The Firefly Recordings Archive (2024)

15/05/2023

The Rocksound review of Plotting was pretty cool too!

Remember. If you want to get this on vinyl then please pre order. The link is in comments. This will only go ahead if we reach enough advance sales

Remastered. New artwork. Red vinyl.

05/05/2023

Cracking Kerrang review from the original release of Copperpot Journals 'Plotting To Kill Your Friends'.
Don't miss you chance to get hold of the vinyl reissue!

05/05/2023

https://fairsound.com/product/copperpot-journals-plotting-to-kill-your-friends/

27/04/2023

We are super excited to finally announce the first of hopefully several Firefly vinyl reissues.

We've been lucky enough to team up with Fairsound who are specialists in small run releases. The first project is the Copperpot Journals 'Plotting to Kill Your Friends' which is available to order right now.

It's been freshly remastered and sounds amazing. Has brand new artwork and will be on lovely red vinyl.

However, for this to happen, there needs to be enough pre orders so if you want this in your life don't hang about and order now. The amount pressed will the pre orders plus a small amount on top of that.

26/04/2023

Some news
12 noon
27/04/2023

05/04/2023

Understand. In the Guardian. Nice.
https://www.theguardian.com/music/2023/apr/05/understand-on-the-90s-punk-scene-that-shunned-them?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other

19/01/2023

Turns out keeping this lot might actually prove to be useful in 2023...

09/11/2022

FFLY016LP

04/02/2022

It's bandcamp Friday. So what better day to finally pick up the reissue of Shutdown's Emits A Real Bronx Cheer. That you've been meaning to get round to doing...with the black vinyl version newly reduced to £8 especially to coincide.

www.fireflyrecordings.bandcamp.com or Helpless Dancer Records have a bundle going with the 3rd pressing of the Diaz Brothers LP.

05/11/2021

There are 12 copies of the coloured vinyl version of this beauty left. And as it is a Bandcamp Friday, it would a marvellous time to snap it up whilst you can.

Feel free to share

www.fireflyrecordings.bandcamp.com

13/09/2021

The Shutdown LPs turned last week and were hand numbered by misters Christian Burton and Neil Cox before being sent my way. They look as lovely as the mock ups indicated. Just packaged first batch of orders up and I've run out of mailers to recycle. I knew I should have bought more records!!

The last few colour vinyl are available at
www.fireflyrecordings.bandcamp.com

06/08/2021

Shutdown - Emits A Real Bronx Cheer

We might actually get these delivered in 2 weeks time and as it is a bandcamp Friday, today would be a wonderful day for anyone who hasn't yet ordered one to rectify that.

I've got the last of the coloured vinyl. Helpless Dancer Records has t shirt bundles.

https://fireflyrecordings.bandcamp.com/

03/06/2021

So the Firefly Recordings Bandcamp page is live as of now and so are the pre-orders for Shutdown's Emits A Real Bronx Cheer, available on vinyl for the very first time. Hand crafted by Unicorns in Narnia, its due back with us some time in August but we're putting it up now so you don't miss the beautiful coloured vinyl edition. There's only 100 of those and Helpless Dancer Records and ourselves have 50 of those each, after that there is 200 on black vinyl.

A classic early 1990's melodic hardcore classic, its remastered and sounding great.

Order, follow, share...whatever you can do will be appreciated. Hopefully I've set the page up right so it does what its supposed to do!

https://fireflyrecordings.bandcamp.com/

18/05/2021

From the past to the future...

So Neil Cox got a little emotional earlier and let out our dirty little secret which is that a respawned Firefly Recordings and Neil's own freshly minted Helpless Dancer Records are giving Shutdown's debut album, 'Emits A Real Bronx Cheer' its maiden vinyl release. Not only is it limited to 300 but also 100 of those are on the beautiful looking colour in the photo.

That's the good news. The band news is that I think they must be being hand etched by oompah loompahs judging from the time they are taking to get pressed and they won't be back until August.

Pre orders will be available in a few days time through the 2 label's bandcamps. Both labels will have 50 of the coloured vinyl. We have a couple of exciting future releases lined up already...

