SHAUN BELCHER: SONGWRITER

Final session at Toerag Mayday 1993 added to player on MYSPACE as NING players will disappear on 20th August!

Listen to whole ‘Greatest Hits’ on MYSPACE

http://www.myspace.com/thehighpriests

Sleeve art of cassette titled ‘Goodbye Double-Decker’

Now here’s the REAL High priests sound before things went badly wrong..first session at Liam Watson’s original Toerag Studio and I’m channelling recession blues and Nick Cave in equal measure and an unhealthy preoccupation with Crows, Cars and the colour black…..

We recorded all in a hour or so to keep costs down and I remember Liam swigging throughout and a bunch of others messing around…

Liam one finger hammond organ on ‘Your Girlfriend’s Quit’…our drummer adored Moe Tucker and even got a Xmas card one year from her.

The player abve has the E.P.added first.

The cassette tape this the cover of found its way to Too Pure head guy (Paul Cox) who came to see us and left disappointed..seems our version of Tav Falco not quite good enough…

After a casual conversation which involved Joe Meek and Beat Happening I decided to excavate some of the original High Priests material which had been scattered to the wind. It was Grunge time and I and a mad drummer from Oxford and even madder guitarist formed the greatest racket makers this side of the Thames Valley.

The Single:

The Story….

Formed in 1990 and hitting the shambling but right track soon after ‘The High Priests’ took their name from a Alex Chilton record.

Looking for the missing link between Garage Punk, Power Pop and Sun-era Rock n, Roll they avoided rehearsing and playing live until 1993 when the above live first-take recordings were laid down at London’s infamous Toerag Studios under the genius care of one Liam Watson ( more famous recently for his work with The White Stripes amongst others).

Thinking they’d made the greatest wigout garage classic ever the bass-less trio span wildly out of control at a succession of dingy north london pub venues before exploding in a bewildering cacophany of feedback mid song at a Piao Festival in Hammersmith London where the head honcho of Rough Trade was seen to physically grimace and walk away in despair…

All in all a thoroughly glorious failure as befits a drunken blues bunch…

A 7″ was released through Southern Distribution in 1993 featuring ‘Ice Cream Town’ b/w ‘Black Swans Sink’.

It was a bloody racket according to noted noise merchant Billy Childish and graced a sleeve by the designer of Stereolab Sleeves. As only 1000 were pressed and most disappeared along with guitarist Tim Featherstone who has never been heard of since*…

It could be a collector’s item or it could be crap…who knows…. the band members are still searching for that rare single and the master tape of the High Priests session recorded at Toe-Rag Studios London with Liam… a mix of punk and blues with heavy Moe Tucker like drumming and no bass player….hmmm…a full ten years before the White Stripes and the Black Keys…maybe if we’d had a colour in their name …… the High Priests ‘complete’ works are to be released on Tstar Records sometime soon……you have been warned…

* we found him recently but still no date for the repackaging of the HP’s greatest hit..and please do not confuse with the London band of same name ( we had the idea first:-)

At long last I finally have a working store couresy of the new beta store functionality in Reverbnation.

To start with just t-shirts and one CD but more to come including new disc Black River