Sounds From The Junkshop #8 - Kingmaker

 

"Oh let's just pretend we're human beings for a while/Maybe chronic shyness could drive us to a smile..." - Kingmaker, Queen Jane, 1993

Kingmaker...god, the poor buggers. Here's the thing about Kingmaker - they were essentially nailed from the get-go as a poor man's Wonder Stuff by pretty much everybody and it meant that when the tide started to turn against that brand of music with Britpop starting to stir, they were very much the first band in the firing line and really copped it with both barrels. Did they deserve it? Hell no. But I'm getting ahead of myself here.

It's easy to forget that in the wake of the Sisters of Mercy, the Cult and (to a lesser extent) New Model Army all graduating to the proper grown-up charts that Yorkshire was a bit of a musically barren place as the ‘80s turned into the '90s. While across the Pennines, Madchester was in full swing, the only bands we really had coming up over here who were getting any press of note were Leeds Uni students Cud (I was tempted to do an SFTJ on them but to be honest, while I used to like ‘em well enough, especially Rich And Strange, I was never what you’d call a mega-fan), Yorkshire's answer to the Happy Mondays, the Bridewell Taxis (who put out a string of great singles but didn't even reach the album stage before their hedonism well and truly sunk them) and Scarborough's answer to Bon Jovi, the Little Angels (a bit harsh actually, looking back they had a few decent tunes and were nowhere near as cringingly shite as ver Jovi were but they were very much not a cool band to namedrop).

So when I heard there was a new Yorkshire band in the Top 40 (even if they were from Hull, right on the opposite side of the county), it's fair to say I took an interest and when Kingmaker made their first appearance on Top of the Pops with Really Scrape The Sky I was...well, I thought it was okay but it didn't really grab me. Listening back now though, I was evidently a bit harsh on it - it's aged well and definitely packs the requisite punch. Yes, I'll admit, the similarity to the Stuffies' Piece Of Sky is difficult to ignore but at least it's done well.

The next couple of singles, Eat Yourself Whole and Armchair Anarchist kind of passed me by (the former actually made the Top 20 but I honestly don't remember it for some reason - not sure why) but they finally reeled me in with their fourth (and biggest) hit Ten Years Asleep which really was absolutely killer, a frustrated howl of rage at the apathy of the early '90s ("All the punks are pushing thirty years and are hardly feared/All the young dudes work for all the old broods in expensive suits now/Ten years asleep and your grave is empty but already dug"). Add to that a TOTP performance which had them performing in front of a huge backdrop with the immortal slogan IT COULDN'T HAPPEN TO A NICER PLANET on it and I was hooked.

And...dammit...as per bloody usual, me finally becoming a fan of Kingmaker was the cue for their career to well and truly crash. To be fair, I read an interview with singer Loz Hardy a few years ago where he claimed that by this point he was already starting to lose faith in the whole operation. When the group had signed their record deal with Chrysalis, one of their conditions had been that old favourite of complete creative control. Unfortunately the fact that Armchair Anarchist, the first single off their second album Sleepwalking had bombed saw the record label calling them in and insisting that they relinquished said control if they didn't want to be dropped. Backed into a corner they were left with no option and the first thing the label did was force them to go and re-record pretty much the whole album as well as insist that all the singles would be multi-format going forward leaving Loz with having to essentially write thirty plus songs to order which left him somewhat frazzled. Add to that Chrysalis bringing them under their umbrella for marketing, promotions etc when they'd previously had people they were friends with and trusted to do these things and it's easy to see why things were starting to go wrong.

To be fair, they were still coming up with the goods musically and Queen Jane, which followed Ten Years Asleep into the Top 30 was another great song, a vitriolic diatribe against BNP boneheads. Unfortunately, not only were Kingmaker now at loggerheads with their label but the sands beneath their feet were starting to shift as well. Late 1992 had seen them out on tour supported first by Radiohead and then by Suede, both of whom would have broken into the Top 10 in the next few months. The smoking jacket clad types in the music press were pretty scathing in their reviews and it only seemed to add to the general feeling that everything that could go wrong for the band was.

To be honest, guilty as charged, Kingmaker kind of fell off my radar after that as well. Possibly I was just a bit too busy listening to Construction For The Modern Idiot, Post-Historic Monsters and Empire Of The Senseless in the second half of '93 to notice they were still about. I do remember buying a new single Saturday's Not What It Used To Be which missed the Top 40 by a mile towards the end of the year and there being a mini-album which consisted of the aforementioned single, a few B-sides and a Radio 1 session coming out called To Hell With Humdrum which I remember seeing in the shops but didn't buy and that was pretty much that.

Actually, not quite - I did see Kingmaker live at a free music festival in Leeds in 1994 where they were sharing a bill over the weekend with Chumbawamba, the Wedding Present, Skunk Anansie, Back To The Planet and Tiny Monroe (bluddyell, now there's an eclectic bill for you!). They put up a decent fight and I remember the crowd giving a decent reaction to the hits but unfortunately they were pretty much blasted off stage by local lads Shed Seven, playing just before them as a late replacement for Elastica, who'd just broken into the charts with Dolphin and pretty much couldn't have put a foot wrong that day even if they'd tried. It was symbolic of the changing of the guard, really.

Kingmaker would resurface in 1995 with a new album called In The Best Possible Taste which spawned two minor hits in You And I Will Never See Things Eye To Eye and the title track but honestly, by that time it was Britpop, it was phuq, it was Infernal Love and I honestly don't remember it. They split before the year was out - rumours had it at the time that Loz would join Elastica following Donna Matthews' departure but although he co-wrote a couple of songs with Justine on their ill-fated second album The Menace, it never happened.

The group have reformed in recent years as Kingmaker 4 A Day with Loz absent and a new singer and new guitarist taking the line-up to being a four-piece (hence the name one presumes). As of yet no new material has been forthcoming. Then again, reading the aforementioned interview with Loz (readable here via the web archive), it seems he's pretty much done with the music business and nothing's going to change his mind. Given some of the treatment he describes both himself and the band being put through, I have to say I don't really blame him.

The thing is...listening back to Sleepwalking now not to mention the Eat Yourself Whole and In The Best Possible Taste albums which I missed first time out, it really does feel as if time has been unjustifiably unkind to them. Yes, they very much weren't Radiohead or Suede but fuckinell, did we really need another of those? The latter were an (admittedly brilliant) entirely different proposition while I've always thought that one Radiohead was one too bleedin' many if you get my drift. And yes, they weren't as good as the Wonder Stuff but they definitely had enough killer songs to stand up on their own (High As A Kite, When Lucy's Down, Freewheeling, Honesty Kills, the list goes on and on). Cherry Red have recently released an "everything but the kitchen sink thrown in" Kingmaker box set called Everything Changed and it's well worth a listen if you want to explore this very under-rated band more. They may not have quite scraped the sky but they deserve a lot more respect than they got.