Musical Touchstones: Pony Club

Mark Cullen is one of the current under-appreciated talents. Similar story as The Pale Fountains for me as I loved the album he made in the 90’s with his brothers, under the name Bawl, but never heard anything again for years. He finally re-emerged as Pony Club in 2002 with the album Home Truths which he recorded in his bedroom (a recording method I can relate to). He’s since released two more albums:  Family Business and Post Romantic. I’ve been reading much lately about people’s picks for the best artist or album or song of this past decade and I would like to nominate Pony Club, Family Business, and Knees.

Musical Touchstones: The Pale Fountains

The Pale Fountains were one of my favourite bands in the 80’s but they fell of the face of the earth as far as I knew. I didn’t hear anything about the Head brothers until the mid 90’s when “Waterpistol” came out under the name Shack. I later found out they had been using this name since the break-up of TPF and had an album from 1988 called “Zilch”. I found a vinyl copy on eBay and paid the most I‘ve ever paid for a record or cd. It was worth the money but it remains to this day my one and only eBay purchase. They have released several albums since and it is good to see they’ve been paid their proper dues in recent years by the British music press. When I had a band years ago we used to cover “September Sting” which you can hear a sample of at last.fm. http://www.last.fm/music/The+Pale+Fountains/_/september+sting

Here’s a couple of other favourites: