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Archive 08
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176 - 200 ::
Here
you will gain exclusive access to my own personal record collection! I
try to bring you mp3s of rare tracks, deleted material, long forgotten
artists, total flops and down right obscure shit. Often, my choices were
only available on vinyl or were just plain unreleased, the aim being to
indulge an old fan or inspire a new one. I try not to post up
forthcoming releases or anything that's too readily available. Honest,
Gov!
There's a tenuous thread running through the tracks but
your requests are always welcome and I'll try and squeeze them in amongst my
own fancies... eventually.
Do read all the blurb, as there's often links to extra tracks lurking in
there... ; )
Tracks are only available for a 'limited
time' folks (sometimes months!), so get them while you can!
Now for the science bit! To access the music, please click on 'Download' and
you'll be whisked off to those nice people over at Sharebee.
Tracks are ripped at 192 kbps and wherever possible taken from the
highest quality source available. All of the music offered here has been
purchased by myself and is part of my own collection. Tracks are for
evaluation purposes only and wherever possible, purchasing is always
encouraged. If you own any of the material posted here or anywhere else
on this site and are very cross with me, please
email me with threats and such like...
Weren't the early 1990's a crazy old
time? Supermodels, 'Twin Peaks' and Fem 2 Fem.
Who? Fem 2 Fem were a lesbian, vagina-baiting
pop act from the good ole USA. Lynn Pompey,
Julie Park, Lezlie Deane,
Jennifer Wolf and Michelle Crispin
quickly gained
notoriety for their lavish live shows (think lap dancing club meets fetish
outfitters shop) and briefly appeared on the talk show circuit (including
a shameful appearance on 'The Word') because some/most/all of the members were lesbians and
their songs were about 'gay issues'. Controversial! Their first album, 'Woman To Woman' was quite the techno fest, with their second more of a euro-house
experience. Here in the UK, we got a repackaged 'Animus' in 1995
which spliced highlights of the two together but us Brits wouldn't touch it with
a barge pole. Here is 'Switch', a bit of a hit single in the USA.
File under 'Les-pop'.
Where do you begin?
Lydia Lunch is
such a fascinating creature who has packed so much into an outstanding career.
Tirelessly expressing herself through music, film, writing, sculpture,
photography and the spoken word, Lydia has amassed an immense back catalogue of
work since she cut her teeth on New York's 'No Wave' scene in 1976. Her musical
outings have seen her work with an array of talent such as
Kim Gordon, Thurston
Moore, Clint Ruin,
Bad Seed Rowland S. Howard
and lots of
others cool enough to warrant admiration but obscure enough to dodge mainstream
acclaim. She's ricocheted between punk,
jazz, new wave, classical, grunge and even dance. In the early 80's she released
one of my favourite albums, 'Queen Of Siam', which saw her collaborate with
Billy Ver Plank,
the guy who did all the Hanna Barbera cartoon music. The album shows a dark,
velvety side to her voice, like a bored to tears sex kitten, and is the perfect jazz noir soundtrack to a dank and
hazy cabaret night club. We've chosen to offer you her reading of old standard
'Gloomy Sunday' (after toying with posting her cover of 'Spooky' - made famous by
Dusty Springfield) and
we hope it makes you at least a little curious about her other recordings.
Looking back over our past mp3
posts, I'm shocked to discover that we've likened many, many bands to
Saint
Etienne yet never actually posted
anything up by Saint Etienne! Well, not
directly by them anyway. So, here are Saint Etienne. This is their cover of
Right Said Fred's 'I'm Too Sexy' which they recorded for
'The Fred EP' in 1993, a
charity release to raise money for The Terrance Higgins Trust. The EP also
featured then-label mates The Rocking Birds
and
Flowered Up (where are they now?). This isn't available anywhere anymore, unless you pick it up second hand,
so for those of you who haven't heard it, I hope you enjoy it. A video was
recorded for it which saw Sarah Cracknell
in a bit of fake fur but they don't
include it on any of their video collections sadly...
While we all wait for
Sophie Ellis Bextor
to return and ignite the charts with a fabulous new batch of songs (well,
we can but hope), let's all recall her earlier incarnation as pouty indie
princess aboard the good ship Theaudience!
