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  1. 2023/4 Albums Thing 424 - The Wonder Stuff “Construction For The Modern Idiot”

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    It’s that difficult 4th album…and this time it did feel and sound like it…

    Although the band members may not have been getting on so well at this time that really didn’t affect in any way their songwriting output, they were writing…a lot. They had set themselves up in a purpose built rehearsal, recording and storage facility in North London that was officially The Far Out Recording Company but we all referred to as Far Out Central. Their equipment was permanently set up in the live room so they could come to “work” everyday, rehearse and write. There was a storage room for equipment and flight cases and where myself and Mr Smith could work if we needed and an office for der-management. Should inspiration strike there was a small recording facility set up on the mezzanine floor on top of the office and storage area so they could get stuff down on tape. And write they did.

    “Construction…” featured 13 songs and the singles from it held another 11 originals so there was no shortage of new material. This time they returned to Pat Collier to handle production duties. “Construction…”’s main problem is that a bunch of songs from that fertile period of songwriting that should have made the album ended up as B-sides to singles and a bunch of songs that should have been B-sides to singles made the album ! If you are familiar with this record tell me, would replacing “I Wish Them All Dead”, and “Cabin Fever” with, say, “I Think I Must've Had Something Really Useful To Say” and “Room 512, All The News That's Fit To Print” have made this album worse ?

    That’s not to say that “Construction…” is a bad record, it could just have been better. “On The Ropes” is an absolute TWS classic that has to been seen to be believed at a Wonder Stuff show to this day. Although they were known as an Indie-Pop/Fiddly Celtic group the music that the band were listening to was not that. Faith No More, Washington hardcore bands, Pixies, dEUS and other American alt.rock (for want of a better description) were all on heavy rotation at Far Out Central and on tour busses and that harder influence showed itself in “On The Ropes” (all that influence would finally be recognised when Miles formed Vent 414). Live “On The Ropes” is a sea of heaving sweaty audience bodies and much audience participation on the main riff.

    “Sing The Absurd” is utterly beautiful and alongside “Hot Love Now”, “Swell”, “Storm Drain” and “Full Of Life (Happy Now)” make up the backbone of a really good album. “A Great Drinker” lays bare Miles’ Bukowski obsession of the time but may have been better suited as a B-side, “Your Big Assed Mother” is a little bombastic for my liking and I’ve never been brave enough to ask who it was about. I always liked “Change Every Light Bulb” but after the problems that one caused on a UK tour some years later let’s leave the praise there, other than to praise the intro by the Reverend Hellacious Boom-Boom.

    Bizarrely the first thing that happened after “Construction…” was released was the band toured Europe, 3 weeks around the mainland with the wonderful Gigolo Aunts in support. During December ’93 and February ’94 a US tour was completed and then the “Idiot Manoeuvres UK Tour” kicked off in Manchester on 8th March ’94, 6 weeks around the leisure centres and theatres of the UK culminating in 2 nights at Brixton Academy on April 21st and 22nd. Relations within the band had maybe always been fractious, these were talented, driven people with strongly held ideas, but during the US and UK tours things got more so. Miles was increasingly isolated/isolating himself from the rest of the band and on the 4th of April ’94 management were summonsed and a band meeting was held in their dressing room at Gloucester Leisure Centre. The crew were told later that day that this UK tour would be finished but all future touring commitments were cancelled, including the forthcoming Japanese & Australian tours (yah-boo-hiss went the crew). Some of us were told the band would be splitting as soon as the tour finished but were sworn to secrecy about that.

    It was over, maybe not with a bang but they went out at the top, “Construction…” reached #4 in the album charts and spawned 3 top 30 singles "On the Ropes” #10, "Full Of Life (Happy Now)" #29 and “Hot Love Now" #19. The “Idiot Manoeuvres UK Tour” was a success, almost entirely sold out as I recall, and once again goes to prove that despite the relationships of the people on stage (and it could be said that various members of the band truly disliked each other at this point) audiences very rarely notice anything wrong.

