2006
- The NoMen's tribute to Nikki Sudden
I made
this music
player at MyFlashFetish.com.
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The
NoMen and Nikki Sudden ... In
February 2006 the NoMen finally put the finishing touches to their
long awaited collection of Nikki Sudden songs. The
NoMen formed as the backing band for Nikki's old friend Steve
Treatment but, after recording some of Steve's songs, they began
to branch out and recorded their own versions of songs from the
DIY punk era. They did some songs by "O Level" and the
Television Personalities and tracks by Robert Rental and Thomas
Leer but it was when they started on Swell Maps related tracks
that things really started moving. |
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Cult Figures "Zip Nolan" on the Swell Maps label had always
been a favourite with us and so we recorded all three tracks from
the single and recreated the sleeve in a NoMen style. Then we decided
to try some tracks from Jowe Head's first solo album "Pincer
Movement" making a few CDR copies and doing a pastiche of the
original album artwork. At this time I was looking on E.Bay and saw the Cult Figures 7" being sold for over £20!!! I, rather cheekily, e.mailed all the people who had bid on the record offering them the chance to buy the cover version CD for £1! Much to my surprise someone got in touch and bought a copy. He was a friend of Gary from the Cult Figures and couldn't believe that a band from Scotland would be covering their song. Gary then got in touch with us and started contributing stories and pictures to our website. We sent him our Jowe Head cover versions and soon Jowe himself was in touch with us! He sent us a CD of unreleased tracks which he had recorded in the nineties and before long the NoMen had done their own versions of these tracks and added a Jowe head page to their website... a theme was developing! |
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that we had to do a real Swell Maps set! We chose some of the Maps
best songs and a couple of more obscure ones, we even managed to
get Jowe Head to sing backing vocals by telephone on 'Midget Submarines'.
By this time the NoMen's webpage was receiving a lot of e.mails
from people who loved the original Swell Maps and seventies DIY
sound and one day we got a message from Nikki Sudden himself! t was with some fear that I read his e.mail - maybe he would hate it and want to sue us! But no, he loved it! We sent him CD versions of the various collections we had recorded and he even managed to play some tracks on radio shows and recommended them on his website. When Nikki went to Russia to play in early 2004 he asked us to send him some NoMen CDs which he would add to his merchandise on tour... we were flabbergasted... Nikki Sudden had become the NoMen's European distributor! By this time we had also recorded some Epic Soundtracks songs and our website was expanding with MP3s, all free to download! "Why do you let folks download your stuff for free?" asked Nikki, "You should sell the beautiful CDRs and leave it at that!" He also started to suggest songs we should cover, "I'm amazed you haven't covered the Phones Sportsman Band single...." We had always changed the name of the band depending on whose songs we did - we had been either the "Jowe Men" or the "Nowe Men" when we did Jowe's songs and the "No Level" when we did the "O Level" songs! Nikki suggested "The Phones Scotsman Band". "... and when are the Jacobites gonna be done," he asked, adding that we should be called "Nikki NoMan and the Kiltobites!" |
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Once
again while looking through E.bay I managed to get Swell Maps
guitarist Richard Earl's solo album "The Egg store Ilk."
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During
all this Swell Maps related activity the NoMen had, from time
to time, been working on some covers of Nikki's own solo stuff!
For some reason we always had bother singing his songs and I apologised
in advance in case Nikki found our verions 'painfull' which he
found amusing! I toyed with the idea of sending the backing tracks
to Nikki himself and ask him to sing them but we eventually drafted
in the singer from the Deciders (who had released their first
single on Topplers) to do some vocals, and in February 2006 we
finished recording five tracks. We ended up with two very different
versios of 'Back to the Coast' from Nikki's first solo album...
"Back To The Coast was planned (by me) as the fifth Swell
Maps single. I had an idea of using a string quartet on it. Rough
Trade told us that the record was guaranteed to go top forty...
and what did we do... we broke up!?! One hit single and I (we)
would have been financially okay for life. When The Adverts had
a hit with Gary Gilmore's Eyes Tim (TV) Smith bought a house.
Gaye and him still live in it!" Once
the tracks were finished I knocked up a sleeve based around the
'Treasure Island' CD with lots of pirates and treasure maps and
prepared a couple of CDs to send to Nikki. After I posted them
to Berlin I was looking at his web forum and realised he was already
away on the start of his tour. |
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