The Midnight Circus - " Richard, Roger, Rodney, Rastus, Raoul, Roderick, Randy, Rupert " (Hyped2Death cd-r 2003)

Classic cassette DIY from Leicester,UK.....your author's hometown, and a hot bed of DIY activity throughout the 80's.
Leicester has its fair share of showbiz legends; Englebert Humperdinck, the magisterial Showaddywaddy, Family, Gaye Bikers On Acid, Kasabian(Mmmmm?),the Attenboroughs,the Elephant Man....the list goes on.
(I lived near Ric Grech from Family/Blind Faith/Traffic, in the early eighties.He was broke wrecked on drugs and alcohol,and was pushed around in a wheelchair by a mate who wore a cowboy hat and an eye-patch; and had to live on my council estate in a flat.How the mighty fall eh? He tragically died not long after i last saw him and his mate slagging off the OAP's with some choice expletives at my bus stop for ogling him and his friend.)
Never mentioned is The Midnight Circus, who never played a gig to my knowledge, and made several impossibly obscure cassettes in the early 1980's.
It's classic sounding Cassette based DIY, upturned buckets and tin cans for drums, cheap fuzz guitar, drum machine and the obligatory short wave radio.
This is suburban folk at its finest, until they tried to make 'proper music' in the latter part of their career.
This happens to all the best bands when enticed from their natural environment. rather like how a teenager loses what made their drawings fantastic when they were pre-teen, as they try to emulate what they think a grown up draws like. This is a mistake that can take years to unlearn, the same tragically applies to music.
So ignore the poorly crafted tunes at the end of this compilation, with their synthesizers and their well recorded bass lines, and relish the innocence of the first 18 tracks in all their muffled brilliance.

Track Listing:

1		Leather & Lace	1:55
2		Song Of Experience & Imagination #2	4:22
3		Tube Train	6:13
4		Playthings	2:58
5		Survivors	5:38
6		Pop Song	2:36
7		Political Song	3:07
8		Pre-Natal Counselling	3:01
9		Which Was Wrong?	1:23
10		Silicone Baby	1:44
11		The Hedonist Jive	2:41
12		Talk To Me	3:19
13		Suburbia Nervosa	3:52
14		Recognise The Man	2:57
15		Wall-To-Wall Noise	3:19
16		Guernica	5:59
17		Obsession & Guilt	2:58
18		The New Age	2:11
19		Untitled	2:58
20		This Deception	5:38
21		Unreal	3:46

Tracks 1 to 4 from the cassette The Bland Craze
Tracks 5 to 9 from the cassette Pre-Natal Counselling
Tracks 10, 11 from the double EP Angst In My Pants
Tracks 12 to 14 from the cassette Do Modern Atoms Wear Fashionable Clothes?
Tracks 15, 16 from the cassette Galvanising The Dead
Tracks 17 to 21 previously unreleased

Sorry the files are M4a, i lost the mp3 files and i can't be bothered to convert 'em!


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ANGST IN MY PANTS EP (Deleted Records DEP 002) 1980

The other big shot of the DIY world was Deleted Records from the rock and roll furnace that is Grimsby. Run by those self proclaimed Legends in their own Lunchtime, The Instant Automations, or Mark Automaton and Protag(#). It was from this stable that this double seven incher was unleashed on the genuinely unknowing public in 1980.

"This is doubtlessly one of the finest records I've ever heard, and the second greatest compilation in the history of rock!Well the proof is in the pudding: Not only does the record include some of the finest recorded moments by the legendary Instant Automatons , 012 and the Door and the Window, but furthermore a rare vinyl appearance by the Digital Dinosaurs! If that ain't enough you get some fine TVP-related spurts from the Missing Persons and extremely do it yourself DIY frenzy from the Midnight Circus. Who in "Silicone Baby" and "Hedonist Jive" have out-poignanted a tow-truck full of Aimee Mann's and Michelle Shocked's edgy humanity and funny as shit to boot."(Johan Kugelberg ,Ugly Things Magazine)

