Yesterday I had a blackout, one minute I was walking down the street in Chester, then the next thing I remember it was 20 minutes later and I was clutching a bag containing Elvis and Black Sabbath drinks coasters and Faith No More Angel Dust, a beautiful deluxe reissue on 180g vinyl* with an LP of bonus goodies, nice sleevenotes** etc. But that’s not what I’m here to tell you about today.
The one moment of clarity I had in the record shop was noticing that the deluxe reissue of The Real Thing had a bit of an obscure track on it that I already owned, ‘Sweet Emotion’ which was only previously released on a Kerrang! flexi disc. By the time I was getting into music flexi discs were few and far between, their 70’s/early 80s heyday long gone, CDs were still a bit expensive at the time to be putting on the outside of magazine covers, apart from expensive classical music mags, still they did appear occasionally. With very average sound quality and a tendency to skip, or just stop spinning^ I assume most were treated as being highly disposable and binned off after a few listens, surely only a real obsessive psychopath with no life whatsoever would keep them immaculately preserved and looked after for over 26 years?
So here is my immaculately preserved and carefully looked after collection of 26 year-old Kerrang! flexi discs. There were two series, Flexible Fiends and Sexy Flexi, I have all the former but only one of the latter ones survived. I think they give quite a neat snapshot of the rock/metal scene at the time, or those on the fringes of it at least – established bands didn’t need to bother with such things.
Fiend 1: Anthrax: Now It’s dark / Disneyland After Dark (D.A.D): Jihad
Anthrax were probably the biggest name at the time on any of these discs. This was the first ever bit of thrash metal I owned, it didn’t make much of an impression then but I like it better now, even though the live recording is a bit scrappy around the edges and it puzzlingly fades out before the track ends.
Happily back in 1990 I’d never had the occasion to hear the word ‘Jihad’ and I remember having to look it up … in a book (yup, that’s how long ago it was kiddies!). I loved this live track straight away and it’s still a firm favourite today, although not as good as ‘Sleeping My Day Away’ which is one of my fave hard rock tracks of the whole era. Nice to see D.A.D using their full name before the Disney lawyers got to them too^*.
Fiend 2: Faster Pussycat: Cathouse / Femme Fatale: Touch ‘N’ Go
This was like Christmas come early for me back in 1989, a live track from my joint fave band at the time. ‘Cathouse’ shows all that was good about Pussycat back in the day, this is ragged, punky, frenetic and highly charged glam rock and so sleazy that I fear I may have just contracted three hideous STDs aurally. This just surprised me by how good it was.
Femme Fatale – bouffy hair, Collagen lips, lots of cleavage so-far so-nothing-you-can’t-get-from-Poison, except Femme Fatale’s singer was actually a chick; well I’m 90% sure, things weren’t so clear-cut back then. This is a studio cut from their debut LP and it’s all very run-of-the-mill workaday stuff. It sounds rather like the kind of identikit rock that always seemed to crop up on the soundtracks of the third instalment of horror movie franchises.
Fiend 3: Balaam & The Angel: It Goes On / Faith No More: Sweet Emotion
I remember Balaam as being a poor man’s cult and coming from the same scene as the likes of Crazyhead et al. This live track is really good, rather pleasing, melodic rock, although they definitely reside on Cult Boulevard, you know turn left after the Sonic Temple – if you pass a man from Bradford dressed as a native American singing about wolves then you (and he) have gone too far. There’s a 12″ single of theirs in my local charity shop, I should go back and buy it on this showing.
This was possibly the first time I’d ever heard a note from FNM, I remember wondering why a band with such prominent keyboards and bass was being featured on a Kerrang! flexi disc and what was with that singer’s nasal voice? heard now it sounds like an interesting transitional piece between The Real Thing and Angel Dust without the latter’s inspired insane genre-bending. ‘Sweet Emotion’ is not an Aerosmith cover by the way, I had hoped it was at the time, it’s an interesting track but not particularly remarkable in its own right; although I’d like to hear it with a better sound than you can get with a flexi disc.
Fiend 4: Vain: Far Away / Tigertailz: Cheap Talk
Anyone remember Vain? they sneaked in at the tail end of the whole glam/hair metal thang and delivered a really good, quite dark (in places) LP, No Respect which I really rated. I saw them support Skid Row and they could certainly cut it live too. This track was a demo for that album and ended up as a polished version on their second LP. I prefer the roughness of this version, this song sounds like it’s all about the burn-outs and casualties that never quite got to the good times Poison were singing about – much like Vain themselves^^.
