Mention of Elastica in the recent Pink Flag post prompted me to present this one. I will have waxed lyrical elsewhere on these pages about how much this band meant to me. Sadly for me, I got into them at the point where having just left the clubs behind them they had moved up into the bigger venues shortly before the release of the first album. There was a tour in 1995 along with a clutch of festival gigs over the summer and then not a lot else.... for the longest time.... five years in fact.
So, I only saw them twice, first time at the Shepherd's Bush Empire in early 1995 and then again at the Junction in Cambridge in 2000. And here's an object lesson for bands. When you are riding the crest of a popularity wave, don't wait five years to release your second album*
Elastica were the darlings of the music press in 1995, garnering every bit as much coverage as Britpop heavyweights Blur and Oasis. Justine or Donna needed only to fart and it would get them a front cover in Sounds or NME! Maybe it was the fact that the band was three quarters made up of ballsy, confident women that made them so beloved of the press. And the first album was a killer. But then came a prolonged period of radio silence. When eventually 'The Menace' emerged music had moved on and the press with it. 'The Menace' had its moments, most notably for me 'How I Wrote Elastica Man' with Mark E. Smith on vocals, but it nowhere near lived up to their first.
This soundboard recording from the 'Live Bootlegs' blog was one of the last that the band played.
* Looking at the history of the album, it would appear that attempts to record a second album in 1996 floundered for all of the usual reasons (drugs, personalities, musical differences...). Key members departed and and the band were barely still in existance. The band that recorded the second album was rather different, not least because Donna Matthews was gone (bass player Annie Holland did leave but came back).