Baby Cuttings : Odds And Sods From The Music Media, the Web And Beyond

Latest list of Win articles in the UK music press

NB : magazines in bold are ones that have been used in the production of this discography. If you have a copy of an issue that isn't in bold then I'd be very grateful if you send me a scan or photocopy for inclusion in Trash Icons.

NB : around 01/02/89, there was an issue with a review of “Love Units”. There is also mention of a Melody Maker sometime in 1986 with Win on the front cover, possibly titled ÒShooting For The WorldÓ.

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You just gotta love Google and what comes out the business end of it - a recent sojourn through the daddy of all search engines, looking for any reviews of the Fire Engines gig at the Triptych Festival threw up this gem from 2002 :

http://ilx.wh3rd.net/thread.php?msgid=1822602

"One of the guys at work went into a sandwich shop here in Edinburgh last year and suddenly recognised the guy working behind the counter. It was Davey Henderson! So i can at least vouch for the fact that he makes a good sandwich".

.... and further down the page :

"I just found Win's Freaky Trigger for £1 in Shelter on Great Western Rd. Apparently Franz are very fond of Win"

.... I think he's getting that mixed up with the Fire Engines, but who knows? Not all conjecture and scuttlebutt on the web can be just that, can it? In the words of King Kenny : maybes aye ... maybes noh ... maybes maybes!

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There's a website that I've come across devoted to all things issued on Bob Last's Pop : Aural and Fast Product labels. Check it oot at :

http://discog.lesdisquesducertain.com/fastpop/e

There's info and scans of the three Flowers' singles issued on both labels, and a mention of the short-lived Heartbeat project between Henderson and Hillary Morrison.

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YouTube.com and MySpace are the sites du jour that everyone even remotely interested in their vibes is raving about. A quick sweep through both sites has thrown up some choice viands for the Win raconteur.

First up on MySpace are the official sites for the Fire Engines :

http://www.myspace.com/fireengines

... and, amazingly, for Rusty Burns' Pie Finger!

http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendid=56527242

Lots of content on both pages so go looksy! YouTube, for those unfamiliar with it, is a site where anybody can upload any kind of video material for public inspection and consumption. It's searchability is not great but so far I've mined the following nuggets. Russel Burns had uploaded a short clip of the Dirty Reds performing in October 1979 at Stevenson College, Edinburgh at :

http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=rustypie

He's also put up a bonkers recording on the same page from the Robert "Burns an' a' that" Festival that was held in Ayr in May 2005. With his brother Tam, they've performed a poem supposedly by the archbard of Alba himself, Robbie Burns, entitled "Nine Inch will please a lady". Sadly I can't personally confirm whether this is true or not! Its a hoot so go have a butchers and the brothers Burn in ribald action.

Tam Burns has also uploaded to the same site a rough 'n ready mobile phone video of the Fire Engines at the Optimo club last September along with a couple of his bro delivering a political protest that he's been involved with recently. The link is :

http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=tambmental

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The Fire Engines reconvened (again) to appear the Triptych 06 festival that ran from April 26th to the 30th in Edinburgh, Glasgow and Aberdeen. Now in its sixth year, Triptych is described as "... one of Europe's most inventive, exhilarating, music festivals".

The website of the festival can be found at : www.triptychfestival.com

The Engines put in a performance on Saturday April 28th at the Liquid Rooms in Edinburgh. Also playing at the venue were Sun Ra's Arkestra and Bricolage. Despite much lookage on t'web, the only vaguely review type thingy I could find was the following line : "... the Fire Engines' blistering 23-minute set at the Liquid Rooms, however, showed such young whipper-snappers how it was done". Still, good to see that they're sticking with the short, sharp shock and awe gigs of limited duration.

Other Engines info that's come to light in recent weeks is this fantastic downloadable article in PDF format from some music mag called State Of Play, with interviews with the band made in November 2005. It's only 3Mb big so get downloading on the instant - 12 pages of great interviews and photographs of the band are to be had, plus interviews with FF's Alex Kapronos and Primal Scream's Bobby Gillespie. Here's a transcript of the Kapronos interview :

Memories on hearing them for the first time? "I was introduced to Fire Engines when my band, Yummy Fur, covered their "Discord". When we getting Franz Ferdinand together they were one of the bands that we would put on compilation tapes to give to each other - we'd drive to rehearsels listening to them, talking about how a good three-note riff was so much better than ten minutes of feedback or a dreary solo".

Influence? "They gave us inspiration because they sounded like a pop group. They were unquestionably at the edge, challenging the accepted norm of what pop music was, but they were still a pop group - genuine rebels who didn't care for convention, so much so that they stole convention and warped it for their own means".