06/05/2021

As others have posted about this now, just feel the need to say how incomprehensible the news earlier about John Hannon's sudden death at 47 is.

I was always a bit in awe of Understand but John was always the friendliest and most welcoming when we shared a bill with them a couple of times. His post Understand musical output was always interesting and always challenging.

Later he pretty much became the Firefly Recordings in house producer. He recorded at least 10 of our releases including Kids Near Water, Copperpots, Jerry Built, Otherwise, Scuttle and Dead Inside.

Most famously I think he nearly quit the recording game after the Sunfactor album due to some last minute mixing demands 🤣

He was always a pleasure to deal with. Go easy John.

06/04/2021

So Scuttle's 'Testing the Strength of the Surface' came out on the same day as the Kids Near Water and Otherwise EPs. It got pretty good reviews which hopefully we'll post soon. In the meantime, here is an interview the band did Real Overdose fanzine from Ipswich. (Real Overdose cover is for illustration purposes only...it was this issue!). The band do what all good bands do and start moaning about the previous release whilst the label is still trying to sell the blasted things ;-)

Lower case i's and spelling mistakes are all original!

This interview was conducted in October 2001 via email by Steve, answering questions set by Wolfie from the mighty ‘Real Overdose’ zine.

1) So you got together in 1999, were you already friends? Had you been in other bands before? How long did it take you to get a set of songs together? Start off doing any covers?
Yeah we got together in February 1999, our Bass player Rich and guitarist Gareth were old School friends from Norflok and they had moved to Brighton a year prior to our forming, same for me, i moved down at the start of '98 and met Matt soon after through mutual friends and we became mates straight away, our old guitarist Rob met Gareth and Rich through and advert they put up somewhere.We were all in bands before (im not sure about Rob though) Rich and Gareth were in a band called Forfeit, Matt was playing drums in a band with some old mates of his from back in London and I'd sung in a few bands, I was even going to audition for Stampin’ Ground just before i moved away, but backed out. We got about seven songs down in as many weeks at one rehearsal a week so we were working quite quickly. We did do two or three covers, a Face to Face one, one by Screw 32 and one by Farside but they weren’t so great and we never played them live, we're gonna have a stab at Cherry Pie by Warrant as a cover which should be a laugh.

2) Was it fairly easy to find places to play in Brighton? Read on the Firefly press release you'd play any show you were offered, so did you windup anywhere really good or really bad? Play w/ anyone that really blew you away?
Well, it seemed easy enough to get our first show in Brighton, we just asked Buz and he said yes, i think it was a novelty to have a new local band who weren't some comedy act like a few bands in Brighton and we wanted to kind of do something with our music. From our first show we started to get
offered a lot of things, our second show was in Brighton with a German band called Yummy and the Fish Brothers(a local Brighton group) and it just sucked, Yummy had this crazy woman singer who cut herself with a knife and did full all else but squeal like a pig with a thumb up its ass, it was shameful, from there it was a case of getting on the ladder and playing wherever, some of our early shows were with Dropnose and i always thought they were rocking, them and Capdown oh and Imbalance.

3) You weren't together that long before you did the Vanilla Pod split 7" right? How did you hook up w/ Mother Stoat? Then you did the split w/Clingfilm, were you happy w/ how that came out?
I cant really remember how we hooked up with Mother Stoat, we may have sent them a copy of the demo, it was all a very loose arrangement, it was our first single and that’s cool, but that’s about it, it was a case of blink and miss it with that one. The split with Clingfilm was much better, nice production from John Hannon (ex Understand) better more developed songs, we kind of found our niche really, we were happy but again the guy behind it could organise anything and the single only really got around because we did all the pushing.

4) Tell us about some of the comps you were on too. Are you quite a prolific band, do you always have songs available to go on comps and stuff?
We will usually donate something to a comp, we don’t have an abundance of unused stuff to hand out, but we try our best, Beast of British on Deck cheese was a good comp, and Uomo al mare was good but our track wasn’t so hot.

