In the early 1990s there were certain bands whose names seemed to be on every venue tour poster and in all the ads in the gig in the back of the NME or Melody Maker- Chapterhouse, Top, Thousand Yard Stare, Kingmaker- most of them long forgotten now except when they pop up in the ramblings of blogs like this one. Five Thirty (or 5:30) were one of those bands. When I was flicking through part of the record collection the other night I found I had three of their 12" singles and their only album Bed. Five Thirty were a mod influenced trio, who made energetic, slightly psychedelic, wah-wah driven rock. Some of their output hasn't aged too well. They had a fondness for punning song titles- Womb With A View, Junk Male. Some of it still sounds pretty good though and the album has undoubtedly got its moments. You was the lead song on an ep released in October 1991 (which crashed into the charts at number 72, possibly contributing to them disbanding a year later). They had arrived on the coat tails of Manchester, weren't shoegaze, and got made obsolete by grunge. You sounds a bit like The Jam doing The Byrds.
You
It's new to me (like a lot of other music) but beautiful. This song is great and I love the fuzzy guitar in the back. Thank you for introducing.
ReplyDeleteI bought Abstain, I'm sure on the bacvk of a mention in the Face and it was ok but haven't played it for years but it was very sort of modish.
ReplyDeleteI loved the Five Thirty. They had come from the mid 80s mod scene, like a lot of the Baggy end of late 80s/early 90s Indie - I had a 1985 single by an earlier incarnation of the band. The album Bed is one of my all time favourite Mod albums, and live they were excellent, really really tight, really energetic. This is actually my least favourite song of theirs. The other tracks on the ep Slow Train and Cuddly Drug were much better. All of their stuff was put out on one of those Cherry Red expanded compilations, which is worth getting, cos their b-sides were quite often better than the As.
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