Monday, November 16, 2009

Medalark Eleven



One more request - this time as a thank you to the Madchester Rave-On blog which I've been following for a while and has given me hours of nostalgic pleasure, listening to obscure old stuff that I've not heard in nearly 20 years.

Madchester was one of those genres, invented I'm sure by the NME, that was huge for a short time before it quickly out-grew itself and dissolved in a sea of grunge.

What was really funny was watching C86-era bands jump desperatly onto the bandwagon (and there were A LOT of them..Soup Dragons, Primal Scream, The Beloved etc) with some very mixed results.

Glossop's The Bodines had released the jangle-pop classic "Played" back in 1987 and it's still one of my favourite albums of all-time. They had a particularly ill-fated attempt at "going baggy" - probably a year too late, on Creation Records under the guise of Medalark Eleven.

They released a couple of singles and an album (some of the better tracks were re-worked from The Bodines era) but suffered nothing by the way of popularity.

Their last single is here - see what you think. It hasn't aged too well but they still managed to retain a lot of their jangly charm. Pece wanted to hear it.

Medalark Eleven - Smoke EP (1993)

Tracks:
1) Smoke (taken from the album "Shaped Up, Shipped Out")
2) Big Sharp Knife (Alternate Mix to the album version)
3) Smoked (Dad's Army Remix)