Album review: Bis This Is Teen-C Power

[juliet]

(One of the things on my 101 things list is to listen to & review some old albums.)


So after listening to Urusei Yatsura last week, I felt the urge to locate my old Bis albums. Although This Is Teen-C Power is not exactly an album, really, being only 6 songs long. (Technically their debut album was The New Transistor Heroes.)

But they are very entertaining songs! They do suffer a bit from the single-song problem that UY had (see also: Helen Love), but I mind less with Bis. (Again, see also: Helen Love.)

Kill Yr Boyfriend is pretty frenetic, as is School Disco (which I am v fond of. "Down at the disco, where nobody goes".).

Kandy Pop inevitably reminds me of Safari, when I was a 1st year, where Dave used to play it pretty much weekly (together with Another Girl Another Planet by the Only Ones, IIRC). They played it on TOTP in, hm, either late 1995 or early 1996: first unsigned band ever to appear on TOTP, apparently.

Not so keen on Teen-C Power: it's a bit too - measured, maybe? Although the bleepy bloopy background is kinda cool.

I saw Bis live at Kings College SU (where Collide-a-scope was and quite possibly still is); can't remember now who they were touring with, but they were *awesome* fun, & I got to say hello to Manda Rin afterwards which excited me enormously! Also they were dishing out badges, and at the time I was still busily extending the badge-collection on my denim jacket.

I'm really fond of some of the tracks from Social Dancing, their second proper album, but it was definitely a move in a different direction. Still bleepy drum-machine stuff, but a fair bit slicker. There's something enormously *fun* about Kandy Pop era stuff.

Comments

[friend-of-tofu.livejournal.com]

I seem to be unusual in not ever having liked Bis much, which is a shame as I generally approved of Manda.

[juliet]

I dunno, I seem to remember them not being terribly popular among my friends with anyone other than me! Hm, possibly other people liked Kandy Pop.

[plumsbitch.livejournal.com]

Yeah, this. I approved of Bis rather than liked them , I think.

But! But! Retroalert! Collide-a-scope!!1!

We also used to go there muchly. Gods, and drunkenly, IIRC the booze was fatally cheap, especially if you weren't a student any longer. Up loads of stairs, amazing view over the Thames?

[juliet]

Yes! I went there every single Saturday of my Upper 6th (so 1995/6), & once or twice thereafter. I remember the boozes being cheap, although I didn't actually drink that often due to:
a) that still being *money*, & as a 6th-former I still wasn't exactly loaded, & spent most of my cash on music anyway;
and b) the fact that from about November 1995 onwards I was driving us up there to save all the hassle of nightbuses and nearly freezing to death, and so forth.

(I grew up in Bromley, S London. The nightbus was the N47, which is still my nightbus now, though these days it's 20 min to get home rather than 90. I used to *love* driving over Waterloo Bridge (still love riding over it :) ), and then we'd stop at the McDonalds drivethrough on the Old Kent Road on the way home, & I'd eat chips and drive one-handed.)

[plumsbitch.livejournal.com]

AH, I was probably going there about the same time! Coming up from Crawley where I was dismally living (my home town) after graduating, and then more often when I moved to London in 97, and occasionally a few years later...

pointless and maundering nostalgia, you have been warned.

[plumsbitch.livejournal.com]

Also, thankyou, you have reminded me of the simple joy my flatmate T and I had, in 1997, getting our first nightbus home on the first night out we did after moving to London. We were all 'la la la not waiting 4 hours for first trains, we can get on our Night Bus now coz We Live In London Now In Our Own Flat'.

Was the N53 to New Cross, again about 15/20mins. Remembering going over the bridge and grinning at each other :)

And also, much later on, going to see Michael Winterbottom's wonderful Wonderland and grinning in recognition when Gina McKee gets on the 53 to go home. Not just coz we were on that bus, but because we loved Wonderland in recognition of the London it portrayed.

Re: pointless and maundering nostalgia, you have been warned.

[juliet]

nostalgia++

I do love the nightbuses. Even if sometimes when stood in Trafalgar Square for an hour at 3am I loved them less. (All praise Ken for more than doubling the frequency!)

The first time I saw someone rolling a joint was on the N47, when I was 17 or so. I was sat just in front of the back seat & (obviously not very subtly) watching the guy roll, so after he was done he kindly offered me a drag, which I politely and with some embarrassment declined.

[lnr]

I remember Kandy Pop on TOTP (which I guess means it must have been out of term, since I didn't watch much telly in Oxford). I suspect it would be rather more to my taste now than it was then.

[juliet]

Hm, yes, I guess maybe it was December 1995, then? (Or just into January, but more likely December.)

[lnr]

Looks like the EP it was on was recorded in December 1995, and apparently they were on TOTP before it was released, so late December must be about right.