The price of fame ...

Having decided to go all out for commercial success after the 1985 split, victory in the name battle with those who would become The Mission turned bitter sweet as the latter began to enjoy UK chart success with a sound, image and fanbase that relied heavily on their TSOM past. When Eldritch finally unleashed the latest version of his own project, with photogenic Patricia Morrison as his sidekick and the legendary Jim Steinman at the production desk, it was no contest, although Von soon found that he had less control over his image and public persona than he had had previously, an issue that remains close to his heart even today. Miming on obscure European TV chart shows, interviews with daily papers and magazines who had hitherto ignored the band, all deemed necessary for the greater good.

The ultimate ignominy was probably this sticker from the 1988 Smash Hits sticker collection produced by Italian sticker giants Panini, which apart from being obsessed with unnecessary "quotation marks", contains a ridiculous number of mistakes (the omission of the definite article in the band's name, both Eldritch's and Hussey's surnames incorrectly rendered, Craig Adams being described as a "guitar twirler") and includes the frankly libellous accusation that Von went "mad in Germany," not a wise move when describing a notoriously litigious rock star. Having said that, this era of TSOM keeps the latest incarnation of Spiggy in cat food to this day (supplemeneted by the odd European festival appearance), so Eldritch definitely had the last (and deepest) laugh.

Fanboy alert

These days, the superfan has many ways of getting involved in promoting their beloved band to anyone who'll listen. Joining "street teams", setting up YouTube channels or (as in my case) creating a blog, there are many ways to help others to share the joy and reach a worldwide audience in a matter of seconds.

Back in the early 80s, when the Sisters were the hip and happening band but no-one south of Sheffield seemed to have noticed, the desperate uber-fan could merely plague the various media outlets who might listen. Being (then as now) funded by the UK taxpayer, the BBC kind of had a duty to listen to its audience, which sad and deluded fanboys like myself took advantage of, sending letter after letter to the DJs most likely to be interested in my inarticulate ramblings. A recent rummage through my (ahem) "archive" unearthed this letter from October 1983, referring to one of my many missives which had apparently been broadcast during the short-lived "Write Now" slot, a sort of Points of View for Radio One listeners. As this would have been the month that Temple of Love was released, I was probably suggesting (as I often did) that Top of the Pops and/or The Top Forty should also showcase the number one single in the Indie Charts, on the grounds that many of the most creative and successful British artists of that time (eg Adam and The Ants, The Human League) had started out there, and that this would help financially struggling but talented young bands to reach their audience sooner, with the Beeb able to take some of the credit. Or something like that. I don't think I actually heard the show in question, so it could have been the suggestion that Eldritch's head should replace the Queen's on UK stamps in order to get "the young folk of today" interested in the noble art of philately, or something equally subversive. Looking back, I think I just had too much time on my hands, and as I believe that this post is the fortieth on this blog, some would argue that I probably still do !

Fro my collection 3

Like the thousands who regret not keeping their old toy cars or Star Wars memorabilia in mint, boxed condition, there must be many old goths who regret recycling the ephemera of their gig-going days down the years. The early Sisters gigs I attended were either pay on the door or had the kind of ticket which you had to surrender on the way in, so I have precious little evidence in any case of some of the gigs I attended. Occasionally though, an attractive looking poster left pinned up to advertise a gig could be easily liberated once it had served its original purpose, and enjoy a second life papering over the cracks (literally) of a Leeds student bedsit.

The A4 example pictured above is one of the few remaining items I have of that time, although sadly it is from the early Hussey period, post classic line-up. Recently discovered lurking inside the pages of an old edition of Record Collector magazine featuring TSOM where it had been obviously placed for safe keeping during a long forgotten house move a quarter of a century ago, it is a reminder of more innocent days when Student Ents Committees would advertise forthcoming shows using little more than a letter transfer set, some flourescent paper and a photocopier. And those who have recently paid fifty euros to see (or rather, not see) the band will also have fond memories of the days when you could peer through the dry ice for under three quid, less than the cost of two bottles of Blue Nun. Incidentally, the Sisters returned to the region of Von's birth (East Anglia) later that year (1984) on the Black October tour, but left it a further twenty-two years before paying a third visit to the UEA LCR, when advance tickets cost ... twenty pounds.

