The Counterforce No. 50

él Records, The Rosehips, Nemahsis, Bauhaus

Last Counterforce I mentioned discovering Jesse Garon & The Desperadoes at Avalanche Records in Edinburgh in the summer of 2003, never having heard of the band before and just taking a chance on the record because I liked the look of the sleeve and it paying off. You might not be able to judge a book (or record, or whatever) by its cover, but said cover can certainly intrigue, and, as part of the package, care should be taken to make sure it does. This is not a metaphor for people. But as for works of art, yes, a good cover is pretty vital.

I got to thinking about the other times I’ve taken a chance on albums like this and how pleasing it is when it leads to a wonderful discovery. And that summer 2003 family vacation - a trip around England and Scotland - was awesome for this very thing. The first day of the trip, while everyone else was sleeping off their jetlag, I made a beeline for Notting Hill, not wanting to miss a single record store in my limited time in my favourite city in the world. To the Music & Video Exchange and their upstairs room full of rarities. As I went to peruse the Sarah Records section, I noticed the divider also listed an él Records, which of course piqued my interest. Back in 1994, a few days before leaving for college and having spent the past few months pursuing a young woman named Sarah, I was surprised to spy a record label of the same name at my beloved Brass City Records in Waterbury, CT. I bought the Another Sunny Day What’s Happened? 7” and the rest is history. Now coming face to face with él, what we called my first real girlfriend Eleanor, who I met later on that same year, was quite a shock to the system. And to be confronted with the beautiful, mysterious cover of the Always Metroland EP, pictured above, was all too much. I needed to hear this post-haste. Though even for me, a dedicated record-buying junkie, £26 was too much to spend on something I’d never even heard of before. So I made a mental note of this and went downstairs to see if they had any él releases that weren’t quite so pricey. Sure enough they did! And there was no way I was not going to fork over the (greatly reduced price of ) £11 to hear this wondrous artefact of Bad Dream Fancy Dress’ Choirboys Gas, even though I hadn’t been aware of its existence the second before. The artwork, the font, the colours on the back of the sleeve, and the song titles - The Supremes, Curry Crazy, Lemon Tarts… I snatched it up straight away. When I rejoined my extended family who were just waking up in time for dinner, I showed the LP to my cousin’s 5 year old son. He had no idea what a record was.

And as luck would have it, when I arrived in Edinburgh the following week and set my course for those record stores, in the same Avalanche shop that I discovered Jesse Garon & The Desperadoes, I also found that Always EP for only £2! The record gods were surely smiling on me. Of course, I had to wait about 10 days until I was home in front of my turntable to listen to them. But it was so worth the wait. Bad Dream Fancy Dress’ poptastic food songs:

and the cold shimmer of Always’ W.C. Fields, who I, ahem, always thought were a great post-punk band. Or rather project of Kevin Wright’s.

Plus the anxiety-ridden propulsion of The Arcade

And thus was my introduction to the wonderful and bizarre world of él Records. There is much to say about Mike Alway’s fantastic label, but that’s for another time

One of my other favourite of these record buying moments also happened in London, again at the end of a family vacation, in the summer of 1998. Everyone else sleeping off the carnage of the previous week at the hotel, I hightailed it into town and to the Rough Trade shop on Talbot Road. The first place I ever went when I first visited the great city in July of 1992. As soon as my feet hit London soil it felt like home to me and not having any idea where I was going, I somehow sniffed out the Rough Trade shop, not too far from where we were staying in Bayswater. At the tail end of that 98 trip I was browsing through their cds, much more prevalent then than they had been in 92, and I came across a sticker on a cd by The Rosehips that read ‘ESSENTIAL POP LISTENING’ Well, that’s all it takes to convince Aug Stone! I grabbed it straight away, once again having to wait until I was back with my stereo to listen. And ever since I have always LOVED The Rosehips. Some Days is pretty much the perfect lazy rainy day spent indoors song

and Bloodstained Fur is the best anti-vivisection pop song ever recorded. Damn catchy

Essential Pop Listening indeed. And speaking of which, this week I listened to the best pop album I’ve heard in ages. Definitely the one to beat for best album of 2024. On Twitter on Wednesday night I saw Julianne Escobedo Shepherd’s Hearing Things article on Nemahsis, a Palestinian-Canadian artist who was dropped by her label simply for being Palestinian. And now she’s back with the album of the year. I highly recommend giving that article a read. It’s a great story of believing in yourself and what’s important to you when the world is trying to erase you in multiple ways. The single Stick Of Gum will most likely be my song of the year. And the video is wonderful too - “Stick of Gum is a love song, so rightfully, what more can i care for than where i come from and who i come from? The entire cast is my family, shot in our hometown Jericho, Palestine.” (from the YouTube info) and this from the Hearing Things piece:

