The Wolfhounds - The Anti-Midas Touch - Pink Records 7". Pinky 14.

Following their inclusion on the NME's C-86 cassette - an influential but patchy grab-bag of indie, angry, shambling or shite white kids - The Wolfhounds outgrew an early, limiting, obsession with The Fall and started to issue blinders like this. Somewhere in the dictionary of finger-popping hipster slang there is an entry for this record correctly identifying it as a 'tune'. Enjoy.


The Wolfhounds - Anti-Midas Touch - Pink Records 7". Pinky 14.

Big Flame BMX Bandits c86 John Peel june brides London NME pastels The Pink Label The Wolfhounds

Laugh - Paul McCartney. The Remorse Label 7". Loss 5. Plus debut Peel session.

The great lost Manchester band. Laugh had the misfortune to straddle two scenes. Born out of the guitar band activity stimulated through the success of The Smiths and scuppered during the excesses of Madchester. This is their first 'proper' release. Before this, they had a flexi-disc release available through Dave Haslam's estimable Debris fanzine. They followed it with the already-uploaded Take Your Time, Yeah and another, more dance-music influenced single, Time To Lose It, which was more representative of the sound of their only, disappointing, LP, Sensation Number One. For me, they were always at their best as a tune-focussed big beat band. Such as on this seven. The title track in particular. Thanks to Michael for loaning me this record during a camping trip. It's a tricky thing preserving a twenty-four-year-old vinyl single in the middle of a field. As a bonus, I've included their first Peel Session, which features versions of Paul McCartney and Take Your Time, Yeah. Enjoy.

Laugh - Paul McCartney. The Remorse Label 7". Loss 5.
Laugh - Peel Session - March 17th 1986.

John Peel laugh Manchester

Girls At Our Best - Getting Nowhere Fast / Warm Girls. Record Records 7". RR1.

Girls at Our Best were a Leeds-based pop band who should have had the World at their feet in the early 80s. Championed by Peel and the NME, releasing slices of catchy guitar pop and fronted by the lovely Judy Evans, Top of the Pops seemed to beckon. But it was not to be. After five sevens and an LP they called it a day. A posthumous Peel session release reminded everybody what they had been missing a couple of years later. More recently everything was reissued on CD by Vinyl Japan, but that version is inferior as it doesn't have The Crackle. MP3 bit rate has been upped to the top end of the VBR scale, just for Mr. Noon, but I still have about thirty releases ready to go at the lower bit rate so it'll be a while before they're used up. Enjoy.

Girls At Our Best - Getting Nowhere Fast / Warm Girls. Record Records 7". RR1.

Girls At Our Best John Peel Leeds pop Record Records

The Mummies - 1994 Peel Sessions. No label bootleg 7".

The Mummies on The John Peel Show. Some things were just meant to happen. It's a great shame that the few times the really great surf, garage and trash bands made it over La Manche they didn't record for Peel. So, no Teengenerate, no Oblivians, no Bassholes, no Untamed Youth, no Saturn V featuring Orbit Peel Sessions out there. We do have this, though, which is taken straight from an FM radio broadcast but still manages to sound slicker than the majority of the band's official releases. This is the second line-up of The 'Euro' Mummies with some fella from The Smugglers on bass. Enjoy.

 The Mummies - 1994 Peel Sessions. No label bootleg 7".

garage John Peel mummies punk

The Secret Seven - Hold On To Love. Bronze Records. BRO 164. 1983.

Another release that betrays my weakness for guitar-based pop music failures. Formed in the wake of The Distractions - a Manchester band who were touted for bigger things - The Secret Seven featured vocalist Mike Finney exercising his soulful vocal stylings on the over-produced 80s-sounding but still listenable Hold On To Love and the less enjoyable b-side Up In Smoke, which suffers from yucky production and a relentless tune. There will be a chance to hear the early Distractions singles and material recorded in the 1990s when 'Nothing' is released in 2011.

The Secret Seven - Hold On To Love. Bronze Records. BRO 164.

John Peel pop secret seven

Glass Torpedoes - Someone Different. Teen Beat Records 7". TBR1.

Scouse power pop from Peel favourites Glass Torpedoes this time. This is one of the few singles I still have from my youth. I liked this so much I bought a Glass Torpedoes badge from Better Badges and was thrilled beyond imagination itself when a young woman working in the Post Office in Spring Gardens in Manchester commented on it positively. Validation!

The band did a Peel session in January 1980, but by the time they recorded a second single singer Barbara Donovan was gone and the band were backing up singer John Milton for Unreal the Real, a pretty rotten soft metal single by John Milton and The Glass Torpedoes.

Glass Torpedoes - Teen Beat Records TBR1.

glass torpedoes John Peel Liverpool new wave pop