Yes, as promised, all the downloads are back up and available once more, for anyone who missed out the first time around.
What's more, we've moved to a (hopefully) faster file sharing provider and all the downloads are now in a .zip format for those of you not working from a MS Windows platform.
There's the two-disc Plunder the Tombs compilation The Atrocity Exhibition, both 12"s by Perth heroes And an A and the the great unreleased Ritual album Songs for a Dead King.
So, having just returned from a brief working trip
interstate, it seems like a good time to kick off the new year and make some
small improvements to the blog and some news about what’s being planned for the
near future.
Firstly, in addition to the traditional ways of following
blogs and the Plunder the Tombs Facebook
page, it’s now possible to receive notifications of new posts using Twitter, or
by getting notifications sent directly to your email address. Just click on
either of the icons below for FB or Twitter, alternatively, you’ll find the
email notification option down to your lower right.
Secondly, although downloads have never been the main
emphasis of Plunder the Tombs, I’ve
changed the file sharing host to Media Fire, following some suggestions that
the old one Plunder the Tombs was using was too slow. Also, after some advice
from those far more tech-savvy than myself (never let it be said that I don’t
listen to you Mr Lafayette!), all new downloads will be in a .zip format rather
than the previous .rar, which should make life a lot easier for those readers
not using a MS Windows platform.
That said, those downloads which have been provided, and
have been unavailable now for some time, will all be back up again for download in
the .zip format in the very near future.
Finally, while we’re on the subject of downloads, yes,
there will be a new Plunder the Tombs compilation, once enough material has
been exhumed. There are already substantial plans afoot for how it will
manifest, but at this point, I think somewhere around mid year seems likely.
A third compilation is also under consideration, but not of
Goth / Death Rock for a change, but rather of bands from the late sixties and
early seventies who were to prove so instrumental in influencing the scene that
came to be. Hopefully, that will also be seeing the light of day sometime this
year.
In the meanwhile, thank you all for following the various
doings of Plunder the Tombs, and I hope you all continue to enjoy what the blog
manages to unearth in the coming year.
Falling somewhere in the gap between Alien Sex Fiend and a slo-mo
version of The Cramps, the short-lived Anorexic Dread appeared out of DanielleDax’s hometown of Southend, Essex in 1983, lasting until just 1985. Perhaps
best described as a kind of Horror-Punk / Psychobilly outfit, other obvious
influences included The Birthday Party and Killing Joke. If they’d been
American, it’s a fair bet that Anorexic Dread almost certainly would have come
under the Deathrock tag. Frontman Phil Black was quick to belie the band’s
morbid image however, stating
“..we go onstage and
have just as much of a lunatic time leaping around. We don’t take what we do
seriously. We go onstage to enjoy ourselves and we invariably do.”
The Tracy’s Burning 12” recorded at Diploma Studios represents Anorexic Dread’s sole
contribution to vinyl. Interestingly, while discogs.com lists only one version
of the 12”, variations of the cover art appear to exist, with the band’s logo sometimes
appearing top left, and sometimes in the top right. The variant album cover can be seen on the deathrock.com link below.
Side A of the 12” begins with the epic nine minutes plus
title track “Tracy’s Burning” and its
conclusion “Epitaph” while side B
graces us with the much more Psycobillyesque “Tick Tock”. I must confess, that this didn’t do much for me on
initial hearing, but it does grow on repeated listenings, actually becoming
kind of endearing. And here for your listening pleasure:
Tracy’s
Burning / Epitaph
Tick Tock
The band played quite a few venues around Essex
including The Pink Toothbrush /Crocs (Don’t bother Googling “Crocs” – you’ll just end up with links
to a lot of sites selling some spectacularly unattractive excuses for what
passes as “shoes”). They also played The Batcave in London on at least one occasion, and managed
to wrangle a support gig with Alien Sex Fiend, a coupling I imagine would have
worked perfectly for them.
This live picture purports to have been taken at Crocs, but
the source who was nice enough to point me in its direction disputes this.
Things didn’t last too long after the 12” however, with
Anorexic Dread’s guitarist going walkabout as a roadie for The Cure. A new line-up
did record a demo “Dark Night in London”,
apparently in a more straight forward rock direction, but the band seems to
have dissolved soon after. Other songs are documented to exist including “She’s Beautiful and She’s Mine”, “Dragnet” and “Limelight”, but as far as I can tell, none were ever formally
released.
There’s a common misconception, especially amongst newer musical
collectors of subgenres that “obscurity” somehow equates with “credibility”. In
reality, some bands remained obscure because they weren’t in existence long
enough to make a real impact, some because they never got the breaks, some
because they were so left of field as to never catch on, and quite a lot who
remained obscure because they simply weren’t that good. In the case of Anorexic
Dread, I suspect that this is very much a matter of personal taste, but I do
think it worth more than just one listen before making your mind up.