'You And Me On The Run' is one of
many fantastic B-sides released by Theaudience in their short existence and was
on the 'flip' of 'If You Can't Do It When You're Young, When Can You Do It?'
(what a mouthful). The 'NME' once reported that
Theaudience were going to release
a double AA side single of their cover of
A-Ha's
'Take On Me' with a new song, 'Out With The Old
School'. The later ended up on that 'Wicked Women' cancer research compilation
(
Phixx.
I like a band who comes up with their own spelling of your ordinary common
English language word. They weren't terribly good on record though were they?
'Love Revolution' was ok and had a raunchy video but really, we're
dealing with pop scum here. Still, there was an album, 'Electrophonic
Revolution', but only if you were (un)lucky enough to live in Taiwan or
some such place. I tracked a copy down because it has a cover version of one of
my all time favourite pop singles ever on it - Sly Fox's
classic 'Let's Go All The Way'. I'm giving you it here today! It's
a cover-by-numbers with a few extra lyrics chucked in for good measure. I recommend finding the original
Sly
Fox track (often crops up on
Soapy pop star time! We're
barrel-scraping here but I'm sure some of our readers will love this. As
Mike Barlow croaks it, we turn our thoughts
to 'Coronation Street'. Maxine Peacock
(played by Tracy Shaw) had her head caved in with a crow bar by serial killer Richard
Hillman a good few years back, obviously wanting to cause some serious damage, after
hearing her earlier attempt at pop stardom! Armed with a cover
version and the production powers of Stock & Aitken
(Waterman had done a runner by this time), she
butchered Lonnie Gordon's 'Happenin'
All Over Again' in 1998. Well, it's not the worst thing I've ever heard but...
So, anyway, there was another single, 'Ridin' High', which wasn't
much to shout about either. She went back to 'Corrie' for a few
years and then, er, left again. Don't really know what she does now but there was an
exercise video in there somewhere and she had all that nonsense with Panto love
rat Darren Day as well. Oh, and tho' you
can't really see it clearly on the image above, I thought it was a nice touch she was
photographed on some cobbles for the sleeve. "Waaaaaaaaaa wa-wa wa-wa-waaaaaaaa....".
This is one of those songs which has
been on my list of things to post here for months and months and it always gets
pushed to the back in favour of another choice. So finally, it has it's day!
Will Powers was a fictional character,
dreamt up by rock photographer Lynne Goldsmith
back in 1983. The project was a tongue-in-cheek audio self help album set to
dance music and this track explains how to, er, kiss with confidence.
Will seems to be back in 2006 and is once again
giving advice via
In 1981,
Kirsty MacColl released her debut album 'Desperate Character',
but by the end of that year, she abandoned the recording sessions for the follow
up and switched labels to Stiff Records.
A few singles followed, most notably 'A New England', which met
with enough success in the UK charts for the ca$h registers to start ringing in
Polydor's ears. 1985's 'Kirsty MacColl' LP was simply Polydor
re-packaging 'Desperate Character' with a few token unreleased
tracks included, which were originally intended for the follow up set, to have
been called 'Real'. Fans had hoped 2005's box set would clear up
all the rare stuff but unfortunately, not everything made the digital grade.
Which leads us to this track - what I think is one of the better songs from her
early material, though not everyone seems to agree! For a more detailed insight
into this release and Kirsty's scrapped
second album, click
So this is from the 1987
Michael J
Fox movie 'The Secret Of My Success' soundtrack. It's
actually written by Siobhan Fahey &
Paul Weller (and another bloke called Ollie
Marland). Weller
also wrote 'Doctor
Love' for Bananarama's debut album.
'Riskin' A Romance' was recorded in 1986, just before the
Stock, Aitken & Waterman machine got a firm
grip on the band and two years before Siobhan
walked. It's not a bad track at all and is but one of a wealth of Bananarama rarities which really should be
collected and released, along with their out of print albums here in the UK.
Though, in fairness, you can still pick this soundtrack CD up on import from the
USA.
Originally meeting up in Glasgow in
the early 1990s, Dot Allison
and the 2 blokes that made up One Dove,
decided to start a band. Impressing one Andrew
Weatherall so much with their self pressed single
'Fallen',
he offered to produce their debut album, dub pop ambient classic
'Morning Dove White' (the title a reference to
Elvis Presley's daily greeting to his
mother, I believe). This was his next production credit after
Primal Scream's 'Screamedelica'.
