Waxing Nostalgic: Lloyd Cole and The Commotions, Rattlesnakes

By James McNally

I’d met Goldie through my friend Colin around 1983, I think. With his thinning hair and permanent scowl, he looked like a perennially pissed off old man. We shared a love for punk, even though he was somehow affiliated with the strange evangelical subculture I’d recently become part of. I remember him bringing us Dead Boys records when Colin and I were in residence at Bible College. We’d play those and Colin’s Zapp funk records as loud as we could, enjoying the vicarious thrill of swearing and talking sexy. I remember Goldie and I commandeering the lounge television one night when Rock ‘n’ Roll High School was on. So we shared a taste in music and a slightly skeptical attitude toward the world around us.

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Waxing Nostalgic: The Pretenders, The Pretenders

By James McNally

Does anyone remember what an album was? Do they still call a music “release” an album anymore? Well, back in 1980, when a band released an album, you bought an album, a piece of vinyl inside a paper sleeve slipped into a cardboard sleeve. I think I might have paid about $8 for this record when it came out in 1980. I was 15 years old. A bit of background may be in order.

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Waxing Nostalgic: The Boomtown Rats, The Fine Art Of Surfacing

By James McNally

There was once a time when “Sir” Bob Geldof was known for something other than organizing huge benefit concerts to feed the hungry. In fact, there was once a time when he was the hungry one. Hungry to find meaning in the world, and to find his place in it. In 1979, Geldof and his band The Boomtown Rats released one of my favorite albums, but the fact that it contained what amounted to a novelty hit (“I Don’t Like Mondays”) consigned The Boomtown Rats to “one-hit wonder” status and left the rest of this masterpiece of angry pop criminally undiscovered. In fact, the album was extremely difficult to find on CD in North America until a 2005 release added some bonus tracks.

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Interview: David Gedge And The Scene That Wasn’t A Scene, C86

By James McNally

It’s June 14, on the eve of England’s first World Cup game in Brazil, and I’m in a muggy club in London, surrounded by an alarmingly large number of bald and bespectacled middle-aged men. It’s a show organized by Cherry Red Records, who have just released a massive three-disc edition of the NME‘s seminal C86 collection, first issued as a mail-order cassette nearly 30 years ago (review).

I’m here to watch bands featured on that cassette, some of whom sound like they haven’t played together in many years. But that certainly doesn’t apply to The Wedding Present, now into its fourth decade as a recording and touring band. Despite numerous personnel changes over the years, the face and voice of The Wedding Present remains taciturn singer/guitarist David Gedge. We talked about the origins of the C86 project, whether it was ever really a “scene,” how difficult it is to be a working musician nowadays, and, just for fun, what England’s chances were in the World Cup.

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