The Lotus Eaters - No Sense of Sin (Vinyl,1984)

In 1984 The Lotus Eaters released their first album No Sense on Sin.

No Sense of Sin (Vinyl, 1984)

A1. German Girl

A2.. Love Still Flows

A3. Can You Keep A Secret

A4. Out On Your Own

A5. Put Your Touch On Love

A6. Too Young

B1. Set Me Apart

B2. You Fill Me With Need

B3. The First Picture Of You

B4. Alone Of All Her Sex

B5. When You Look At Boys

B6. Start Of The Search

(The Italian edition features You Don't Need Someone New instead of Too Young)

About the album Coyle remembers: “We eventually signed our own label Sylvan Records to the Arista record company. We recorded First Picture Of You with Nigel Gray. I liked Nigel. He was very quiet and very talented. It seemed like he understood us. The only problem was that for some of the tracks like Can You Keep a Secret the Peel Session sounded better. Nigel liked our melodies but was very keen to change our rhythms. It was a horrible dilemma because he did understand us but we were worried that the album would have too much of a rock rhythm. Out of the five tracks we recorded with Nigel we were only happy with the First Picture Of You.We chose to try several other producers [Alan Tarney, who also produced the 1983 single You Don't Need Someone New, and Bob Sergeant, who also produced the 1984 single Set Me Apart, ndr] , which was a shame because it makes No Sense of Sin less cohesive and flowing as it could have been. What’s more it also made it more difficult because we recorded No Sense Of Sin in lots of different studios.

[…] Anyway the point is that I think it probably would have been better if Nigel had done the whole album. That is not to say that I didn’t appreciate working with the other producers. I did and I have learnt a lot from all of them.”

No Sense of Sin, the Lotus Eaters' 1984 debut album, is a gorgeously crafted collection of melancholic guitar pop. "Love Still Flows" and "The First Picture of You" caress the ears with haunting piano and twinkling guitars; both songs unreel with a cinematic feel, the music and lyrics drawing sentimental memories from the listener's imagination. […] The starry-eyed keyboards and sing-along chorus of "German Girl" and spellbinding violin of "Set Me Apart" deepen the Lotus Eaters' appeal; they further explore Coyle's hankering for affection while lifting the spirits with sharp hooks. (Michael Sutton)

Until the recent new release of 'Silentspace', 1984's 'No Sense Of Sin' has remained their sole long player but such is the addictiveness of the subtle melodies on offer that much of this album sounds like a top quality best-of compilation that avoids the naffness associated with much of 80's pop. 'The First Picture Of You' was their one significant UK hit; a typically innocent pop song about young love but with follow-ups of the strength of 'Out On Your Own', 'German Girl' and 'Can You Keep A Secret' it seems unfair that they were unable to build on their initial success. One fault that coud be levelled at 'No Sense Of Sin' is the production which involved three separate producers so whilst the [some songs] retain their subtle guitar melodies, 'Alone Of All Her Sex' is almost buried by the thudding drums unlike their earlier Peel Session versions whose stark intensity and beauty made them essential listening.

Sorry, guys, no link. Censorship again.

(http://www.petercoyle.com/bio.html
http://www.answers.com/topic/no-sense-of-sin
http://www.pennyblackmusic.co.uk/MagSitePages/Article.aspx?id=2781
http://www.leonardslair.co.uk/lotus.htm )

Mental Aardvarks - Some Recordings (1979-1982)

