Friday, 16 December 2022

Gathering Winter Newell

Earlier this week that Rol of My Top Ten fame featured The Cleaners from Venus in one of his celebrity tributes - David Bailey as you ask. This got me reminiscing about the period in the early 1980s when I lived in Wivenhoe just round the corner from Mr Cleaner himself, Martin Newell.

Back in those days Martin was only releasing music via the medium of home-made cassettes - apparently the most time-consuming part of the production process was colouring in the black and white photocopies that served as the cover sleeve - and I would pop round and buy them whenever he had a new one.

I still have a handful of those cassettes and I dug out this one from the winter of 1983 as it is vaguely seasonal. By this time Martin had worked out that you could speed up the production process considerably by just printing the covers on coloured paper.

Here are both sides of the single. The sound quality isn't brilliant but as they are taken from a cassette that is nearly 40 years old its a miracle you can hear anything at all. If you listen right to the end of "When Fire Burns Dreams" you will understand the relevance of today's video.

"When Fire Burns Dreams" - Martin Newell

"Amateur Paranoiac" - Martin Newell

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10 comments:

  1. Rol16 December 2022 at 09:58

    As someone who spent much of the 80s making comics, fanzines and APAs, with much photocopying, stapling and mailing involved, I have great respect for any musicians who plied their trade in a similar fashion. It's too easy for the young uns these days.

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    1. Ernie Goggins16 December 2022 at 11:46

      Fanzines! You're right, the young people would not understand the effort that was involved. One of my main jobs on ours was persuading the local office supplies shop to give us a discount rate on the photocopying. I was selected because I was less scruffy than the others and seemed to appeal to the maternal instincts of the nice lady who worked there.

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    2. Rol16 December 2022 at 17:33

      I used to go to a local solicitors whose secretaries were running a sideline printing business that their bosses were blissfully unaware of.

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    3. C16 December 2022 at 18:08

      Love this and love the whole DIY ethos - ah, happy gluey inky days. And as a fellow fanzine creator in the '80s I can wholly recommend having a boyfriend who works in a printshop...
      Good to hear this early work too. If I remember rightly, being quite local, both the Swede and I saw Martin in his previous band Gypp (not together!)

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    4. Ernie Goggins16 December 2022 at 20:09

      Did he get the boyfriend position because he worked in the printshop or was that just a happy coincidence?

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    5. C17 December 2022 at 09:57

      I couldn't possibly comment.

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  2. George16 December 2022 at 11:47

    The first track is surprisingly listenable, dated but worth a repeat playing.

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  3. Charity Chic17 December 2022 at 08:15

    It was more football fanzines that I was into in those days.

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    1. Ernie Goggins17 December 2022 at 08:30

      But presumably similar production techniques involved?

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    2. Charity Chic18 December 2022 at 08:35

      Indeed although I was merely a reader and not involved in any production

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