Why still relevant, 25 years later? "There was a sense of nihilistic fun with their music. It sounded like they could do anything. They were the true antithesis of the hated prog excess and its self-indulgent showing off. They played terse riffs that were rhythmic and repetitive, 15 minute sets instead of 15 minute solos. Their melodies were atonal, yet as catchy as a Phil Spector pop song. Everything was precise with no waste, yet sounded unpredictable".

The PDF file can be found at : http://www.thefireengines.com/pdfer/fe_sop.pdf

I've also found some photographs of the Optimo gig from September '05 on Flickr which are worth a gander :

http://www.flickr.com/photos/biotron/tags/stage/

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Domino Records – home to the recent live Fire Engines album and Franz Ferdinand (no relation to Les, Rio and Anton) – updated their website in March 06 with the news that the Engines did a live radio broadcast on Saturday 4th March on Marc Riley's Rocket Science on BBC 6Music. This will be their last BBC session, their first being of course for John Peel some 25 years ago. The band also played a rare gig in the evening of the same day of the broadcast at The Islington Mill in Salford, Manchester with support from Say Jansfield. So much for the last gig on Earth played a couple of Christmases ago! Long may they reign.

Domino also released a new Fire Engines 7" single on 20/03/06, that of “Discord”. Both the a-side and b-side “Candyskin” are taken from the band's very first John Peel session and will commemorate the 25th anniversary of its first broadcast.

I also belatedly noticed that back in November 2005, the video of “Get Up And Use Me” was added and can be streamed from Domino Record’s website at :

You’ll need to select the Fire Engines as artists in the ‘View Artists By’ pull-down box.

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Yet further Fire Engines news off the port bow!

On September 26th 2005, there was a CD release of “Codex Teenage Premonition”, an 18 track collection of unreleased material, studio outakes and previously released live tracks from a gig at Leith Town Hall (this could well be their first gig, because the Engines' first gig was in the Leith Community Centre on March 16, 1980). S’pretty good, especially the 13 second clip of one of the band saying that “… we’re gonna do two 15-minute sets, half an hour between each other, and things like that, and we’re playing with this band called U2, not really heard of them yet, but I’m not really bothered about them”!

More info can be found at the Domino Records website, which is also that of Franz Ferdinand’s :

Reviews for “Codex Teenage Premonition” :

Record Collector – “A ferocious teenage avant-garde act, from Edinburgh … then, as now, nothing on earth sounded quite like Fire Engines. Warped youthful mania fizzed from a collection of manic excursions parading as songs … this is a challenging, exotic noise, quite beautiful in places and reminiscent only of the Beefheartian-based early days of Buzzcocks when they, too, upstaged The Sex Pistols by sheer force of invention. … the problem, of course, was how to possibly move away from the ferocity of this initial attack to a place where a larger audience would take notice. It never really happened which, if nothing else, secures Fire Engines in a state of eternally crazed youth”. 3 out of 5.

Uncut – “The obvious template for the jags and splinters of the Fire Engines sound is Captain Beefheart. But their most thrilling songs remind me more of James Brown. … just listen to “Get Up And Use Me” … from the sub-funk bassline through the two guitars’ frictional mesh of screeching slide and itchy rhythm, to Davey Henderson’s parched yelp, it’s obvious that Fire Engines listened closely to “No New York” and “Buy The Contortions”. … Fire Engines had a terrific way with song titles : “Hungry Beat”, “Meat Whiplash”, “New Things In Cartons”. … Far from Eno’s aural tranquillisers, this was ambient as buzz music, a spiky cloud of sonic amphetamine designed to get you in the right mood … before going out on the town. … Codex captures Fire Engines lubricating some big rooms in Edinburgh, with four songs from the group’s debut gig and six from another performance closer to the end of their brief lifespan. Both concerts feature their No 1 tune, “Discord”, a shard-scattering groove that’s like The Fall’s “Fiery Jack” rooted in funk rather than rockabilly. The later show is prefaced by a snippet of Henderson vowing to do “two 15-minute sets” with a half-hour gap between. Playing 15-minute gigs wasn’t a gimmick but a logical structural extension of the group’s commitment to compression : twice the energy into half the time. Like James Brown, Fire Engines had ants in their pants, but zero angst. Codex preserves their euphoria and NRG like a case of vintage Red Bull”. 4 out of 5.

