Alternative Sound – Volume 1 – Various Artists
Coventry Music Museum Records
CD/ DL
Out Now
The Coventry Music Museum is a work of love. It’s a space to discover all about the wealth of music that has come from Coventry and the surrounding area. This CD is a record of ‘the cream of Coventry music, past, present and future’ all profits go back into the museum and keep it’s legacy going. Fighting Boredom like the museum and the music a lot.
This album is a celebration of Coventry and Warwickshire music, and as it’s called Alternative Sounds don’t expect Gangsters by The Specials or Crash by The Primitives or Mouldy Old Dough by Lieutenant Pigeon. They are not here, but what is here is a song by Roddy Radiation and The Skabilly Rebels that you more than likely didn’t know, a track off the more recent Primitive’s EP and a newer track by Lieutenant Pigeon that is every bit as odd and incongruous as their sixties work. It’s not obvious, and thank heaven for that, obvious is stuff you know and listen to anyway and that you wouldn’t bother forking out for again. This gives you little discoveries that suck you into wider discoveries that make you listen to things again and again.
I bought this record to support the Coventry and Warwickshire Music Museum, this is their second release, the first was a seven inch single in a fetching neon pink sleeve. With this you get twenty one songs on a CD from which all the profits go to the museum. The museum in itself is fascinating, it’s a plethora of artifacts, records, sounds and memories from the wonderful Delia Derbyshire to the 2Tone bands through to The Enemy and everyone else you can think of that was based or came from around Coventry. It’s a quite wonderful space that is run with enthusiasm and love. If you haven’t been to have a look around make sure that you do.
I’m not going through the tracks one by one, that’s for you to do when you listen to it for the first time, you’ll know who some of them are immediately and others you’ll read about
and realise who it is that’s singing or playing the clarinet and you’ll smile. I’m sure every City has it’s own musical stories and corners but not all have been curated quite as well as Coventry’s. The best song? Well for my money it’s a toss up between The Shapes, The Giraffes and the quite wonderful PsycheDelia by Grangehurst Primary School. But that’s selling it short, I like pretty much all the music here and it demands more and more repeat plays.
It’s dedicated to Steve Edgson whose clarinet is captured here on the Reluctant Stereotypes and Giraffes tracks.
Fighting Boredom love the memories that this conjures and the new music we have been turned on to by this compilation and hope you get as much from it as we did.
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You can buy the album from the Coventry Music Museum Bandcamp page.
The Coventry Music Museum’s website is www.covmm.co.uk/2016, they are also on Facebook.
All words by Adrian Bloxham.
