We now do requests. Oh yes. For reasons that will become much clearer early next year, I’ve been spending time sifting through my dim and very distant past in order to put together a history of the Norwich music scene. My partner in sifting, although he doesn’t realise it yet, is a lovely man called Push.

Push manned the Orbit desk at The Maker before my time, was the Editor of Muzik magazine during my time, and is wholly responsible for providing the stepping stones I needed to become a music journalist in the first place. Without him, my life would have been very different. I don’t say it enough, but I think he knows. Thanks Push.

He was dragged up in the sticks, Swaffham to be precise, and hit the bright lights of Norwich as a teenager in the late Seventies, just before punk began to wander its way up the A11. It could be a long and tiring journey in those days, especially when the horses had to be rested near Thetford for the night.

We were talking the other day about where it all started for Norwich, musically. I know a man who could tell me all I need to know about the Fifties and Sixties, the one about when The Beatles played in Prince Of Wales Road and all that, but I’m much more interested in how things developed for the homegrown bands. During the late Seventies, a couple of things happened that we think proved pivitol.

1) Nick Raynes, former tour manager to likes of The Teardrop Expoldes, arrived at the University of East Anglia as Entertainments Officer. The Lower Common Room is legend among anyone who even remotely liked music in Norwich, with a who’s who line-up passing across its stage. All thanks to Mr Raynes.

2) I was a too young remember this, but Push wasn’t. Apparently, Ace Records on Lower Goat Lane was the record shop of choice. It was stuffed full of US imports, lots of soul records, and as such was frequented by the more discerning customer. There was a small section of records, with no browser (the only thing called browsers in those days were the bits of card or plastic that separated the different sections in record racks). It was this small section that Push poured over, watching it grow over the summer of 1977 until it had taken over the whole shop.

And it was this combination, we think, that planted the musical seeds in a hundred heads of both UEA students and City soul boys alike. Let’s form a band. And boy, did they form bands.

Popular Voice, pictured here, I know very little about. They were certainly one of the more accomplished bands, musically. During the early Eighties record labels would sign pretty much anything that string a note or two together, makes you wonder why Popular Voice didn’t crack it. Sure I’ll find out sooner rather later.

Push got quite excited when he discovered I had a single by them. Here it is then Push, the b-side as requested will be forthcoming.

More hear…
- The BBC website is often a thing to behold and their Peel archive is quite handy, if not a little frustrating. you’ll find Popular Voice recorded a Peel session in Maida Vale 4 on 28 June 1982. Four tracks, but can you listen to them. Nope. Really, what is the point?
- Push pointed me in the direction of The Norwich Music wiki, it is a fine thing to behold. Behold for yourself here.

When I was 12 or 13, growing up Norwich, there were two things on my mind – Norwich City Football Club and live music.

I won’t bore you with tales of footballing woe, which continue to this day, but the live music thing… Me and Cuz cut our teeth live on Altered Images at the UEA in 1981 and that was that really.

They were the loudest thing we’d ever heard. We were quite literally deaf for days afterwards. Might have had something to do with being inches from the PA, heck, we had no idea what a PA was until that night. It was a life-changing night. After that, anything that waved a guitar in Norwich (and plenty that waved them at distance once Cuz passed his driving test and was behind the wheel of his much-loved Hillman Minx), and we were there.

Quite how we found ourselves knee-deep in the local music scene I can’t quite remember. We were just up for anything that made a noise. UEA was the venue of choice, but The Jacquard, Pennies, The Arts Centre, The Gala, The UEA Barn and The Studio Theatre were all regular haunts.

At the time, Norwich was in the spotlight thanks to The Farmer’s Boys. They were snaffled up by EMI and came within a whisker of being on Top Of The Pops, peaking at no.41. Seems daft now, but it was stupidly exciting at a time when the charts actually meant something.

It did the Norwich music scene no harm and there was no shortage of local bands to like. Gee Mr Tracey, The Fire Hydrant Men, The Higsons, Popular Voice, 18 Yellow Roses, Serious Drinking… there’s a great A-Z here, courtesy of Mr Pete Roberts, if you fancy a rummage.

