How About “The Something”?

Please excuse me while I embark on another nauseating nostalgia-fuelled trip down memory lane. These will have to stop.

Formed in Whitehaven in 1998, The Something was a teenage garage band in the most literal sense. I played an out of tune white Yahama guitar (which I later drizzled black paint on because I was obsessed with the Stone Roses and thought it would make me look cool), while my good friend Peter played bass and wrote all of the lyrics. A reluctant Paul Smith handled the vocals, until he quit to become an apprentice electrician. We rehearsed in the garage five times a week and we recorded all of our demos there on a battered old Tascam four-track. Unfortunately crippling teenage shyness and our lack of a drummer meant we never actually ventured out beyond the four walls of that garage to play a gig. I like to think we’d have blown people’s minds if we had.

We only ever received one proper review, which was in our local paper the West Cumbrian Gazette. I think it’s a positive one.

I’m still very proud of some of the songs we wrote together and I still occasionally get the opportunity to write music for Peter’s lyrics. In fact, I recorded one of these such songs only a few weeks ago. I might even share it with you once I’ve ironed out a few of the creases. Until then, listeners looking for a fix of The Something should pop over to the Zeitgeist Tapes MySpace page – the track Perfect Imperfection is actually a cover from those halcyon days.

How To Say Goodbye to a Decade’s Worth of CDs

In preparation to try and sell my flat (2 bedrooms, large lounge, secure parking, central location with river views*) I’m getting rid of my entire CD collection. A drastic measure? Perhaps, but it’s a necessary one – those shiny little discs are everywhere and the place is a complete mess. So in the next week or two I’m going to be sending them all back up to Cumbria with my parents for temporary rehousing. I say temporary, but if Emma has her way I’ll never see my beloved collection again. But that’s another story.

In order to avoid missing out once my collection has gone, I’ve embarked on the gargantuan task of ripping every vaguely worthwhile single, EP and album onto my computer. It’s taking forever so far and I think I have around 200 albums to go but it’s been a strangely fulfilling job. Previously all of the discs were stacked up in plastic storage boxes underneath the futon in my guest room, which meant I never really played, well, any older records. Going through the boxes methodically, I’ve found quite a few old favourites I’d practically forgotten about all together (plus a missing copy of The Shins’ Oh Inverted World that I hadn’t seen for the best part of four years!). Here are some of my best rediscoveries:

1) The Beta Band: “To You Alone / Sequinsizer” (Regal)

I hadn’t listened to this since I reviewed it in late 2000 for a very amateurish No Ripcord. It genuinely sounds just as fresh today as it did then and probably wipes the floor with some of the other shit I was raving about at the time. The Betas never quite made that one killer album, but their singles and EP tracks stand up to the work of any British band in the last ten years.

2) Royal Trux: “Veterans of Disorder” (Domino)

I’d completely forgotten that this album existed. Actually, I’d pretty much forgotten this band existed. I remember I really liked the first track Waterpark but listening to it now the whole record sounds pretty good.

3) British Sea Power: “The Decline Of British Sea Power” (Rough Trade)

A bit of an obvious choice? Who cares – this is nothing short of a modern classic. My promo came in the form of a CD-R in a thin plastic sleeve and those things are difficult to keep track of. I think the last time I listened to it was well over a year ago. It’s on my iPod now so I won’t have to live without such gems as Favours in the Beetroot Fields, Fear of Drowning and Blackout. I remember I used to skip Lately because of its length (13:59); I listened to the whole thing the other day and loved every minute of it.

4) The Wannadies: The Wannadies (MNW)

In 1990, way before You and Me Song brought them the fifteen minutes of fame from which they never really recovered, Sweden’s The Wannadies released this record. It was their debut, and while it’s not a great album by any stretch of the imagination, it does bring back some happy memories. I received this record as a gift from a Swedish lady called Magdalena, who also sent me three awesome mixtapes that basically ended up shaping my musical tastes for the next five years. I remember her vividly telling my seventeen year old self “if you want to write about alternative music you need to know about Dinosaur Jr”. I’ll write about the mix-tapes some other time actually; I still have them, even though I don’t have any equipment capable of playing them.

5: Johnny Boy: “You Are The Generation That Bought More Shoes And You Get What You Deserve” (Vertigo)

Remember this? It was one of the singles of 2004, with its boy-girl vocals, Spector-esque drums and soaring choruses. Brilliant stuff, unlike the band’s debut album which eventually surfaced two years later and was pretty much panned.

. . .

* The building has only flooded once in three years – it’ll never happen again.