ViperSuzas ‘Tongue And Groove’

‘As you can see from the band photo we don’t really buy into the whole image thing. Pixies didn’t, Sebadoh didn’t, and we sure as hell ain’t gonna lose no sleep over how pointy our shoes are.’

You got to love a band who set our their stall like that, really. Biff and Jim, they are. Here’s what I know. They hail from some arse end of nowhere, probably south east England, Sussex way I think. Probably not important. Biff plays drums, Jim plays guitar and sings. Jim’s got one of those splitters so he can plug his guitar through a bass amp too. No bass player required, see. But they make enough rock for three. Or four. Or five.

There’s a great biog (see link below) crafted by former Maker hack Push, where you can find out more. It’s rare to find this sort of info these days, which is a shame. Like we’ve said over and over, it never hurts to give people a peg to hang their coat on. Most bands just expect people to chuck their coats on the floor these days, which is a shame.

Yes, yes, digress, but what’s new eh? It’s great to know there are still bands left who do what they do best (the music bit) and gather people around them to do what they do best (ask a writer to write, you know). They’ve a fine looking website too that was probably built by a pal who’s good at those sort of things.

More than anything, it’s refreshing to find a band who not only understand the power of the internet, but understand they don’t have to do it all themselves. Can’t. Don’t have to.

There’s much to like about ViperSuzas. And that’s before you’ve even heard a note.

The music, then. Yes, lazy people say it’s like the White Stripes. Well, there is too of them. Thing is, White Stripes sounds like two people. ViperSuzas sound like a gang of roofers ponding away up top until the roof falls in, but in 4/4 time. They sound like an express train grand prix through your front room. Like a batallion on the charge in the Battle Of The Bulge. Like guns and bombs. Sorry, came over all Cranberries there.

They are carved from the same plank as bands who knew how to be bands. Husker Du, Tad, Magazine, The Ramones. check the list of influences and the names are all there, Neil Young, QOTSA… and then they toss in Cable – Derby band who deserved more. Split up in the late Nineties after being half-flogged to death in search of ‘commercial success’. Truely excellent, a terrible waste. The Cable memory jog reminded me of the likes of Groop Dog Drill, Submarine (who became Jetboy DC), Union Kid, A… all bands who knew what guitars were really for and stuff the rest of it.

You’ve got to be happy when you discover a band this good. Be happy.

More hear…
- There’s a single ‘Long Way Back’ and eponymous six-track mini album… getting hold of them is a whole other matter.
- A rummage has also turned up a limited edition promo EP featuring four tracks it’s a snip at £3.50. A wise investment even.
- Back in August they proclaimed they’d record an album in a day, 12 tracks, 24 hours, called ‘Blunt Chisel’ they’d chop it out on CD for a crisp fiver… Last Friday, October 9, they admitted 12 was a bit ambitious, but five were in the can and sounding almighty. Can’t wait.
- A real, proper website… a MySpace
- Read some well-written words about them here

Quite soon I will stop with the Norwich bands. Well, I won’t actually stop, but they are going to live in a new online home… not with monkeys. This has to be one of my favourite singles of all-time. I love everything about it. I got it for my birthday from Cuz, aged 14. It came in a brown paper bag on which he had meticulously copied the sleeve. So many record sleeves to copy, so little time. Little wonder we both ended up at art school, eh?

We used to spend a fair amount of time painting the flaps of those canvas army surplus rucksacks everyone had as school bags in the Eighties. I was quite proficient and vaguely recall taking on a commission or two. My bag of choice for everyday use featured the cover of Altered Images’ ‘See Those Eyes’, and I also had a Genesis bag too. Can’t quite remember which cover, or why.

The Higsons then. By the time we were wandering from the well-beaten track of the UEA LCR and heading for the bright lights of Norwich city centre, The Higsons were very much on the up. We were regulars at The Jacquard, The Gala and the Theatre Royal’s studio round the back of M&S as well as the Arts Centre. I vaguely recall the UEA Barn being good too.

I didn’t see The Higsons live all that much. I can remember seeing them at Pennies on Edward Street once, and I think, but I’m not totally sure, we were at The Jacquard when the ‘Live At The Jacquard’ tape-only release was recorded in February 1982. I still have the tape at least.

If The Higsons were any kind recommendation for soul music, you could have signed me up there and then. They seemed effortlessly cool, being a UEA band they weren’t Norfolk boys and as such they seemed all the more exotic. In our little world, they seemed enormously famous. And of course, Switch, or Charlie Higson, did go on to be exactly that. Enormously famous.

I think the thrill of The Higsons was seeing all that brass on stage. The bands we were used to were all guitars and drum kits, but here was something new. I’d seen trumpets and trombones before, but they made a horrible noise played by spotted orchestra girls at school. Alex James in his very readable book about himself mentions something or other about being at close quarters with a trumpet and how it’s just the loudest instrument in the world, ever. It is, but blimey, what a great noise in the right hands, and The Higsons were the right hands.

Later in life, I made frequent beelines for the Super Furry Animals live. Hard life, but it was my job, and the Furries were a stonkingly good live band. They often reminded me of The Higsons, especially when their brass section would wander onstage for tracks like ‘Demons’. The Higsons never went for fancy dress like SFA, not many did really, which is a shame.

Somewhere, some time, in between the two, I got involved with another fine Norwich band called Basti who also understood the power of a decent brass instrument. But that’s a whole other story. Another time eh?

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.