch of those bands, including PWEI on their OMG SELLOUT tour, post "beaver patrol", where the greboes in the audience booed them all the way through the set! Killdozer gigged in the UK long after this, also, it must be said, Killdozer's "12 point buck", "little baby bunting" and "uncompromising war on art under the dictatorship of the proletariat" walk all over any record by Crazyhead, PWEI or GBoA, by virtue of their actually being FUNNY.

It may be hard to believe now, but live, Crazyhead were amazingly good.

i love GBoA, the spinoff Hyperhead was almost as much fun, but their eventual development into @440 (apollo 440) became a sad waste of an opportunity (good 1st lp, but declined somewhat with each release), though the sight of Manry Mary wearing his GBOA t-shirt in the Charlies Angels video always makes me smile.

Worry Bomb was a bit meh (though the bonus live CD was worth having), but PHM is grebt! Search: "The Music That Nobody Likes", "Mid-day Crisis", "A Bachelor For Baden Powell", "Evil", "Travis".

Anything after that is disposable though.

Arf!!!

Incidentally, is this the first ever sentence which has included "Jesus Jones", "Babylon Zoo", and "talented"? Surely.

I mean, i wasn't even reading it back then...

So apparently GBOA are getting back together for some shows later in the year. I can't decide whether to dig out the records to find out whether I might want to go.