The Peoples Friend + Crisis With A Y + The Mooches + Mother

The Peoples’ Friend– Played around 60 gigs in the late 90s, almost all in London. Appearing at then The Dublin Castle many times They had a beautiful gang of fans, and now they’re back and we can’t wait! The more interesting side of Indie rock at the time, melding psychedelic rock with punk and touches of Prog, an eclectic and compelling mix, there’s shades of Cardiacs here, in fact Tim Smith was a fan who ended up engineering the band. The songs were written by Steffan Kay and the lyrics by Jamie Kelsey. The original line up had Jay ‘manoray’ Starkey on drums, Lewis ‘dark lord’ Perry on guitar and Kirsty ‘dragon’ Newton on bass and vocals. After Kirsty left, Jamie Carol joined them on bass and Cara Vella on violin and vocals. Crisis With A Y- Charming youthful punky indie from the locale. A touch of the Damon Albarn mockernees about the vocal. Good cheeky chirpy songs with a Buzzcocks/Supergrass type flavour The Mooches- Sprightly hook-laden indie pop with a nod to new wave and power pop,up-beat catchy tunes, great stuff. Mother– Oxford quintet produced by Mark Gardener (ride) psychedelic indie with clipped funk basslines and a wash of grunge guitars-wise, can’t put our finger on who they sound like (a good thing).