This review was by Simon Reynolds, author of the excellent postpunk overview “Rip It Up And Start Again”. This Uncut review also features a very short interview with DH :

Uncut : It’s pretty amazing that Fire Engines’ very first performance was documented.
Henderson : Our bassist Graham had been keeping the tape under his bed for 25 years! That debut gig was the best thing we ever did. We should have split up afterwards, ‘cos we didn’t get any better! It sounds like an emergence, like something coming from a swamp. Most people know our Pop: Aural stuff, but this compilation is all about the whole year we existed before hooking up with Bob Last. Another reason to release the session and live stuff is that the songs were never recorded as they were written and performed – two-minute songs.
Uncut : It must be sweet getting all this love from such as Franz Ferdinand, covering “Get Up And Use Me”.
Henderson : It all started when we got asked to reform to play with The Magic Band. We wouldn’t have done it for anybody else. But if Don van Vliet himself had been involved, we would have been too scared! Not long after, Franz invited us to play a surprise gig for their fans. They gave a free single to the audience, all 5000 of them, with their cover of “Get Up…” on one side and us covering their “Jacqueline” on the other. But we’re not coming out of retirement; just a couple more gigs and that’s it!

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Fire Engines activity ahoy!

They played a limited number of gigs in Scotland and in London, which included the following venues :

Reviews :

Note the interesting spelling of Davey’s current voodoo collective!

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Jesus Jones, I’m doing it again, putting muchos research into a Win-related side project – but there’s some interesting info to be gleaned. So, here’s some details on the Russel Burn solo project ...

Pie Finger : “A Dali Surprise”

“A Dali Surprise”
Format :LP / CD
Label :Creation Records
Serial No's :crelp 122 / crecd 122
Date Of Release :April 1992
Track Listing :

1. Jaggy Jungle
2. Time Will Tell
3. Strictly Planets (Jupiter)
4. A Dali Surprise
5. Let Them Drip Gold
6. Amazonian Howl
7. Without A Name
8. Re-Possession Mix – CD only
9. Jaggy ‘Pie’ Seas

• Produced by Tony Pilley and Russel Burn; except 5 and 8 (Ian McKenna and William Perry), and 6 (George Peckham).

• The album was recorded mainly in Barcelona in 1991 (at the Happy Valley Studio), with two tracks recorded at Sonic Studios in Edinburgh, that of “Let Them Drip Gold” and “Re-Possession Mix”, where old muckers Davey Henderson and ex-Fire Engine Murray Slade contribute, with ex-Winster William Perry co-producing. “Amazonian Howl” was laid down in Edinburgh’s Clermiston Wood studio.

• Both the front cover and spine has the title in inverted commas, thus : “A Dali Surprise”

• Nick Prescott, credited with guitars and bamboo flute on the album, is another son of Edinburgh who lives in Barcelona. He also trades under the name of Mercurio and produces chillout and electronica. Check out these links for the ‘artistic hairdressing group’ (you couldn’t make it up!) Sienta La Cabeza for whom Nick is the DJ :

http://www.sientalacabeza.com/mercurio_bioE.htm

http://www.sientalacabeza.com/mercurio_critica.htm

– likely base of ops : Barcelona; unlikely base of ops : Warrington.

• “Let Them Drip Gold” was inspired by the bizarre life of Salvador Dali, and is filled with quotes from interviews in which Dali expresses his love of money and gold (the greedy get).

• On the sleevenotes, Russel is credited with contributing “pie fingers and voice”! As mentioned previously, this is a reference to his nickname whilst in Win.

• With the tracks “Jaggy Jungle” and “Jaggy ‘Pie’ Seas” in mind, Harry Gillies, a Glaswegian pal of mine, confirms what ‘jaggy’ means exactly : “Jaggy means sharp/barbed/nettles eg ‘watch oot, that’s jaggy neetle bush’”. (“Jaggy ‘Pie’ Seas”? Pisces? ? At the risk of looking like a reet bin-raiding stalker, I recall elsewhere in an interview that Burns gave his starsign as Pisces (a restraining order is probably already on it’s way!). BTW this track is extremely similar to the first on “A Dali Surprise” and could well be one song cut in twain, and meant to stand as musical bookends).

• It’s not known if there’s a cassette edition.