I’ve always regarded Tigertailz as something of a national embarrassment, I know you’d have thought I’d have been all over a glam metal band who came from 20 miles up the road from where I grew up, but they just weren’t much good, too soft for my tastes. Man the way they looked too, think Look What The Cat Dragged In era Poison’s older, Welsh ex-hooker sisters. Funnily enough, ‘Cheap Talk’ sounds rather good to me now, confident and swaggering, maybe I need to listen again? later in life they cut a really kick ass version of Megadeth’s ‘Peace Sells’, heavy as shit but with a real glam-style chorus.
Sexy Flexi 3: Almighty Wild Angel / Overkill: E.Vil N.ever D.ies
My fave British hard rockers of their era do what they did best, tearing up a great live version of one of their best tracks with some extra bonus swearing. I must have seen The Almighty 5 or 6 times in a three year period and they were never less than absolutely brilliant. This is a good representation of them live too, although not as good as early live LP Blood, Fire & Live.
Overkill? man this is shit awful I’m afraid, high-pitched Pinky and perky style vocals and music that sounds like it was recorded at 45RPM. Still, it’s far better than any music I’ve ever released.
For some reason either I only bought one of the Kerrang!s carrying the Sexy Flexi series (maybe I was at uni then?). It was fun listening to all these tracks again, okay so with the exception of FNM and Anthrax they were all comparatively second division acts but it brought home to me again how the scene sounded, smelt and looked back then. Even the bands I didn’t buy anything by, I can still half remember pictures of them, reviews of and interviews by them all, Kerrang! was my life for a good while, my Wednesday act of worship.
Amen.
590 Down (still)
*is there actually a correlation between heavy gauge vinyl and sound? or is it just a plot to one day bring down my record shelves?
**SLEEVENOTES!!! Sweet Lord above, I love me a good sleeve note.
^grizzled old hand that I am I know the trick is to put your flexi disc on top of a LP when playing it.
^*also see hardcore band Bomb Disneyland!, can’t for the life of me see why Mickey Mouse objected to that. Still, I liked the fact they changed their name to Bomb Everything!
^^since I’m feeling nostalgic, dig this. It’s very of its time, but I like the bit where the lady strokes the, highly symbolic, snake:
Was Kerrang! a British ‘zine? I don’t recall ever getting any when I was in my rock magazine buying days. Hit Parader, Circus, and Metal Edge yes. But Kerrang! wasn’t widely distributed around here. Because if it was, I’d have a collection of flexi discs as well dammit. The only flexi disc I ever owned was of Joe Satriani’s “The Mystical Potato Head Groove Thing” that came in a Guitar Player magazine right before ‘Flying In A Blue Dream’ was released. I think I still have it somewhere.
Very nice archive of your youth right there.
Flexi discs?? Haha, true story: Mattel came out with a line of Barbies in the mid 80s called, “Barbie and the Rockers” and I HAD to have them! The one barbie I managed to get was Derek – the Michael Damian of barbies, with a pompadour and cool threads. Each Rocker came with a flexi of their theme song, and a B-side track of another “hit”, as did Derek. To play it on our shitty record player, you had to put a quarter (that’s 25 cents) on one side of it for balance. Weird.
Other flexis would come in children’s books growing up too, though I don’t remember precisely what books.
Wow, that’s a great story – just the sort of thing that I’d imagine strange middle-aged men pay $gazillions for still boxed.
So was Derek’s full name Derek Barbie? If so I think I may have found the perfect pseudonym for fronting my punk band under.
Fortunately (or unfortunately) I haven’t suffered from a blackout in a while.
… I also just threw out a couple of mid to late 90s issues of Kerrang! Interesting what could be found in there once upon a time – Stone Temple Pilots, a nice big article about Lanegan, and another boasted chat about Axl Rose and his imminent Guns N’ Roses album … (I fair chuckled at that). No flexis or sexys, though …
Why’d you bin them?
I was clearing out stuff and really had no need for them they. Hadn’t looked at them in years and was actually surprised I even had them!
I never owned any of records but some of those bands bring back memories.
Your blackouts sound like fun. I’m not familiar with much of anything in this post so it’s interesting reading! Learning moments. 🙂
Also meant to say that I, too, have had those blackouts. They always happen in front of record stores, and when I come to I’m always holding a record or three…
My lovely wife just rolls her eyes when I tell her these true stories!
