12 x 12 - Big Gold Dream by Fire Engines

Washing Powder and Meat, Heston is that you?

This band are the epitome of a Cult band, only existing on short bursts of activity but leaving such an imprint. This was what turned out to be their last single, an attempt to follow up the success of Candyskin and it fell flat (or so the internet tells me) and the band broke up.

Although sounding nothing like their first LP, it's an impeccable single; Antithetic chords, rattling toms and funky. If this came on in a club people would be dancing and not give a monkeys who it was by, "The Fire Who...?" they'd say. The B-sides go back to a bit more of the sound we are used to hearing from the scratchy, up tempo percussive work outs that brought them to my ears the first time with tracks like "Get Up, Use Me" and their amazing cover of "(We Don't Need This) Fascist Groove Thing"

Like this hear the full story on the film Big Gold Dream, It's awesome

12 x 12 - Elepant Stone by The Stone Roses

Original pressing worth £13, My Version £3

Let's start with the positives and work backwards (much like Full Fathom Five, which we'll get too), the 7" version of this great track by The Roses produced by Hooky himself is amazing, Really like this gem since discovering it on an odd CD version of their debut I've got (maybe I can discuss another time?). The 12" mix has dated horribly with these really stiff drum machines opening it for reasons I don't understand, the guitars don't sound in time, a little washed out when layered over such a pounding drum machine and the main bit of the song sounds like a different band. Avoid.

Full Fathom Five, I assume is a test case for what would become a trick they use on Don't Stop on their S/T debut, doesn't stop it being awful and The Hardest Thing is the World is a really cool little track which is very much of the bands sound without being over dramatic.

12 x 12 - Bedsitter by Soft Cell

99p from Cash Converters, Noice

Those who saw that it was a bedsit you were correct. in that it was a photo of one. Did it look like Marc Almond's that he wrote this song about probably in some capacity but I can't exactly get him on the blower and ask him. Bedsitter (Reached number #4) surpassed Tainted Love (their no #1 single) in the charts but not in the songwriting. Admittedly Marc didn't write Tainted love, but his take on the nightlife in this track is much more impressive. Dave Ball does an outstanding job on the instrumental too.

Always liked the 7inch version, the 12 inch does the drop out a few instruments and I'll spit some bars and bring it back into the chorus and it rather works well as it's not a rehash of any previous parts of the track, these are fresh lyrics. Facility Girls isn't much of a track, I suppose that's what the B-side was for but it goes on  long and doesn't really go anywhere.

12 x 12 - Mini Series announcement

I've always wanted to be a music journalist. I love writing about design, honest, but if you said which one came first it'd be music. I used to watch a program called "freshly squeezed" on channel 4, an orange pun I assume, when my dad went out to work on a morning and it would play the newest music videos discovering The Ordinary Boys, Kaiser Chiefs and Bob Sinclar.

 This coupled with a friends obsession with Green Day, a regular viewer of the free music video channels and a music obsessed family; it was hard not to be unless of course I am missing the link in the chain where I discovered the works of Herbert Bayer at the age of 3 and forgot about them.

No orange puns, kinda sad now

Herbert Bayer's sweet layout

Why am I telling you this? Well I have a rarely visited section of my record shelf that I would like to explore. It's the 12" singles collection. Now their are masters of the 12" format and then their are some who sound like the 12" release was an after thought. Not naming names yet... that is for this mini series 12x12; 1 record and 12 lines of text to review it.

I mean clearly I bought the record so I am not going to think that it is terrible but I have made some bad buying decisions and this might show me up a little bit but hey ho. We are all music lovers here. 

Here is a teaser of the first single >