• The inner sleeve has a photograph of one Andre Breton, who was a French writer, poet, and the father of the surrealist movement (penning the influential Surrealist Manifesto in 1924). Of course, Salvador Felip Jacint Dalí Domènech (to give him his full name) was also a noted surrealist. After Dali fell out with his fellow surrealists when General Franco came to power at the end of the Spanish Civil War, Breton coined the anagram “Avida Dollars” for when referring to ol’ Salvador. Here’s a quote from Dali that could well be a mission statement for the lyrics of Win : "What is important is to spread confusion, not eliminate it". A summary of the Catalan man’s life and works can be found at the Wikipedia site :

• I’m not sure how to describe this album – suffice it to say that’s it worth tracking down for the Win collector as a curio. Unsurprisingly, the partial Win reunion on “Let Them Drip Gold” is pure class and very Win-like, with it’s harmonius blend of Davey’s croon, chiming guitarwork, Dali samples, and squiggly electronics sitting atop a percussive rollercoaster. “Without A Name” could well be an outtake from Simple Minds’ “New Gold Dream (81-82-83-84)” album, such is the similiarity to Mick McNeal’s trademark swirls of synth and Charlie Burchill-esque rhythm guitar, and it’s recital of artists (incluing Goya, Jackson Pollock, Francois Truffaut, Man Ray, Dali, and … err … T’Pau’s Carol Decker!) brings to mind Davey’s quote that in Win’s work, “there were lyrical references to people we loved through art”. There’s a comprehensive review of this album on Al Crawford’s website at :

• Note that there is also another band with an almost identical name of Piefinger in existence, an acoustic-folky outfit, who can be found at :

• Creeping Bent organised a gig on 31/03/02 at The Venue in Edinburgh which both the Nectarine No.9 and Pie Finger played – I can’t work out if the concert was called “Easter Uprising” or “Roll Away Tha' Stone (Sha La La La, Push Push)”. The missive read : “Piefinger returns to wave the freaky punky flag for the first time since Creation released his shortwave synthesised pop art” – first time? That’s ten bleedin’ years after the album was first released!

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Win or WIN?

Is the band’s name WIN or Win? There seem to be numerous examples of both. In the music press of the time, the phrase Winpop would occasionally surface. It also begs the question as what fans of the band should be known as? ‘Winners’ is waaay beyond both irony and good taste – reet Alan Partridge! Other serving suggestions could include : ‘Winsters’; ‘Winnites’; or even ‘Belles of St. Winians’!

I also like the band’s name – at the time as a ‘yoof’, I liked the forthright bullish thrusting (almost arrogant) feel to it (which is important : if your musical crew intends to blast off on a jazz-fusion odyssey, then it’s inadvisable not to confuse your potential audience with band names like The Mucuous Membranes or The Spleens!), only in later life realising the irony associated with such a moniker in the society-is-dead Thatcherite free-for-all decade.

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While its not within the scope of this project to specifically detail other bands such as Nectarine No.9 and The Fire Engines, I’ll make an exception for the more obscure side outfits that nutjob collectors (like me) typically feel the need to gather magpie-like. So here for your perusal is the 7” and 12” by ...

Everest The Hard Way

““Tightrope””
Format :7" Single
Label :Do It Records
Serial No's :DUN 17
Date Of Release :April 1982
Track Listing :

A : “Tightrope” – written by Everest The Hard Way, published by Do It Records, 1982, copyright 1981 Bryan Morrison Music Ltd; B : “When You’re Young” – written by Service, produced by Everhard / Griffin.

““Tightrope””
Format :12" Single
Label :Do It Records
Serial No's :DUNIT 17
Date Of Release :April 1982
Track Listing :

A : “Tightrope (Extended)” – written by Everest The Hard Way, produced by Everhard / Griffin; “Quarter To Six” - written by Everest The Hard Way, produced by Everhard / Smarties; B : “When You’re Young” – written by Service, produced by Everhard / Griffin; “Take The Strain” ” - written by Everest The Hard Way, produced by Everhard / Smarties.

• Everhard is presumably a rudey shorthand for Everest The Hard Way, but who the bleddy hell are Service and Smarties!? No info on Mr / Mrs / Miss / Dr Service have ever come to light, but I’m 99% cocksure that Smarties is Wilf Smarties, an “eccentric” producer who worked on the Fire Engines’ “Get Up And Use Me” (during whose recording he barked at the band to “just keep going!” after the opening racketty fumble) and on a pre-Pop:Aural session. Wilf produced most of the work of Scots funksters APB, Goodbye Mr McKenzie’s debut “The Rattler” (a group once featuring future Garbage singer Shirley Manson), and much of the Shamen’s early material. He also hand-built the studio Wilf’s Planet in Edinburgh (where Wet Wet Wet did their demos).

• The 12” has on it a publishing mark for Do It Records 1982 and a copyright symbol for 1981 Bryan Morrison Music Ltd.

• Note that on the 12” record sleeve, the “Tightrope” track is listed as ‘Tightrope’, whereas on the vinyl it is written as “Tightrope (Extended)”.