Listening back now, I can still hear the appeal of The Farmer’s Boys. There’s something of Morrissey about Baz’s voice. Funny how I never noticed it before.

‘I Think I Need Help’, pictured above, was their debut single. It was released on The Higsons’ Waap Records, which was run out of the magnificent Backs Records, a true great among the record shops Norwich seemed awash with during the Eighties.

I served my time behind the counter of Andy’s in Lower Goat Lane from 1984 until 1989. I started working there while I was doing my O Levels. Exam in the morning? I worked in the afternoon. It was the world’s greatest job for a 16-year-old boy. I loved every last second of it.

Actually, I didn’t like moving round much – that’s the one where you spend an afternoon in the backroom moving the vinyl, from right to left, round the floor-to-ceiling wooden shelves to make room for new stock), but I did like hoovering at the end of the day. There was something very satisfying about that. Most of all I loved the people I worked with. They were to a man and woman the funniest, kindest, most lovable people I’ve ever met. Even the awkward sods – and there were a few – never failed to make me honk laughing.

I never ceased to marvel that I actually got paid to hang out, laugh far too much and smoke fags while reading a paper on the loo, and all in a huge shop full of records. We often did whatever it was we did in silence because no one could decide what to play. I once put on The Beastie Boys’ ‘License To Ill’ only to be told to ‘turn that shit off’ by a passing regional manager. He reasoned we were here to sell records not drive the customers away. CBS’ biggest selling album of all-time then. Happy about that.

Payday was quite something. We all had a cubbyhole in the back room where we’d stash records we wanted to buy. The bosses weren’t daft. They’d hand over your wages just before slapping down the staff purchases book. At which point we’d hand back a good chunk of our wages. We were paid in records, basically.

Andy’s is a clothes shop now. I make a point to walk past it when I’m in town. Every time, something inside yells at the injustice of it all. Andy’s is why I am who I am. These days, what’s a young person to do? What’s the coolest Saturday job in the world now?

More hear…
- There’s an unofficial website, which is here.

Sometimes, things seem to take on a life of their own. When I set up rippingvinyl.co.uk the idea was to share the music I own on vinyl. The kind of music you’d only get to hear if you came round mine for a rummage. It didn’t seem right that all this fantastic music existed and yet, thanks to record label short-sightedness, no one will hear it unless they’re lucky enough to own it.

What I didn’t expect rippingvinyl.co.uk to become was a place where I unloaded stories. To be honest, I’ve never been very good at giving myself the big ‘un, but I’ve found I really enjoyed the little tales attached to my vinyl.

Sensateria, I thought, were the exception. thought I’d just put it here because it’s a cracking tune. Nothing more to say. Nope.

Only… Sensateria’s ‘Give Me My Auger Back’ appeared in July 1997, at the height of big beat – We had to call it something. And who says the music press just invent scenes? Think Monkey Mafia, Lo Fidelity Allstars, Lionrock, Bentley Rhythm Ace, Propellerheards, Death In Vegas, The Wiseguys. The grandmaster was, of course, Norman Cook, the clue being his Brighton nightout, Big Beat Boutique, which he ran with Skint’s Damien Harris.

You’re probably one step ahead of me here, because, yup, Sensateria was Norman Cook, like Mighty Dub Catz was Norman Cook. Hands up, I had no idea at the time, just loved what was coming out of his excellent Southern Fried label. Listen to it will you? How could I not have known? Fine journalist I was.

Anyway, I’ve never met Norm, but I knew Zoe Ball to say hello to in her pre-being Norman’s wife days. She was a proper indie kid, you’d bump into her all over the place – actually, it was mainly Camden, but you know.

So one night I was in Camden doing a feature on the inaugural Camden Crawl. Can’t remember if it was the actual night, or if we were doing a preview. Whatever. In tow I had Barry Ashworth off of Dub Pistols, couple of bods from Symposium, Matt and Phil from the Lo-Fis and Louis Jones from Warm Jets. Sure there was someone else. Ho hum. Get me shameless name dropping. I knew the stars let me tell you.