Track listing:

restless night       INSTANT AUTOMATONS
  scared to be alone   INSTANT AUTOMATONS
  cracked actor        MIC WOODS
  weekday crush        MIC WOODS
  silicone baby        MIDNIGHT CIRCUS
  hedonist jive        MIDNIGHT CIRCUS
  9 to 5               012
  in the ghetto        012
  sideways man         DIGITAL DINOSAURS
  not got champagne    LILY MALONE
  is it you, is it me  COLIN POTTER
  i am your shadow     COLIN POTTER
  quick one            COLIN POTTER
  blue eyed boy        MISSING PERSONS
  angst in my pants    MISSING PERSONS
recorded at Street Level 8 track bannana factory 28th-30th july, engineered and mixed
variously by kif kif, grant showbiz and corina

Note That the First greatest compilation in the history of Rock is "The Weird Noise E.P" of course!
Also that the Midnight Circus come from my home town of Leicester,home of many Diy legends like Deep Freeze Mice amongst many others.

# On the subject of Protag, i can't think of any other genre that include participants with such excellent monikers as this.Other notables are Bendle, Nag,Giblet, and of course Kif Kif.

DOWNLOAD directly to your pants HERE!

Various Artists - "Deleted Funtime - various toons by various loons" (Deleted Records DEC 009) 1980

Another classic UK DIY compilation cassette, up there with "No New York", "Nuggets" and "Hicks from the Sticks" in its influential majesty.
This tape was as exciting to the skint 16 year old Zchivago,as was the Sex Pistols LP three years earlier. The fact that you got all this weird noise for just 60p plus a self addressed envelope was a revelation; yes some people out there DO really mean it after all! The £3:99 I paid for "Never Mind the Bollocks" seemed an unjustifiable rip-off, by some cynical fashion clique in London that had little or nothing to do with us 'Outsiders' living in the provinces.
From here, one could merely send a blank tape and an SAE to an address, to gain access to endless numbers of cassettes from marginalised non-musicians and misfits from all over the UK; and they were listed in the insert.
Among the more well know faces we have hidden gems from such creatures as Lurch, Heddon Street W1, and Duo Elettronica.Units of Pleasure are especially good, sort of a semi-instrumental zero-fi cross between Joy Division and Dick Dale, without either tunes or surf board.(Surf Division for a concept anyone?)
 The sound quality is reassuringly abysmal, except for, tape compilers ,the Instant Automatons, tracks; which I suspect had a lot less number of cassette generations behind them (a sort of accidental version of the old rock trick of giving the support act the crap PA). The Digital Dinosaurs could obviously play their instruments, them being post-hippie types, but their tunes are nearly all classic pop toons and can do no wrong; even if they did have beards.
 There ain't a shite track on this c-90, but then again I am well known for liking, what Henry and Henrietta Normal would call, 'Shiote'(sic).
Like it says on the insert," Don't worry about the tape Hiss......you'll get used to it!".......I did,or is that my tinnitus?

Tracklist:

A1 –Missing Persons - Chemical Solutions 0:49
A2 –Units Of Pleasure - Another Form Of Art 0:48
A3 –Colin Potter - Power 4:48
A4 –Stabmental Thin Veil Of Blood 3:03
A5 –The Midnight Circus - Obsession 3:00
A6 –391 - Prisoner Of The Living Room 2:28
A7 –1,2,3, I Ddrim - Ystafell 54 1:04
A8 –The Door And The Window - Habits 2:35
A9 –The Electric Bereaved - Duty To The Empire 2:22
A10 –The Digital Dinosaurs - Fingers And Thumbs 4:04
A11 –Missing Persons - Richard Nixon At The Oxford Union 1:07
A12 –Lurch - Single Symphony Excerpt 2:01
A13 –Percy Faeces - Pray For The Boys At The Front 2:43
A14 –The Instant Automatons - Mr McPhee 1:56
A15 –The Mystic Umbrellas - Journey To The West 3:48
A16 –The Everchanging Face Drummer Boy 3:14
A17 –Units Of Pleasure - Forces Of Joy 1:19
A18 –The Digital Dinosaurs - Walking Out 1:59
B1 –The Digital Dinosaurs - Bouncing Back 2:16
B2 –Units Of Pleasure - Acueforpure 2:33
B3 –Merz - Spud-Dream 3:00
B4 –The Door And The Window - Human Touch 3:20
B5 –Missing Persons - Acoustics In The Atomic Age 1:36
B6 –Duo Elettronica - Duo Elettronica Tape Excerpt
B7 –Colin Potter - Bogey Man
B8 –The Bonfires - Drumfall
B9 –Mic Woods - Little Girl 3:53
B10 –The Instant Automatons - Disillusion 3:14
B11 –The Midnight Circus - Pre-Natal Counselling 3:04
B12 –Alien Brains - Alien Brains Excerpts 3:43
B13 –Home Brew - Home Brew Tape Excerpt 2:45
B14 –Eyes In The Dark - At Six O' Clock 2:57
B15 –Heddon Street W1 - We Wanna Pogo 1:49
B16 –Missing Persons - Negatives 2:54

