Sounds From The Junkshop Bonus: Footnotes 2001

 

This might just be the most weirdly varied Footnotes to Sounds From The Junkshop that we've done to date. If you look back at the history books then they'll tell you that 2001 was basically the year that the Strokes completely changed the indie landscape for better or worse (you can probably guess which side I'm on in that argument) while on the metal side of things, nu-metal was (thankfully) now starting to die off although its equally ugly half brother frat-punk was still very much in the ascendant.

So where does that leave the stuff on the margins then? Well, even though the list below contains a real mish-mash of groups from desperately unlucky old-school indie types through spiky metallers and some bands who were just wonderfully flat-out weird, all of them had one thing in common, namely that they were basically swimming upstream from the word go trying to do something that wasn't in vogue at the time. Except that while, as we've discussed on the 1999-2000 Footnotes, there'd been a feeling a year or two earlier that anything different might have been worth a shot in the absence of an overbearing main musical scene at the time, in 2001 there wasn't that luxury as most major labels by now had a template for what was “in” to go on and were more likely to be trying to sign the “next” Strokes/Limp Bizkit/Blink 182 meaning most of these bands were quickly abandoned to fall into obscurity after one or two flop singles.

Yet I'd argue that the stuff most of the bands below were coming up with was much more interesting than the Strokes or the White Stripes or the legions of dead-eyed imitators like the Yeah Yeah Yeahs who'd blundered through the gap in the wall after them. For better or worse, these bands were at least trying to do something different and even if their short-livedness meant that they never had the chance to become long-term favourites of mine they did all at least intrude on my regular listening habits for a bit in 2001. Let's peel back the lid and take a bit of a closer look shall we?

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BEAUTIFUL CREATURES

Formed out of the ashes of two earlier sleaze rock bands, the Bulletboys and Bang Tango (both of whom may crop up in Garbage Days Revisited at some point in the future), Beautiful Creatures were the sound of the old sleaze rock sound getting a turn-of-the-millennium nip and tuck. Similar to Buckcherry a year or two earlier, the group had enough spiky guitars and attitude that they were embraced for five seconds by the nu-metal crowd and, to be fair, their debut album wasn't bad, packing in the right mix of cement mixer guitars and screeched vocals to get your attention with the early hours paranoia of opener 1am being a particular standout.

Unfortunately, the Beautiful Creatures jumped on the nu-metal bandwagon pretty much just as it sunk - the album got a bit of hype but within a few months of it coming out the winds of change were already blowing across the metal scene and it undersold leading to them being dropped by Warners. Guitarist DJ Ashba (the one who'd been in the Bulletboys) clearly saw the iceberg coming and jumped across to briefly join the rotating door era Guns 'n' Roses. The group would stick around for a minor label follow-up Deuce but by this point the game was very much up and singer Joe Leste would be back with his old group Bang Tango soon afterwards. Bassist Kenny Kweens would end up in the Phil Lewis/Steve Riley version of L.A. Guns and drummer Glen Sobel would prove to be the most successful of the group after they split joining Alice Cooper's band where he remains to this day.

I appreciate that describing a band as one of the best of the nu-metal era is very much the equivalent of winning a Tallest Dwarf contest but while that first Beautiful Creatures album isn't perfect, it's still got a few standout moments on it to make it worth a curiosity listen for any hair metal/sleaze rock fans who are curious as to how that movement had evolved around the time of the millennium. I did actually see Joe Leste playing with Bang Tango supporting Love/Hate at Bradford Rio's a few years later and while his trademark screech of a voice was impressively still intact, I think it's fair to say the guy may have enjoyed a few hot dinners in the interim (and I fully realise I can't take any moral high ground here comparing my waistline as a 43-year-old to where it was as a 25-year-old) as I remember hearing the big lad in the Saxon denim jacket stood behind me at the gig, upon seeing Leste take the stage, exclaim to his mate "F**k me Steve, it's Ian Astbury's dad!!"

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DANNY FRYE & THE DEVILDOLLS

Signed up to ChangesOne records, I think it was the presence of the Yo-Yo's duo of Tom Spencer and Neil Phillips in the Devildolls touring line-up that brought them to my attention. It was enough to persuade me to pick up their Hellbent album for a fiver in a sale that the label were having an I absolutely loved it. I think it was the awesome scuzzed-up cover of the Jags' Back Of My Hand that drew me in but the group had plenty of awesome originals as well like Long Gone, Your Pretty Face and Pill-Poppin' Supervillain.