    The Wonder Stuff bowed out at a headlining festival performance at the Phoenix Festival on 15th July 1994, Miles’ parting shot to the crowd being “Ever get the feeling you’ve been treated” (a paraphrase of Johnny Rotten at the final Sex Pistols gig at San Francisco’s Winterland Ballroom)…little did we know at the time, this death was not the end…

    Sing The Absurd - https://youtu.be/EIo9AnLU6Eo?si=MnhHUATr2RVgd5MR

  2. 2023/4 Albums Thing 423 - The Wonder Stuff “Never Loved Elvis”

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    The Eight Legged Groove Machine had sprouted two new legs and was now a Ten Legged Groove Machine. “Bass Thing” Rob Jones vacated spot stage right had been taken over by Black Country compadre Paul “Snogger” Clifford, previously of my old band The Libertines. Myself and fellow Totally Crap Crew member Adam Booker were asked to audition a lot of bass players who had applied for the job to whittle it down to some who would actually be suitable, sorting the wheat from the chaff as it were. We were set up in a rehearsal room at John Henry’s in North London with a bass rig, a selection of songs on tape with the bass lines removed and a loooooong list of names and were supposed to spend 2 days screening bass players. After half a day myself and Adam were ready to kill each other never mind some of the clearly useless musicians who were attending cos they thought they would get to meet the band. I called TWS HQ, told them we couldn’t continue with this without committing a crime and that they should just hire Paul cos they knew him and he knew all the songs anyway. He got the gig the next day, whether or not that turned out to be a good thing, different people have differing views on that. The 9th and 10th legs belonged to “Fiddly” Bell who had now become a permanent fixture in the band.

    Polydor by now had big expectations of The Wonder Stuff. I don’t know who decided that a producer other than Pat Collier (who had produced their first 2 albums) was required for album number 3 but I suspect it may have been Polydor’s suggestion and ultimately the bands choice. The choice was Mick Glossop. If you’ve been reading along you’ll know that The Waterboys “This Is The Sea” is one of Miles’ very favourite albums and Mick had produced a lot of that record. But there is an element of Punk Rock in The Wonder Stuff’s make-up and Mick Glossop had produced records by The Ruts (Malcolm’s favourites), Magazine (another of Miles’ favourites), Penetration, The Skids, The Lurkers and had also worked a lot with Van Morrison so he could take care of the Stuffies raggle-taggle folky side. “Never Loved Elvis” was recorded at London’s Townhouse Studio in Shepherds Bush where The Jam had recorded “Sound Affects”, Phil Collins had recorded THAT drum fill in Studio 2’s slate lined drum booth and where Mick Glossop had been one of the original design engineers.

    I was lucky enough to have been around for the entire recording of “Never Loved Elvis”, before that even, I was around while some of these songs were being written and demo’d on a cassette portastudio that seemed to be permanently sat on the dining room table at the band’s flat near Great Portland Street tube station in London. I was there for the production rehearsals at John Henry Studios in North London when Mick Glossop would come in to listen to the songs in their raw state and, in some cases, strip them apart and completely re-arrange them.

    The recording process, to some, may have been tedious but Mick Glossop was meticulous in his execution in recording “Never Loved Elvis”. He had identified that “the sound” of The Wonder Stuff was the interaction between Miles and Malc’s voices so although the tracks were layered and complex those two voices were always at the forefront of the songs. Mick Glossop after hearing these songs in rehearsals had a vision from the start, I think, of what “Never Loved Elvis” would eventually sound like.

    I have fantastic memories of the months we spent in and around Shepherd’s Bush making “Never Loved Elvis” from the very first days, having set up Gilksy’s kit, the Groove Controller, Mick and studio engineer Al Stone working on drum sounds. I shit you not for about 3 or 4 days myself and drum tech Adam Booker would come to the studio each morning to see if they were ready for us to do anything, to find Martin, sat behind his kit hitting single beats every few seconds on his snare drum looking like he wanted to be anywhere else, while Mick and Al busied themselves over the mixing desk and at racks of effects to achieve the perfect sound. We’d come back the next day and Martin would be doing the same thing but on a tom tom. The next day, cymbals, we thought it would never end.

    The night Miles recorded the vocal for “Donation” was the night the US Army rolled toward Baghdad in the first Iraq war. We sat watching a war live on Sky News, drinking wine while we all got angrier and angrier at what was going on in the world, until eventually Miles stood up proclaiming he was ready to do the vocal NOW.

    If you’ve ever seen Miles perform “Welcome To The Cheap Seats” solo you’ll no doubt have heard the story of how he met Kirsty MacColl at the Townhouse (Miles “you’re Kirsty MacColl”, Kirsty “too right I am darlin’, who the fuck are you ?”). She came into Studio 1 to hear what the band had been doing, telling everyone she’d be back tomorrow to sing on something, we never expected to see her again. But she did come back and watching her layer up those incredible vocals was a privilege.

