No other news apart from a few gigs lined up - original line-up, too.... but pretty good news that the gals are back...

http://www.gigantic.com/g~email~g/gigantic/home_fuzzbox.html

This is tremendous news!!!!

Great news :)

I adored international rescue from them, id be interested to hear something new from them.

lord.... are we all going to agree?...:lol:

 

imho they were the only ones producing good melodic guitar pop in the late 80's.

About time. :yahoo:

 

But will teenagers who today worship Cheryl Cole & The SaTURDays appreciate the ramshackle flippant, ironic, self parodying brilliance of a great late 1980s self contained pop act...... will they f.....

 

I mean this video alone has more personality than the members of The Saturdays will achieve in their lifetimes.....

 

 

 

 

 

I loved all their incarnations - from the scuzzy indie chicks that The Chart Show adored, to ultra-glam foxy pop vixens (didn't they scrub up well?!).... great band, it's smile-inducing news that they're back

Pink Pink Sunshine!

Remember their cover of Walking On Thin Ice? And the great 12" mix of 'Self'?

self was also very catchy they were def a good band in their day and very different.

I'm really hoping we get the Boston Steve Austin style band but the 2nd album was great pop too. Now all we need is Betty Boo back and I'll be in Pop heaven

Didn't Betty Boo try a comeback recently with Alex James from Blur?

Didn't Betty Boo try a comeback recently with Alex James from Blur?

It was a one off collaboration under the name Wig Wam. If you ask me he spoilt it.

 

She also appeared on jack Rokka's Take Off single but is currently pursuing a 'musical biography' of Emma Hamilton, Nelson's bit of fluff

I was never a fan of their music ut remember I used to fancy the blonde one playing the keyboards in that video :lol:

Preferred them as "Scuzzy Indie Chicks" (We've Got a) Fuzzbox and We're Gonna Use It tbh, but they were fun... Certainly more fun than Girls Aloud or Saturdays....

 

It would be even more amusing if Shampoo were to make a comeback.... :lol: God, I bet they're a bit rough now though, eh....? :lol: :lol:

Remember them from Saturday morning TV circa International Rescue and Pink Pink Sunshine. Wasn't a huge fan but if all the boys from that era are touring again then why not the girls too?

I had forgotten all about them, but checking some of their videos I remember them now :D

Hello again,

 

I had wanted to talk about this band earlier but unfortunately I have not felt like contributing to any discussions recently as my family has received some very sad news, which for me is saying something, as I was a big Fuzzbox fan back in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

 

I was such a fan of Fuzzbox back then, that I tried to buy any magazine that I could see them in, though as my local newsagent saved me a lot of music magazines anyway on a regular basis, this was not too hard for me to accomplish. I still have many of these magazines in my collection as well as my copy of “Big Bang” in that daft American long box case that CDs in the States used to come packaged in. I also have their DVD collection that came with their recent Hits album, though as it was more the stylised ‘pop version’ of the group that I liked, I was never bothered with “Bostin’ Steve Austin”.

 

It is great that everybody has good feelings towards the group, as having read the S/A/W discussion I thought that people would be equally as negative towards Fuzzbox. I thought that people may only know this later hit making incarnation of the group and therefore would criticise them for being a cheesy manufactured pop group, as if they were the 1989 version of The Faders [though I guess credit had to be given to Molly of The Faders for not trading on the names of her parents, unlike most of the celebrity offspring that you see in the press these days].

 

Looking at the responses to many of the questions posed here in this retro section, I think that the majority of people would be more likely to identify Baby Turpentine or Big Stick in a pop quiz, rather than Botany 5 or The Big Bam Boo. The first two bands were typical [non-Gallup charting] ‘NME type’ acts that you would have probably seen in the mid-to-late 1980s if you were an avid reader of that paper. They are also the type of acts that I just about remember from that time, whilst the last two acts are artists which still feature in my album collection, even though most people forgot about them about 20 years ago [botany 5 were like a cross between The Beloved and The Blue Nile; and were named after the outfitter to the stars on TV’s "Bewitched", clothes firm Botany 500, a firm which was also referenced by The Wedding Present on their ‘Dick York’s Wardrobe’ release. As was the case with one-hit-wonder Owen Paul, I think Botany 5 also included somebody who had a brother in Simple Minds, though this time it was Jim Kerr rather than any of the other musicians. On the other hand, The Big Bam Boo were the self-styled Everly Brothers of 1980s, who must have been signed by MCA Records as a kind of rival to The Proclaimers. I think this duo was only known for looking like they had come straight from the 1950s and for having a vocalist-guitarist called Shark, whilst their singles included "Fell Off A Mountain" and "Shooting From My Heart"].