Gracefully accepting his offer, One Dove
were soon signed to his label, Boys Own, and
enjoying success with their euphoric pop epic 'White Love'. Follow
up, 'Breakdown', remains a firm favourite of mine, taking
Saint Etienne's more atmospheric and angelic
moments to an altogether more spiritual high. Included here is the 'Radio Mix'
(a bonus track on the CD format of the album, although it's a different version
to the 'Radio Mix' that's on the CD single... Hmmm). The band unfortunately
suffered at the hands of record label politics (that old chestnut!) and finally
split in 1996 after just one more single, 'Why Don't You Take Me?'.
Dot suffered a very serious car accident
following the split and spent 4 months confined to a wheelchair but thankfully
made a full recovery. She embarked on her solo career via
Heavenly Records in 1999. More info
Grief affects people in different
ways, doesn't it? Hmmm. This is Cosmetique's
'tribute' to Princess Diana. It was released as
part of PPQ Records' 'Now That's What I
Call Stan's - The World's Dodgiest Club Compilation Ever!' in 1999,
before getting a 'limited DJ' 7" only issue later the same year.
Cosmetique are Justin
Anderson and Sarah Churchill and
they have released a few records over the last 6 years which have met with
relative obscurity. Their 'bag' is to nick bits of other people's songs
(possible legalities restricting a wider audience?) and make them into ironic,
twisted, lo-fi, indie-disco anthems. After 'Lady Di, Why Did You Have To
Die?' (Laura Branigan's 'Gloria'), they brought us
'Jackson' (I thought this was
the Johnny Cash song but it's not - whose is
it?), 'Straight To Video' (Iggy Pop's
'Night Clubbing') and a full length album called 'I Was Born
In A Disco Fun Pub' (Human League's
'Sound Of The Crowd', etc.). Their most recent outing was a 7" on
1-2-3-4 Records (home of Whitey) called
'Horror Attack' in 2004.
Pick up some cheap CDs
This was requested, ok?! So,
Damian did the whole
'Time Warp' thing (I think it was released about 6 times before it made it into the charts
in 1989, courtesy of a PWL
upgrade) and who
can blame him for trying to extend his 15 minutes of fame? 'Wig Wam Bam'
was of course a hit for glam rock pretty boys
The Sweet in 1976 but
Damian took
the camp factor to a new high when he brought us this cover. Anyway, we get a
warm feeling inside our tummy knowing a visitor asked for this mp3 to be posted
and now he gets his wish. Damian
resurfaced
a few years later with a bleached hairdo and another cover (!), this time disco
God Cerrone's 'Supernature'. I
think he was even the support act on an early Take That
tour when that came out! This CD single goes for about £60 on ebay!
Who is buying these things?! He will always be fondly remembered here at
The International House Of Pussy
for his
non-appearance on The Wide Awake Club in 1989
when his car broke down on his way to a live performance on the show. They
instead interviewed his poor old mother and rang Damian
in a lay-by on the M1 using a dinosaur telephone. It's all true. (More) Trivia!
Damian was listed as being on the 'Hit
Me Baby One More Time' TV show tie-in CD but was never actually on the
finished item or the show. Maybe on the next series, Vernon?
Rachel
Sweet was just fifteen when she was spotted in her home town of
Akron, Ohio by one Liam Sternberg.
Liam slapped her on UK label Stiff Records (Lene
Lovich, Tracey Ullman,
The Belle Stars) and her debut album
'Fool Around' appeared in 1978. Label mates with
Ian Dury, his Blockheads were
drafted in to be Rachel's backing band and
further assistance came from Kirsty MacColl
on backing vocals. Her second album, 'Protect The Innocent',
boasts one of The International House Of Pussy's
favourite album sleeves ever, but her blend of country and rock and roll seemed
destined to remain an acquired taste. She flounced back to the USA where she cut
a further two albums, 'And Then He Kissed Me' in 1981 and 'Blame It On love'
in 1982. 'Voo Doo' is taken from the
later, which has a promising sophisticated New Wave feel about it but it was to
be her last album. You can now buy Rachel's
last two albums on on CD!
"Hi! My name's Barbie!"...
