The Rain Parade - Blue

Gorgeous little track from the Rain Parade's 1984 EP Explosions in the Glass Palace. Of all the Paisley Underground bands I always thought they had the most perfect sound.

The Bangles - Going Down to Liverpool

The BBC had a programme on last weekend about girl groups. It spent a decent amount of time on the Bangles, but unfortunately, it was all in their crap phase (ie after Prince discovered them). So I thought I'd post another one from their 1984 debut album, All Over the Place, which remains one of the finest collections I've ever heard of '60s influenced girlpop. And around these parts, we love '60s influenced girlpop.

I'm not sure how many people know this was a Katrina and the Waves cover. It's not terribly different from the original, though the harmonies are nicer.

The Three O'Clock - Marjorie Tells Me

Since I started doing this blog, I've been very pleased to see how many Three O'Clock fans there still are out there (judging by the number of people who end up here by searching for them). They were one of my favourite bands as a teenager - I was actually a member of their fan club, and I didn't join many fan clubs - but I could really count on my fingers the number of people I knew who seemed to have ever heard of them. It's heartening to know that I'm really not alone in my Three O'Clock love, even if this knowledge is about 25 years overdue.

This one's from the 1983 Baroque Hoedown EP. Not one of their better-known tunes, but isn't it just delightful?

The Salvation Army - While We Were in Your Room Talking to Your Wall

The Salvation Army’s lone album under that name is basically a psychedelic pop record, but one that largely reflects their punk roots – it’s some distance from the fluffy pre-twee sounds that they would become known for as The Three O’Clock. This song is as close as they get to it, a trippy almost-ballad distinguishable from their Sixteen Tambourines period only by the sloppy production.

The Eyes of Mind - Alice

A little-known treasure from the Paisley Underground vaults, the Eyes of Mind's entire recorded output seems to consist of Tales of the Turquoise Umbrella, which was mysteriously released as a six-song EP in their native US and a full-length album in Europe. Frankly, they could have released a double LP of this song alone and it would still be worth tracking down - one of the catchiest pieces of bubblegum psychedelic pop you'll ever hear anywhere.

The Three O'Clock - The Girl with the Guitar

Here's a wonderful little treasure: an acoustic performance of one of the Three O'Clock's loveliest tunes, from their last really good album Arrive Without Travelling (1985). As I said in another recent post, they were twee before "twee" existed.

The clip is taken from IRS's Cutting Edge which was a programme broadcast on MTV USA in the mid-1980s. I would murder someone for DVDs of the series.

This song, by the way, is allegedly about Susanna Hoffs of the Bangles, who the Three O'Clock's Louis Gutierrez was going out with at the time.

The Three O'Clock - Seeing Is Believing

If you were hoping for something a bit more Irish today, forget it. I find St Patrick's Day an absolutely loathsome holiday, and always spend it hiding indoors from the drunken mobs that terrorise the city centre. And I don't mean the American tourists in leprechaun hats.

So here's something a bit cheerier instead. I've posted a number of Three O'Clock songs but it seems I've skipped over their first full-length album, Sixteen Tambourines. Released in 1983, it marks the point at which the Three O'Clock finally and firmly rejected their punk origins, instead opting for winsome psychedelic pop that could be placed as easily in the children's as in the indie section of your local music store (well, maybe not "A Day in Erotica").

I actually think of this album as twee before "twee" existed. It's a bit more slickly produced than you usually get in that genre. So, hi-fi twee, maybe. It's still a record that any self-respecting tweehead should own.

This is my favourite track on the album, mainly because the chorus sends shivers down my spine every time I hear it. Still.

The Three O'Clock - I Go Wild

The Three O'Clock's 1982 Baroque Hoedown EP is so full of pop classics, I could post every track from it here. Eventually I probably will.

Here's a great one with a fabulous video, too.

Bangles - The Real World

An absolutely classic Bangles track, from their 1982 self-titled debut EP. All jangly guitar pop and harmonies. Why couldn't they have stayed this good forever?

Opal - Fell from the Sun

Opal tend to arouse swoons of adoration from a lot of indie music fans but I have to confess I'm not one of them. Mainly, I find their earlier folky stuff a little boring and their later, more psychedelic stuff too overwrought and lyrically embarrassing at times. Plus, I've never understood the love for Kendra Smith's voice, which I find flat and often tuneless. From the shocked reaction I always get from saying that, though, I know it's just me.

I did have high hopes for them when they first emerged as Clay Allison, mainly because of this song, which is genuinely wonderful. Pity they never really lived up to this again.