5) How did you get together w/ Firefly? I've read you weren't 100% happy w/ a few things on 'Testing The Strength Of The Surface' but still do you feel it's a good representation of what the band's about? It's been selling pretty well hasn't it?
Testing the Strength..." was good for its time, i think we held back some better songs from it though, and instead of that we should have gone all-out, and i hate the vocal sound, its really thin and clinical sounding, still it has been doing really well, it kind of had a slow start but its picked up brilliantly, so i cant complain at all really.

6) What kinds of things are you singing about on the CD? Where do you draw your influences, both as songwriters and as a band overall?
I sing about a range of things, Adjustment Disorder is a a song about abuse, its very specific to a subject without the lyrics being clearly laid out, i wanted to avoid that because sometimes these things are very personal, six month repetition is about someone who will not let their ex get on with their lives and how it effects the new person that they are with, that feeling of wanting to just kick the s**t out of someone who keeps ringing your partner and pestering them to meet up or writing or whatever, that sort of thing. This hateful place and Ten mile day are both "fu**ed off with work and your position in life" type songs, they were snap shots of the time i wrote them, now the subject matter has moved on. Influence wise musically and lyrically were all over the shop, but I don’t think we really sound like the sum of one great influence really. As a band our influences go from Grade, Glassjaw, Quicksand, Far, Face to Face, Samiam, loads of band really, Texas Is The Reason there so many too mention.

7) Have you been playing a lot to support the CD? Do you play regularly in Brighton? Is it as much of a cool place to live as it seems? What is a Scuttle show like?
We have played a fair bit to support the CD, but we had a slack period when our guitarist Rob left the band so we bought Burton in and then we wrote some new stuff, but were off on tour again with Planes Mistaken for Stars in November which should be amazing, our touring is kept within the framework of day jobs though so we can only do so much a year. Brighton is a weird place to play, it will either be amazing or just awful, theres a lack of venues and i think some all ages shows would really benefit getting the scene going down here, maybe some matinee shows at weekends
would be good, it is a cool place to live, theres a lot of cool people and lots to do, i love living down here.A typical Scuttle show is better now than a year ago, with Rob gone everyone rocks out more, we just try to give 200% every time we play or theres no point in doing it.

8) Did you have a good time when you went to Europe? Did you notice any big differences between playing over there and playing over here?
Always seems so much better organised whenever we've been over there. I think we found Europe the same as here really, some shows were well attended others weren’t, it was just a cool experience to think that you got to travel to this foreign country purely because of a music scene on that occasion. The organisation seemed pretty much the same as here, although Belgium was pretty exceptional.

9) When did you recruit Burton? Were you already fans of Penfold? What does he bring to the band?
Well we were kinda thinking about the Rob situation after our tour with Elliott and Kids Near Water.It was obvious he want pulling his wait in the band, but he beat us to it and quit. Burton's name was the first one we came up with as a replacement, he always rocked out on stage and we knew he would be perfect, so we asked him and he was up for it, it was the only way we could get rid of those pesky Penfold kids was to poach a member so they would split!. Penfold were always good live but never kind of pulled it off with their recordings, but what do i know. They are all great guys too.
Burton has bought out the heavier chuggy element to our music and i think our song writing has improved 100% since h

29/03/2021

Scuttle Part Deux

Bands. This is what you should all do. Someone in the band should be in charge of keeping an exhaustive list of all the gigs you played and all the bands you played with. Otherwise you'll end up like me, questioning why you have no memory of playing with the Grabass Charlestons or Horace Pinker and having no recollection of ever being in Swindon.

Here are Scuttle's 1999 and 2000 dates. Busy boys.