“I just want to show you what I saw there is beauty,” Hasan says. “Some people didn’t know about Palestine before last October, and all they’ve ever seen us is under the rubble. They didn’t see that we could just be on scooters, that we could just be enjoying some food with family. I wanted to show that part and humanize them—us—for a couple minutes.”

Coloured Concrete is right up there too. What a chorus! It hasn’t failed to bring a very big smile to my face whenever I hear it. Joyous.

And I love her explanation of the album’s title and cover:

The record is full to the brim with emotion, with her life, as music should be. Great vocals, great songs, great production. Meaningful pop, and that really elevates it to something special. Check it out.

I’ve also been listening to a lot of Bauhaus lately. It occurred to me that if I were to have the band I always wanted, it would actually probably be a lot like Bauhaus. Knowing me, not as dark, but that sense of stylistic exploration and the freedom to do so, and having four strong personalities on each instrument. Volatile but ones that also work extremely well together. I remember being a big fan of Go Away White when it came out, to the point where I think this was the last time I actually had a friend over to my place to play them an album. That doesn’t really happen anymore, which is a shame. There’s certainly been times people have been in my car and I’ve exclaimed ‘you gotta hear this!’ about a particular song, but for a whole album, sadly no. It was June 2008 and I’d been down in New Cross working with David Shah on the second Soft Close-Ups song, At The End Of A Good Day, and I hightailed it up to The Buffalo Bar just in time to catch my beloved Indelicates playing, Simon still sporting his American flag rubgy shirt in support of the first album. Before I left the recording session, David had passed on to me a bottle of red wine that someone had given him, as he doesn’t drink. And post-gig, Alex Sarll and I headed back to my flat down the road to polish it off and listen to the new Bauhaus album. This sets the scene for a story I rather love. We were drinking pints of wine, as back in my drinking days I was known to do. And at some point, probably around 1 or 2 AM Alex fell asleep in his chair whilst still holding a half-full pint of red. Instead of taking it out of his hands, which would’ve been the sensible thing to do, I decided, continuing on with the creative overflow of the day, to sketch him. As I was finishing up what would be titled ‘Alex Before The Wine Dropped’, his grip loosened and the glass hit the floor precipitating a cascade I have never seen the likes of before or since. Wine went all over, further than I ever would’ve thought, sluicing my bedsheets a good ten feet back and Jackson Pollack’ing the walls there, as well as the wall right in front of us. Unsure of what to do, I slipped ‘Alex Before The Wine Dropped’ into Alex’s jacket pocket, went outside to my shared kitchen, and called my sister back in Boston. I explained the situation and she said ‘well what are you doing about it?’ I responded with the truth - ‘I’m making some soup.’ Perfectly reasonable to my drunken way of thinking at the time. Alex found the sketch the next day and I was pleased he used it as his FB pic for a while, and I headed out to buy some heavy duty bleach to hopefully remove the stains from the walls. But yeah, thinking about having people over to listen to whole records, it was a wonderful thing. I miss that.

I went to see Dave Hill’s Caveman In A Spaceship show at the Soho Playhouse in NYC last Monday. Very funny stuff. Running until November 2nd, go check it out if you can. Also ate at an absolutely fantastic Mexican vegan restaurant in the West Village, Jajaja (pronounced ‘hahaha’), beforehand. The food was D-LISH. Can’t wait to go back and try more of their dishes. Anyway, on my drive back to Connecticut afterwards I listened to a lot of Bauhaus as well as the audiobook of P.G. Wodehouse’s Right Ho, Jeeves. What I then referred to as ‘The Full English’. The next day ‘P.G. Bauhaus’ struck me, and I’m pleased to say I’ve been working on something with this précis and very happy with what’s coming. The hours have been flying by writing it and that’s a lot of fun when that happens.

I’ve got some creative projects I’d like to fund so I’ve put a bunch of stuff up in my Discogs store. I’ve also started a Buy Me A Coffee page, although caffeine makes me constantly have to pee. Any help much appreciated. You can also buy my books : )