Liverpool and avant-garde are certainly not “mots qui vont très bien ensemble”. They probably do in Sheffield, but not in Liverpool. If I had to sketch a ‘symbolic’ history of post-punk in Liverpool, I would take the Big in Japan / Chuddy Nuddies split single as the point of departure, since the two sides also mark the different trends in Liverpudlian music: ‘experimentation’ and tradition. Big in Japan propose an eccentric cabaret version of punk, a musical pastiches capsizing rock conventions complete with high-pitched type vocals. The Nuddies offered an example in line with the easily recogniseable upbeat, nervous, kind of two-tone, pop tradition of the time (the Deaf School and Clive Lager, but also Madness, Specials, English Beat, etc.). The two polar sides would produce the Pink Industry, and the one hand, and the Yachts / It’s Immaterial, on the other, influencing either way everything growing in the middle between.
But experimentation in Liverpool is never avant-garde. It rather ranges from cabaret to electronic music through the back door of psychedelia. It plays with forms without deconstructing musical schemata. It always verges on melody rather than on noise. It is always soundly structured and never free form. It is usually enjoyable, rather than disturbing.
Nevertheless there are some noticeable exception. One of the most remarkable is represented by Mental Aardvarks

Mental Aardvarks was an avante-garde experimental band active from 1979 to 1982, brainchild of Paul Grady, who was the only member. They (he) ran their own label Trazom which issued all the band’s material on cassette, and operated from Paul's house in the Platt Bridge area of Wigan. Very much an experimental outfit, not at all easy listening, was played with regularity on 80's pirate station Merseyland Alternative Radio. Following their releases they came to the attention of the United Dairies label and had a track Bogart...Was Three Lemons included on the compilation 'Hoisting The Black Flag'. Another couple of songs were featured on the compilation ‘Sudden Departure’, namely Radio Caroline North and What Have You Done (Pieces of Meat).

Some Recordings

The Lotus Eaters - Single Releases (1983-1985)

Towards the end of the experience with the Wild Swans, Paul Simpson allegedly teamed up for a very short period of time with Peter Coyle in a band called Living Legend (1982). No evidence of this collaboration survives, but a relevant link between the Swans and Coyle was established. Coyle had also been a member of the short lived (1980-1981) R’n’B orientated rock band No Trace (which released the tracks Africa / Talks in Tongue), Tin Ethics (1981), and most remarkably of The Jass Babies (1981-1982) – formed with former Visual Aid members Rob Boardman on guitar (later Personal Column), Dave Whittaker on bass and Steve Brown on drums (both later in Here’s Johnny). In October 1981 The Babies recorded a 4 track peel session. With the aim of giving some sense of direction to the career of the group and some coherence to their music in the fall of 1982 Coyle contacted the other Wild Swan, Jeremy Kelly, to play guitar on some demos he was doing with the band. Coyle and Kelly immediately hit it off, and since there was not enough space for Kelly’s inventive guitar parts in the Babies, Coyle left and the two began trying new stuff on a portastudio (a little 4 track home studio) in Kelly’s bedroom. Since Peel had booked the Jass Babies for a session, and the Babies were no more, the two had only a couple of weeks to find a name, to write some songs, and to put together a band to go with the name. The name would be Lotus Eaters. The shortest way to gather a band was by contacting members and session players of the disintegrating Wild Swans (mainly Gerard Quinn on keyboards, Phil Lucking – a.k.a. Looking – on bass and Alan Wills on drums). And as to the songs? In one of those home sessions Kelly played the guitar riff he used in the chorus of the Swans’ song (Opium) accompanied by Quinn’s keyboard parts, on which Coyle improvised the melody that was to become their most successful hit, The First Picture of You. Soon after the Peel broadcast (18 October 1982) records label contacted the group, and the Lotus Eaters had a deal. The band recorded and released The First Picture of You, which entered the UK pop charts before the band have even played a live gig. (No wonder Paul Simpson took the whole Lotus Eaters affair very personally as a treason.) In 1983 the Lotus Eaters put out two singles (12”) (ndr. There are rumours about a third 1983 single, German Girl b/w Can You Keep a Secret / You Fill Me with Need, but there’s no evidence of it in the official LE discography or in Coyle’s and Kelly’s accounts).


