Sunday, February 18, 2007

UK Early-80s Indie Pop - part 9

Back from Belgium - a great country: neat, well-organised, great beer, great chocolate - and in this shot, some beautiful trees and water reflected in the late afternoon at Maria Hendrike Park in Oostende. This park provides free bicycles to cycle around on! A truly civilised country.

Anyway, back to the real world... here are two more indie tracks, both adding to key elements of the 1980s indie revolution already blogged here - Postcard records, and Creation records.

Orange Juice signed first to Postcard records releasing a string of electric singles in their Scottish punk-soulboy style. Blue Boy was my favourite, although Felicity always ran it close. The band went on to sign for Polydor, released the magnifiscent album You Can't Hide Your Love Forever (superbly engineered by pop-boy genius of the mixing desk Phil Bodger) and had some hit singles, and of course lead singer-songwriter Edwyn Collins went on to become a brief mega star with (I never met a) Girl Like You (before) - although for me, his solo Don't Shilly Shally was the most wonderful single ever.

Edwyn Collins suffered a stroke two years ago almost to this day. He is currently recovering, but hopes to return to the studio. We wish him well.

The Loft were yet another superb guitar-based group who rose quickly and then fell apart almost as soon - famously splitting up mid-song on stage in 1985. This single was released on Creation - "Doing it for the kids" - completely manic yet brilliantly executed. Pete Astor was the band genius, and went on to form the Weather Prophets - another fine, if under-rated band.

The Loft have now reformed and have released a single, which can be heard on their myspace site - their first single for 20 years.

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