Honesty

There's loads of this in the front garden this year - Beck really likes it and looks very impressive just now, though technically it's probably 'invasive' or something (plus it should be purple, apparently, though I think white is somehow more fitting - their must be loads of ironic and/or symbolic inferences I could probably draw if I could be bothered...!)


There's plenty of great bands whose entire recorded output can be collected onto one CD - think Talulah Gosh, Minor Threat, Another Sunny Day - and there's something pleasingly neat and complete about that kind of oeuvre. Some bands, though, never even make it quite that far. I've been listening to a favourite of mine today - The Raw Herbs, a fine jangly mid-eighties indie guitar band from, I think, Oxford. A flexi and three singles proper, one BBC session, for Janice Long, and couple of bits and bobs - 16 or 17 songs in all (just enough, on reflection, for a nice compilation should someone be bothered) - but, and here's the thing, pretty much every one a corker. I first heard their single "She's a Nurse" on a compilation cassette ("Strum and Drum", I must still have it somewhere) that came with the short-lived, and very badly titled, 'Underground' magazine sometime in the mid to late eighties. Most of their stuff came out on the Medium Cool label, who also put out records by The Siddeleys and The Popguns, but perhaps they'd be more widely remembered if they'd been on Sarah or Creation (certainly they'd have fitted at the more jangly end of the former's roster or the more fey end of the latter's, if that helps place them for you on the indiepop continuum...!) Luckily, there's always someone on U-toob who remembers these things...