The First Picture of You (June 1983)
- The First Picture of You

- The Lotus Eaters
- Stranger So Far

You Don't Need Someone New (August 1983)
- You Don't Need Someone New

- Two Virgins Tender
- You Don't Need Someone New(Charleston Mix)

By this time, towards the end of 1983 the Lotus Eaters began to think about releasing an album. Coyle and Kelly wrote more songs and reshaped the line-up of the band: they had already acquired the Cure and Associate bassist Michael Dempsey and drummer Steve Crease, both appearing in the video for You Don’t Need Someone New, and now they added keyboard composer Stefan Emmer replacing Quinn. This was officially baptised as the definitive line-up during the bands second Peel session (10 October 1983). Before the album another single was released:

Set Me Apart (1984)
- Set Me Apart (Full Length Original Version)
- My Happy Dream

After the album No Sense of Sin (1984), two more singles were released in 1985:

Out On Your Own (1985)
- Out On Your Own

- Endless

It Hurts (1985)
- It Hurts

- The Evidence

The Lotus Eaters suspended animation in March, 1985, subsequent to the release of It Hurts, their final single. Jeremy Kelly left and the group split up. At this point Paul Simpson, Jeremy Kelly and Alan Wills re-formed The Wild Swans. Peter Coyle started a solo career (see below).

Peter Coyle remembers: “At that time for me personally the best bit about doing music was playing live. It was the honest bit. It was that that kept me going. Playing live and the b-sides to The Lotus Eaters singles. I still think they were our most successful recordings.”
Now you have a chance to listen to them.

Singles 1983-1985

The Dance Party (1979-1980)

The Dance Party formed in 1979 by Yorkie (a.k.a. David Tracy Palmer, friend of the Teardrop Explodes and of the Bunnymen) and Mike Head. The two will then play in Egypt for Now – see the Street to Street vol. 2, below – before going their separate ways: Yorkie with Balcony and then Space; Head with the Pale Fountains and then Shack. Over the course of the two years the line-up was quite fluid, comprising first Rod Bennett on guitar, then replaced by Jeremy Kelly (of the Wild Swans, then Lotus Eaters). The band recorded a couple of songs, only one of which survives.

Where I've Been

Here are some memories of Yorkie about the days where the Teardrop and the Bunnymen would rehearse in his mother’s basement, and about the first musical experiences of the Dance Party.

“Having both bands rehearse in the Basement meant that I had a cellar full of equipment at my disposal and it was time to start a band of my own. I was introduced by Paul Simpson (of the Teardrop Explodes and later Wild Swans, ndr) to Michael Head, who had an equally burning desire to make music, but a similar inability to myself as to how to go about it. We flitted from instrument to instrument until we settled on Bass Guitar (for me) and Keyboards (for him). We recruited some musicians who could actually play, and out first band was underway! We were christened Ho Ho Bacteria! by Julian (Cope, ndr) after he saw it written in the middle of a huge black stain on a toilet wall in a venue he had played. We recorded our first demo under this name before changing it to the much more user friendly The Dance Party (named after a Pere Ubu song). A second demo was recorded […] and a debut gig was forced on us by Pete Wylie!
[…] Our line ups changed a bit at this period; a second line included Jem Kelley from The Wild Swans and the Lotus Eaters. A further line-up change also meant a band name change to Egypt for Now. We recorded a session to be used for the Street To Street Volume 2 album, but the band was short lived as I had recently played Mike the band Love, and it changed his life forever. Musical differences in direction split the band: Mike wanted to sound like Love and I wanted something far more experimental. (As an aside, EFN actually recorded a cover of Love's She Comes in Colours at the very same session).”

( see also: http://www.incendiarymag.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=1176
http://www.yorkiestinyuniverse.co.uk/Pages/Dance%20Party%20Gallery.html
http://www.yorkiestinyuniverse.co.uk/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=19&Itemid=31 )

(Photo copyright Julie Marsh 1980, and Francesco Mellina 1980)

The Wild Swans (1980-82)

The Wild Swans are one of the greatest "lost" bands of the Liverpool scene. Formed in 1980 by Paul Simpson (on vocals) who, after leaving The Teardrop Explodes (where he played keyboards) long before they even planned to record an album, teamed up with Jeremy (Jem) Kelly (guitar, ex Psycamesh, ex- Systems), and Gerard (Ged) Quinn (who had briefly replaced Simpson in the Teradrop on keyboards). The three-piece was assisted on drums by Justin Stavely first and then by Alan Wills, and on bass by Rolo McGinty (later of the Woodentops), Phil Lucking and Baz Hughes (for the BBC sessions).