MR31 Clask of Dreams...at last

So finally after 30 years, Salvation’s Clash of Dreams, the dead sea scrolls of the legendary 80s Leeds goth scene, has been released, the shelved Merciful Release which was a vital missing link between many of the bands concerned. Although dulled and rusting fifth generation cassettes of the meisterwerk have been furtively circulating amongst the cognoscenti for many years, this is the first time one can legally own this seminal lost classic, and in remastered digital format to boot. If the fact that it was recorded for MR was not enough, the presence of not only Doktor Avalanche in what many consider to be his finest manifestation but also Andrew Eldritch himself on production duties make this an essential purchase for anyone with even a passing interest in SGWBM era TSOM. Add the fact that the hoary old chestnut of the Von-Hussey rivalry can be stoked with the inclusion of the former’s production of Salvation’s Jessica’s Crime which can now be compared with Wayne’s own knob-twiddling for the song’s single release, also available in digital format, and that the original intended six track Clash of Dreams has been supplemented by all three tracks from Salvation’s other Merciful Release (the Girlsoul 12” of 1983, some available here digitally for the first time) and the band’s first new recording for twenty-three years, and you have an unmissable package worthy of much greater fanfare than being sold at gigs and via the band’s website.

And if all that weren’t enough, the sheer quality of the music on offer would be worth the price of admission even leaving the historical significance of the release to one side. That the modern Salvation (still featuring Danny and Ben) chose to start and end the new CoD with the unusual but effective conceit of one track (The October Hour) is its 1984 and 2014 guises is entirely appropriate, as it’s the song which has most in common with the more folky, slightly psychedelic pop-rock which the band peddled after leaving MR. Danny sings the same melody as the picked guitar riff in a manner which fans of, say, Ghost Dance will easily recognise and became a key feature of the more overtly melodic (yet strangely less commercially successful) end of the goth movement in the late 80s. The early version showcases the drive which Doktor Avalanche brought to the band’s sound whilst also highlighting weaknesses in Danny’s vocals and the lack of a second guitarist to flesh out the sound, factors which are frankly acknowledged in the CD’s excellent sleeve notes and which are rectified on the modern version. When CoD was originally recorded at the late lamented Strawberry Studios in Stockport (as FALAA was), Salvation had yet to make their “live” debut, and many of the songs seem to be in an embryonic format (despite Eldritch’s first-rate technical input), and would clearly have evolved further with the experience of regular live performance, as later Salvation recordings appear more “rounded”.

The title track is second up, and aficianados of the early Salvation sound will revel in the slow-burning atmosphere of the song, a decent slab of angular coldwave whose main interest for the Sisters fan is the utterly magnificent three minute instrumental ending, just one key (and oddly familiar) riff repeated with minor modifications. If this section of the song had been presented to Sisters fans as a long-lost out-take from The Reptile House, there would be few who would doubt its authenticity, such is the effect created here by producer Eldritch. As it is, those who secretly enjoy imitating the great man’s vocal inflections can take great delight in reciting the chorus of Heartland, A Rock and A Hard Place or Burn which all (vaguely) over the top of this broodingly magnificent beast.

Before the listener can re-draw breath it’s on to the afore-mentioned Jessica’s Crime. Unlike Hussey, Eldritch always seeks to draw inspiration from a song’s lyrics in creating its dynamic atmosphere, and here he gives the song the slightly claustrophobic feel of, say, Jefferson Airplane’s White Rabbit, aided by the galloping beat of the good Doktor in subdued Floorshow mode. Hussey’s version of the song (not featured on CoD) by comparison is both grander yet more spartan, a clearer vocal and a plaintive viola dominating and ironically creating a more traditionally gothic ambiance.

Any blogger who has ever discussed CoD over the years has been quick to point out the obvious parallels between the next track, Burning On and the then contemporary sound of The March Violets, riding high at the time with their Indie Chart number one Snake Dance, whose chorus is imitated here very effectively. The verse features the twisted slightly bluesy riffs favoured by many bands on the scene at the time, such as The Three Johns and Red Lorry Yellow Lorry, and overall the song is strong enough that it could have been an indie chart success in its own right, had Von gone for the EP release rather than the mini-LP route for the CoD recordings before they were mysteriously deleted from the release schedule in March 1985.

The fifth track again is another slow-burner with a psychedelic twist and presages the sound of The Rose of Avalanche, another Leeds band who found great success with a very similar sound shortly after that time, further evidence that had it been released at the time, CoD would have propelled Salvation to the very forefront of the nascent gothic scene, contrary to the future direction which their career took.

The final track of the original six, Sea of Dreams, is the weakest by far, meandering along endlessly in a tuneless drift highly redolent of TSOM’s own dirgey single release of that era, Body and Soul. Aiming for a melancholic Faith-era Cure vibe, the band themselves were clearly unhappy with this version as a much-changed rendition surfaced on a later LP.

The other three tracks, which originally made up the Girlsoul EP, were of course released on vinyl as the band's debut single (on Merciful release) back in 1983, but get their first full digital release here. The title track was the most immediate, and was deservedly the first of the band's Indepenedent Chart hits, whilst Evelyn has an almost Joy Division back beat. The real treasure, though, is Dust Up, already the subject of a post on this blog and one of the greatest MRs of all time. Danny and the band seem to be playing an obscure OMD b-side in the first couple of minutes whilst Doktor Avalanche rat-tat-tats impatiently on the studio door. The next ten minutes is pure psychedelic goth trance bliss, before the song ends in the same way it started. One can well imagine the band leaving Eldritch in the studio to finish the insipid original  whilst they headed to the nearest pub to Ken Giles' studio in Bridlington to make last orders, returning the following morning to find Von slumped over the controls, exhausted by the all-night shift required to make his masterpiece. Possibly.

