DIE or D.I.Y.?

Beating Hearts - " The First Three Hours" (demo cassette 1981)

2013-05-18T20:28:00.002+02:00

Tim,sporting that ultimate punk rock fuck you prop...a beard!

The next installment in the Keine Namen, Controls, saga that tracks punk rock's evolution from the primeval soup of punks year zero, to the new prog of post punk. Here we find The Beating Hearts, as featured on the legendary "Beyond the River" compilation, finding their post punk feet with "The First Three Hours" demo tape.This was sent to Chris Green, latterly of the excellent Criminal Damage label, but then of the equally excellent X-Cassettes.(check out some x-cassetes compilations here and Here).
The music is sort of like Section 25 as recorded by Martin Hannett with none of his legendary equipment, except a cassette deck with inbuilt condenser mike, and a reverb unit made from a damp cardboard box. Not unlike a live Joy Division bootleg, except with even less people in the audience.( yes, everyone's seen Joy Division haven't they? ....I once made the mistake of turning down Joy Division, supporting the Buzzcocks, to go and see The Slits, and the Subway Sect, on at a rival venue. By the reports I received of the gig, everyone was in the bar when J D were on,and came out when the Buzzcocks played! Oh, the choices of entertainment you had in 1979!).

I'll let Tim, previously referred to as 'The John Boy Walton of Punk' in these unhallowed cyber-pages, fill you in on the Beating Hearts story(Active: late-1981 to late 1982):

"After Controls (Mk 2) called it a day in early-81, Tim Naylor and Kerry Kirk formed a short-lived outfit called Heartbeats with a girl guitarist (Tina) that rehearsed a few times but never played live. Tim then joined a Farnborough-based four piece band called Spod (also the name of the girl vocalist) as bassist, but left after six weeks as he wanted to put his own outfit together.

Through contacts at Kingfisher Music in Fleet (“The West End Store in the Sticks” according to the Pearl & Dean style ad that used to run at the local cinema), a series of revolving door auditions started in late 81 for a band Tim provisionally christened Beating Hearts and a number of jams around a song (Listen to the Heartbeat) gradually whittled the wheat away from the chaff.

One promising line-up featured Jim Rump on vocals and Kerry from Controls with a former mod guitarist Steve Gerry, but that failed to take off. Gerry recommended Simon Baggelley as a guitarist and Tim invited former Control guitarist Jon Monks to come and try out on keyboards (Jon’s preferred weapon of choice). He also auditioned a young drummer Richard Jennings who had been playing in an anarcho-punk inspired outfit with Sean Burt who later vocalised with Black Easter. This line-up crystallised into Beating Hearts, with Tim on lead vocals and bass.

Tim brought a clutch of songs to the first two ‘official’ rehearsals and in a brave move these were recorded live to cassette with barely any time for the band to learn them, which Jon then took away and edited into a demo called ‘First Three Hours’. This comprised two post-punk pop songs ‘Being There’ and ‘Forget about Debbie’ (the latter appeared twice on the demo for some reason), the Joy Division-ey ‘New Pride’, another lengthy version of Listen to the Heartbeat (which was actually two parts rather inelegantly edited together), a song dating from Controls Mk 2 called ‘You tore my heart out’, and an extended ten minute instrumental jam based around an echoed bass and synth line which Tim improvised some lyrics over called ‘Beauty Fades’.

This live demo was packaged up by Tim and despatched to a few indie labels including the X-Cassettes supremo Chris Green who was in the throes of establishing a vinyl label (called at that stage Open Eye Records, but eventually changed to Open Door Records). Green was exceptionally enthusiastic and offered the band a place on the ‘Beyond the River’ vinyl compilation.

Meanwhile, Beating Hearts made their live debut with a Saturday night gig at the Function Suite at Farnborough Recreation Centre, playing to a small crowd of Controls fans. One new track ‘Wrap me Up’ stood out as the obvious candidate for Beating Hearts to record, and the band went into a local four track studio and produced a breakneck rough and ready version which was duly dispatched to Reading and Open Eye Records. This was rejected as being in the wrong format for mastering, so the band booked into Matinee Music, Reading in April 82 with Chris Broderick at the helm. A more sedate version of the track was re-recorded and eventually appeared as track 4 on Beyond the River (Open Door Records OD001)."

You can sample the Beating Hearts contribution to Beyond The River, "Wrap Me Up" (mp3)HERE!

Track Listing:

1. Being There

2 Forget about Debbie take 1

3 New Pride

4 Listen to the Heartbeat

5 Beauty Fade (edit)

6 You Tore my Heart Out

7 Forget about Debbie take 2

8 Listen to the Heartbeat take 2

DOWNLOAD and listen to the heartbeat HERE!