Pete de Freitas of Echo and the Bunnymen (a friend and flatmate of Simpson's), possibly the band’s first and biggest fan, decided to invest his first royalty cheque from the Bunnymen and fund the Wild Swans’ first single The Revolutionary Spirit (1982, the last Zoo Records release and is considered by legendary label boss Bill Drummond to be the best single he released). At the day of the recording came, Stavely was unable to make the session so De Freitas played on the single as well as producing it. Simpson describes the title track as “virtually bass-less and in mono due to Pete (Freitas) being off his head on cocaine and the band too stoned to notice”.


Revolutionary Spirit (1982)
- Revolutionary Spirit
- God Forbid



.
The single received a measure of critical acclaim and in time, even developed cult status, capturing the youthful optimism that existed on the Liverpool indie scene in those early days of post-punk, and featuring a completely new ‘sound’: “In most rock music at that time the guitar occupied the middle of the sound, filling it out - remember, the most influential group in Britain at the time was Joy Division: upfront drums and bass, guitar mixed back but deep, menacing and other-worldly. And then listen to the Wild Swans: Bass practically inaudible, the guitar up at the very top of the sonic spectrum, playing melodically, often flirting with the vocal line, and then the keyboards, mainly piano and/or string synth, filling the sound out, often even carrying the rhythm, adding incredible dynamics and drama. And it's a warm sound, as opposed to the icy jags of synthesizer that had become de rigueur since people had heard Wire's Chairs Missing and 154 and then Joy Division‚s Closer. And the vocals were sung with a very English delivery when most British singers affected American accents” (Nick Halliwell) – anticipating Morrisey’s style of a couple of years (listen to Enchanted and Simpson’s influence on the Smiths singer is embarrassingly manifest).

After a short tour with the Bunnymen, the group was asked by David Jensen to do a session for his BBC Radio 1 show in May 1982. They recorded two of the strongest tracks from their live set, Now You're Perfect and Fruits Of The Earth - now rechristened Flowers Of England - plus the two new composition, The Iron Bed and Opium (listen carefully to the guitar parts: the Lotus Eaters’ single The First Picture of You comes directly from here!).


Jansen Session (March 23, 1982)
- Flowers Of England
- The Iron Bed and
- Opium
- Now You're Perfect


Only a couple of weeks later they were asked to do a session for John Peel's show. They didn't have any new songs and only manage 3 tracks for that session. (The session was released much later, in 1985)


Peel Sessions (May 1, 1982)
- No Bleeding
- Enchanted
- Thirst



The first split occurred very soon after this auspicious debut and resulted in Kelly starting up The Lotus Eaters with co-founder Peter Coyle. Simpson followed suit with the Care project, teaming up with Ian Broudie. But the original chemistry of the Wild Swans (Mk I, circa1980-82) would never resurface in any later projects. Simpson confesses: “It was definitely a chemistry thing with The Wild Swans. Jerry was the mind, Ged was the body and I was the soul. Ged was the unsung hero of the story, he was our John Cale.”

Because of their involvement with The Teardrop Explodes, Care and The Lotus Eaters, it's already easy to view Paul Simpson, Jeremy Kelly and Ged Quinn as pivotal members of the much-revered Liverpool post-punk scene. However, even their triumphs with these projects pale by comparison with what they achieved together as The Wild Swans. Indeed, during an all-too brief period (roughly 1980 - late 1982), this trio recorded one of the greatest debut singles of all time in "The Revolutionary Spirit" and two tantalisingly brilliant BBC Radio Sessions that in effect would become the band's elusive legacy.
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Wild Swans 1980-82

http://www.thewildswans.co.uk/discography/discography.htm
http://www.whisperinandhollerin.co.uk/chat/chat.asp?id=1392
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The Yachts - Part 2 (1978-1981)