The group hailed from Cleveland and Frye used to style himself as "the king of greaser rock". He certainly had a pretty impeccable pedigree having cut his teeth in Sylvain Sylvain's band and played with Joan Jett among others while the US version of the Devildolls line-up included drummer Frank Garisto, brother of ex-Iggy/Shooting Gallery sticksman Paul. The album was a firm favourite among a lot of the scuzz-rock crowd and it seemed as though great things beckoned.

Unfortunately it wouldn't happen as the Devildolls' run would be cut short in the cruellest of circumstances - Frye would unexpectedly pass away due to diabetes complications in 2003 at the age of just 30. I remember his death came as a real shock to a lot of the Britrock community and even looking back nearly twenty years later, there's a real sense that this band could've really gone on to do something if fate hadn't intervened so harshly. Spencer would go back to the Yo-Yo's and record the tribute to Frye Tattoos Don't Last Forever which was probably the best track on their Given Up Giving Up mini-album.

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LOWGOLD

Another classic case of a band who looked like being the next big thing for five minutes only for the musical ground to fall away from under their feet in short order, Lowgold hailed from St Albans and featured ex-Slowdive and Inner Sleeve man Simon Scott in their early line-up. They burst on to the scene in late 2000 with the languid Beauty Dies Young single which was a real standout and would give them their sole Top 40 hit upon its re-release the following year.

Unfortunately literally straight after that first single the Strokes "happened" and it spelt doom for Lowgold who went from "next big thing" to borderline forgotten about almost overnight. It didn't help that when their debut album Just Backwards Of Square (word of advice, cricketing references and rock 'n' roll don't really go together...well, unless it's Jonny Cola & The A-Grades' Rain Stopped Play anyway) surfaced, it was a disappointment with maybe four or five good songs (Mercury probably being the pick even if it was basically Beauty Dies Young with different words - amazingly they didn't put the first single's B-side The Feelings on there which was a real mystery as it was a lot better than most of the stuff that did make it) and a lot of filler.

Predictably things would fall apart very quickly from thereon out - the group's label Nude would go to the wall soon after the album release (not helped by their main cash cow Suede splitting up in the wake of the commercial flop that was A New Morning - I remember the band's blog at the time being quite angry about it and pointing the finger at groups like Ultrasound and Gloss who'd been signed with much fanfare only to deliver next to nothing commercially) and the group would find themselves labelless with Scott leaving for new projects and the remaining three members almost being driven to bankruptcy after the unpaid bills their label left them with.

The group would pull off something of a coup by bringing in drummer Martin Gilks, fresh from leaving a reformed Wonder Stuff and who would also take on management duties with the band, for their second album Welcome To Winners but I remember listening to this one and just being left completely cold by it. It came out on Sanctuary records but the group quickly realised that they'd jumped off one sinking ship to land straight on to another as that label would also go to the wall soon afterwards. Add to this the tragic death of Gilks in a road accident in 2006 and you really do start to think Lowgold must have got a good claim on being the unluckiest band of the noughties.

The group would manage to stagger on for a third album in 2007's Promise Lands which I missed but was described a much more raw and personal effort, understandable after a lot of the shit the band had gone through in the years leading up to it. They also put out a compilation album after buying back the rights to their back catalogue, wryly called Keep Music Miserable before going on hiatus in 2009 (the split was described as temporary at the time but as of thirteen years later, there's been no further news). Frontman Darren Ford would become a journalist and write a number of satirical blogs with titles like I'm Bono (You're Not) and Dick Cheney - The Retirement Years. I think to be fair, Lowgold were probably doomed as soon as people realised that Just Backwards Of Square didn't really have any other songs on it as good as that first single (plus the fact that, as with so many other SFTJ bands, it was released into totally the wrong time for them to be successful). I would certainly at least recommend going back and listening to Beauty Dies Young, The Feelings and Mercury though, they were all good efforts. And whether you're a fan of this sort of music or not, you really have to feel a bit for everything the poor buggers went through in their decade-long existence.

