New wine
I should really plaster this with declarations of interest, as one among the folk behind the Hangover Lounge concern is a good friend of mine, but the truth is I’d be writing about their first EP regardless, because (a) it contains the first chance to hear Amor de Días, Alasdair MacLean of the Clientele’s new [...]
All about hope
A reminder that the Claim open for the Dentists in a Medway spectacular at Dingwalls in Camden on Thursday 25th March. Here to celebrate this once in blue moon appearance are two songs from their Boomy Tella LP which can consider themselves unlucky not have made it on to last year’s Black path retrospective. [...]
Absolutely second to none
I completely concur with Vic – the Claim were bloody marvellous on Saturday night in Rochester. Not better than I remember, as I said in the immediate aftermath, but simply as great as I made out in words written about them many years ago. So it’s pleasing to know that my memory isn’t playing tricks on me, [...]
Loser’s corner
28th September 2009. Set your faces to stunned and make a note of the date in your diaries, for that’s the day on which the Claim finally make it onto CD with the release of Black path: retrospective 1985-1992. Who’d have thought that in 2009 they would be releasing a record within eight days of [...]
This pencil was obviously sharpened by a left-handed Indian knife thrower
A jumped-up pantry boy has made frequent reference to the Claim over the two years it’s been up and running. Here from Pot Plant Pantry is the piece in which I first wrote about them, spurred on by seeing the group for the first time at the Black Horse in Camden in July 1987 and [...]
Picking up the bitter little pieces
Well done to Vic who is trying hard to get some wind behind an unlikely Claim revival here and here. Vic was if I’m not mistaken the writer and narrator of ‘Mike the bike’, the B side of the group’s ‘Birth of a teenager’ single for Bob Stanley’s Caff label. It will be a joyous [...]
Riding on the crest of a new wave
Appearing around the time that the Manic Street Preachers took to the stage to help celebrate Heavenly’s eighteenth birthday last month, here is a great interview by Simon Price with Nicky Wire and James Dean Bradfield. It focusses on their time on the Heavenly label, and includes some reflections on the group’s first London outing, [...]
Let me see you
Alistair has been posting live recordings of the triumvirate of groups who recorded for Kevin Pearce’s Esurient label, along with the handbills produced to advertise the shows. In the absence of the half-dozen long-players that collectively the trio should have gone on to make, these sets formed part of my staple listening for many years. [...]
Ernestine
I should have mentioned in my ‘Goodnight’ post that there is a Claim website. Assuming you have Adobe Flash Player installed, you can listen to a handful of their songs, including Boomy Tella opener ‘Not so simple Sharon said’, their single for Bob Stanley’s Caff label ‘Birth of a teenager’, ’This pencil was obviously sharpened by a left-handed Indian [...]
Goodnight
His voice has lost its top-end choir boy sweetness, and the bottom-end is rougher than it was, but you can still see performance magic in this clip of Dave Read singing ‘Goodnight’ from a rendering of the whole of the White album at the end of last year. Bob Collins formerly of the Dentists is playing [...]
