Tag: Miles Hunt

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Tunes

Eighties’ best 100 redux: #96 The Wonder Stuff “Unbearable” (1988)

credit to Derek Ridgers, Brighton 1988
credit to Derek Ridgers, Brighton 1988

<< #97    |    #95 >>

At song #96, we have The Wonder Stuff and their snarling, acerbic track “Unbearable”. This is a band that I typically identify with the early nineties because this is when I discovered them and also when the band released the bulk of their original catalogue. However, their startlingly upbeat debut album, “The eight legged groove machine” was released in the latter part of the eighties, back before the fiddle was added to the stuffies’ repertoire and before The Bass Thing left the band for America. I featured this very same album when it appeared at number two on my Best albums of 1988 list*, back when I counted that down a few years ago. And in that post, I described how the album was my introduction to the band and a bit of the story behind how the band became one of my favourites during my last few years of high school and into my early twenties.

For those unfamiliar with The Wonder Stuff, “Unbearable” is a good starting block. It is certainly representative of their early work and the rest of their debut album, seamlessly blending the pop mentality of The Beatles with the guns blazing, two-minute guitar rock of The Ramones. Yes, it’s the thirteenth track on a fourteen track LP that falls well short of the forty minute mark. Another song about money and the way it’s misspent, priorities and greed. It was this angst and snarling lyrics and vocals of frontman Miles Hunt that drew me (and by all accounts many others) to the band in the first place and what most probably led to the band’s downfall. They were quite popular for a time in their native country but sadly, The Wonder Stuff never quite broke into the North American market.

Original Eighties best 100 position: #98

Favourite lyric:  “I didn’t like you very much when I met you / And now I like you even less” Classic Miles Hunt.

Where are they now?: After their original break up in 1994, The Wonder Stuff re-formed for a string of shows in London in 2000. The shows were so successful, Hunt, who had been recording solo up to then, began recording new material under The Wonder Stuff name with the original guitarist, Malc Treece. The two of them are still at it these days, having added violinist Erica Nockalls in 2005, and the rest of the band has pretty much changed every few years since. They last surfaced with a new album called “Better being lucky” in 2019.

*In fact, each of their first three albums have appeared in the top five for albums on this blog for the years in which they were released.

For the rest of the Eighties’ best 100 redux list, click here.

Categories
Tunes

Best tunes of 1993: #16 The Wonder Stuff “On the ropes”

<< #17    |    #15 >>

If you asked me today who is my favourite musical artist, I’d be hard-pressed to even narrow it down to a top 50. However, if you had asked me this same question back in high school and right up to my first couple years of university, I wouldn’t have even hesitated in responding that it was Stourbridge, England’s The Wonder Stuff.

I have written about them a number of times already on these pages, hitting lists on my favourite covers and favourites tunes of 1990 and 1991, and of course, their first three albums all placed in my top ten lists for 1988, 1989, and 1991. By the time their fourth long player hit the shelves in the fall of 1993, I was a full-on fanboy and was eagerly awaiting its release. I had already seen the Samuel Bayer* directed video for the advance single, “On the ropes”, and was thrilled by the rock energy and crisp production. It had seemed Miles Hunt and the boys were loosing themselves from the technicolour folk rock of their previous release and embracing a more rocking sound. Martin ‘Fiddly’ Bell still had his fingers all over the sound, of course, as is evidenced in this early single, in which his fiddles screamed and bounced and generally, kept the Stuffies just slightly apart from the American alt-rock that they appeared to be courting.

I was all in on The Wonder Stuff, though, and the changed sound on “Construction for the modern idiot” didn’t deter me in the least. I loved it from the first and I immediately studied it with the same fervency that I did their earlier work. Of course, a new album meant that the band might tour and going to concerts was a new favourite pastime for this young lad. When they were announced to play the tiny club RPM in Toronto in February 1994 for a mere $10, I jumped all over it.

Incidentally, one of the most memorable moments of the concert for me occurred just as the group was leaping into this very song. A few bars into the intro, the noise arrested and Miles roared into the microphone, “Gouge the ****-ers eyes out!” He was referring to a young fan that had leapt on to the front of the stage just long enough to leap off it again and into the outstretched hands of the audience. The whole band weren’t really fans of the act of stage diving. The frontman took the opportunity to take a swig from his magnum of red wind before continuing his tirade against the offender that had disappeared into the crowd. “The next person that tries that will have the rest of the crowd to deal with when we walk off the stage. They paid to see us, not your ass!” The band then started right back up and with no less energy, blowing the doors off the place.

There wasn’t one other attempt to dive off the stage that night and the band duly played a super long set, complete with three encores. I left the show a very happy fan and with a concert T-shirt much like the one Hunt sports in this video, a shirt that I wore for nearly a decade and only retired it when it was no longer wearable. I was proud idiot.

Good times.

*Famous for directing the iconic video for a certain Seattle grunge act’s breakthrough hit.

For the rest of the Best tunes of 1993 list, click here.

Categories
Vinyl

Vinyl love: The Wonder Stuff “Never loved Elvis”

(Vinyl Love is a series of posts that quite simply lists, describes, and displays the pieces in my growing vinyl collection. You can bet that each record was given a spin during the drafting of each corresponding post.)

Artist: The Wonder Stuff
Album Title: Never loved Elvis
Year released: 1991
Year reissued: 2021
Details: Limited edition, HMV 100th anniversary exclusive, OBI strip, brown

The skinny: I hereby interrupt our regularly scheduled ‘Vinyl Love’ programming of my favourite albums from last year to bring you one of my favourites from thirty (!) years ago. The Wonder Stuff’s third album, “Never loved Elvis”, is what our friend Aaron over at KMA would call a grail find for me. It’s the only album from my Best albums of 1991 list that wasn’t already on my record shelves and was one that I never thought I’d find. It was almost by random that I discovered it had been reissued last November as part of an HMV anniversary series in the UK, the only problem for me was that it wasn’t available for purchase here in Canada. Not to be deterred, however, I managed to procure a copy with the help of a fellow vinyl addict named Jim, whom, some of you may remember, used to run an excellent blog named Resurrection Songs. I gave the record a spin within hours of receiving it in the mail and it immediately transported me back to those days of walking around my small hometown while my Walkman transmitted these very tunes to my earbuds. Needless to say, I sang along with good old Miles Hunt for the album’s entirety.

Standout track: “Welcome to the cheap seats”