 

Nevertheless, after seeing what types of music people here seem to be interested in, I will suggest that a lot of people reading this page are at an age where they would have enjoyed, or at least known, Fuzzbox from their days on Vindaloo [even though the band came from Birmingham, I am not sure if their record label would also have been based there, though I think it would have been a very good name, as I think that the Chicken Tikka curry was actually invented there in that city].

 

I remember seeing a clip of Fuzzbox on the first series of The Chart Show, when the on-screen info was provided by a computer called ‘HUD’ [if you remember, that stood for ‘Head Up Display’ though the facts were so tiny that you could never read it properly]. I think the show was from Christmas 1986 and was a ‘best of the year’ compilation. Fuzzbox were listed at about number 10, though I cannot remember which song the video was for [even though I could go home and look on their DVD] but from what I remember I think that they were all riding on the back of a scooter at the time.

 

At that age I thought that they were dreadful, but then again, I thought most of the artists that appeared in The Chart Show’s indie charts were awful, as to me most acts sounded like a ‘shambolic mess’ of ear-splitting punk noise.

 

I avoided most acts on ‘proper’ Indie labels like Vindaloo, though there were exceptions. I liked all the singles by The Smiths but never bought any of their albums as I thought that being on Rough Trade records, the rest of the tracks might be too experimental for my tastes. I was actually happy that Morrissey signed to EMI Records as I thought that would be the sign of a good pop artist [though by the time he had released "Viva Hate" I was starting to like ‘proper indie’ music, as now I was in my early teenage years I was buying the NME every week]. In addition to The Smiths, I was fine with most of the artists that were on Mute Records [artists such as Erasure, Wire and Laibach] as to me, Mute was just a synth-pop label that I knew from the early 1980s.

 

I do not know if other people here were aware of the differences between ‘Indie’ and ‘Major’ when they were 10, 11 or 12 or whether this knowledge would be something learned during your teenage years. I think it might be more to do with people’s teenage years, perhaps happening the most with '6th form' students [especially if the cliché about artistic students is to be believed, with music tastes usually operating hand-in-hand with interests in ‘bohemian poetry readings’], but whereas many people, especially those of a ‘student’ age, seem to become very ‘anti-major’, as a child it was the other way around for me.

 

I would be wary of an album if it came out on an Indie record label such as Rough Trade or Factory, but generally records released on a ‘major’ label would be fine [an exception being Soul II Soul's "Club Classics Vol. One" which I guess was more in keeping with an album released on Mute & Martin Heath’s Rhythm King Records].

 

My favourite record labels at the time, the ones that I thought would always release quality recordings, would be ones like Circa Records and Virgin, labels which at that time, would be part of the AVL group.

 

I thought that seeing a Virgin Records label on a sleeve was a sign of quality because I liked bands such as Scritti Politti and OMD. These acts had released a number of great albums in the 1980s, though at that age I did not know that these acts themselves were ex-Indie acts, coming from Rough Trade and Factory Records, respectively.

 

Back in the 1980s record labels such as Chrysalis, Island and Virgin were releasing records by very mainstream acts and were always seemed to be regarded as ‘Minor-Major’ record labels by the press, with the more serious rock ‘inkies’ regarding them in a very negative way. Therefore, it was quite interesting to read the recent news about XL Records topping the charts in America with that Vampire Weekend album, as back in the 1980s Beggars Banquet [XL’s parent group] was usually seen as being as bad as the labels I mentioned at the start of this paragraph.

 

XL was the first indie label in 20 years to have an album top the Billboard album chart and when you think how highly that label is regarded now, it is amazing to think back to the days when it was just an offshoot of another dance label owned by Beggars Banquet.

 

That label in question, Citybeat, was one that I cannot ever remember being held in much regard by dance music fans and one which could probably be regarded as the 1980s version of AATW [but with jazz-funk band Freeze signed instead of N-Dubz],

 

As Citybeat, a label not in the same league as Rhythm King, was only known for Freeze and a few other ‘faceless’ Piano-house/Italio-dance records, it is no wonder that XL Records was set up as their more credible dance label. From that point, I think it was great to see how XL became such a highly regarded Indie label and I suppose a lot of this ‘cross-over’ success has been due to The Prodigy, who were always popular at the Indie nights that I used to frequent back in the 1990s.

