They look impossibly young now; slumped against a brick wall, all Chelsea boots, white Levis, turtle necks and – the absolute giveaway – two of the lads sporting out of control Bobby Gillespie fringes covering up half their faces. It’s early 1987, and four piece The Clouds are staring out blankly from a one colour smudgily printed sleeve of their first release, ‘Jenny Nowhere’, a split with Mighty Mighty on the Bring Back Throwaway Pop! EP released by brand new label; Sha La La records. Except this isn’t vinyl, but flexi disc; the disposable format sometimes used by bright marketing chaps to shift cereal but reappropriated here by a group of fanzine publishers.
Sha La La was an idea that came from a bunch of like-minded editors all sporting titles named after 7” singles that now give you heart attacks if you look up their price on Discogs. The writers of Are You Scared To Get Happy (a reference to the lyrics of ‘Hip Hip’ by Hurrah!), Baby Honey (named after a single by The Pastels ) and Simply Thrilled (lifted from the title of a 1980 Orange Juice 7″ on Postcard) all had a plan. They were looking to do it themselves by releasing a flurry of demos and tapes that were being hawked and shared, like their zines, in plastic bags at the back of a network of gigs, which they often promoted themselves.
But, just like The Clouds’ bowl cuts, the aesthetics of the artefact they’d just created was a bat signal to a 1980s subculture which had extremely limited ways to connect with others who shared the same tastes and values. Or perhaps it was merely, as label founder Matt Haynes later wryly recalled, “simply a way for people without too much money to put out records”.
Nearly forty years on and The Clouds and other acts who had their music showcased by Sha La La, such as Talulah Gosh, The Sea Urchins, and Razorcuts are rightly all present and correct on a new compilation that tries to capture – the curse of all genre compilations – a DIY fuelled underground rush of youth that nobody can definitively name or successfully define in just thirty tracks.
The compilation, lovingly put together by Pete Paphides, gives us a flavour of the artists that inspired the scene, the landmark tracks and songs from the next generation of labels that followed in its wake. One of which of course was Sarah Records, co-founded by Matt Haynes himself and fellow zine/flexi pioneer Clare Wadd. Easily the most misunderstood label of its time, their progressive politics, sleeve note polemics, and ambition/ industry – one hundred releases up to 1995 – was all lost under the weight of considerable music press derision that still lingers today. Yet Sarah more aped labels like Factory (give everything a catalogue number!), the situationism of the KLF (release a board game!), publish (manifestos in the Melody Maker!) and had strong echoes of the three-chords-and-Letraset power of punk.
It’s their release from 1989 and their biggest act The Field Mice, that gives Sensitive its name (and it’s remastered here for the first time). It still has that astonishing crunching drum machine and repetitive guitar riff that plays out over and over for a full five minutes which utterly defies that neat, jingle jangle indie pop box you’d think anyone who calls a label Sarah or Sha La La might release. It’s an example of English irony. And that’s why Sensitive, now long since divorced from the baggage of its era, still has the power to confound afresh.
This isn’t the first time that this indie pop – or twee, or shambling, the term preferred by John Peel – has been reassessed and repackaged. There have been multiple expanded reissues of the NME’s C86 tape alone: a pivotal 22-track cassette which helped found a genre and consolidate an aesthetic, all for a £2.95 postal order. Sensitive gives the tape an appropriate nod, scooping up its finest moments (Primal Scream’s ‘Velocity Girl’, The Bodines’ ‘Therese’) and swapping out the weaker songs from the higher profile acts with far better replacements (The Wedding Present – ‘Once More’, The Soup Dragons – ‘Hang Ten’) while overlooking more abrasive elements such as The Age Of Chance and We’ve Got A Fuzzbox And We’re Gonna Use It.
Even more than John Peel, in the UK during the 80s, the dominant figure in this scene was Alan McGee of Creation records and he looms large over this compilation both as a songwriter (his underrated and melodic band Biff! Bang Pow! are included) and as label boss via the presence of his notorious signings, the Jesus and Mary Chain. The band’s incendiary ‘Upside Down’ single from 1984 is a foundational text for this music, but they are featured here in major label guise, ‘Some Candy Talking’ from (1985).
Only a few of the selections such as Del Amitri, The Chills and a pre-fame Pop Will Eat Itself caused me to scratch my head. Personally I would have tried to attempted to license tracks by 14 Iced Bears and The Darling Buds. But also I would have tied to convey the self-deprecating humour of the time. ‘Anorak City’ by Another Sunny Day was a spiky riposte to all the detractors, and the Pooh Sticks’ knowing ‘On Tape’ is the easiest way of understanding some of what Sensitive is trying to represent but in 90 seconds. And with jokes.
I saw The Clouds once in 1987, a truncated feedback drenched ten minute set on the bottom of a bill playing to a dozen students. I was completely blown away. I’d never seen anything like it. And then I was off, getting the Pritt Stick out, writing zines, promoting over 100 gigs – including the first ever gig by The Field Mice – and running clubs dedicated to this music. I made The Field Mice cheese and tomato sandwiches and gave away free apples to punters. It was all about aesthetics! Have a look at Sensitive’s sumptuous packaging; there are some flyers I ‘designed’ in there. But for a few years, until life and kids and everything else kicked in, I’d never felt so alive, so in love, and so connected to music. Listening to Sensitive perfectly re-captures that time.