It’s a (financially) debilitating condition.
Oh yes a new excuse, she will never believe me though
It’s OK, my lovely wife never believes me, either. But when the blackouts cannot be controlled, what’s a guy to do? 😉
I have a five record blackout sitting in the living room right now.
Man, you’ve got a bad case of blackouts right there.
Exactly
It certainly is… odd that it only happens in front of record stores, for us. I wonder if anyone else has the same problem in front of book stores, or lingerie stores, or candy stores…
When we got our record pressed up at Pirates, I got to check out their warehouse/museum and they had a whole shelf of flexi’s, a few thousand or so! I thought they might be from back in the day but they were newer ( a few years old) I guess someone thought it was gonna be the next ‘hipster resurgence’…boy where they wrong.
Regarding heavy weight vinyl, I spoke with a good friend and avid collector/dealer recently who believes the heavyweight vinyl may actually be inferior as the deeper grooves amplify defects. I also revel in the irony of how people (DJ’s usually, or people who have had to move their large collections multiple times) complain so much about how heavy a collection of vinyl can be, so what do we do? Make ’em heavier! Hahahaha! Also, I have noticed that since the saturation of the pressing plants with everyone one and their grandmother pressing wax and labels re-issuing everything and anything, the consistency is shit. One out of every 10 or so new releases I’ve copped in the past 10 years or so has been defective, even 180gm.
I love the idea of warehouses full of failed hipster trends – one day they’ll make a come back, along with the wax cylinder.
The weight debate is a real interesting one too, I’d not heard the idea that it actually worsens the quality (or amplifies the errors). A perverse part of me actually quite likes that as a concept.
So did you get to see your records being made?
No, Pirates sends the masters to Europe, they use a press in The Czech Republic, I know…crazy but that’s who they’ve worked with for years and I’m not sure why they haven’t sourced a local yet or if they are looking into but I think they just have a reliable experienced crew over there as opposed to the younger perhaps unproven presses that have been popping up as of late here in The US.
This. This post is awesome. I love how you’ve hung your flexis out to dry after washing them. 😉
I’ve never owned a flexi disc. Good on you for keeping the spirit alive!
You’ve never flexi’d? Man, you’ve never lived!
Um… I guess? Haha
Love the pic of vinyl hanging off of a closeline! Ha …Vain got press back in the day and I remember Vain going on about England is where it’s happening you the total late 80s drive the hype machine in America deal….nver heard them either ..great call should have done Your So Vain but Pussycat beat Em to it..snooze u loose…..great read Joe!
Cheers Deke! I’ll get around to listening to/reviewing Vain some time soon.
Oh wow Kerrang was the bible for awhile. That is serious collecting still having the flex-discs
No, its just serious need-to-get-out-more-ingness!
I used to love Kerrang! I have big scrapbooks full of them.
The only flexi I ever had was Love/Hate’s Tumbleweed which I accidentally played too fast with hilarious consequences.
There’s got to be a post in that… records you played at the wrong speed. I took me ages to get used to Nuclear Assault at the right speed after playing the Plague ep too slow. I thought it was awesome grind!
Do tell! Did it shred the flexi?
No. It just sounded really funny too fast. Its a silly riff anyway. And we were kids so…
John Peel made a career out of it. I think Moby deliberately made a record that was designed to work at 33 and 45 RPM – clever bastard!
Ooh that is clever. It is a thing that got lost in the shiny disc age.
Good thing we brave rebels rose up and threw off the cruel yoke of our small silvered oppressors.
I wonder if those Kerrang! flexis might form a significant part of your retirement fund one day.
I hoped so too. Sadly a quick look at Discogs tells me I’d be looking at just upwards of £8.50 for the lot.
Oh rats. Guess there must have been lots of obsessive teenage hoarders, eh?
Well FUCK. Here are more records I want, you bugger.
^grizzled old hand that I am I know the trick is to put your flexi disc on top of a LP when playing it.
I did not know that. I haven’t had a problem, I guess my turntable grips the plastic of these things well enough. Good to know, though.
Aww shucks, I knew you’d like this one and I knew you’d want ’em too. You’ll want my next post even more …
Btw – do you remember Vain?
Davey Vain! He should have been a huge star with that name.
I think they missed the boat when they never covered ‘You’re So Vain’. Open goal that. Good band though, well that’s how I remember them.