So anyway, after a couple of halves we found ourselves in the Palace (Camden not Buckingham) where I got chatting to Zoe. Introduced her to the charges for the night and, blow me over, if a week later she wasn’t dating Louis. Lovely man, didn’t deserve the kind of tabloid attention he got when she suddenly went stella – landed the Radio 1 Breakfast show I think it was. As I recall it was a NoTW splash. Holiday snaps, big old lens, properly pap job.

I was in Bedford a few months after their relationship fizzled to review Warm Jets. They could be a bit hit and miss live, but when they got it right they were stonking. They were on fine form that night.

After, I was sitting in the dressing room with Louis. I apologised once or twice, while he maintained that look popular with rabbits, especially those flattened by the car with the headlights. You know, the one full of tabloid hacks gnashing their teeth and frothing at the mouth.

Louis wasn’t at all starry, he understood the game we all played, he knew his place and made the most of his time. I liked him a lot. He didn’t regret it one bit. And he’s got one hell of a story waiting for the grandchild.

KiN ‘Papageno’

Sorry it’s been kind of quiet round these parts this summer, but we’ve been busy. Oh yes. Been getting back in the saddle, and getting comfy today and job number one is clearing out waaaaaaaay too much dubstep, techno, tech-house and various combinations of the above from our soundcloud.com dropbox. Blimey, if we had a pound for every bedroom DJ sticking stuff in our ears we’d have £92.

As our regular reader will know, we’ve started using soundcloud on our sister site, rippingvinyl.co.uk, and it’s very neat indeed, take a look if you’ve a mo. Only problem is hypem doesn’t pick up tracks from soundcloud. Hypem assure me it should only be a matter of time, and then we’ll make the switch to their player here too.

So anyway, after our ears were hurting from the sound of waaaaaaaay too many repetitive beats we found a proper pearl. ‘What kind of magic is this?’ are the words that squeeze themselves, popping out in a Minnie Mouse squeak (and we mean that in a good way), from the quite breathtaking pipes of Stockholm’s Sara Hedin, or KiN if you’ve got a soundcloud dropbox. Which we have. Have we mentioned it?

What kind of magic indeed. With a growling thrum of backing tracking, think Depeche Mode booted out the back of a Transit on a cold, dark winter’s night, think Lykke Li taken by the darkside, think Kyle with Winehouse’s problems, think Emilliana Torrini on 45, Bjork dating Goldie… oh, hang on…

In our usual through music journalist manner we know Sara is a girl, she dwells in Stockholm and has released two albums as KiN, ‘The Zombic Hunch’ and the brand-new ‘Those Bombs Were Made For Us’, there’s also an EP and four, count ‘em, singles. We also know that one of her songs ‘Sandman’ featured in Portuguese TV soap Morangos com Açucar, we never miss an episode.

She deserves better than Portuguese soaps though. What she does is quite quite quite quite the most brilliant thing we’ve heard all year. ‘Papageno’ stopped us dead in our tracks. It sounds utterly bonkers first time, and come to that it still sounds bonkers the second time too. What it does is leave you scrabbling for more. And the more is just as good.

Not only does Sara sound like a star, she looks like one too… almost. With eyes you could stand teacups on, she’s got something of the Cheryl Cole about her… only with a Katie Price makeover… at night… with doll’s clothes. Sounds original, check, looks original, check. You could file comfortably under the current 80s electro revival and no one would bat an eyelid.

Best of all though, the whole thing has the sort of rough diamond feel that gets people like us all worked up. It’s all there, but it could do with a bit of spit and polish. Not the finished article, which is a good thing, but you just know when she does (and from where we’re sat, it is when rather than if) get a polish, well, blimey.

