Stirrer Podcast

PERFECT UNPOP

26-05-2008

Former Balsall Heath resident Derek Hammond is responsible for the summer’s “must have” retro compilation CD – a celebration of the underdog bands championed by John Peel. It features a host of West Midlands faves including the Au Pairs, Prefects, and Swell Maps.

Hammond, originally from Leicester, swanked into Birmingham in the 1980s as a typical Uni student. He wanted to drink beer, meet girls, and do as little work as possible.

Not unnaturally, this made him a natural ally with your Stirrer editor, but what really bound us together was a love of punk and post punk music – the sort of stuff that, at the time, was being played at the Fighting Cocks in Moseley.

Everybody, it seemed, was in a band, and as the member of Peel favourites Yeah Yeah Noh! Hammond knows only too well the twilight world inhabited by the 24 bands featured on this unmissable collection.

"It was kinda weird" he recalls over a curry in one of our old Ladypool Road haunts.

"We were known to about 200 'anoraks' in every town in the country because John had played us and we got reviewed in the NME, and if that kind of exposure was available these days it would guarantee us a Top 40 hit.

"But back then, Peel was an island of good taste amid the dross of Radio One, and most bands he liked were never heard by anyone outside of his immediate audience".

Plenty of the groups championed by Peel went on to have huge pop hits of course – the Sex Pistols, The Undertones, New Order – while other artists established massive undergrounds followings, notably The Fall and Wedding Present.

Below that level, though, were “the ones that got away” – dozens of bands who released maybe just one or two criminally neglected singles which are no longer heard but which still stand up three decades later.

It was these groups that provided the inspiration for Perfect Unpop – subtitled Peel Show Hits And Long Lost Low-Fi Favourites 1976-1980 - an album which can achieve for Punk and Post-Punk what Nuggets did for psychedelia.

"As a music fan I just wanted to hear this stuff again, and make it available for people who weren't there first time around" says Hammond in his cheery East Midlands drawl.

"Peel's influence has been reduced to shorthand now - just play 'Teenage Kicks' and there you have it.

"But really, his whole ethos was about moving on to the next most interesting thing, and with the explosion of own-label bands from 76 onwards, there was always something fresh to play.

"The amazing thing is how well so many of these tunes stand up."

He’s not wrong.

The CD opens with “Language School” by The Tours, two and a half minutes of joyous powerpop, and ends with Here Comes The Flood by Blue Orchids, a doomy, rampaging thrash that links the Velvets to The Verve.

In between, there are neglected indie classics galore – “Whole Wide World” by Wreckless Eric, say, or “Ambition” by Subway Sect.

Local bands get a fair showing, too, with Solihull lo-fi innovators Swell Maps represented by “Real Shocks,” The Prefects with “Going Through The Motions” and the magnificent Au Pairs with “It’s Obvious”.

"There was such a great scene in Birmingham at the time" recalls Hammond.

"We could have put out an album consisting of West Midlands bands only and it would have been a corker.  But this is only Volume One. 

"I'm sure that other bands like The Nightingales will get a showing on Volume Two - we just had too much good stuff to put in."

Perfect Unpop is released by Cherry Red Records.

To listen to a podcast, click here

To download individual tracks, click here http://secure1.mppglobal.com/ishop/202/ProductInfo.aspx?p=313181    is link for downloading indiv tracks

And to buy the LP, click here http://www.cherryred.co.uk/cherryred/artists/variouscherryred.php