The Three O'Clock - Her Head's Revolving

On an overview of the Salvation Army/Three O'Clock's recording career, there's a fairly straight trajectory from their psychedelic-punk-pop origins to the feeble new wave slush of their final album. 1985's Arrive Without Travelling was their fourth release out of six and soundwise, it's more or less in the middle as well: although the punk element is pretty much totally gone, there's still plenty of psychedelic pop here, but it's much keyboard-heavier and more slickly produced than its predecessors. Some of the lyrics also continue the band's unfortunate journey towards the mawkishly sentimental. I liked this album a lot at the time - hey, I was 15 - but I can't say I was really surprised when it turned out to be the last Three O'Clock album I liked.

This was Arrive's first single and one of its few tracks to retain elements of their... I don't want to say "harder" early sound (it would be vaguely ridiculous to describe anything they ever did as "hard") so let's just say that it rocks a bit more than most of the rest of the album. I seem to recall from somewhere that the video was banned from Canadian MTV for its alleged drug references.

The Three O'Clock - As Real As Real

Been a while since I've posted anything from the Paisley Underground and I can't believe I never posted this one, since it's one of my all-time favourite songs ever by anyone. It comes from the Three O'Clock's first release under that name, the 1982 EP Baroque Hoedown, and it is lovely beyond any words I could use to describe it. Just have a listen for yourself.

The Dream Syndicate - That's What You Always Say

I think this is the only one of the major Paisley Underground bands I haven't put up here yet. The Dream Syndicate were fairly distinctive from the other bands in that scene, having almost none of the jangle-pop influences of the Three O'Clock or Bangles and favouring a much harder psychedelia than the Rain Parade.

The main difficulty I have with their early recordings is that Steve Wynn wasn't much of a singer (and I also think the same is true of Kendra Smith, although I know I'm in a minority in that view). That didn't stop them having a lot of really, really good songs on their full-length debut The Days of Wine and Roses, but it did make the difference between "good" and "great" on some of them. After that album, unfortunately, the tendency towards hardness won them over completely and they sank straight into plonkerville.

This is the standout track from Days.

The Bangles - Tell Me

It may be hard to believe now, but there was a time when the Bangles made brilliantly catchy three-minute jangly pop tunes that were adored by people who listened to "new wave", college radio, underground music or whatever it was called back then.

Although their slide into shitsville is often blamed on Susanna Hoffs becoming the centre of attention to the exclusion of the contributions made by everyone else in the band, I have to say that nearly every single one of my favourite songs on their first few releases, apart from the covers, was hers. She may have been the male fans' favourite Bangle for other reasons but she was also their best songwriter in those early years. Having said that, she did go on to co-write the atrocious "Eternal Flame", which is more than enough to earn her the opprobrium that was unfairly heaped on her in other respects.

Anyway, here's a little slice of the pop perfection that was their first full-length album, All Over the Place, from 1984. The clips that appear on this video, incidentally, were from an old American MTV show which somebody really needs to make available again.

Rainy Day - I'll Keep It With Mine

Long before the tribute album became such a tiresome cliché, a bunch of musicians from the Paisley Underground scene got together to record an album of (mostly) '60s cover versions. Rainy Day - it was never quite clear whether that was the name of the album, or the name of the "band" - was choc-a-bloc with treasures, such that I had a hard time deciding which one to put up here.

In the end it came down to either this one, a Dylan cover sung by the Bangles' Susanna Hoffs, or David Roback's version of Buffalo Springfield's "On the Way Home". I might still put that one up some other time, because it's just gorgeous. But this one has slightly more memories for me.

Rain Parade - This Can't Be Today

The Rain Parade were probably the most critically acclaimed Paisley Underground band, and with good reason. Their songs were beautifully crafted, gorgeously sung, and with an unerring sense of when it was time to shut up and let the music do the talking. Sort of a psychedelic Television (aside from the "gorgeously sung" part).

This is my absolute favourite song of theirs, from their first album Emergency Third Rail Power Trip. It features Kendra Smith (then of Dream Syndicate, later of Opal) on backing vocals. I'm actually not a huge fan of her vocals generally - I know that's a bit of a heresy among Paisley Underground fans - but they're very, very nice here.

The Salvation Army - Upside Down

Here's a two-minute gem from one of the founding bands of LA's Paisley Underground scene, the Salvation Army (later known as the Three O'Clock thanks to legal action from the unamused owners of that trademark). I absolutely adore the Three O'Clock, too, or at least their first few records, although like their close associates the Bangles they took a serious turn for the worse after getting mixed up with one Prince Rogers Nelson in the late 1980s.

Some would argue their decline began even before then, as their sound lost all traces of its early punk influence and effectively became the musical equivalent of candyfloss, but I for one still think they were great then. In any event, their debut album in their original incarnation remains a classic and this is probably my favourite track on it. Enjoy.