PAST SHOWS
#1 01.05.99 - BRIGHTON, the Freebutt - One Car Pile Up, Vanilla Pod, Penfold, Scuttle
#2 06.06.99 - BRIGHTON, the Freebutt - Yummy, the Fish Brothers, Scuttle
#3 03.07.99 - BRIGHTON, the Freebutt - Astream, Dropnose, Scuttle, Winner
#4 04.07.99 - SOUTHAMPTON, Joiners Arms - Astream, Dropnose, Scuttle
#5 06.07.99 - WI******ER, the Railway Inn - Chester, A**l Beard, Elementary, Scuttle
#6 07.07.99 - BRIGHTON, Pressure Point - Unfounded, Landmine Spring, Lodestone, Mute, Scuttle
#7 17.07.99 - BRIGHTON, the Freebutt - Speedurchin, Annalise, Pencilcase, Scuttle
#8 31.07.99 - ALDERSHOT, the West End Centre - Speedurchin, Winner, the Duvals, Ripping Teeth, Scuttle
#9 08.08.99 - BRIGHTON, the Freebutt - Scuttle, Penfold, Next In Line
#10 29.09.99 - SOUTHAMPTON, Voltz - the Propergumbhies, Scuttle, Portiswood
#11 01.10.99 - BRIGHTON, the Freebutt - the Tone, Ska-Gal and the Hands of Ra, M.T.A, Scuttle
#12 19.10.99 - BRIGHTON, the Freebutt - Scuttle
#13 22.10.99 - LONDON, the Underworld - Caffeine, Capdown, Southport, Scuttle
#14 31.10.99 - WI******ER, the Railway Inn - Capdown, Southport, Abjure, The Informers, Scuttle
#15 16.11.99 - LONDON, the Red Eye - Honeytone Cody, Scuttle, Jar
#16 20.11.99 - KINGSTON, the Peel - One Car Pile Up, Vanilla Pod, Scuttle, Figure Four
#17 21.11.99 - BRIGHTON, the Freebutt - Capdown, Scuttle, Stillborn
#18 04.12.99 - BRIGHTON, the Freebutt - the Fish Brothers, Scuttle
#19 10.01.00 - NORWICH, Riverside Inn - Scuttle, Kneejerk, Southpaw
#20 05.02.00 - REIMES, FRANCE - The Informers, Travis Cut, Scuttle
#21 06.02.00 - PARIS, FRANCE - The Informers Travis Cut, Scuttle
#22 11.02.00 - LONDON, the Underworld - Vanilla Pod, Flying Medallions, Ripping Teeth, Scuttle
#23 12.02.00 - LEEDS, the Firkin - Goober Patrol, Joe 90, the Copperpot Journals, Penfold, Scuttle
#24 25.02.00 - BRIGHTON, the Freebutt - Scuttle, Flatpig, Myriad, Kaito
#25 26.02.00 - KINGSTON, the Peel - Goober Patrol, Vanilla Pod, Scuttle, Clingfilm
#26 16.03.00 - EXETER, the Cavern - The Parasites, Skimmer, Annalise, Scuttle
#27 18.03.00 - WISBECH, Angles Theatre - Vanilla Pod, Southport, Inside Right, Scuttle
#28 25.03.00 - LONDON, the Red Eye - Scuttle, Welter
#29 08.04.00 - LONDON, Goldsmiths Tavern - Flying Medallions, Soeza, Yeast, Scuttle
#30 13.04.00 - BRIGHTON, Pressure Point - New Bomb Turks, Crawl Limbo, Scuttle
#31 20.04.00 - SOUTHAMPTON, Joiners Arms - Imbalance, Scuttle, Chokeword, Circus Act
#32 22.04.00 - BRIGHTON, the Freebutt - Southport, Servo, Scuttle, Alcatraz, Penfold, Flatpig, Winner, NIL
#33 25.04.00 - LONDON, the Garage - Down By Law, I Against I, Scuttle, Schindler
#34 28.04.00 - MEERHOUT, BELGIUM, JC Horizont - Area 51, Scuttle, Plan 9, Trust, Between The Lines
#35 24.05.00 - LEEDS, Rocket Bar - One Line Drawing, Sergio Vega, Scuttle, Torino 74
#36 25.05.00 - MANCHESTER, the Beat N' Track - One Line Drawing, Sergio Vega, Grand Central, Scuttle
#37 28.05.00 - LONDON, the Falcon - Grand Central, Yeast, Scuttle
#38 29.05.00 - CROYDON, the Cartoon - Skimmer, Serpico, Scuttle, Grand Cenral, Blocko, Jinx, Diction
#39 11.06.00 - LONDON, the Golden Shoe - Caeser Soze, Travis Cut, Scuttle, Bombjacks, Route 215
#40 16.06.00 - LONDON, the Underworld - Shelter, Silencer 7, Scuttle
#41 06.07.00 - EXETER, the Cavern - Leatherface, Scuttle, Reeko
#42 09.07.00 - WI******ER, the Railway Inn - the Unknown, Capdown, Skin of Tears, Scarper! Scuttle
#43 29.07.00 - BRIGHTON, the Ray Tindle Centre - Tripswitch, Scuttle
#44 05.08.00 - KINGSTON, the Peel - Capdown, Sunfactor, Copperpot Journals, Scuttle, Kids Near Water
#45 13.08.00 - LEEDS, Josephs Well - Dugong, Otherwise, Scuttle, Copperpot Journals, Vanilla Pod + more
#46 19.08.00 - BRIGHTON, the Free Butt - Capdown, Scuttle, Fatpig, Lightyear, Blocko, Ripping Teeth + more
#47 22.11.00 - LONDON, Upstairs @ the Garage - Otherwise, Scuttle, Kids Near Water, The Modulating Boy
#48 25.11.00 - PORTSMOUTH, the Horseshoe - Southport, Scuttle, Blocko, Bulletproofcupid
#49 02.12.00 - CROYDON, Shake Some Action (afternoon show) - Scuttle

