Sounds From The Junkshop #18 - Heavy Stereo

 

"So here's to a happy landing, wherever we're fallin' to..." - Heavy Stereo - Cartoon Moon, 1996

Let's be honest, it all started to go wrong for Oasis when they started to swallow the "new Beatles" hype wholesale. Well that and when they started developing a worrying predilection for tedious blues jams but that's a whole other story. I blame Paul Weller meself.

The thing about Definitely Maybe was, y'see, yes there was definitely a Beatles influence there (I mean on the likes of Live Forever and Up In The Sky you can't really miss it) but there was so much more going on there as well. On that one, the Gallaghers owed arguably more to the '70s glam stomp of T-Rex and Slade (Cigarettes and Alcohol for the former, Rock 'n' Roll Star for the latter) or the scuzzy sneer of the Pistols (Bring It On Down) than they did to the Fab Four. Their critics may have derided them as such but a Lennon & McCartney tribute band they very much weren't...well, not until later on anyway...

Of course, once it became obvious that Oasis were very much the "now" band, it seemed that every label was falling over itself to try and sign their own version (trust me, the above classic Fast Show sketch really wasn't that much of an exaggeration!) and hence we got Cast, Northern Uproar, the Seahorses, Hurricane #1, 18 Wheeler, Sussed, Wireless, Coast, Proud Mary...and Heavy Stereo. One or more of these may end up in future editions of this 'ere column as we scan over the Britpop years but for this week, we're dealing with the mighty 'Stereo.

I think I ended up gravitating towards Heavy Stereo (signed to Creation, the same as Oasis were) because someone told me they were from Hartlepool which is my original hometown. It's not a place that's really got a particularly prolific musical output, in fact the only other band I can remember coming from the town and getting any kind of chart success were mid-'90s indie-dance types the Sneaker Pimps and they were so utterly dire that it's something we should probably just gently gloss over and keep quiet about so the prospect of a new band coming out of the place to put it on the map was something I was quite excited about. The truth is, as I discovered a few years later, that while frontman Gem was indeed a South Durham lad (albeit from Willington which is halfway between Bishop Auckland and Spennymoor and about 20 miles inland from 'Pool), the rest of the band were actually Mancs. Ah well...

As it happens though, my geographical cock-up actually worked in my favour as it led to me going out and buying Heavy Stereo's second single Smiler. Honestly, I'd genuinely put this song up as one of the best of that whole Britpop second wave era. Similar to Oasis at the beginning, it had that whole lad-rock singalong feel to it but married to a riff and tune that was pure Slade/Sweet style early '70s glam. It just missed the Top 40 by a couple of places and the future looked bright.

I enjoyed it so much that I actually went into town the following week and tracked down a copy of Smiler's predecessor Sleep Freak - not quite of the same quality but definitely a cut above yer average Britpop second divisioners with its loping riff reminiscent of T-Rex's Hot Love. Third single Chinese Burn was more Deep Purple than Marc Bolan but still just about competent enough (although the lyrics were definitely a bit on the cringy side - "You gave me heebie-jeebies so can I claim my freebies?" anyone?) and it was all boding well for the group's upcoming album.

I went out and bought the puntastically titled Deja Voodoo when it was released. And that's when the depressing realisation hit me that...oh wait, they only really had those three singles as the good songs didn't they? Actually, there was one other banger on there in the anthemic Cartoon Moon which should really have been a single in its own right but a lot of the rest was just dull chugalong sub-Oasis by numbers with a lot of the glam flash of those early singles mysteriously absent. While it took Oasis three albums to do their plummet from brilliance into tedium, Heavy Stereo managed to do it in one. Ouch.

Heavy Stereo weren't long for this world afterwards - they put out one further single in the form of the plodding Mouse In A Hole before being dropped by Creation although they'd crop up on the Jam tribute album Fire And Skill a year or so later with an energetic rip through The Gift which showed a glimpse of what might have been if they hadn't had their heads turned by Oasis/Alan McGee (delete as appropriate). I remember an interview with Gem where he claimed that the interest from the Jam cover actually prompted a couple of indie labels to express an interest in offering the band a new deal but then Noel offered him the Oasis Mk2 gig as a replacement on rhythm guitar for the departing Bonehead and thus Heavy Stereo were no more. As a footnote, supposedly Gem walked into his local in London the night the announcement was made public and the place went into an instant hush broken by the late great comedian Sean Hughes who piped up with the words "Hang on, he's in here all the time but up until now he's just been that c**t from Heavy Stereo!" Brutal but funny. The group's drummer Nick Jones on the other hand would well and truly strike gold by resurfacing in the excellent Jim Jones Revue some 15 odd years later.

I'm not gonna pretend that Heavy Stereo were a criminally under-rated band because...well, because it's not true mostly. They showed occasional flashes of brilliance but there's really no way you could ever call Deja Voodoo a classic. Maybe if they'd stuck with those floor-stomping riffs and glam swagger of the early singles they could have delivered something special but as it was the album just kind of fell silently into the gap between What's The Story Morning Glory? and Ocean Colour Scene's dreary Moseley Shoals. However, I will say that Smiler remains an overlooked diamond of a song and certainly belongs on any Britpop compilation worth its salt (Sleep Freak, Cartoon Moon and maybe Chinese Burn for further listening if you so desire). Meanwhile, my never-ending wait for a genuinely great Hartlepool band to rise to national acclaim continues...