 

As I do not remember Beggars Banquet having much credibility bestowed upon them by the music press in the late 1980s I can see why XL has to become more than just a ‘dance’ label. Whereas [sister label] 4AD had a very strong identity with great acts that would always get ‘raved’ about in the ‘serious rock press’, Beggars Banquet was mostly known for The Cult and Gary Numan, acts that did not always get the best press in the 1980s [i liked them even if nobody else did, and still own The Cult’s ‘RM’ flexi-disc and some Sharpe & Numan singles].

 

In regards to Numan, even though he is now seen as one of the great icons of electronic music, in those days he was regarded as being more akin to the ‘musical Boris Johnson of the skies’ rather than the ‘flying Elvis of synth-pop’ that is, and with reference to “Have I got News For You” rather than giving an overtly political statement, a figure of fun rather than a true musical pioneer [Metal fans may like to replace the Elvis reference with one of Bruce Dickinson, if you prefer to use him instead as an iconic figure].

 

At this stage, I do not want to discuss the merits of Numan or Ashbury too much as I am sure those artists could fuel a major discussion by themselves. Before I move on, I would like to say that it is good that opinions have changed in regards to Numan, so much so that I can imagine Numan being a good fit with the current artists of XL’s roster, in a way that Kraftwerk have ended up being issued by Mute.

 

In fact, I thought that it would have been Mute Records who would have had the last indie Billboard Number One album. I was hoping that it would have been Depeche Mode’s “Violator” and when I found out that was not; I was very surprised to see what the actual album was.

 

I think Americans did not have the same concept of indie music that we did back in the 1980s and I think that style of music was actually called ‘college rock’ back then by them, as the last Indie album to chart at the top was actually a Paula Abdul record released on Virgin, though on the other hand, I guess it could be the USA equivalent to all those Kylie songs in the Indie charts when it used to be featured on The Chart Show [in the days when it was on C4 as a replacement for The Tube].

　

I think it was because all those ‘Minor-Majors’ were releasing a lot of mainstream records like “Opposites Attract” and “Straight Up” that they did not get the credit that they originally deserved, credit that has only been recently bestowed upon them [for example, in BBC Four documentaries, though I have not seen a Virgin Records show yet, I guess because of Branson's on-going celebrity as a kind of ‘bearded Boris Johnson’ of the business world].

 

In recent documentaries such as the one celebrating 50 years of Island Records, these ‘Minor-Major’ labels are now seen as the original Indies, with a lot of ‘bohemian’ signings from the Folk, Prog and Reggae scenes. In addition to these genres, most of the first generation punk and new wave acts seem to have been signed by them, artists whose music I think would be actually easier to listen than some of the artists signed to Virgin a few years before that.

　

I think Virgin Records signed a lot of Krautrock and Prog artists like Faust, Gong and King Crimson, as well as comedy records like 'Derek and Clive', in the early 1970s. I suppose if you were to compare the 1973 roster of the company to some ‘Landfill Indie’ labels of today, then they would probably be seen as being more indie and ‘weird’ than a lot of the labels of today, even with a figure such as Branson at the helm of the company.

 

I cannot comment too much on Prog and Krautrock, as for most of my life I have avoided those genres and therefore would not know which acts have produced what records [well I suppose I could name a couple of records by Genesis as I was a Peter Gabriel fan in the mid 1980s]. I know slightly more about Punk and New Wave, though not enough to say I have a real passion for it and I guess only because many of the 'pop' artists in Smash Hits/RM that I liked in the mid to late 1980s, such as The Dammed, Siouxsie, PiL and XTC, would have been artists active with slightly different styles in the punk days [with the last two also being signed to Virgin].

 

Another ‘Alternative’ artist who ended up signing to Virgin in the late 1980s was Robert Lloyd. Unlike Microdisney, The Big Dish and The Indian Givers, I never got around to purchasing his album, though I nearly did about 20 years ago. I have heard his name mentioned many times in the music press usually in regards to his band called The Nightingales.