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MINUTEMAN

Another group formed out of the ashes of a band who made a previous appearance in an SFTJ footnotes column, Minuteman evolved out of late '90s indie-prog types Ultrasound and were formed by their keyboardist Matt Jones who moved to being frontman/guitarist. A bit poppier than Jones' former group, they came up with a couple of decent singles in Big Boy (which I'm pretty sure was a dig at his former bandmate Tiny Wood - bizarrely I even remember it showing up on a highlight reel on Match of the Day at the time) and the gentle 5000 Minutes Of Pain, both of which scraped the lower reaches of the Top 75.

The group's album Resigned To Life was a decent enough effort but as with so many of the bands in this particular Footnotes column, Minuteman just weren't in step with what was popular at the time and predictably just never went anywhere. They would be dropped by Ignition, their label, after the album didn't sell and split soon afterwards with Jones next being seen back in Ultrasound a decade or so later (though he's no longer with the band). Again though, Resigned To Life is worth a curiosity listen if you can find a copy somewhere.

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MY VITRIOL

Probably the most successful band in this instalment of Footnotes, My Vitriol were a bit of a last minute addition to this column as, I'll be honest, I wasn't that big a fan of theirs back in the day. However, even so I did end up seeing them a lot in 2000-2001 as they were an incredibly hard-gigging band who seemed to tour everywhere and anywhere that'd have them so a lot of the time it was just the fact that there was a band we'd read about in the NME and Melody Maker playing down the road that led to me and my friends going to their gigs (plus the fact that they were very popular with a lot of the goth girls I knew at Uni around this time). It was probably this whole "fanbase expansion by Transit van" route that eventually pushed them over into the charts, gaining a couple of Top 40 hits into the bargain. And I'm not knocking that because there've been several of my favourite bands down the years going right back to the likes of Carter USM, the Senseless Things and Mega City Four, who it could be argued used that very method to get to the levels of chart success that they did

My Vitriol were a bit of an odd one sonically - they were a weird cross between Placebo's crushing riffs and Ride's shoegazey ambience and the result was a frustratingly inconsistent album, 2001's Finelines, which veered from the paranoia of Cemented Shoes (their best moment) and Always Your Way to the blissed out waves of sound on Pieces and Grounded to some moments where they just dropped into abject dullness (which sadly accounted for about half of it).

To be honest, I don't think My Vitriol really did themselves any favours with how presented themselves in interviews either, lead singer Som often came across as though he'd had a major sense of humour bypass and the group seemed to end up in a lot of press feuds with other bands (fellow SFTJ alumni Crashland most notably) because of it. Either way, when the garage rock explosion of 2001 happened (pretty much the diametric opposite of their sound), it was the beginning of the end for them as they were simply swept away by the tidal wave of leather jacket clad NYC pretty boys and would split by the time 2002 was out.

The split would be a short one - the band would reform in 2005 and have been going ever since, putting out a much-delayed follow-up to Finelines in 2016's The Secret Sessions although they made the mistake of going the Pledgemusic route just as that particular platform sunk meaning it was only available for about five minutes (it has since reappeared on Bandcamp). Like I say, I wouldn't class myself as a massive My Vitriol fan but they deserve a fleeting mention here on SFTJ just because of how ubiquitous they briefly were in late 2000/early 2001 (when they genuinely were being hailed as indie megastars in waiting) and they give an interesting glimpse of how British alternative music scene might have developed if the Strokes hadn't happened. Well, possibly anyway.

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SACK TRICK

Comfortably the silliest band in this Footnotes column, Sack Trick were formed by the former Antiproduct duo of Chris Dale on bass and Robin Guy on drums plus guitarist Alex Dickson and drummer/percussionist Alex Elena who'd played with Dale in Bruce Dickinson's backing band during his solo career years. Slowly but surely the group would end up expanding with various other members joining - it would literally take a whole article to list everyone who's ever played in Sack Trick but both Jef Streatfield (ex-Wildhearts) and Pete Friesen (ex-Almighty) had runs with the band on guitar and they even got Doogie White from the '90s Rainbow line-up to sing with them for a bit. Plus predictably, most of the other members of Antiproduct did double duty with the band at some point.