Barbie was apparently the secret lovechild of
Marilyn Monroe
and John F. Kennedy. She was taken to the planet Mars where she grew up
into a beautiful 'woman'. She came back to Earth in 1985 with a mission - to
teach us how to make love (and turn a few tricks). Later on,
Barbie would meet two friends,
La Camilla and Jean-Pierre. Collectively, they became
Army
Of Lovers! Yes, so, this is
Alexander Bard's
pre-Army Of Lovers musical outing,
Barbie the drag queen. Her other singles were
called 'Wham Bam', 'Barbie Goes Around The World' and 'Rock It Up!', and she even released an album,
'Barbie',
but alas this was only in Sweden and nowadays these records aren't so easy to
come by. A nice CD collection would be super but it aint gonna happen. If anyone
wants to help us complete our Barbie
collection, mp3s and CDRS are
Snatch
were Patti Palladin and
Judy Nylon, two Americans who turned up in
London in 1974 and set about recording demos at Patti's
flat. Each track is a snarling No Wave anthem, with a brutally direct delivery
and a 'no frills' approach to recording. They sound just as you'd imagine a
female duo named after a slang word for the vagina would sound. Their first
single, 'I.R.T.'/'Stanley', appeared on Bomp Records in 1977
and was a gritty antidote to the sexy punk pop Blondie
were exporting at the time. A second single, 'All I Want', in it's
beautiful, shimmery mirrored card sleeve, was issued in March 1978 and then a
final single, the 'Shopping For Clothes' 12", was released on the
Fetish label in 1980. Somewhere in between all this they collaborated with
Brian Eno and
Pandemonium Records posthumously
collected together their output, along with unreleased tracks and demos, for an
album, 'Snatch', in 1983. 'When I'm Bored' was
originally the flipside to their second single but this version is taken from
the LP, which boasts one of the coolest sleeve photographs ever. After
Snatch, Patti
worked with Johnny Thunders
and The Flying Lizards and remained a goth pin-up
courtesy of her frequency on the Batcave club scene of the 80's.
Judy has worked with
John Cale (The Velvet Underground)
and released a solo LP in 1982 with On-U-Sound
producer Adrian Sherwood, called 'Pal
Judy'.
Lio
is a French pop star! And actress! How cool is that?
This didn't actually get a UK
release as far as I can see but we got a promo CD yonks ago (well, 2003) and it
was quite 'big in the clubs'. Lacquer is a
French musician whose stylish electro dance tunes arrived on the music scene
about a year prior to the quite similar sounding Colder, who met with a
more wide-spread success. Michel Gondry was
behind the MTV-friendly video for debut single 'Behind' and you
can still view it over
TV/radio comedian and author
Tony Hawks is behind
Morris Minor & The Majors, originally a band
featured in children's comedy sitcom 'Morris Minor's Marvellous Motors'.
They had a surprise top 5 hit in 1988 with their Beastie Boys-spoofing
'No Sleep 'Til Bedtime' and as is
usual in such cases, a follow up was deemed necessary. With
Stock, Aitken & Waterman
in their target
sights, 'This Is The Chorus' was born. Not troubling the charts at
the time, it's naffness is only challenged by it's scarcity...
Kylie, Bananarama
and Mel & Kim ("Fun, Love and
Monotony...") are all lampooned and everything from the drum machine to the
sleeve art perfectly resembles all that was SAW
at
the time. In fact, were it not for the sarcasm, it could quite easily pass for a
bona fide SAW release. Fun!
Possibly still a going concern,
The Honeymoon
released their debut album, 'Dialogue', in 2004 and despite some pleasant reviews, it kinda sank
without trace. We stumbled across it today and popped it on and remembered this
positively sun-kissed piece of loveliness winning us over a few summers ago.
Thorunn and
Wayne
(who was one third of indie-pop boy band Catch)
won a support slot touring with
Darren Hayes back in October 2004 but that's where the information stops.
Lindy
Layton! She sang 'Dub Be Good To Me' with
Norman Cook's Beats
International and you might remember her 1990 hit
'Silly Games'
as well. Lindy's 1991 debut album, 'Pressure', might not have changed the world but we've dug it up and
plucked this track off it for you to investigate. Think
Cathy Dennis with a dash of soul.