28/03/2021

Le Freak...C'est Chic. Introducing Scuttle

In May 2000, Travis Cut were asked by our good friend Buz (promotor of shows in Brighton) if we’d like to go and play 2 shows in France which the French band The Informers were organising. The first was to be in Reims (champagne capital of the world) and the other in Paris. The other band coming along were a young band from the Brighton area called Scuttle.

Because playing Paris seemed glamorous, our girlfriends decided to come along for ride so it was a rather cramped van that set off on the Saturday morning. The Paris show was set for Sunday afternoon leaving enough time to get back to the ferry late at night and all back at our jobs on the Monday. We met Buz and Scuttle at the ferry port and then followed their van all the way to Reims.

If the girls had been expecting some chic French venue; they were quickly disappointed. The gig was in the basement of an abandoned factory and was quite frankly a dump. A dump that also featured those peculiar French squatty toilets where there’s no toilet bowl or seat…just a hole in the ground with foot rests! We played to around 30 people and then realised there was no plan for where both bands were to stay.

Crashing in the venue certainly wasn’t an option. A young skatey looking kid said we could stay at his, so he sat up front in our van so he could give directions and off we went. Sat in the back, with no windows, it seemed like we drove for hours before reaching his house. He explained that his parents would be asleep so we all crept up to the top floor and crashed out.

Waking up in the morning was quite the experience. All the walls were covered with pictures of one particular type of dog and some of the furniture in the room appeared to made from bones. Bones, inferentially, had come from the dogs. Imagine that scene in Alan Partridge when he goes round Jed’s house and finds the room full of Partridge paraphernalia. Getting over the initial fears that we had been lured in by a family of serial killers, a couple of us braved going downstairs…

There, we were welcomed by a huge dining table laden with bread, cheeses, jams, meat and coffee! This kid had unexpectedly brought back over a dozen Brits to his house and his parents had gone out and catered for us. Everyone was lovely and so we didn’t pursue our lines of enquiry regarding the bone furniture; despite our curiosity. Some of Scuttle and I had a quick walk around the village we’d ended up in. It’s strange events like playing a squatted factory in another country, winding up in some strangers house and eventually receiving a cracking breakfast that bonds you with people you’ve just met.

France had been on the receiving end of some powerful storms a few days earlier so the short drive from wherever it was we had ended up in, to Paris, was interspersed with sights of uprooted trees and upside down farm buildings. Using the power of an address and a Paris A-Z, we arrived at the venue having done several loops of the city; at least we got to see some of the sights! We went for a quick walk around the part of Paris we were in; the Eiffel tower was magnificent in the distance.

Returning to the venue, we watched as it was turned from a woman’s refuge day centre, into punk rock hub, simply by changing all the posters.