Before the release of the first album, and due to the success of the first single the Yacht put out a live version of the song (as a freebe):

2/1/78 (1978)
- Suffice To Say (Live)
- On And On

On the cover of the single the group appears as a four-piece, and as a four-piece the group continued to record. After the departure of Campbell and Dempsey (the latter replaced by Ray "Chopper" Cooper, then Glyn Havard and finally Mick Shiner), the Yachts release a new single:

Now I'm Spoken For (1979)
- Now I'm Spoken For

- Secret Agent

The following year, two more singles were released by Radar Records

There's A Ghost In My House (1980)
- There's A Ghost In My House

- Revelry

- Yachting Type (album version)

I.O.U. (1980)
- I.O.U. (In The Oddments Drawer)

- 24 Hours From Tulsa

The same year was issued the second album ‘Without Radar’ – whose title was meant to reflect the parting of ways with their British label (Radar).

Without Radar (1980, UK version)

- Consequences (Watson / Bellis)
- On The Bridge (Priestman)
- Trust You (Watson / Bellis)
- Out Of Luck (Priestman)
- This Thing, That Thing (Watson / Bellis)
- March Of The Moderates (Priestman)
- There's A Ghost In My House (Holland / Holland / Dozier / Taylor)
- Life Saving's Easy (Watson / Bellis)
- Now I'm Spoken For (Priestman)
- The Lush (Priestman)
- Don't Call Us (Priestman)
- Spimosa (Priestman / Watson / Bellis / Cooper)

The album had also a US version with a differently ordered track-list (without Spimosa, but with Revelry and I Couldn't Get Along Without You This album, which is said to suffer from an uncharacteristically poor production by Martin Rushent, is considered “a mediocre follow-up and the band's parting shot” (Chris Woodstra, All Music Guide).
In 1981 the group released their final single

Fool Like You (1981)

- Fool Like You

- Dubmarine

At this point, not only power pop started to fall from favour, but also the fact of not being taken seriously because of funny lyrics may have taken its toll, and the band finally split up in 1981. Priestman went on to join It's Immaterial, Wah! and, later The Christians.

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Singles 1978-81
Without Radar (1980)

Mel-O-Tones

After the release of the Yachts first album, in January 1980 Martin Dempsey left the band. He teamed up with Jayne Casey (they had already virtually met while occupying the two sides of the split single by Big in Japan and The Chuddy Nuddies) playing bass with the Pink Military on Do Animals Believe in God? (1981). After briefly joining the first formation of It’s Immaterial, with ex Yacht fellow member Henry Priestman, Dempsey was also a temporary/occasional member of Rebél Da Fé, with future It’s Immaterial JJ (Jarvis) Whitehead, ex members of the Liverpudlian punk act Psycamesh Gary Williams on bass and Mark Robson on drums, and Tomo on vocals. After these short-term musical experiences, Dempsey efinally joined the Mel-O-Tones.
The Mel-O-Tones was a five-piece band featuring, Marlyn Dempsey on guitars, David Dickie on piano, Bob Parker on bass, Jon Neesan on drums, and Frank Martin on vocals (the latter three to become the Walking Seeds). The music is possibly the weirdest thing to be heard among the musical product of the period, combining warped Captain Beefheart-esque vocals and acid lyrics to twisted rockabilly riffs choked in swirling echo effects - and the band itself is possibly the last Liverpool band to carry the torch for weirdness and psychedelia in mid 80's .

The first vinyl release by the group in is the mini-lp Bomb Sutra (1985)

Bomb Sutra
1. Bomb Sutra

2. Burton Buzz

3. Lice Age

4. Scaffold

5. 40 Nights

6. I Walked With A Bugs Bunny Bendy Toy

Later the same year a 12" was released under the title Melonheaded (1985)

Melonheaded
1. Mad Jesus

2. Seedy Lotion

3. Happy Hour

4. Happy Hour

5. Melonhead

Mel-o-Tones