• In Brian Hogg’s “All That Ever Mattered : The History Of Scottish Rock And Pop” there is a picture (on page 215) of a poster advertising various bands playing in April at The Nite Cub (‘upstairs at the playhouse ~ fri., sat., sun.’ – the Edinburgh Playhouse?). No year is given (but the spod in me surfaced, and with the help of Windows’ clock app, I’ve worked it out to be 1980), but on Saturday April 5th, Everest The Hard Way headlined with The Delmonts. On the following Friday (the 11th) there was Josef K, Orange Juice, and The Go-Betweens – cracking value was to be had at the Nite Club back in the day!

• I’ve come across another band that were on Do-It Records – the Mothmen. Formed in 1979 by ex-members of Albertos Y Lost Trios Paranoias, they released 3 singles (including one that was deleted after just one day!) and a LP on the Do-It label. Amazingly, some time later after disbandenment, they all hooked up with Mick Hucknall in Simply Red.

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For the avid collectors oot there, here is a list of all ... :

Swamplands releases :

These are just the ones I’ve been able to confirm through research, and I dare say that there’s probably more, going by the serial number format of SWP for 7”s and SWX for 12”s. For example, it’s a good guess that there’s a 7” (SWP 4) of the Memphis single – it’s just that I haven’t come across one yet.

Memphis included former Orange Juice members James Kirk, Paul Heard, and Stephen Daly. There’s an interview with the band in Sounds back in 13/4/85 and with the band plus Alan Horne in May 85’s edition of Blitz.

Paul Quinn went on to form Paul Quinn And The Independent Group on the reformed Postcard label in 1992 (a veritable Scots supergroup that included ex-members of Orange Juice, Aztec Camera, The Commotions, Bluebells, and even Alan Horne himself), and later appeared with Nectarine No.9 on their 1995 “Pregnant With Possibilities” EP.

Note that subsequent Win releases on London still had the Swamplands panther on the vinyl and CD, though there was no new Swamplands serial numbers issued (ie in the SWxxx format).

See the “Un-American Broadcasting” section elsewhere for a curious double use of SWX 6 for Paul Quinn and for “Unamerican Broadcasting”.

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Uncut magazine interview

There is a short interview and pictures with Davey Henderson can be found in the March 2004 edition of Uncut magazine, as part of look at the ‘Sound Of Young Scotland’ scene that included the Fire Engines, Aztec Camera, Josef K, and Orange Juice. There are a couple of photographs of the Fire Engines including a decent shot of the chaps loitering in a butchers shop (with intent to purchase charcuterie!)

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Nectarine No.9 website

A decent looking site dedicated to the Nectarine No.9 can be found at :

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Marc Bolan website's Win section

This is a MP3 of the Marc Bolan cover by Win (the B side on the 12” of Shampoo Tears) and some background info on Win.

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Freaky Trigger : the website

Freaky Trigger is the name of a music website that forms a network of other music sites :

The site’s creator talks here why :

… and draws an interesting parallel between Win and the Scissor Sisters.

(In a similar vein, you can find me on Xbox Live under the username of ‘Freaky Trigger’ – like all good videogamers, I suppose I better get in some ‘smacktalk’ to proclaim my prowess on the digital playground : You want some? I got some! So come get some! I’m Brutal Deluxe, Baby! (Except when I’m metaphorically having my 30-something arse handed to me on a plate by some 12 twelve year old dead-eyed twitching maniac from Chickenshit, Alabama whose gaming reactions are to mine what mine are to a corpse’s)).

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Top 100 Scottish albums of all time

Sifting through Google, I came across a piece in the Scotsman concerning the top 100 best Scottish albums from the 16th of October 2003. Wading in at a respectable 51 is “Uh! Tears Baby (A Trash Icon)”:

The article in question reads as follows :

51 UH! TEARS BABY (A TRASH ICON)
WIN

”Formed by ex-Fire Engines stalwarts Davey Henderson and Russell Burn, Win was a quite different proposition to its predecessor. Superficially similar to the quicksilver pop of Heaven 17, they attempted subversion through lyrical content. Two funk-oriented singles, Super Popoid Groove and UnAmerican Broadcasting, prefaced Uh! Tears Baby, which mischievously twisted between Marc Bolan and Prince. Another stellar song, You've Got The Power was featured in a McEwan's Lager TV advert, although the company obviously missed the punchlines "to censor what's real" and "to generate fear". Win split up after a second album, Trigger Finger, after which Henderson formed the Nectarine No 9”.