The Bots - "I'm Gay" (Year Zero records YEAR021) 1983/2013

2013-05-10T21:19:00.000+02:00

Year Zero Records bring you another archive release from the darkest annals of DIY Punk land.
This charming primal scream dirge comes from north-east Englands teenage DIY Legends, The Bots; who terrorized the politically correct back- alleys of Consett during the blackest days of Thatcherism. Forget such mundane rubbish as song structure, lyrics and musicianship! What we have here is a cathartic channelling of ones inner bigot,vomited forth onto a malfunctioning ferric oxide tape. Rather like a sonic version of the head twisting scene in he Exorcist,but, with that oh-so illusive sense of lowest common denominator humour.
Outsider Punk of the highest un-quality, recommended listening for all right-on lefties and metrosexuals everywhere. Almost makes Keine Namen , The Barron Balls,or The Prats sound like the Eagles!
I'll leave you now with a short sample of the beautiful poetry from these charming improvised lyrics; obviously channelled from the dead souls of Bryon,Keats and Shelley.........."Suck me off you cunt, I'm Gay!"

Bots drummer Eric Doob talks us through the technical aspects of the recording:

"On 'I'm gay' the Bots are Eddie Dibbs/vocals, Dirk Smedley/guitar and Eric Doob/drums. This was recorded in Eric Doob's (MY) front room on 23/1/83, the night before my first date ever. I got my end away. On 'Shit Dixon' it's Eddie Dibbs/guitar, vocals and Eric Doob/drums. Guitar was a Bontempi kids guitar with 3 strings."

"The BOTS were usually Eddie Dibbs / guitar, vocals and Eric Doob / drums. We used to put our own 'albums' together full of songs about school and what was around us. Most songs were libellous, obscene and almost always featured someone being bummed. It was our humour and banter amongst ourselves, and nearly always someone was called 'gay'. But guitarist Dirk Smedley joined and suddenly we had electrics and he brought two tunes with him, the tunes to 'I'm gay' and 'Caught in the bogs'. We had a three-piece drumkit, a Satellite Les Paul copy, and a Park 8 watt amp. It was technical ecstasy.
Eddie didn't have a mike until long after we recorded 'I'm gay' as found here. He is singing into the tape recorder, which even stretches during the recording. We were 14-year-old kids, and this was our budget; this is possibly the most low-budget recording ever released. Dirk and I had lyrics for this composition, but Eddie disregarded them. Or had trouble following the tune, so he discarded them anyway."

'Eric Doob' 2013"

Tracklisting:

1 "I'm Gay"
2 "Shit Dixon"

DOWNLOAD this gay ditty HERE!

Various Artists - "Deleted Funtime - various toons by various loons" (Deleted Records DEC 009) 1980

2013-05-04T17:28:00.002+02:00

Another classic UK DIY compilation cassette, up there with "No New York", "Nuggets" and "Hicks from the Sticks" in its influential majesty.
This tape was as exciting to the skint 16 year old Zchivago,as was the Sex Pistols LP three years earlier. The fact that you got all this weird noise for just 60p plus a self addressed envelope was a revelation; yes some people out there DO really mean it after all! The £3:99 I paid for "Never Mind the Bollocks" seemed an unjustifiable rip-off, by some cynical fashion clique in London that had little or nothing to do with us 'Outsiders' living in the provinces.
From here, one could merely send a blank tape and an SAE to an address, to gain access to endless numbers of cassettes from marginalised non-musicians and misfits from all over the UK; and they were listed in the insert.
Among the more well know faces we have hidden gems from such creatures as Lurch, Heddon Street W1, and Duo Elettronica.Units of Pleasure are especially good, sort of a semi-instrumental zero-fi cross between Joy Division and Dick Dale, without either tunes or surf board.(Surf Division for a concept anyone?)
The sound quality is reassuringly abysmal, except for, tape compilers ,the Instant Automatons, tracks; which I suspect had a lot less number of cassette generations behind them (a sort of accidental version of the old rock trick of giving the support act the crap PA). The Digital Dinosaurs could obviously play their instruments, them being post-hippie types, but their tunes are nearly all classic pop toons and can do no wrong; even if they did have beards.
There ain't a shite track on this c-90, but then again I am well known for liking, what Henry and Henrietta Normal would call, 'Shiote'(sic).
Like it says on the insert," Don't worry about the tape Hiss......you'll get used to it!".......I did,or is that my tinnitus?

(for mp3 sample tracks click on the highlighted areas below)

Track Listing:

A01

Missing Persons –

Chemical Solutions