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or

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Various Artists - "A Bagfull of Angst" (Unknown Label BOOB 005) 1980

Here we have a “Bagfull of Angst” , on an umarked cassette label run by Dean Poole from South Wales. A fine selection of Street Level and Deleted Records artistes, recorded in glorious Mono, harking back to the halcyon mono days of Dr. Feelgood. A fine compilation, so I won’t rant on  about the purity of this music, instead you get an uninspired running commentary of the tracks contained within this compact package of UK DIY classics.
The Instant Automatons kick off the proceedings with a live rendition of Humberside Delta Reggae classic,“Peter paints his Fence” fused with “Scared to be alone”. I assume they were fused together deliberately as they share the very same pre-programmed el cheapo drum box beat;....and why not? A surprisingly unsparce sprinkling of mild applause follows!
Mark Automaton continues to hog side one with “side” project, 391, with "Living in a Factory", which is an ethereal meeting of Joe Meek and a ring modulator.Then , some classic anti-sunshine pop with the post ironic "I'm so Happy"; followed by a de-nazified version of Beethoven's Nineth via a Scunthorpe working mens club band on a cocktail of Laudenum and Peyote. A touching peon to the Fashionable Trousers cassette label winds up Mark Automaton's contribution very nicely indeed.After Instant Automatons mate Mic Woods' muffled hippie punk, we get the chance for Protag's side project Merz, to provide us with a fuzzy flange-fest of Automatic Music, before we end side one with the chaos of The Bombay Ducks, about whom I know little, but I do recognize the familiar honking of that saxophone; I suspect I have heard that horn on one, or several, of the Instant Automatons recordings!
Side 1 is an almost perfect compilation, but side Two does start with what seems like a recording of some awful hippie warbling with some kind person accidentally leaning on the erase button after ten seconds into the song. It doesn't get any better for the whole of the Missing Persons 5 song contribution! I'm sure they weren't as bad as this on the other stuff of theirs that I've heard! "Besides myself with laughter", the fifth tune from said band, is without doubt one of the most annoyingly unfunny tunes I've ever had the misfortune to be exposed to! But if you like the sound of long haired sixth form students mucking about in the common room in between Genesis albums, then this is undoubtedly for you!
Not for the first time we are saved by Leicester DIY legends The Midnight Circus, hammering out a couple of anthems on their cheap guitars and their ,unbettered, plastic bucket and boxes rhythm section.
The bizarrely named The Original Child Bomb, follow with a couple of Fuzz punk monoliths that verge on the realm of Fireball XL5 at times; but that's good isn't it?
Coventry's sole reason for existence has to be the Digital Dinosaurs? If the Luftwaffe tried to flatten those sweeping concrete flyovers, and tasteless shopping centres, we'd all applaud, but no force on the planet can erase the classic songs from those Donovan devotees that gave us "Baby Snakes"; now come on, even Hitler would get down to this little number....surely?

Track Listing:

 Side 1:
1 The Instant Automatons - " Peter Paints His Fence" / "Scared of being Alone"
2 391 - "Living in a factory"
3 391 - "I'm So Happy"
4 391 - "En Die Freude"
5 391 - "Requiem for fashionable trousers"
6 Mic Woods - "Martin's Out-Take"
7 Merz - "Automatic Music"
8 The Bombay Ducks - "Croonin' 'bout my baby
Side 2:
1 Missing Persons - "Fly away Peter"
2 Missing Persons- "The secret Diary"
3 Missing Persons- "Marie-Claire"

4 Missing Persons- "Towards the Forest"
5 Missing Persons - "Besides myself(with Laughter)

6 Midnight Circus - "Me and Debbie"
7 Midnight Circus - "A Child in the Sun"
8 The Original Child Bomb - "Alone...."
9 The Original Child Bomb - "Interruption"
10 Digital Dinosaurs - "Baby Snakes"

DOWNLOAD a bagful of angst HERE!