N.F.A.D

While grunge reigned in the early '90s, New Fast Automatic Daffodils made its mark on the indie rock scene in Manchester, England. Bassist Justin Crawford, guitarist Dolan Hewison, and drummer Perry Saunders got together in 1988, and singer Andy Spearpoint joined soon after. Spearpoint's obscure lyrics spoken over repetitive riffs and beats gave NFAD's music a dream-like quality. While many bands of that era were preoccupied with displaying their angst on the world stage, NFAD was concerned with creating groovy, spacy music you could dance to. And they made plenty of it: three full-lengths, five EPs, and ten singles all in roughly four years.

Heaven 17

Taking their name from a fictional pop group mentioned in Anthony Burgess's novel, A Clockwork Orange, (where 'The Heaven Seventeen' are at number 4 in the charts with "Inside"), Heaven 17 formed when Ian Craig Marsh and Martyn Ware split from their earlier group, The Human League, and formed the production company British Electric Foundation (BEF). BEF’s first recording was a cassette-only album called Music for Stowaways and an LP called Music for Listening To. Shortly after, they recruited their friend and photographer Glenn Gregory on vocals to complete their line-up for Heaven 17. Like The Human League, Heaven 17 heavily used synthesizers and drum machines (the Linn LM-1 programmed by Ware). Session musicians were used for bass and guitar (John Wilson) and grand piano (Nick Plytas). Where as the band's former colleagues The Human League had gone on to major chart success in 1981, Heaven 17 struggled to make an impact. Their debut single "(We Don't Need This) Fascist Groove Thang" attracted some attention and, due to its overtly left-wing political lyrics, was banned by BBC Radio 1[2] DJ Mike Read (who is a staunch Conservative).[3] However, neither this or the other four singles taken from the band's debut album Penthouse and Pavement managed to reach the UK Top 40.[1] The album itself proved to be a minor success and peaked at #14 on the UK album chart, and was later certified Gold by the BPI in 1982.

Love & Rockets

Three fourths of Bauhaus formed Love And Rockets, who defused Bauhaus' gloomy pop and linked it with the generation of shoegazers and ravers. More electronic sounds and dance beats, plus evanescent vocals and evocative guitars, lent Seventh Dream Of Teenage Heaven (1985) the quality of a mirage, accomplishing de facto the old hippie ambition of turning acid-rock into abstract trance. After the commercial Express (1986) and Earth-Sun-Moon (1987), the band reached a new synthesis for the rave generation on the hyper-psychedelic Love And Rockets (1989). But the style was still in progress. The lengthy ecstatic litanies of Hot Trip To Heaven (1994) contributed to found the genre of acid ambient music (like Stone Roses covering Pink Floyd's A Saucerful Of Secrets), whereas the ethereal Sweet F.A (1996) exaggerated and diluted the idea (early Pink Floyd fronted by Donovan and arranged by Brian Eno). While not up to their creative standards, the futuristic/edonistic electronic music of Lift (1998) seemed to come full circle and to eventually make sense of their entire career.

Saturn 5

The Inspiral Carpets are one of those great English singles bands.
Up there with Madness or the Kinks or The Buzzcocks those effortless purveyors of a machine gun rush of fine three minute statements.
In the late eighties and early nineties The Inspiral Carpets hit the chart far more consistently than their fellow Madchester travellers the Happy Mondays and The Stone Roses.
Playing their psychedelic punk pop in the mid eighties way before anyone was putting the ’Mad’ into Manchester.
They had the trippy light show, the short snappy songs and the frazzled fringes of prime time garage gonzoids.
Maybe that was because The Inspirals were always a punk rock band at heart and cranked the energy level accordingly.

99 Records

The 99 Records (pronounced nine nine) story is really the story of a guy called Ed Bahlman and the events that surrounded his life for a few short years in the early 1980's.



99 Records was started by the aforementioned mythical, visionary Bahlman and named after its location in the basement of 99 MacDougal Street, just off Bleeker Street in New York's West Village. Originally it was a hip clothes shop run by Ed's girlfriend Gina Franklyn (a Londoner who incidentally was the first person in the States to import Doc Martens). Later Ed turned part of the shop into a record shop - 99 Records - which became a hang out for all sorts of muso types. The shop was one of the very few places to sell imports of many of the releases on Ed's beloved UK indies (he would go on trips with Gina to the UK and bring back the first copies to reach the States of many releases) and you could actually hear the records before you bought them, which was pretty much unheard of in New York back then. Gina would later split up with Ed and open a clothes shop called 99X on 6th Street. It still exists to this day but is now on 10th Street. Today the MacDougal Street shop is an Indian restaurant whose owners looked a little perplexed when I (in true saddo style) took some photos of it a few years back.

Ed was very involved in the New York music scene, putting on gigs and doing the odd bit of production. Sal Principato from Liquid Liquid recalls that he was 'thee hip underground guy at the time'. Right at the start of the 80's, he was really inspired by UK labels such as Y Records, On U Sound and Rough Trade and thought New York needed something along those lines, so after some gentle persuasion decided to start a label. Luckily this coincided with a very fertile period in New York's music scene. Importantly, Ed had a very clear idea of the sound he was looking for and was involved in mixing and producing many of the 99 releases.

Vivien Goldman

VIVIEN GOLDMAN is a writer, broadcaster, and musician who has devoted much of her work to Afro-Caribbean and global music. She is the adjunct professor of punk and reggae at NYU's Clive Davis Department of Recorded Music. Originally from London, Goldman now resides in New York City.The Book of Exodus is her fifth book. She began her career as a PR officer for Island Records, which is how she met Bob Marley. Goldman has written about reggae, punk and post-punk for the New York Times, Interview, Rolling Stone, The Observer, NME, The New Stateman, Sounds and Melody Maker. She was a founding member of The Flying Lizards, shared a flat with fellow NME journalist and Pretenders singer Chryssie Hynde, wrote songs for artists such as Massive Attack, and launched the video career of Flava Flav. Goldman is also an accomplished documentarian.

Danger Boy Compilation #5 (UK.DIY.Post/Punk.No Wave)

Tracklist :

1.Oh-OK - Playtime
2.Renaldo and the Loaf - A Medical Man
3.Monte Cazazza - Sex Is No Emergency
4.Zero Zero - Alptraum
5.The Fizzbombs - Beach Party
6.Pylon - Danger
7.Dum Dum Dum - Dum Dum Dum
8.The Beloved - If Only '88
9.Neon Judgement - Factory Walk
10.Artery - Afterwards
11.No More - Suicide Commando
12.Quad Throw Salchow - Unwelcome Guest


To Download Danger Boy Compilation #5 Please CLICK HERE