The group would put out a trio of albums, seemingly aiming to up the silliness ante with every release. 1997's Music From The Mystery Rabbits included such future classics as I Play Bass and Blue Ice Cream, 2001's Penguins On The Moon was a concept album about, erm, penguins flying to the moon including a lot of songs about fish and the dangers of what happens when a penguin falls in love with a fridge and 2004's Sheep In Kiss Make-Up must be the most bizarre album of Kiss covers you'll ever hear with a guestlist featuring everyone from Bruce Dickinson to CJ Wildheart and what sounds suspiciously like Johnny Vegas on their version of Sure Know Something - even all these years later the version of War Machine with what appears to be a missing member of the Wurzels on vocals still cracks me up.

Sack Trick have sadly been inactive musically since Sheep In Kiss Make-Up (most of the members have main jobs as session musicians which presumably pay the bills a bit better!) but the band never officially split and still do an annual gig in Roskilde in Norway (I do remember being told the reason for this by one of my fellow writers at Pure Rawk back in the day but have sadly forgotten it). Whether we'll ever see that elusive fourth album released I guess only time will tell but rest assured if it ever does then we'll be straight on the case to review it here ate Nite Songs.

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SKINNY

An indie-dance band who landed about two years too late to hop on the skunk rock bandwagon with the likes of Delakota and the Regular Fries (not that it would've probably done them much good anyway looking at the success rate of the bands from it!), Skinny were nevertheless one of the better bands of the genre even if they were a bit late on the scene. The group would actually chalk up a minor hit with Failure in 1998 but it would take another three years before they returned with the better of their two albums Taller (which bizarrely also had Failure on it!)

The group's best song was the atmospheric Morning Light, a minor hit that summer, about heading back home in the early hours after breaking up with your girlfriend ("This'll be the last time I wait in this night bus queue/I disappear into the dawn/Early morning blues") which had some great observational lyrics in it and a suitably smooth but unnerving backing. Elsewhere, Failure and the string-drenched Sweet Thing were other highlights...oh and they did a version of that "Daydream, I fell asleep among the flowers" song (On A Beautiful Day) that came out about the same time as the All Seeing I's version did so no idea who came up with it first.

Skinny seemed to just sort of quietly disappear after the commercial failure of the Taller album and I've genuinely no idea what happened to them afterwards. However, the album's worth a curiosity listen if you fancy some surprisingly well written chillout music - hell, if it could even get a Britrocker like me listening to it for a few months then it's got to have something going for it...

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TEN BENSON

Basically think Groop Dogdrill only about ten times sillier and you've got Britrock late-in-the-day types Ten Benson. The group had actually started out as a dark indie-psychedelic outfit (see early singles like The Claw) before recording a metal spoof called Rock Cottage which got them more attention than anything they'd done up until that point. They decided to stick with the formula and basically stayed that way for the rest of their career.

To be fair, the main issue that a lot of comedy bands seem to fall short on is that they forget to actually be funny (as anyone unfortunate enough to have listened to Steel Panther or Goldie Lookin' Chain will testify) but at least Ten Benson did seem to hit exactly the right balance between decent riffed up rock music and tongue in cheek silliness so that it didn't get too grating. I mean, they even called one of their albums Satan Kidney Pie and somehow got away with it ferfuxxake!

Ten Benson have been carving out a reputation as underground favourites ever since and even supported the Darkness on their first big tour (the other support band was ridiculously OTT battle metallers Three Inches Of Blood - talk about tongue-in-cheek overload...). They haven't released an album since 2003's Benson Burner but have put out a steady stream of singles over the last couple of decades since then and always seem to resurface when you least expect it. I've had many an evening of enjoyable drunken buffoonery to their music and hopefully there'll be many more to come in the years ahead.

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And so we close the book on 2001. Expect the 2002 Footnotes column...I'm guessing somewhere around June/July looking at the schedule coming up ahead. Either way, by this point both the indie-garage scene and the nu-metal and frat-punk scenes had a definite whiff of staleness about them and the overriding feeling seemed to be wondering what was coming next - however, it would take another year or so for that to become obvious. Which, in the meantime, left us with another group of weird and wonderful bands with not a lot in common to get our teeth into which will be revealed in more detail when we get round to it.