sound of the suburbs

Before we get down to today's Peel artist there are two other things I would like to mention. First up, sorry for the state of affairs at EZArchive, they are changing their system and for the last few weeks this has meant that things have been rather sluggish. To add to this I have just discovered that all files are to be transferred and or deleted at the end of October, which means the links will be down, so instead of posting I shall be spending some time putting up new links for my old posts. I just hope their new system is really worth all the hassle! Second, as promised Friday night the beer did flow and maybe just a little bit to freely, I guess this is very much a case of me showing my age! I was not to be the only one displaying their years as the gig was indeed very strange, true OTH made a lot of people very happy that night but the sound was to say the least rather strange and the individual members seemed to have problems getting into the swing of things, as a friend said to me after the gig it was a shame they didn't just play the encores! For me the evening's highlights were a) the excellent support band Servo, for whom we shall return another day. b) The sight of the three Rockstore bosses on stage providing backing vocals for OTH and a little bit later Fifi, who is well into his 50's though evidently still young at heart, stage diving hand in hand with Spi the OTH vocalist into the arms of the adoring audience, he did later confess that it was the first time for him! Still it was his birthday. c) Around 2 a.m. being jumped upon by a smiling Beubeu, OTH drummer, as he hugged me in the middle of the bar before soliciting my opinion. d) And of course there was the beer!

And now back to the BBC, today's band the Farm were long time Peel favorites having entered those hallowed studios on 6 occasions between 1983 and 1981. I think it would be fair to say that at least at the beginning part of the interest on Peels behalf was motivated by vocalist Peter Hootons passion for all things Liverpool FC, he even went as far as editing his own football fanzine The End. The band were formed in Liverpool in 1983 by youth worker Hooton who was looking for a way to voice his political concerns. Their left wing politics and horn driven sound led to them being dubbed the soul of socialism and lumped in the same bag as the Redskins. Maybe because of their openly political message they failed to find a niche for themselves with their first three singles and as such were going nowhere quickly. After dropping the horns and adopting a more eighties sound they scored a club hit with single number 4 'Body And Soul'. Realising that the immediate future was with beats they approached dance producer Terry Farley who produced their baggy take on the Monkey's 'Stepping Stone', this finally did the job and got them national airplay. The rest as they say is history, top ten singles, selling in excess of 500,000 copies of 'All Together Now', a first album that charted at number one, playing before 15,000 people for the last night of the Kop (Liverpool FC's legendary terrace). Success was to be short lived as maybe in the public's eye they were too closely associated with baggy/Madchester that was to die an early death, and their two following albums failed miserably in commercial terms after being dismantled by the critics.