    “Mission Drive” was a challenge to record. During rehearsals Mick Glossop pretty much rewrote the entire bassline for Paul and while it was being recorded I sat with Paul while Mick made him play it again and again and again and again…to this day I can perfectly hum the fantastic walking bassline under the verse that begins “I'm looking on the bright side,I wear it like a bruise…” I heard it played so many times that day. But it was all worth the effort , “Mission Drive” is one of the greatest album/gig openers I’ve ever heard. Night after night on the ensuing tour I watched crowds across the world explode to that song as the band took off after the intro and lighting designer Carl Burnett hit the room with the “punter blinders”. It still gives me the shivers when I see it.

    “Here Comes Everyone” has developed into an essential song in any Stuffies set, I wish they would play “Inertia” more, I love the rampaging almost outta control "Play" and as an inside tidbit the original line in “38 Line Poem” was “I wouldn’t sing I wanna be adored, Cos that would only bore”…We spent hours and hours making the promo videos for "The Size Of A Cow" and "Welcome To The Cheapseats" with the "vidiots" as the band called them and BTW, the four other fellas in the "...Cheapseats" video, 3 of us playing cards and the large wizardy type bloke are myself, Adam Booker and sound engineer Simon Efemey plus manager Les Johnson as the wizard.

    I was there from start to finish with “Never Loved Elvis” the only time I’ve ever been so closely involved in the making of a whole album. I was in attendance at every show on the what came to be known as the “Never Going To Memphis” world tour, it’s one of the most fantastic experiences I’ve ever had. Of their first 4 albums “Never Loved Elvis” is definitely my favourite. It feels like something I saw born and grow and mature into the live experiences of it we have today. I know a lot of Wonder Stuff fans “complain” it sounds too “produced”…well yeah, that was the idea!

    Mission Drive - https://youtu.be/Qg-JGLN02Ik?si=M3vL_Y29tFtBDfir

    Mission Drive (Live Bescot Stadium 1991) - https://youtu.be/V4NW5S1UTPQ?si=BtVwzBhCyvTVfAK0

     

  3. 2023/4 Albums Thing 422 - The Wonder Stuff “The Boot Legged Groove Machine”

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    Whisper it quietly, this bootleg of demo’s and unreleased tracks was put together by the band and sold on the merchandise stands during a British tour in order to make everyone a nice Xmas bonus! It’s made up of demo’s and unreleased recordings that were hanging around unused.

    The master tape was compiled and taken to a cutting studio and pressing plant up near Manchester by TWS manager Les Johnson and me, he claiming to be my manager and I posing as the singer in the fictitious band that had made this record, “Nine Ways To Thursday” (IYKYK is I believe the correct way to describe that alias). The Mancunian studio engineer took one listen to it and looked at me and Les with a very knowing “yes mate, of course that’s what this band is called” on his face.

    As bootlegs go, and this after all is a bootleg, the sound quality is as good as it gets. Side 1 makes up what would have been most of a Wonder Stuff live set in those early years before the songs that made up “The Eight Legged Groove Machine” were written. Side 2 is made up of songs that were played live at some point and were all very close to making that first album or a B-side. “How High (The Upper Hand)” was recorded a number of times (there’s another take of it on the compilation album “Love Bites & Bruises”) and was a candidate to be a single at one time but they never quite captured it how they wanted it. Then there is the version of “Golden Green” which is incredibly different to the final version and shows just how much a song can change from initial writing to final release.

    There is also an unofficial bootleg of this “official” bootleg. If your copy includes a recording of a gig in Holland in 1988 (from the Euro Rock Festival in Groningen on 2nd November 1988, a terrible setup and gig and in future years we used the name of that town to describe a debacle, as in “oh no it’s all gone Groningen”) then it’s a bootleg of the bootleg, that gig was never on the bands original pressing. The guy responsible for that bootlegged bootleg, Paul a notorious Manchester bootlegger, walked into my shop a few years ago with a pile of them under his arm and sold ‘em to me ! There was also a limited run of the original release (sans gig) released on CD some years later.

    No link on this one as none of the tracks are on YouTube (as far as I can tell)…but if you’re a Wonder Stuff fan there’s some great stuff on “The Boot Legged Groove Machine” and you should track it down.