Where's The Beach
were formed in late 1987 in Liverpool when two ex-students working on
synths and samples out of an attic on Canning St., Pete Jones and
Adam Marshall (also with Elliptical Trampolines, Frontiers of Chaos,
Cindy and the Barbie Dolls, Flaccid Botulists Incorperated and
Machine Age Voodoo) first heard the Justified Ancients of Mu Mu's
‘The Queen and I’. Jones and Marshall soon enlisted Chloe Mac on
vocals, playing their first Liverpool gig in the Jacoranda Club on
3rd February 1989.
The band got their
first big break when Radio Lancashire's seminal On
The Wire radio show played all the tracks from the bands first
porta-studio demo. Alison Martin of Scam Records heard the tracks and
got the band to supply two songs for the Freak Beats compilation.
Since all other bands on the album provided only one number, one of
the songs by Where's The Beach, Deliciously Deranged, was credited to
The Elliptical Trampolines, (or the Convoluted Pullovers as John Peel
called them). The bands looked
destined for the big time after having their other Freak
Beats track, Tripping The LUV Fantastic (aka Trippin the Love
Fantastic, as credited on the LP cover), broadcast on daytime Radio
Ones' Newsbeat program.
WTB
got a gig at the 'Greetings' Festival Festival in Florence, Italy
supporting The Residents. Things went badly and Chloe Mac left the
band as soon as the gig finished. When they arrived back in the UK
the band began the search for a new singer. In the end Angie
Sammons was recruited.
In 1990 the
band quickly put together enough tracks to make up a mini LP and
recorded it in a small studio in Liverpool (the tracks were Suakin,
Feed The Fire, Tripping The LUV Fantastic, Swallow Me, No Liberty,
Metal Machine). Most of the songs were not considered good enough, so
a 12 inch single was released instead containing Suakin, Feed The
Fire, Tripping The LUV Fantastic. The single gained absolutely
ecstatic reviews in Music Week and Sounds. Music Week described it as
"the first proper acid crossover record" and Sounds stated
quite categorically that "This band are going to be massive".
The band also recorded Suakin for an appearance on Granada TV.
At around that time Sammons left the group. ('WTB were writing mainly instrumentals when I went away [...] and I had only about three
numbers to do on a gig, so it was just an evolution really. I didn't
say, I'm leaving, they didn't say you're going.'). Nonetheless WTB were soon hard
at work, releasing
a second single, Primeval Goddess (backed with Liberty and a
re-recorded version of Deliciously Deranged).
In 1992 they
released their third single Sex Slave
Zombie (containing Sex Slave Zombie 1 and 2, Minutes to Bomb
(Live) and Kaos at the Axe Factory), which was single of the
week in NME.
In the mid-nineties
the band provided the song LA (Drudge Nation) for the LP Evening We
Are Not The Fall, and later released the cassette Sous les PAves, la
Plage (containing among others Manta Ray, Malibu Stacey Theme, Zoner,
Universe, Bodfar, Yankamantra).
(see also:
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