…… heh heh, Trigger Finger indeed! (I’m on iffy ground here – I initially thought that the title of my cassette copy of the second album, bought in a record store in York in ’94, read as “Freaky Tiger”). The text is superficially similar to the Win section in Brian Hogg’s “All That Ever Mattered : The History Of Scottish Rock And Pop” (see further down for more details), where he also later on makes the same titular error of the second album.

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Franz Ferdinand connection

In December 2004 Franz Ferdinand did a concert with a temporarily reunited Fire Engines as a support act at the Glasgow SECC. For sale at the gig (and only this gig) was a very limited edition 7” single which featured FF’s cover of the Fire Engines “Get up and use me”, backed with an Engine’s cover of ‘Jacqueline’. Unsurprisingly, numerous copies have since cropped up on Ebay. According to the Scotsman newspaper, it was a tough old gig! :

At the first of two hometown gigs to cap their annus mirabilis, they (Franz Ferdinand) invited their favourite Scottish pop band of yore, The Fire Engines, to reform once more for the occasion. The Edinburgh post-punkers’ set flew right over most of the crowd members’ heads, so plastic beer glasses flew over the band members’ heads.

After a customarily pithy set, dedicated to John Peel "and anyone else who’s dead", The Fire Engines departed to a chorus of boos, but to the core faithful, the spiky fuzz of Get Up And Use Me, the madly danceable New Things In Cartons and the almost conventionally melodic Meat Whiplash were still a buzz 25 years on.

A review of the gig can be found on the Scotsman website :

I understand that they planned to play eight or nine songs at the reunion (out of a total of 12 recorded Fire Engine tracks). Compared to their early 80s heyday where gigs would clock in under fifteen minutes, this may have well been the longest-lasting Fire Engines gig ever!

This second article is a decent interview with Davey Henderson and a bit more on the FF gig :

…… and there’s also a brief mention of Win :

“….. Win, another briefly but brightly burning left-field pop band”

Well, I did say it was brief! It would be interesting to know whether Franz Ferdinand had ever come across Win or Nectarine No.9, and what they thought about them.

Also on the Scotsman site, there is a review of the Fire Engines “last ever gig on Planet Earth” on Hogmanay (30/12/04) at the Liquid Rooms in Edinburgh (which you need to be registered to see; alternatively, use the Search function on the Scotsman website and enter Fire Engines Henderson).

Alex Kapranos from Franz Ferdinand lists the Fire Engines as one of his favourite bands : “I can't think of another band like The Fire Engines - they had pent-up explosive energy and an astonishing rhythm section, and sounded Scottish”. At the end of the gig, Alex bigged up the Engines, saying that Fire Engines were one of the reasons they started Franz. The link can be found at :

At www.brooner.co.uk there’s a great line where Davey says that touring with Franz Ferdinand was like touring with S Club Juniors! – probably because of the vast age difference.

Though Win didn’t make the BBC Scotland’s online poll The 50 Best Scottish Bands Of All Time (though Bis did, thus proving that we truly live in a godless universe), the Fire Engines came in at a respectable 32. On the same area of this site are some pictures of the Nectarine No.9 working their voodoo groove on stage :

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Recommended reading

The following tomes were used in my researches and come highly recommended :

“The Creation Records Story : My Magpie Eyes Are Hungry For The Prize” by David Cavanagh – one ultra-short mention of Win (“…. Horne’s hottest tip was Win, a band formed by the Fire Engines’ singer Davey Henderson”), but a lorra lorra background on the Fire Engines, Postcard Records and the ‘Sound Of Young Scotland Scene’, Bob Last and his Pop : Aural label, and the rise and fall of Swamplands.

“All That Ever Mattered : The History Of Scottish Rock And Pop” by Brian Hogg – this brilliant 1993 tome details the development of the Scottish music scene, taking in all manner of artists from bonny Alba, from Alex Harvey, Lonnie Donegan and Lulu, up until the likes of Teenage Fan Club and Primal Scream took over the early 90’s charts. Its real strength is the inclusion of all those bitpart players who never quite made the grade, the movement of musicians from one band to the next, and the unexpected nuggets of unalloyed joy that can be mined on every single page – did you know that Talking Heads’ David Byrne was born in Dumbarton?!

As well as much info on Alan Horne, Postcard, and the Fire Engines, there’s also plenty of quotes from Chairman Henderson, three whole pages devoted to the Edinburgh stalwarts, and a curious photograph of a promotional sticker for “Unamerican Broadcasting” (see the "Super Popoid Groove" section for further info on the UA vinyl). This sticker graphic is also on the front cover. This excellent tome also has info on Heartbeat, Flowers, Apples, Pie Finger, and other such peripheral acts of interest to a Win collector. It curiously has a mention of somebody called Jason Robertson (who was part of Burn This – later Witness – who formed in the aftermath of Hipsway’s breakup; he might be the same Jason Robertson who played guitar for Botany 500) who is described as “ex-Win”.

