All Ears: Space Raiders ‘Glam Raid’

Hailing from the musical hotbed of Middlesborough, named after a bag of crisps and signed to Fatboy Slim’s Skint label, Space Raider are, hands down, one our our favourite bands of the Nineties.

Their storming ‘(I Need The) Disko Doktor’ single entirely soundtracked one especially messy trip to Ibiza, while there were a firm favourite live, leaving us nothing short of gobsmacked at the high level of arsing around on display. Clearly very drunk, there was lots of dancing and waving of toy guns and light sabres as they unleashed their irresistible big beat beauties. Most entertaining.

It’s a shame there’s hardly a whisper about them as the wisps of time waft onwards. But that’s kind of the point of us being here. We’d like to be thought like a musical stick that pokes you in the direction of lost lovelies like Space Raiders.

We first stumbled across them while do the single reviews for The Maker, a most enjoyable job as we always enlisted the help of a guest reviewer. One of my favourites was the lovely Mary-Ann Hobbs, who just froths musical enthusiasm. Normally, we’d turn up with a pile of singles and work our way through them with the guest. Rather fantastically, Mary-Ann turned up with her own pile, in which was this, the Space Raiders’ debut.

We were both mad about it, so I guess it must have been single of the week… if it wasn’t they were robbed. We came away with Mary-Ann’s copy, swapping it for something or other. Can’t quite recall. And in a beautiful moment of something or other, we now have a new site where you can buy the actual records we write about right here. Yup. Think of it like a music redistribution service. More details below.

More hear
- You can buy this very record, a white label promo previous owned by Mary-Ann Hobbs, from our sister site, ripingvinyl.co.uk.
- Or if you prefer, pick up their debut long one, ‘Don’t Be Daft’ from 65p from Amazon Marketplace. While you’re there might as well get the follow up ‘Hot Cakes’ seeing as it’s being knocked out for 1p.
- Oh, and can we find a single picture of them/ No we can’t. If anyone’s got one, knock it this way. They really did deserve better.

All Ears: The Loyal Few ‘Adventures’

We’re back then.

Sorry for the radio silence. It’s been a bit hectic round here. You can marvel at what we’ve been up to at our sister site, rippingvinyl.co.uk. See, we’ve built a little shop to sell curios, promos, vinyl and the like. Figure if we can make a bit buying and selling it’s one less proper job we have to do, which means more of this.

The other string to our busy bow is running a music journalism course. It’s been going well and we’ve got a day-long extravaganza lined up for June.

The thinking is the music press is broken. It’s too top heavy, with too little being published from local scenes. Where have all the ‘zine writers gone? Where do local bands get the big up? Writing about music isn’t rocket science (no, that’s rockets and stuff), but people tend to make a bit of a fist of it. So I run a little course to show people the ropes and hopefully kick-start something locally. Next job is a little site for music coming out of Norwich, UK.

Oh, it’s nice to be back. Not had a ramble like this for a while. My favourite part of the course is the session on interviewing, where the students get to quiz a real band. Finding a suitable one was a piece of cake.

First time I met The Loyal Few, I watched them walk up the road for their stint as guinea pigs. Sounds daft, but you just know from looking if a band has got it or not. Half a job done if you look like a band. Other half is sounding like it. And do they sound like it? Yup.

They do breezy pop music, packed tight with sunshine and dripping in melody. Garage pop they’d called it if asked. The one thing the world has plenty of room for is bands like The Loyal Few. No pretence, no agenda other than getting up there and doing enjoyment with bells on. No point in getting all chin-strokey, it is what is, does what it does and does it rather brilliantly.

The nice thing about sitting here, ears flapping, is you often hear music that isn’t a polished diamond. Often bands we stumble show flashes of what they could be. We like that, we like hearing one corking track that just pins us to a wall. With The Loyal Few it is very much the finished article.

Listen to the two EPs (available for free from their website) and you’ll hear the difference, the progression. The remarkable thing is that they were recorded six months apart. Here’s a band set to full stream ahead, and working up quite a head of steam in the process by all accounts.

Next step, a wider audience, which could well come on the back of a third EP. Not heard it yet, but can’t wait. If the difference is as huge as it was between the first two EPS, well… Don’t all rush at once. Form an orderly queue please.

More hear…
- Before we forget, the corking photo above was taken by Clare Mills.
- A visit to the MS is time well spent.
- Trundle along to the proper website where you can download both EPs for free.