shack
just listening to "hms fable" for the first time in ages, fuck i love(d) that band, "waterpistol" is a cracker too.
can't help but think that without the absolutely shit-awful luck they've had over the years they'd have had greater commercial success
also really hoping they'll tour again at some point
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Brilliant!
Only recently rediscovered this myself. In the words of old plastic chops herself (Cher) 'If I could turn back time'
yeah they should have been bigger
only got to see them once
but it was a cracker
i had tickets to see them in king tuts in glasgow about 5 years ago
but my bastarding ex of the time had some ridiculous college graduation ceremony so i had to miss it, that was the last tour they did to my knowledge :(
HMS Fable
I like it....but do you not think it has a bit of a shiny production? Here's Tom With The Weather and The Corner of Miles and Gil are better albums i think
i agree about the production on hms fable
but actually think the corner... has that even more so, it's definitely between hms fable and waterpistol as their best for me.
favourite shack tunes?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O11ZqVAdg5A
Waterpistol is one of the greatest albums ever made.
Sensational songwriting.
HMS Fable is incredible too, although it IS very overproduced.
Favourite song... tough call but I always tend to come back to this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VlNiSAoU-hE
that's a belter too
apparently john head is playing a gig next month in liverpool - http://tinyurl.com/c3nm8lk
Interesting!
John's songs may be few and far between but they're always wonderful:
Cornish Town
Miles Apart
Carousel
etc. Lovely stuff.
I'm tempted to go, despite it being a long way from me.
What is John's solo stuff like?
Here's Tom with the Weather
is my favourite album of the century so far. Absolute genius from soup to nuts. Along with the Go-Betweens, the most criminally underrated band in musical history. I mean, here are my 10 favourite Shack songs (I've included a Strands song as they're basically Shack anyway) - listen to them one after the other and be blown away by how fucking brilliant each song is:
John Kline
Mood of the Morning
Undecided
Comedy
Cornish Town
Byrds Turn to Stone
Miles Apart
Girl with the Long Brown Hair
Butterfly
Something Like You
Forgot 'Cup of Tea'. Another classic.
can't argue with a lot of that list
really love "sgt major" and "pull together" too
i remember the music press
always saying that had they not had so much bad luck they would have been way bigger than they were, but surely all the bad luck they had got them far more press than they ever would have had? what was all the bad luck anyway? stolen gear and a rained off glasto new band tent headline show?
Bad luck
Well, Waterpistol was recorded in 1991, but the studio it was recorded in burned down with the Master Tapes. The album was supposedly lost until a few years later it was discovered that a duplicate master was made and was found in someones car or something. Anyway, it meant the album didn't get released until 1995.
Apart from that, they just always seemed to miss the boat somehow. HMS Fable probably would have fitted in nicely in 1995, but was released in 1999. I think the record company closed not long after it was released too. By the way, all 6 of their albums (if you count The Strands record) have been released on 6 different labels!
I dunno man
The press were all over HMS Fable when it came out. Remember this?
http://shacknet.co.uk/wp-content/gallery/mag-pics/nme.jpg
HMS Hype
Yeah, that's true. The NME really pushed HMS Fable. Didn't translate into sales though really. I'm pretty sure there were no Top 40 singles from the album
Comedy
got a buttload of radio play at the time too, but the public didn't bite. Very depressing.
Well...
...they got lots of backing from a decent label to push their second album (Waterpistol - their best one). They finished recording it, but the week after they'd done this the studio burnt to the ground with all of the master tapes in it. They had no money to record it again.
A year or so later, someone found a master tape in the glovebox of their car, miraculously. So they gave it back to the band. However, the label who had originally fronted the cash to release it had, in this period, gone bust. So they now had the record but no-one to put it out (the exact opposite situation to a year earlier).
They eventually had to put it out on a small german label 4 years after it was originally scheduled for release. By this point, the band had practically split up and Mick Head was heavily addicted to heroin. So no-one cared/noticed.
So yeah, it is a bit of bad luck, but that narrative definitely helped them to sell more copies of HMS Fable I guess. Had Waterpistol come out at the right time, I think they'd have made it huge.
also
quick shoutout for Oscar aswell - a non album single and a glorious pop single.
Classic Shack
Riding on a wave of the most publicity they have had, on the cusp of finally `making it` and... they put out a single about a disabled fella in Liverpool who wants to move to Amsterdam to take advantage of their government-funded scheme which gives disabled people subsided rates on using prostitutes.
I think it's decisions like that why they never made it big. Cracker of a single though.
You could say the same about Cornish Town
It swells into this huge euphoric chorus, and just as you start realising how fucking amazing it is & wish it could go on forever, it fades out. Doh.
one of my favourite shack songs that
and yeah, it could do with at least one more time round the chorus at the end. I often gradually turn up the volume during the fade out to try and simulate this..
and then maybe an extended version that goes on for another three minutes...
I was campaigning for Cornish town to the first dance at my wedding but to no avail.
HMS Fable is a classic
I remember reading about Mick Head's heroin problem at the time, & when I'd listen to the album, I'd think "pretty good for a junkie" - I couldn't get that out of my mind!! But I still think this is a great record during a time when most other "indie" type albums haven't aged well at all...
Yeah I'm listening to HMS Fable today actually...
...it's aged really well. I mean they're just timeless songs of real quality - that'll always age better than stuff that follows a trend etc.
pretty bleak short documentary about michael head here -
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CEYzJeGxJ1A
That's a link to a Chvrches song fella.
I don't know this doc! Would love to see it...
shite sorry
it's here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wxIauMRcsEs&feature=related
seems to be from a french tv station or something
the approach road to runcorn bridge looks like a terrible palce for a game of football
Lend's some dough!
I've gotta get out of the kitchen
Was listening to Waterpistol at the weekend
and possibly due to listening to it on different equipment to usual I noticed how shoegazesque some of it is, particularly Dragonfly and Time Machine (the latter wouldn't sound at all out of place on the first Moose album for example). I guess it's not surprising given that it was recorded in 1991, but I'd never noticed that side of it before.