Hogg makes a strong and potentially contentious remark concerning bands from Glasgow and Edinburgh – that Glaswegian groups worked their way through adversity to success (Simple Minds, Wet Wet Wet, Love And Money), while Edinburgh acts (such as Win, Fire Engines, Josef K, and the Rezillos) had a habit of falling apart when the worst of the hard times were already over (and at least avoiding the difficult 3rd album syndrome).

”The Great Scots Musicography” by Martin C Strong – a fantastically detailed tome, with a potted history and discography of each band to have originated north of the border. I wish I had come across this labour of love before I wasted hours of my life trawling the web for Win-related rumours, hearsay and conjecture. As well as a nice section on the Postcard and Swamplands labels, there is plenty of info on The Fire Engines, Win, and Nectarine No.9, and even mentions for the more obscure solo ventures such as Pie Finger and Everest The Hard Way!

“Rip It Up And Start Again” by Simon Reynolds – everything you wanted to know about postpunk music between 1978 and 1984 but were too louche to ask! A towering and fascinating read, taking in the usual postpunk suspects of PiL, Gang Of Four, and Magazine, but widening the cast of his net to include the likes of Heaven 17, Orange Juice, and Associates. Just a brief mention of Win, mentioned elsewhere in this site, as Bob Last talks about The Fire Engines recording the single ‘Candyskin’.

All of these books were easily available on Amazon, Abebooks.co.uk, and Ebay.

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That McEwans advert

Breaking news! (May 2006) : trawling through Google I came across the actual ad that some good soul had uploaded to a TV advert website. You'll need Realplayer to watch but the ad is of good quality and can be watched full-screen with little of the usual pixellation. The link is at :

Man, its been nearly 17 years since I've seen this and its every bit as good as I remembered. It's noticeable that the Win track is not exactly the same as the one on the 3" promotional CD that McEwans put out - for a start its much shorter and the synths are more to the fore, with only the one chorus of alternate chorus lyrics.

It's also possible to watch one of the later McEwans advert for the Chinheads campaign, which can be found on YouTube.com :

On the forum for the DVD Reviewer website, I came across a mention of a parody of the ad done back in the day. Here's an edit of the posting :

"... but do any of you remember the parody that the late great Scotish comedian Ricky Fulton did on one of his 'Scotch and Wry' programmes? Scene is similar to that of the video, but turns out the video is playing in a bar, as the ball rolls down the hill, it crashes throught the glass wall of the bar, Rickies face appears and asks 'Can a hae ma ba' back', or rather ' Can I Have My Ball Back'. Absolutely hilarious, if you are a fan of the late dear departed funny man".

OK, on with my earlier breakdown of the ad... :

Ask a 30- to 40-something chap to recall a beverage-plugging television advert from the 1980s and its an odds-on cert that they will trot out the usual suspects of the Hofmeister bear, those arch and artistic Rutger Hauer-starring Guinness segments (that wouldn’t look out of place playing in Tate Modern), Holsten Pils’ genesplicing of Griff Rhys-Jones and sundry cinema classics, amongst many others. The odds would also be good that said-gent would remember the series of distinctive ads that Scottish brewer’s McEwan’s produced in the mid to late 80s for their lagers.

Such companies were forbidden (by the IBA) to make use of already established bands for their advertising soundtracks under the ruling that no ‘heroes of the young’ could be used to advertise alcohol. Indeed, Big Country’s Stuart Adamson took some serious fire for endorsing the brewer Tennants’ sponsorship of musical competitions for new bands. Because of this ruling, McEwan’s dropped their first choice of Simple Minds and instead made advances to new talent such as Win and, later, Hipsway.

(…. On the subject of Hipsway, Henderson and Stoddart would occasionally in interviews have digs at their fellow Jockrockers. Here we have Ian Stoddart : “Take Hipsway. They’re pretty hard-hitting and dead tight but they’ve got no danger about them. They don’t strike me as having that quality. They’re not likely to push back any barriers”. Davey H offered up back in 1985 : “We’re the only sound in Scotland. There are just no groovy bands apart from us, basically. Hmm. I could attempt to sing the praises of Paul Haig and Hipsway but … frankly it would be futile”. Interestingly, ex-Josef K Haig used to be a roadie for the Fire Engines. …)

Of particular interest to the Win afficionado was the McEwan’s ad soundtracked by an edited version of “You’ve Got The Power”, and was entitled by it’s marketing mandarin creators as ‘Escher’ (and to the rest of us lumpen masses as ‘the one with the stone balls in’). It went on to win several advertising awards.