 

I heard on 6Music the other week that ‘The Boy Lard’ had been playing an old Peel Session by The Nightingales, though I did not actually get to listen to the session myself as I had fallen asleep during the course of the programme and had only regained consciousness when I heard an old Orange Juice record being played ["Simply Thrilled Honey"].

 

It was a pity that I had fallen asleep before the session was played, as I do not think I have ever heard The Nightingales in full and wanted to know what they actually sounded like. I have never seen any cheap albums by them for sale in all my years of shopping, whilst iTunes generally annoys me for reasons that I will not go into now.

 

The only song by The Nightingales that I have actually heard before is their ‘Vindaloo Summer Special’ collaboration with Fuzzbox that features on the DVD, but I guess this would not be the best indication towards the actual sound of the band. In addition to that, I think that "Rockin’ With Rita" is the only Vindaloo era record by Fuzzbox that I have ever played more than once since I got the Fuzzbox DVD.

 

If The B-52s had been British, I think a record like "Wig" or “Channel Z” would have sounded very much like "Rockin’ With Rita", with Ted Chippington in the Fred Schneider role. Personally, I thought The B-52s were brilliant at the time, though I got fed up hearing "Love Shack" as it was one of those 'party tunes' you could not escape when I worked in a local pub.

 

I heard "Roam" on 6Music, recently, and as there is an absence of Fred, it sounds more like The Voice Of The Beehive or Belinda Carlisle. Whereas the former act was a band I liked a lot and own a few albums by them, the latter was an act that I was never much keen on. I think this was because she was always seen by me as one of those big American acts, part of a culture of which I had a confirmed opinion about and therefore I would think that her releases would be no good, as ‘mainstream’ American pop would always be regarded as being inferior to the British pop I had grown up with.

 

As the Beehive sisters, Tracy and Melissa, were signed to Food and had Woody from Madness in their group, I regarded them as if they were a British group. In addition to that, their band name had a link to the kitsch hairstyles of Cindy Wilson and Kate Pierson, singers who unlike Carlisle, I always regarded as being part of an alternative pop scene [which would be a group different to a ‘Chart Show Shambolic Indie’ act such as Fuzzbox in 1986]. I suppose as Carlisle was a member of The Go-Gos, I may have unfairly viewed her career and at some point I will have to re-evaluate her recordings, if not solo then especially in regards to that of The Go-Gos.

　

Another act from America that I did not care too much for in the 1980s was The Bangles. I think I disregarded a lot of The Bangles work mainly due to the 'horror' of "Eternal Flame", though I liked "Manic Monday" as that was a song by Prince [though he was called Christopher or Alexander Nevermind at the time]. In addition to that, I came to regard "Walk Like An Egyptian" as being a daft pop record that was alright in small doses [for example when drunk at an 80s party night].

 

I was not bothered with the rest of their catalogue for a long time and I have only recently started re-evaluating their career after buying their Greatest Hits on CD. This was because I had been reading about the recent work of Susanna Hoffs that she had been doing with 1990s power-pop artist Mathew Sweet. I had not heard much about their work together, apart from a couple of songs they had recorded as Ming Tea in the Austin Powers films, but power-pop is a genre I think I would like to discover more about and I think their records together, being power-pop cover albums, might be a good starting point.

 

On their recent album, Mathew Sweet and Susanna Hoffs have covered the songs of acts such as Nick Lowe and Big Star [an act, like Sparklehorse, no doubt I will pay my respects to at a later date]. Similar to Barry Manillow, Sweet & Hoffs are recording an album of covers per decade, though they started with the 1960s and I guess are unlikely to cover a Rick Astley tune any time soon.

 

A proportion of The Bangles hits were also covers, and in addition to that aforementioned song by Prince, their songs were written by people like Kimberley Rew from The Soft Boys [also from Katrina and the Waves] and Jules Shear who also wrote Alison Moyet’s "Whispering Your Name" single.

 

A lot of people may take a negative view of ‘covers’ especially when they are obvious song choices but in this case I do not think the originals would have been too wildly known and therefore I guess that these songs would be seen more like the ‘definitive’ versions, in the same way that “Torn” is usually identified with Natalie Imbruglia.

