May 5th, 2008 by Ed
Never one to turn down a request, here’s the very first BDS demo, Gothic Monstrosities (for James R). Recorded over a couple of days in the basement of a used car salesroom in Kingston in (I think) 1986. The engineer was a lovely bloke called Hick. He even played sax on one of the songs I think. Martin Hawkes (aka Marty Tuff) from the Stupids played lead guitar on a couple of songs (listen out for anything that sounds remotely competent and that’ll be him!). I had no idea what I was doing and relied on Jason and Paul who had both been in the studio already with earlier bands. I’d hung out with the Stupids for a couple of sessions and done a 4-track recording with Frankfurter, but this was the first ’serious’ session I’d ever done. Listening back now I honestly can’t say any of it sounds too clever…in fact most of it’s pretty embarrassing, but I’m amazed at the number of people who like it 20+ years later. To be honest I’m amazed that anyone’s heard it at all.
- Nick Norris - Vocals
- Paul Condon - Bass
- Jason Cook - Drums
- Ed Wenn - Guitar
A lot of it’s punk-by-numbers and influences were very much in evidence. Here’s a rundown of the more obvious steals:
- Obsession = London Dungeon by the Misfits.
- Dark Knight = Heard It All Before by Stupids (or the Marginal Man track that they nicked it from).
- Never So Funny = No More Pain by Embrace (just the intro which is taken from Chris Bald’s bassline)…also a nod to the Stupids again with their song title Always Never Fun (which is way cleverer than my feeble attempt).
- Why Even Bother? = Generic 7 Seconds riff.
Posted in Bad Dress Sense | 4 Comments »
June 11th, 2007 by Ed
That clever Ian Glasper (author of two great books on the UK punk scene) is at it again. He’s busy writing a third book about the bands who were selling their souls on the HC circuit between 1985-1990. Apparently he’s doing pieces on Bad Dress Sense, Stupids & Sink (hurrah!) so I’ll be contributing material here and there. We’re currently trying to set up a face-to-face meeting to kick things off.
While we wait for the book to hit the streets you’d do a whole lot worse than go out and buy his first two forays into documenting that elusive little beastie called punk rock:
Posted in Bad Dress Sense, Stupids, Sink | No Comments »
March 8th, 2007 by Ed
Looking back on it, maybe the Peel session was the best thing BDS ever did. It’s all subjective I suppose, but Cynical Smile and Life’s Demand sound great and it’s hands-down the best version of Never So Funny that we recorded. Also, Nick’s vocals sound wonderful. I never thought of him a singer per se, but there’s no question that he steps up on these songs and does a really great job.
What kind of freaks me out about the whole BDS thing is how little I remember about any of it. It’s just a blur. Shame really, but then it was long time ago. This lot were recorded on 24th Feb 1987. Hope you like ‘em:
One thing I do remember clearly about this session was that I didn’t have a proper guitar amp at that point so I took along my 12W Marshal practice amp and essentially used it as a distortion pedal by plugging the guitar into it and then taking a line out of the back and sticking it into a 100W H&H bass combo that we’d scrounged from somewhere. The result was pretty good. Definitely more fizzy than any guitar sound I’ve had since, but the Beeb techies certainly did a good job in making it sound dense and powerful. Also, because the 12W is a tranny amp it has a bit of a Husker Du sound to it and it holds the individual notes really well.
BTW, while I have the floor, I’d like to thank John Hannon for giving me the “Grandfather of UK Emo” tag. Wasn’t sure how I felt about it the first time he said it, but listening back to these tracks the Embrace/One Last Wish influence is pretty obvious and I don’t think anyone else was doing that in 1986-87, so maybe he’s right. Interestingly enough I think Squirrelbait was at least as much (if not more) of an biggest influence on BDS than the DC lot, but you only have to compare Always Away with anything from Squirrelbait’s sublime Skag Heaven album to see just how far I was from the mark. It didn’t help that I could hardly play guitar, but even so, it is pretty basic. talking of which, that song and Need To Love are the two here that I can’t really listen to 20 years later. A bit basic, a bit embarassing. I was growing up in public as a songwriter that’s for sure. One minute you’re sitting in your room, writing a bunch of stupid songs about your ex-gurlfriend…next thing you know it, they’re being broadcast to a national radio audience by the best DJ in the world ever. And the funny thing is that I only just realised how weird that was. 20 years on and it finally strikes me as a bit strange.
Posted in Bad Dress Sense | 5 Comments »
January 23rd, 2007 by Ed
Paul May, who wrote Final Curtain fanzine years ago, got in touch via MySpace recently and sent me rather a nice photo of myself playing at an early BDS gig (back when I still had hair). A nice gesture to be sure and one that deserves a deed in return. So, Mr May, here are the tracks from the BDS 7″ that you wanted to hear. Nothing special, but probably a nice trip down memory lane.
The first 2 tracks were recorded at the same time as the mini album Goodbye…It Was Fun (in fact Cynical Smile is taken directly from that release), 11:59 is a cover of the Blondie classic and the other two are re-workings from our very first demo, Gothic Monstrosities.
The single had blank labels, no cover and never received a proper release. It was part promo and part merch. BDS split up very soon after it was released however (actually, very possibly before it was released!) so not many copies were shifted as merch and I ended up with quite a few boxes lying around in my room. At this time I was also playing in the Stupids and we’d sold out of our own equivalent 7″, Leave Your Mark, so nothing to sell at gigs. Ever the opportunist, Tommy Stupid, decided that because there was no band name printed anywhere on the BDS record, we could get away with selling it at Stupids shows because no-one could play it till they got home and even then most people wouldn’t know the difference. He was right and it was only £1, but still….
For the 2 tracks not taken from the mini album sessions, Nick and I got hold of the original multi-tracks from the first BDS demo and re-recorded the guitars and vocals. I’d changed the title and lyrics of, Never So Funny, and it was now called, It’s All In The Mind. I also wanted to re-do the guitars on Dark Night because Marty from the Stupuids had played them on the original demo. The short solo is still him, but the rest are me. The drums and bass are the same as on the Gothic Monstrosities cassette release.
This just popped into my head; the guitar intro on Never So Funny/It’s All In The Mind was stolen from the bassline of No More Pain by Embrace.
Vocals: Nick Norris - Guitar & B Vox: Ed - Bass: Paul Condon - Drums: Jason
Posted in Bad Dress Sense | 2 Comments »
December 20th, 2006 by Ed
Bad Dress Sense released a 4 song 7″ on Vinyl Solution in 1987 called Cynical Smile. It was a budget job intended to give away to zines and to sell at gigs (for a princely £1 a pop!). As a result it came in a white bag with no information on it and a blank, but bright orange label. The record itself was pressed in green see-through vinyl.
Because I fancied one myself and because people kept asking me, I knocked up a sleeve for family and friends in various different colour combos at the punk rock copy shop that Rob Tennant and I used back then to make our flyers.
That was all a very long time ago.
Last month Sean Forbes asked if he could get a copy of the sleeve for his absurdly definitive punk rock vinyl collection. I didn’t have any spare sleeves, but did offer to scan mine for him so he could print his own. There’s probably one in 3 million chance that this info is of any use to anyone else, but because I went to the effort of scanning it for him, I thought I might as well post the images here. So, if anyone needs that BDS single sleeve cover follow these links:
Posted in Bad Dress Sense | 6 Comments »
We Rule: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download