Lindy turned up signed to PWL Records in the mid-90s but her 15 minutes was already up. A second album appeared
in Japan in 1996 (
I know very little
about this record. It was released in 1982 and wasn't a hit. The track was
written by New York No Wave star
Judy Nylon,
who, a long with Patti
Palladin (later of
The Flying Lizards),
recorded as Snatch
in the late 70's/early 80's (appearing here soon!).
Natasha
sounds like a
young, poppier Lydia Lunch
or a less snotty Honey
Bane
(also coming soon...)
and would not look out of place in
Toto Coelo.
She released an earlier single, 'I Can't Hold On' (written by
Richard Hartley
- he who wrote 'The Rocky Horror Show'
songs with Richard O'Brien),
and then a third, a cover of
The Dixie Cups'
'Iko Iko' but disaster struck when
The Belle Stars
released exactly the same song just
after Natasha
and it was
theirs that became a hit.
Natasha's
album, 'Captured', came and went and I 
Romo again. This time,
Roxy Music aficionados
Fantastic Plastic
and their only single 'Fantastic No. 5' (originally to be named after the perfume
Chanel
No. 5 'til legal action was threatened). There's a thin line between catchy
and down right annoying but as this track is on
The
International House Of Pussy's i-Pod, I guess we're going with
catchy. The lead singer of Fantastic Plastic,
Stuart, looked a bit like
David Sylvian from
Japan or
maybe Thereza Bazar from
Dollar. Just like the Romo movement was over
before it began, the band never got passed the debut single stage but tracks
were indeed recorded for an album, to be called 'Autumn'. These
include 'Jesus Loves That Rock'n'Roll', 'Godzilla',
'Dripping On You', 'Plastic World' (originally planned as the
second single) and 'My Friends Electric' and they're quite good
actually. Another track, 'Complimentary Electron', appeared
on the 'Melody Maker' freebie cassette, 'Fiddling While Romo Burns'.
That's about it really.
World Of Twist
began life in Sheffield around 1985,
but it wasn't until a line-up change and a re-location to Manchester in1989 that
anyone became bothered. Signed to Circa
Records, the bands 1990
debut single was to be their greatest pop moment. 'The Storm' (one
of Factory Records legend
Martin Hannet's
final productions) still sounds totally amazing today, not least of all in it's
12" incarnation. You can file this next to
The Charlatans,
Happy Mondays,
The Stone Roses,
Intastella
and the rest
of that baggy, pill-popping Madchester scene of the early 90s. The later singles
were alright and although the production is a bit lacklustre (blame
The Grid),
the debut album, 'Quality Street', aint bad at all. A follow up
album was undertook, Creation Records wanted to sign them up
pronto and the word is that those second album demos, including a cover of
'MacArthur Park', were so good they rivalled
Primal Scream's
'Screamadelica'. I dunno what happened but main man Tony Ogden
pulled the plug and by 1992, after
contributing 'New Electric Pop And Soul' to
Saint Etienne's
Icerink label compilation, 'We Are Icerink',
World Of Twist
were kerput. Shame.
Gordon King
went on to form
Earl Brutus
(they had cool artwork but I don't
think I thought much of the music at the time). All your
World Of Twist
needs
Republica
weren't exactly a non-stop fierce hit machine and what hits they had ('Drop
Dead Gorgeous', 'Ready To Go', 'From The Rush Hour
With Love' - collected
Inescapably the sound of a
young Saint Etienne,
it's their goofball rave-pop spin off project
Cola Boy!
'7 Ways To Love' was a surprise hit back in 1991 and although
intended as a bit of fun, the band found themselves being asked for a follow
up by Arista Records and 'He Is Cola' was the result.
It flopped, of course, and
Cola Boy
quickly lost their fizz. Wanting to keep their spin-off a dirty secret,
Bob Stanley
and
Pete Wiggs
recorded the
Cola Boy
tracks with a new 'vocalist' (think she was a mate of
Sarah Cracknell's
- forgotten her name now). We like 'He Is Cola', as it goes,
and this lovely long version is the best mix. It's the rarer single of the
two and we thought you might like it. Listen out for the
Adam Ant
Burundi drums kicking in around
3 minutes into the track (last heard holding together
Rachel Stevens'
'I Said Never Again (But Here We Are)'). The new
Saint Etienne
fan club CD, 'Nice Price', includes the original '7 Ways
To Love' recording, which features
Sarah's
vocals and is otherwise unreleased. Lovers Unite