 

I cannot state which Bangles singles the girls wrote themselves but I know that some were masterminded by the same producer/songwriter who had a hand in helping Fuzzbox get chart success [i think he was called Liam Steinberg]. I know that many pop acts have this kind of songwriting ‘hired help’ that is regularly brought in by record companies to guide them with co-writes, though with most acts you do not know to what extent a song is a proper collaboration or just a writing credit given out in a way similar to all those ‘Exec Producer’ credits on American TV.

 

In regards to Fuzzbox, I remember a few people, writing in the 'grown-up inkie' music press, were criticising the band for selling out as they had signed to a major, but I suppose these people were never going to be satisfied unless they were on Vindaloo. In Smash Hits they were regarded as good popstars who would play up to the fact they were a band in the pop genre and were always thought of very fondly. Actually I have still got all my Smash Hits from that time, still in pristine condition, though I got rid of all the old copies of NME from that time, apart from a few featuring Fuzzbox in the pages.

 

Does anybody remember the interview in Smash Hits where Fuzzbox stated what their ‘real names’ were? These ‘real names’ were according to the band rather than their real birth certificates and are an important occurrence in Pop Culture history, as this is where the editor of Top Of The Pops magazine is supposed to have got the idea to name the Spice Girls from [though everyone at the time joked they were rejects from the seven dwarfs].

 

I cannot remember the names exactly, but I remember the interview and think that Mags said her name was ‘Margargarita Durunddurunda’. It was something to that extent though I do not think the name was such a ‘mash up’ between the names of Margarita Pracakhan [the mad Cuban woman from The Clive James Show, not to be confused with rave act Praga Khan] and Duran Duran. You may have already thought of other links to Duran Duran at this point as they were also a band that came from Birmingham, whilst a further link to Fuzzbox would be Ade Edmondson, who played Barbarella’s Dr Durand Durand in the "International Rescue" video.

 

Bizarrely, I think that out of all musicians I have seen live in concert, Ade Edmondson is the person I have seen ‘in concert’ the most, though this was in his former role as comedian rather that that of touring folk musician with daughter Ella and band The Bad Shepherds. In relation to his comedy career and Smash Hits does anybody else remember when he ‘killed’ Howard Jones on the cover of Smash Hits in 1986, bursting out from a blue background with a chainsaw?

 

As he is a touring musician, it is amazing that he has not been selected as the host of Never Mind The Buzzcocks yet, though maybe he is now seen as being ‘too old’ and not ‘cutting edge’ anymore for this type of show by the powers that be.

 

By the way, did anyone else see Vix [Vicky Perks] on Buzzcocks during the last series of Buzzcocks? Like when Roxy from Home and Away turned up in Heroes as the policeman’s wife, I was quite shocked to see how Vix had aged, especially since I used to have a massive crush on her as a teenager. Whilst watching that show I was thinking that she reminds me of a cross between Claudia Brucken from Propaganda and Maggie De Monde from Swansway, something I have never thought about before.

 

I cannot remember if Maggie De Monde has been on Buzzcocks yet, but I can imagine that she would be a good booking for the line-up, especially if the comedian presenting makes a pun the name Scarlet Fantastic [her duo after Swansway] or joke about "No Memory". I think that the team could get a lot of ‘mileage’ out of that song title joking that they have ‘No Memory’ of her. In fact anything would be better than Vix’s appearance where she was under used and only briefly bothered with.

 

I think the comedians could have made more of the fact that she was in a band called ‘We’ve Got A Fuzzbox And We’re Gonna Use It’ but then again maybe the comedians booked were not the type of people who would base their acts around innuendo and double entendre. Even though the band name sounds like it may have come from a rejected Talbot Rothwell script for a ‘Carry On Punk’ or ‘Riot Grrrl’ film, I think that their name is probably only the decent band name of this length, due to the ambiguity of that phrase when used in association with a female guitar group.

　

Due to this, I think that the artwork of their hits compilation album may have been more striking if it had a cover similar to that of PiL’s “This What Is Not” album, though as that CD’s inlay booklet has been turned around now so not to offend anybody in the shops, I suppose they were better off with the permitted amount of rudeness that Fuzzbox got away with on their CD.

 

Loz

 

I listened to Big Bang again the other day and most of it apart from Self and Pink Sunshine is absolute pants.

 

Meanwhile Bostin' is still sheer class all the way through.

I think the track the Chart Show loved and had in their year-end top 10 was Rules and Regulations... which was pop punk fabulousness if ever there was pop-punk fabulousness :P