Opening with the clattering sonic salvo of a drum machine, a desperate scene emerges as a gang of rag-garbed corpse-pallored wretches (seemingly straight from the chorus line for Les Miserables) toil at the task of pushing a collosal stone ball up a fogbound incline. Still, better that than a place on a 1980’s Youth “Opportunities” Program, eh? Anyways, at the pinnacle of the slope, there is a sudden drop-off, over which the ball is rolled, and down which the ball falls to unknown depths, which causes a monstrous bell to toll deafeningly – definitely not to the amusement of the rancid rabble, who fall to the floor with their hands clapped over their ears. The camera pulls back to reveal that the whole incline is some kind of workcamp, or prison, in the form of a Escher diagram (named after the artist Maurits Escher, 1892-1972. Yes, you do know his work, in this case referencing those perplexing drawings of his, of gothic buildings with neverending staircases and aquaducts that no 1970’s school science lab would be complete without), hence the name of the ad.

With the stone sphere consigned to the abyss, the workslaves sullenly trudge off (presumably for a crafty B&H and a brew), at which point the camera pulls back further, through the ‘invisible wall’ (as film types refer to it), to find that the whole Boschian scene is being played on a load of video screens in a bar. McEwan’s lager is being guzzled with gusto and enthusiasm by the barflys, and a merry old time is being had by all, except the denizens of the prison who are now strangely aware of the pub through the other side of the screen. To the edited refrains of “You’ve got the power to get out of here, out of the tower”, the huddled mass concoct a plan of escape : they propel another stone ball at the screen with causes the assorted tellys to explode for no adequately explored reason. Through the mist of the shattered boozer, extends a battered hand to grab some poor punter’s pint of McEwan’s. Thirsty work is that escapage from alternate non-Euclidian dimensions!

As can be seen elsewhere in the Discography, it is actually possible to get hold of this alternate mix of “You’ve Got The Power”.

(…. By coincidence, at some point in the late 80s, Russel Burn’s sister appeared on the side of cans of Tennant’s lager, in some capacity of a model. Back in 1989, Russel commented : “It was a really big break for her. She’s doing calenders now”. …)

And on the advert itself, here’s Davey’s take : “Oh God, we never thought it would come about. The advert won an award in New York and it shows Win works. Objectively, baby, it’s one of the best adverts there’s ever been. People have been asking for ‘the song by The McEwans’!”

DH again back in 1985 on the ad : “It’s one of my favourite adverts ever. It’s like a really surreal two minute pop video”. There’s all these people dressed in rags pushing this huge ball around and us singing over the top of it. It was shown at the time of Scotland’s World Cup matches so everyone in Scotland saw it. It’s still shown quite a bit and you still get people writing to the Daily Record and STV asking what the song is in the background”.

I’ve also read in a copy of Melody Maker that the advert was shown in Scotland and in some cinemas in England (no mention of TV ads, which is where I came across said promotional film first). It was even shown on Diamondvision (whatever that is) at Rod Stewart’s Wembley gigs. Davey H : “That means we can tell people we played with Rod Stewart at Wembley”. The article also confirmed that the first choices for McEwans were Simple Minds and Big Country.

(A selfish aside : not that this is of any particular interest to perusers of this site, but it was because of this very ad that I got into Win in the first place. Sometime in 1985, I’d gone to a now-defunct club in Leicester called The Bearcage with a cousin of mine. As we walked in, the place was cutting some serious rug to the sounds of “You’ve Got The Power”. I asked of my erstwhile relative who this artist playing was, and he drunkenly responds “I’m sure its by Hipsway”. (The mook had gotten his McEwan’s ads mixed up, the useless …… er … mook). Being the days of pre-Internet, it took an aeon to finally track down the eponymous Hipsway album, but eventually I scored a copy at a record fair : as excellent as it was, there was no such track on the album. Bah. Fast forward to 1991, and I’m working in Coventry at a glamorous anodising plant. A teabreak conversation drifts onto adverts of quality and distinction, and I offer up the Escher example as a personal favourite, and regale the ensemble with my tale of woe of identifying the soundtrack. A coworker then informs me that the music is not only by a troupe of Jockrockers called Win, but that he had the album on cassette that I could borrow. Back of the net! The moral of this story is : if you want accurate info, then you’re better off chancing your arm on t’internet rather than heeding the random thoughts of sozzled inlaws!).

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