Track Listing:
Tracy’s Burning /
Epitaph
Tick
Tock
Line Up:
Phil Black (vocals), Leonard Finch (AKA: Leonardo de
Finchie) (guitar), Magoo (keyboards), Donald Frame (drums)
Not to be confused with
the LA hardcore band of the same name, The UK version of Wasted Youth formed in
1979 at the notorious Bridge House in East London’s CanningTown, which became at
once pub, home base, gig venue and record label. Not that the lads were
complete newbies to the music scene; brothers Ken and Andy had previously
played in the Tickets, and bassist Darren was formerly in Darren’s Dead Flowers. An
unreferenced Wikipedia article also states that Ken may have also had a past in
a Black Sabbath influenced hard rock act known as Warrior, but other sources
are curiously silent on the matter. Never fear – onwards!
The first singles “Jealousy” and “I’ll Remember You” both appeared in 1980 (Bridge House Records)
before being compiled and rereleased for the French market as the cheerily
monikered My Friends Are Dead 12” ( Underdog Records, 1980), and bearing cover
art snapped at the bar of Bridge House that appears to be a homage to Hungarian
photographer Brassai’s homoerotic “Un
Costume Pour Deux” http://cs.nga.gov.au/Detail.cfm?IRN=76907 .
"Gott in Himmel Fraulein! Von't you get cold like zat?"
The drummer here is
curiously listed as one “Andy Doll”. Since Wikipedia states that Andy Scott was
a founding member, it’s probably not going out on a limb to presume this to be
a pseudonym, and that Andy Doll and Andy Scott are in fact one and the same. I
stand to be corrected.
Somewhere in between the
first two singles, original guitarist Mick Atkins exits stage left and is
replaced by Rocco, formerly with punk outfit Smak, and the stage is set for the
first full-length album Wild and Wandering (Bridge House Records, 1981).
The album begins
strongly with the nodding “Maybe We’ll
Die With Them”, but then moves onto shakier territory with the nowadays
politically incorrect “Housewife”,
perhaps post-punk’s answer to The Rolling Stone’s “Mother’s Little Helper” (London Records, 1966), and follows through
with the lyrically shakey ode to cougars “Games”
that in turn seems to be post punk’s answer to Simon and Garfunkle’s “Mrs Robinson” (Columbia, 1968 – or
better still, just watch the actual movie “The
Graduate”, Columbia Masterworks, 1967).
All is far from lost
however, as we move into the very Velvet Underground-esque “Pinned and Grinning”. “Wasted” follows, an intriguing song with
most of the lyrics constructed from a pastiche of titles of 60’s rock songs.
“Spot the Reference!” - it’s a fun game the whole family can play (as long as
they were born some time during the upper Jurassic) and indeed one that would
be repeated decades later by the high priests of Electro-Clash Miss Kittin and
the Hacker in “1982” (International
Deejay Gigolo Records, 2001).
Things take an exciting
new turn however with what is indisputably the album’s strongest song, the
gender-bending track “I Wish I Was A Girl”,
a strange tale of adolescent desire involving wearing your sister’s clothes.
The next track “IfTomorrow”
unfortunately does little and gets filed under filler/dirge but we have a
welcome return to form in “Survivors Pt.
1”, returning once more to the cross-dressing theme. This topic would
already seem curious in itself, but doubly so since drummer Andy Scott was also
pounding the skins for punk band Cockney Rejects, a group more commonly
associated with violent gigs and football hooliganism than anything remotely
resembling transgressing gender boundaries.
Finally, Wild and Wandering then
bows out with the very punk inspired, and again gay-friendly “Survivors Pt. 2” and leaves us on a
strong note, one that must have been quite brave for the time in which it was
recorded.
Maybe We'll Die With Them
I Wish I Was a Girl
Survivors Pt. 2
Wasted Youth leave us
with a legacy of just one more album, The Beginning of the End (Bridge House
Records, 1982), which I won’t claim to have heard, but gets a dishonourable
mention for its cover art, neatly encapsulating everything that was aesthetically
wrong with the early 80s in one single image. Things weren’t improved by the
earlier single Wildlife (Bridge House Records) in which something very bad
apparently possessed them to remake the cover art of Dynasty by Kiss
(Casablanca Records, 1979).
It wasn’t all bad though, with the single Rebecca’s
Room (Fresh/Bridge House Records, 1981) coming out with some splendid art work
that actually epitomised the emerging Goth vibe quite perfectly.
Two of these album covers are embarrassing.
We'll leave it up to you to decide which.
Just two other albums
were forthcoming, an apparent best-of ((From the) Inner Depth), Vinyl Cuts
Records, date of release unknown) and a live album (Live, label unknown, date
of release unknown) before Wasted Youth accept the wisdom of Nick Cave and “ Go shuffling out of life, just to hide in
death awhile”.
Oh well. 'twas nice
while it lasted.
Track Listing
1.Maybe We’ll Die With Them 2.Housewife 3.Games 4.Pinned and Grinning 5.Wasted 6.I Wish I was a Girl 7.If Tomorrow 8.Survivors Pt. 1 9.Survivors Pt. 2
Line Up: Ken Scott
(vocals, guitar), Rocco Barker (guitar), Nick Nicole (keyboards), Darren Murphy
(bass), Andy Scott (drums, percussion, vocals)
