Tag Archives: UK Albums Chart

The Bluetones – Smeets Music

Leave a comment Posted by on 22/06/2012
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Bluetones badge (Photo credit: Maria Keays)

The Bluetones were an English indie rock band, formed in Hounslow, Greater London, in 1993. The band’s members were Mark Morriss on vocals, Adam Devlin on guitar, Scott Morriss on bass guitar, and Eds Chesters on drums. A fifth member, Richard Payne, came on board between 1998 and 2002. The band was originally named “The Bottlegarden”.

The band’s biggest hit, “Slight Return”, was released in 1996. They have achieved thirteen Top 40 singles and three Top 10 albums in the UK charts.

The Bluetones’ commercial success waned after the fall of the Britpop movement, yet they continued to tour and release new records and were therefore often labelled as “Britpop survivors”.

The band’s latest album A New Athens was released on 31 May 2010.

The band split on 1 October 2011 following a farewell tour which ended with a concert in Osaka, Japan

After the release of two singles on Fierce Panda Records, the band signed to A&M Records and released Expecting to Fly on their own sublabel Superior Quality Recordings.The album entered the UK Albums Chart at number one, and featured the singles “Bluetonic” and “Slight Return”, with the latter being beaten to number one by one-hit-wonders Babylon Zoo’s “Spaceman”. Following the touring and promotional duties for Expecting to Fly, the band released stand-alone single “Marblehead Johnson” to bridge the gap between albums.

The second album, Return To The Last Chance Saloon, was released in 1998. While failing to generate the commercial success of their debut, it did spawn hits in the form of “Solomon Bites the Worm” and “If…”.

Whilst many of their mid 1990s peers had disbanded by 2000, The Bluetones released their third album, Science & Nature, which again reached the Top 10 and featured the hit singles “Keep the Home Fires Burning” and “Autophilia”.

After releasing a best-of album in 2002, the band followed up with Luxembourg, an album which received mixed reviews.

A three-album deal was signed in late 2005 with the Cooking Vinyl record label, promptly followed by the limited release of E.P. Serenity Now and a full UK tour.

In early 2006, Universal issued a comprehensive box set of all The Bluetones singles and B-sides released between 1995 and 2003, A Rough Outline.

A single, entitled “My Neighbour’s House”, was released in the UK on 18 September 2006. The single was taken from their self-titled album, which was released on 9 October that year. It failed to chart in the UK Albums Chart after its first week on sale. The album was also released in the US, the first such occurrence since their debut. Although no reason was cited, on 1 October 2006, it was announced that a planned nine-date tour of North America and Australia had been scrapped. However, on 1 November 2006, the band began a month-long tour of Europe in support of their new release, including two sold-out nights at Glasgow’s King Tuts.

In February 2007, the band released BBC Radio Sessions containing tracks recorded for the BBC between 1994 and 2000. This was followed in June with their first full live album, Once Upon a Time in West Twelve, recorded at the Shepherds Bush Empire on 18 November 2005, and was followed on 29 October 2007, by a live DVD of the same concert under the title Beat about the Bush. 2007 also saw the release of a compilation album of early demo recordings, entitled The Early Garage Years. They also released a DVD under the title Blue Movies.

In January 2008, the band began a mini-tour of Scotland, playing five cities (Stirling, Dunfermline, Aberdeen, Glasgow and Edinburgh) in as many nights. In May 2008 a ten-date tour covered Cambridge, Whitehaven, Sheffield, Newcastle upon Tyne, Birmingham, London, Bristol, Manchester and Darwen, including one of the last few concerts at the Astoria. They also played a show with Brit-pop rivals Dodgy on 17 May 2009, at a secret London venue, to benefit the homelessness charity Crisis, as part of the charity’s ‘Hidden Gigs’ campaign against hidden homelessness.

In December 2008, the band embarked on a five-date tour, taking in Lincoln, Manchester, Sheffield and Birmingham. The tour saw them playing their debut album, Expecting to Fly, in full. Some further dates were subsequently announced for February and March 2009.

On 31 May 2010, the band released an album called A New Athens. Despite largely positive reviews by fans and critics alike, the album failed to chart in the UK Albums Chart.

The song “Sleazy Bed Track” from the 1998 album Return To The Last Chance Saloon was featured in the popular 2010 film Scott Pilgrim vs. The World and also included on the soundtrack.

On 28 March, the band announced they would split after a farewell tour in September 2011, with a message from frontman Mark Morriss saying “After 17 years and 6 albums, The Bluetones have decided that the time has arrived to call it a day and move on to other challenges. Before disappearing forever though, we will be heading out for one last tour, as a chance to say farewell and thank you to all the fans that have sustained us over these years, with a career-spanning Greatest Hits/Best Of… style set of songs. It’s gonna be emotional.” Smeets Music – London

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Black Grape

Leave a comment Posted by on 22/06/2012
Cover of "It's Great When You're Straight...

Cover of It’s Great When You’re Straight Yeah

AH Smeets presents the Black Grape were a 1990s rock band from England, featuring former members of Happy Mondays. The group’s music was funky and eclectic, using varied instrumentation and samples.

The band was formed in 1993 by former Happy Mondays members Shaun Ryder and Bez. It was Ryder’s first musical project after the disintegration of Happy Mondays due both to his multiple drug addictions and to disagreements about revenues with other bandmembers. The formation of the new band was intended to draw a line between his past life and his new one. Ryder and Bez recruited rappers Kermit and Psycho, drummer Jed Lynch, and guitarist Wags (formerly of the Manchester-based group the Paris Angels). Recording of new material started that year, although the group was not under contract.

In 1995 Black Grape was signed by Radioactive Records (an imprint of major label BMG) and released its debut album It’s Great When You’re Straight… Yeah. It immediately charted at number one in the UK Albums Chart, and spawned three Top Twenty singles.

The first single “Reverend Black Grape” managed to outsell the Happy Mondays cover of John Kongos “(He’s Gonna) Step On (You Again)”.

The third single, “Kelly’s Heroes” – a song lampooning society’s obsession with celebrities and idols that had much to do with Ryder’s own previous hero worship of people he now saw as wastrels – had its opening lyric changed before recording from “Don’t talk to me about heroes – Most of these guys snort cocaine,” to “Don’t talk to me about heroes – most of these men sing like suggs .” (Ryder initially intended it to be ‘Smurfs’, but feared he could be breaching copyright). Another song on the album, “Temazi Party”, mocked the then-current craze for abusing Temazepam sleeping pills (a.k.a. ‘jellies’), but was deliberately misspelt on the album sleeve as ‘Tramazi’ instead of ‘Temazi’ in order to forestall any legal injunction against the album’s release.

It’s Great When You’re Straight… Yeah received critical acclaim in the UK, but the group made little impact in the US. However, Metallica drummer Lars Ulrich listed it as his favourite album of 1996. The album cover featured a picture of then-recently-imprisoned terrorist Carlos The Jackal.

The subsequent album Stupid Stupid Stupid was less favoured. The group split in 1998 after Ryder fired the rest of the band while touring, starting with Kermit (who was suffering from septicemia) and ending with Bez (who was unsatisfied with his financial situation).

On 2 February 2010, NME reported that Ryder will be reforming Black Grape with Saber and Kermit for a concert as part of the ‘Get Loaded In The Dark’ gig series on 1 April at The Coronet in London.

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