It was a big place but there was a really good crowd. My witty between song schtick consisted of me reading random French phrases from a travel guide. Hilarious. I also broke a string on my guitar, as well as on the guitars of both Scuttle guitarists and ended borrowing a white Flying V copy off one of the French support bands. I wish someone had taken a photo.

As the gig had been a late afternoon, early evening, affair, we packed up in full confidence we’d easily make our ferry. The large spanner shaped object in this plan was, just as we were about to set off, the promotors beckoned us upstairs to present to us the fact they’d cooked us a full on meal. We dutifully took our paces at the table whilst trying to eat as fast as possible.

We set off about an hour later than planned. The ferry was still doable. Doable until les Gendarmes pulled us over at a ‘peage’ en route to Calais. We stood forlornly in a layby while a sniffer dog failed to find anything incriminating in our van before setting off at breakneck speed to try and get the last ferry.

Arriving at the port terminal our spirits soared to see the ferry still sat in the dock. They were quickly crushed by the customs officials who happily informed us that we’d missed the last call for boarding. Despite our desperate imploring that the ship was right there in front of us, we were given short shrift and set packing.

The car park at Calais ferry terminal is a bleak place. You can intersperse your 6 hour nocturnal wait with a trip to the toilets and later a visit to the vending machine. We boarded the first ferry out of France whilst the sun came up and ate over-priced breakfasts in an exhausted silence.

Somewhere around the North Circular I rang my work with a wholly unconvincing reason as to why I wouldn’t be able to be in that day. I’d learnt from experience not to tell them I was doing these hare-brained trips due to the propensity for them to go wrong. I was also running out of plausible excuses.

We got home. We went to sleep. I woke up with a strange determination to put a Scuttle record out.

26/03/2021

*casual whistling*
Nothing to see here
FFLY028LP

26/02/2021

FFLY028LP

18/08/2020

And a random contact sheet of those handsome devils from a shoot with Paul Harries

18/08/2020

As promised, a selection of KNW interviews from around the time of the release of EP1

15/08/2020

One more...from Evil Powers of Rock n Roll zine

15/08/2020

In other news, 2021 (if we make it that far) may see us put out a version of the Copperpot Journals - Pilots on vinyl. Thats exciting isn't it!

15/08/2020

So, began the job of sifting through 3 folders of press cuttings that I found. Here's some more reviews of Extendedplayer 1. There's also half a dozen interviews that I will scan in properly next week. After that we can move on the Scuttle!

05/08/2020

Been on a little holiday but now back to business. And today's business was finding all sorts of treasure in a couple of boxes at my mum's house. Lots of press clippings to sort through...

27/06/2020

Does anyone have contact for anyone who was in the band Cleatus? If so please message me. Otherwise the bit where we get onto FFLY004CD is going to be somewhat brief!

22/06/2020

Brian KNW was kind enough to put down on 'paper' some of his memories of this time in the band's life...

"In some ways, I think that Kids Near Water was an accident. we kind of rose from the ashes of various projects and were cobbled together to be part of the New Year’s Eve millennium party at the arts centre in Exeter. We all shared a common interest and participation in what was becoming a resurgent UK scene. Suddenly it seemed that people were interested again.

We would practise upstairs at the Cavern Club office and managed to cobble together the five songs that would eventually make it on EP1. 'Some Free Advice' was the first song we wrote and would always be my favourite, but the others all followed shortly as we had only a couple of weeks to get ready for the show. We practised hard and eventually, it felt like we were ready to unleash ourselves on the unsuspecting public.

The show was chaotic, to say the least. I think there were about ten bands playing and the backstage area was full of people, many of whom we hadn't seen for a long time - it made the show really special. We seemed to go down well and even though it was scrappy, we had a great time. After the show, Mark Gravity approached us to see if we wanted to play at an all-dayer that he was putting on in Kingston. Needless to say, we were keen, and the date went into the diary.

After the strong reaction to our performance at the millennium party, we decided to record the songs we had on a demo to try and get some more shows and to circulate at the Kingston show. A chance encounter with Chris Cut at the show started the ball rolling to getting our first ep released on firefly.

