The other Jonathan's Indiepop odyssey: Songs four to six

4 Fuzzbox... What’s The Point?


I say Fuzzbox, but of course this quintet of violent-haired Brummie lasses really called themselves We’ve Got a Fuzzbox And We’re Going To Use It, and for a few short months in 1987 it seemed their curiously engaging brand of electro pop, the shambolicness of whose execution made early Talulah Gosh look like the Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, was about to take over the world. Tragically however, good sense prevailed and the Fuzzbox girls went back to playing on their Bontempi organs and scrawling their schoolgirl-crush lyrics in marker pen on West Midlands bus-shelters. A sad loss.

5 Colourfield.... Thinking of You

Terry Hall left the chart-busting Specials, dissappeared off the face of the Earth for a couple of years, then reappeared on BBCs Saturday Superstore (the weekend morning show that the fey indie-kids of tomorrow watched; Tiswas was just so vulgar and, oh, mainstream) with a new female vocalist (who he had met a bus-stop or something) and this mournful, plinkety-plonk offering, the sort which gets into your head and refuses to leave for twenty years. Treat this apparently throwaway melody with the respect it deserves!

6 Specials..... Friday Night Saturday Morning

‘I hope the chip shop isn’t closed, because their pies are really nice’. Terry Hall (for it is that man again) is evoking the end of a typical weekend night out in his native Coventry- but it could have been Liverpool, Nottingham, or Newcastle in the early 80s, as unemployment soared, and a nation’s dissaffected youth sought solace in drinking, brawling, and late night steak and kidney puddings. Friday Night Saturday Morning was the B-side of the more celebrated Specials ‘State of the Nation’ address, the number one hit Ghost-town. The B side, I say! These boys were so talented they had songs like this to throw away, apparently.

Songs five to seven of this rummage through my box of Silk Cut- scented seven inch singles to follow on Friday.