More hear…
- The album then, ‘Those Bombs Were Made For Us’, is available from iTunes.
- There’s the usual MS and a site too, kinplanet.se which looks like it’ll fall over over if you click on anything. I’m assured it’s being rebuilt, but it’s all part of the charm, all part of the charm…
- You can also find here on last.fm, ilike and twitter.

I used to live next door but one to Phil Oakey. It’s a story I often forget, but I’ve been waiting to write that line for a while. He wasn’t very neighbourly. It was 1988, The Human League were quite famous. He’d nod, and Joanne would smile occassionally, we’d just stare a lot, so I guess his non-neighbourly-ness was understandable.

I was in the first year of a Fine Art degree at Psalter Lane in Sheffield. Me and Whil rented the downstairs of a house on the corner of Gisbourne Road and Ecclesall Road South, just down the hill from college. Phil and Jo, as we never called them, lived two doors down on Ecclesall Road South.

We moved up to Sheffield from Norfolk in the back of horsebox. It belonged to Whil’s uncle and was one of the lorry types, clearly very much in use for moving horses, and quite recently too as it was full of straw bales. We travelled, with all our worldly possessions (bag of clothes, radio/cassette, duvet, black and white TV), in the back for some reason, perhaps it was the allure of standing straw bales on their end and trying to surf them as we rattled towards South Yorkshire.

We stopped off in Nottinghamshire, somewhere or other, to visit more of Whil’s relatives. I appreciate this tale is getting a bit off-piste, and I really must check, but I recall this relative was an old friend of Christine Keeler, who in 1961 had a fairly low-key affair with with a guy called John Profumo… who was the Secretary of State for War in Macmillan’s government. Show me a man who wouldn’t want a job title like that – isn’t it called Secretary of State for Defence these days?

Anyway, back on track… slightly. Our house in Sheffield was odd, but then when has student accommodation ever been anything else? We shared it with total strangers called Kev and Bella (jolly nice people as it turned out, luckily). We had one frontdoor, they lived upstairs, we lived down. The place we moved to after Gisbourne Road was next door to a, erm, ‘massage parlour’, and their fire exit was a wooden hatch that opened into our flat. Not a problem when you’re a student, I guess. It also had a room in it that was locked. We were told the previous tenant had left his stuff and was going to come collect it at some point. Can’t remember if he did. Must ask Whil.

So, Phil and Jo’s house wasn’t the sort of place you’d expect mega pop stars to live in. there was very little sign of opulence, but in the drive there was a Jag and more than several big motorbikes – five or six. The most remarkable thing about it was the front room, which was clearly visible from the road. In it was a giant teddy bear, giant, almost as high as the room, and across the back wall, arranged in a line like some sort of mission control, there were four TVs.

There was no Sky, which was perhaps lucky for Phil, because the TVs were all on at the same time, each tuned to one of the four available channels. We thought it was terribly impressive, the very height of pop starness. Boy, were we were naive fools.

What? Oh, music, yes. Almost forgot. In the days when proper remixes were coming from a sprinkle of US cities, from New York and Detroit, Martin Rushent (have I mentioned him before? I have? Oh) was leading the charge in the UK. ‘Dare’ had been a massive hit for The Human League in 1981, and in a cynical bid by Virgin to exploit the success and fast, ‘Love And Dancing’ appeared the following year.

It was a revelation, stripping out much of the vocals and adding rafts of effects and tricks, Rushent says the mixes, essentially all his own hard work, were a result of not having time to do ‘proper’ B-sides. Inspired by Grandmaster Flash, he’d add effects and chop and splice tape till his eyes bled and his fingers ached, or until he’d finished, whichever came first. He’d then serve them up to Virgin as B-sides. When he had half a dozen he’d almost done the whole album… so he finished the job and the spectacular ‘Love And Dancing’ was the result.

More hear…
- The ‘Love And Dancing’ album is still very much available, get it from Amazon on CD or download for about a fiver. There’s a rather nice remaster from 2002 of the original ‘Dare’ album bagged up with ‘Love And Dancing’, for a bargain £7.99. Download that here.