BEATNIK FILMSTARS - RECORDED LIVE AT LA CAV, BRISTOL,UK. OCTOBER 12TH 1990 ON CASSETTE FROM THE AUDIENCE.
This is pretty rough, but it’s also the only document of the first time Beatnik Filmstars played anywhere.
La Cav was a small underground stone cellar underneath a pub in St. Nicholas Market in the centre of Bristol. There was only a small vocal PA and no stage. Really no more than 100 people maximum should have ever been in the room, but tickets were free if you sent off to Raving Pop Blast! and 147 sent off for them, and I’m told there was most likely around 160 people jammed into the room (with no fire escape).
There was a little bit of interest as previously three members of this first line-up of the group had been in Indie-Garagey-band The Groove Farm, who had called it a day a few months earlier.
The support band were also people who had previously been in a band before called The Five Year Plan, but had yet to choose a new name, hence their odd name for the night! - Two of the group later joined Beatnik Filmstars for the second line up.
On this night the Beatniks were Jon Kent, Guitar and bongos. Dean Tyler, Guitars. Arthur Andrew Jarrett, Guitar, maracas & Vocals, Andy Henderson, Bass and Jez Butler, Drums, Vocals, and tape loop operator (which amounted to pressing play on a cassette player!)
It was 1990, and the band had yet to release any records, having spent a good nine months in talks with assorted record labels, with Rough Trade at the fore. But Rough Trade were going through financial issues, and the following year the group tired of being messed around and refusing to jump through hoops (“Come and play in London”, “Record more demos”) went ahead and released the album ‘ Marharishi’ themselves using the label name ‘Big Sky’ which was basically Raving Pop Blast! in disguise, as they didn’t want to be connected to anything from their murky past.
The cassette has, over the years, got damaged, and a few of the songs had to be ‘edited’. ‘
Some tracks cut off at the end, so have been faded.
‘Loudmouthed English Swine’ had silent drop outs, which have been ‘patched’ to make the listening back more enjoyable. The only other thing has been trying to balance out the treble/bass levels just for listening ‘pleasure’.
These days it would be possible to separate everything and re-tidy each track as well as the temptation to replace and add better played parts. And perhaps if enough people in the world cared that’s exactly what would have happened. Fortunately for you, no one does, and so you get it left in it’s raw and rough state.
It's interesting to hear ‘English Swine’ in this early stage, as the song resurfaced two albums later as ‘Apathetic English Swine’ and became one of the groups most popular tracks. Here, in this early version, you can easily point and say it was a rip-off of ‘Tomorrow Never Knows’ with the drum pattern and the ‘woo-woo’ tape loop, and it would be hard to reply with anything other than ‘Guilty’.
But remember in 1990, no one was really doing that. In fact there was an actual studio version of the song (long lost I’m afraid), recorded at PIJ where all the tracks that made it onto ‘Marharish’ were recorded. And one afternoon, the track was overheard by some people who later went on to be involved with one of the biggest named groups to come out of the area. They were into ‘Dance music’ and asked if they could use the track. Not that we had anything against the idea of ‘Dance music’ (isn’t all music ‘Dance Music’?) But we said thanks but no.
But from the Beatniks point of view, the song was vastly improved when it finally surfaced with a ‘similar’ drum pattern, changed enough so no one could shout ‘rip-off’ and smothered in feedback rather than ‘tape loops’.
Of the eight songs played only two of them ‘More’ and ‘Pop Girl’ made it on to the debut album.
‘Tense’ also resurfaced in a new ‘way better’ version on the mini album ‘All Popstars Are Talentless Slags’ six years later. The song was also featured in the Channel 4 short film ‘See Red’
It's rough, but fans of the Lo-Fi Beatnik Filmstars won't mind that. The rest of you let your ears adjust and you might enjoy it. The rest of the world, won't even listen. And who can blame them?