Buy this essential slab of Leeds musical history whilst you still can.

From my collection II

If there's one thing TSOM fans are suckers for, it's new merchandise, and the sad recent news that the MAM store is now longer seemingly trading reminds me of the halcyon days of the Reptile House mail order service in the UTR era. Nowadays it's mugs, tote bags and the like which the ageing goths who make most of the current 'live' audience seem to lap up (surely the first MR zimmer frame is not far away), but amongst my Sisters junk I found one of the flyers given away by Acme in the band's first foray into megabucks merchandising at the Merch stall on the Black October tour. These flyers were intended for those whose post-gig arrangements were too chaotic to get that Ruth Polsky poster home in perfect condition, or who had spent their last 72p on a pint of lager and black (guilty as charged, m'lud) and would need to save next week's giro to buy a fashionably unfashionable white t-shirt. I still have the set of three badges which I bought at one gig (the last of the big spenders), but I never did manage to save up the twelve quid needed to buy the tour shirt, although I'm not really sure where I was planning to wear it.

From my collection 1

Recent correspondence with other fans of TSOM's earliest incarnations has prompted me to have a rifle through what I sometimes rather laughably describe as my TSOM "collection", which is in fact a few old carrier bags stuffed with a variety of press cuttings, flyers, artefacts etc (but also containing old family photos, football programmes, random souvenirs etc etc), hidden deep in a pile of garage-bound boxes which we always intended to sort through when we last moved house over a decade ago.
Anyway, the first find I thought might be of interest to some is a photo (one of several) which I took at the legendary Sheffield Uni gig in June '83 (see blog post entitled "Sisters For Free Part Two" for further details).
It's never easy trying to take photos at gigs, and that was even more the case in the early 80's, as this shot was taken on a 110 Instamatic of East European origin (via Argos) whilst I was bobbing around in the moshpit trying to avoid being crushed by the toppling upper layers of the human pyramid from Wakefield. Then there was of course the lengthy wait for the return of the film from the processing factory somewhere near Watford to see if you'd actually managed to get any decent shots at all, or just twenty-four of your own left ear having held the camera the wrong way round.
Seeing some of the spectacular shots posted online of the recent 2014 tour puts this grainy, badly-lit shot of Von to shame, but at least you could see the band in those days and lightshow didn't burn your retinas.

The Rose of Avalanche

Of all of the alternative bands to come out of Leeds in the mid 1980s, none were as controversial in their home town as The Rose of Avalanche. Like many people, the first I had heard of them was when John Peel  frequently played their debut single “L.A Rain” in the Spring of 1985. Although there some features that marked them out as a Leeds band – the drum machine, the twin guitar assault, the referencing of early 1970’s US pre-punk rock – their most distinctive feature was vocalist Philip Morris’ delivery, half-spoken à la Lou Reed and more California than Call Lane. Rather risibly, he kept up the mid-Atlantic drawl for his inter-song banter at live shows, which did little to endear him to an already sceptical music press. Their second single later in the year, “Goddess”, also made the indie top 20, but although it had more obvious appeal to those seduced by The Cult’s new “rawk” direction, the fact that again the sleeve featured the band’s name in a familiar font and little other information meant that it also appealed to the ever-growing Sisters following. “L.A. Rain” featured at number 26 in 1985’s “Festive Fifty”, well above the two TSOM entries (the stand-out tracks overlooked as singles which close the two sides of FALAA). I for one was certainly drawn in, and recall that I actually bought a copy of their first compilation (“First Avalanche”, still on the Leeds Independent Label, produced by Neil Ferguson who later became a member of Chumbawamba) on the first day of release, and fired off a hugely positive review in Leeds Student, the campus newspaper for whom I was one of several music correspondents (I believe I called opener Stick In The Works as “a punchy statement of intent” in the pompous music press vernacular of the day), and continued to fill my column inches with positive coverage of what were frankly lacklustre live appearances supporting the likes of Balaam and The Angel. Although they went on to have greater success with “Goddess” style rockers like “Too Many Castles In The Sky”, I always personally preferred the slightly hippyish, more psychedelic “L.A. Rain” influenced tracks such a “A Thousand Landscapes” and “Never Another Sunset”. Last week a cover of one of the slower burners, “Velveteen” (with a guitar riff seemingly “borrowed”  the following year by no less than Guns’n’Roses), was released by Carnival Star, and I’ve spent a very pleasant week re-discovering the long-forgotten joys of T’Rose.