We recorded the ep with John Hannon in Southend. At that time, many UK bands were making use of John's services and I had been a fan of John's band Understand for ages, so it was a no-brainer for me. We needed to keep the costs down, so we recorded the five songs in one weekend. It was a great experience and a massive laugh. The time spent recording the EP really cemented us together as a unit and I knew then that we had something special together. Four mates making good music and having a lot of fun! Except for when we left Southend and realised that there was a massive fuel crisis and we nearly didn't get home!

To promote the CD, Chris added us as the support to a tour he was booking with the Revelation band Elliot. Simon and I really liked them, and we started to rehearse hard to make sure that we were tight. Then we had a minor setback. Whilst John was playing football, he suffered a truly horrific injury to his hand. It was all sorts of broken and there was no way he would be playing bass anytime soon. We were done. Just as it felt like we were gathering momentum the rug was pulled from under us. We had two weeks until the tour and it was looking like we would have to pull out. We talked and John agreed that if we could find someone to stand in, then we should try to do it. We went through the possibilities and we decided that the only viable option we had was our old friend Sam. He was a great musician and we shared a lot. Ironically Sam was the subject of many of my lyrics as he was going out with my Ex. I had to put that behind me and grow the f**k up. So, the plan was laid, and we set to teaching Sam the songs.

The tour was amazing, and we had a great time. Unfortunately, I overindulged most days and my recollection is hazy to say the least. It goes without saying that what goes on tour, stays on tour!

So EP1 was released and the tour went well. We did some great shows with our mates Otherwise and Scuttle and had a blast. Kerrang (in their infinite wisdom) decided that our CD warranted a five K review and did an interview. After that, things changed a lot and paved the way for great experiences and mega-riches (well perhaps the former anyway!). EP1 was the seed for nearly six years of fun with four of my favourite people. Happy days..."

22/06/2020

On The Road with Simon Fuller

So. Kids Near Water's Extended Player 1 comes out and to say it goes down well is a bit of an understatement. Most importantly it gets a 5K (KKKKK) review in Kerrang and before you know it we are having to repress because proper record shops are stocking and more importantly selling it.

Being now a record industry bigwig I am obliged to have meetings with the movers and shakers and words like 'contracts', 'agents' and 'management' start getting bandied about...though not from either the band or me. We do actually get a half decent agent and amusingly I have a meeting with one industry bod at a members club in Soho and his other guest is Spice Girls manager and Pop Idol impresario Simon Fuller! We collectively decide that we will muddle on as we are without a Mr 40% in the mix.

Being organised, I'd arranged for KNW and Scuttle to go out on a UK tour with Revelation Records Elliott. I really liked their False Cathedrals album and the Underworld show was an absolutely joyous occasion. The tour also got all the bands some live reviews which kept the momentum going. I had hundreds of bands stay at my Walthamstow flat during this period and Elliott turned out to be absolutely terrible houseguests. The highlight being how they broke my oven by trying to boil water in china teapot on a gas hob! I posted some disparaging remarks about their house manners on the home of the UK scene at that time, The Fracture Forum, and the Revelation press/label lady got the right hump. All I can say is, it wasn't your oven lady!

01/06/2020

DISCOGS IS YOUR FRIEND
So, I found this video. I have never watched it but I plan to get it transferred as soon as possible. Having sorted the 3 releases to kick off the label with, what we needed now was a cracking launch night. And this was a cracking launch night. Upstairs at the Garage, our venue of choice at the time. The modulating boy were me, Matty Scuttle on drums, my friend Alex on bass, and Roxy from Otherwise on guitar. We were really good and it is a shame we only did 2 gigs. Then Nic played, in a rollneck sweater probably, and then the 3 bands with CDs out.
We were doing a buy 2 get the third third free offer and sold a lot that night. It was really well attended, all the bands were great and as a new label, you really couldn't ask for a better start. The sense of family really started here.

This video is dated 22nd November 2000. But Discogs lists the first 3 releases as coming out on 15th January 2011. I will bow to their superior knowledge.

The Firefly Recordings Archive

15/05/2023

05/05/2023

05/05/2023

27/04/2023

26/04/2023

05/04/2023

19/01/2023

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