I was very pleased/surprised/relieved/honoured (delete as applicable) to find the seventy-third edition of Bucketfull Of Brains magazine waiting for me on my doormat the other evening. In its thirty year history, it’s often barely struggled out – nominally a quarterly, I think there have been occasions where one issue a year has been a big ask. Yet in those thirty years, under various editorial leaderships, it’s never once dipped in quality.
Since its launch in 1979, it’s been a source of inspiration, a font of knowledge and a basket of light. I guess I first picked it up around ’86 on a vinyl-buying expedition to London, at a time when my hard-earned student grant was earmarked for various Australian imports. At that time BoB was the only publication featuring the likes of The Church, The Celibate Rifles, The Lime Spiders, The Hoodoo Gurus, etc. And as such, it was right up my street. But it also turned me on to such unheard delights as Davis, CA’s Thin White Rope, Hoboken, NJ’s Yo La Tengo and Walthamstow’s Bevis Frond.
As time’s worn on, I’ve only had limited access to each of these acts. Yo La Tengo have developed into a successful mainstream act by means of crossmatching plangent indie with psyched-out free jazz. Frond sits in his Walthamstow bunker, compiling brilliant compilation CDs for the Psychic Circle label, but very rarely gigging. And the Rope? They called it a day in ’92 after a string of brilliant desert-psych albums, including their live epitaph The One That Got Away, recorded at their final performance in the Belgian town of Ghent.
I was lucky enough to see Thin White Rope on the second day of my sojourn as a student in Birmingham in October ’88. It was in the backroom of The Hummingbird, there were only about thirty people there and the band came on at 11pm. And it was revelatory. Like Clarence White had joined Television and taken them off in a more Krautrock direction, yet still staying close to his country roots. Oh, halcyon days!
Unfortunately, I never got another chance to see them. I don’t know why. But by the time of their final tour, frontman Guy Kyser had decided that he’d rather play in bars with his girlfriend that front a brilliant desert psych band.
And, to cut a long story short, that is why Bucketfull Of Brains is so, so important: it knows what its readers want to read about and is the first to bring it to them. In every issue there are so many new musical relationships waiting to be formed, with bands you just won’t read about anywhere else, that – if they gig at all – you are only likely to see one or two times, in the weirdest of venues, on the rainiest of November nights, before they prematurely implode leaving you with the sweet, aching memory of it all. And isn’t that what being a fan is all about?
Since its launch in 1979, it’s been a source of inspiration, a font of knowledge and a basket of light. I guess I first picked it up around ’86 on a vinyl-buying expedition to London, at a time when my hard-earned student grant was earmarked for various Australian imports. At that time BoB was the only publication featuring the likes of The Church, The Celibate Rifles, The Lime Spiders, The Hoodoo Gurus, etc. And as such, it was right up my street. But it also turned me on to such unheard delights as Davis, CA’s Thin White Rope, Hoboken, NJ’s Yo La Tengo and Walthamstow’s Bevis Frond.
As time’s worn on, I’ve only had limited access to each of these acts. Yo La Tengo have developed into a successful mainstream act by means of crossmatching plangent indie with psyched-out free jazz. Frond sits in his Walthamstow bunker, compiling brilliant compilation CDs for the Psychic Circle label, but very rarely gigging. And the Rope? They called it a day in ’92 after a string of brilliant desert-psych albums, including their live epitaph The One That Got Away, recorded at their final performance in the Belgian town of Ghent.
I was lucky enough to see Thin White Rope on the second day of my sojourn as a student in Birmingham in October ’88. It was in the backroom of The Hummingbird, there were only about thirty people there and the band came on at 11pm. And it was revelatory. Like Clarence White had joined Television and taken them off in a more Krautrock direction, yet still staying close to his country roots. Oh, halcyon days!
Unfortunately, I never got another chance to see them. I don’t know why. But by the time of their final tour, frontman Guy Kyser had decided that he’d rather play in bars with his girlfriend that front a brilliant desert psych band.
And, to cut a long story short, that is why Bucketfull Of Brains is so, so important: it knows what its readers want to read about and is the first to bring it to them. In every issue there are so many new musical relationships waiting to be formed, with bands you just won’t read about anywhere else, that – if they gig at all – you are only likely to see one or two times, in the weirdest of venues, on the rainiest of November nights, before they prematurely implode leaving you with the sweet, aching memory of it all. And isn’t that what being a fan is all about?
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