S&D: Grebo.

SEARCH: DRILL YOUR OWN HOLE by Gaye Bykers on Acid DESTROY: Fuckheads who talk shit about the Wonder Stuff.

EIGHT LEGGED GROOVE MACHINE by the Wonder Stuff was fucking brilliant, and you're a thankless twat if you think different!

EIGHT LEGGED GROOVE MACHINE by the Wonder Stuff was fucking brilliant, and you're a thankless twat if you think different!

-- ...Motel Hell

I like Carter, though. They don't count.

PWEI rock. 'Beaver Patrol' is one of the best songs ever. As is 'Def Con One'. I think it's unfair the Poppies have been forgotten when they were a very innovative and entertaining pop band.

The Wonderstuff, on the other hand: are godawful shite. I don't understand what anyone sees in them. Nor do I see any stylistic links between them and the mighty Pop Will Eat Itself.

Ned's, PWEI, Wonder Stuff, MC4, Senseless Things, Carter - good tunes, good fun, good memories.

Problem?

BJ

Does anyone sound like Gaye Bykers on Acid on acid?
― Andy, Wednesday, 25 July 2001 00:00 (8 years ago) Bookmark

this question is still up for debate.
would love to hear of bands in '10 being influenced by this lot.
playing their debut album for 1st time in years, and loving it way more than i ever expected.
never noticed the driving bassline on the excellent, but dreadfully titled track, after such there's blow.
sounds amazing ..

after suck there's blow i meant of course.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=83mYg7kHrhk

This is the most bizarre thing:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TcQ6Av3pwT0

this is the rubbish you get reminded of clearing out old cupboards on a saturday night

Ah, I didn't realise that Andrew Eldritch was their manager for a spell, that might explain the bizarre and terrible Sisters cover. It sounds like Primal Scream trying to write a song in the style of early Third Eye Foundation.

http://static.rateyourmusic.com/lk/f/s/c97fddd982a7d2e53e12c12a9c24f3a2/3352460.jpg

haha! god, why am i even interested in this shit?

its kind of hard to look away

Reminds you of your misspent youth.

only grebs i ever really liked were crazyhead, but not sure i even want to hear them again now

took me a while to figure out this thread isn't about greta garbo.

so it's about methy barenaked ladies bands?

greta grebo!

the name grebo is p incredible, also bambi slam, can you imagine having to tell people the name of yr band is bambi slam

http://youtu.be/rf6-5-9efM8

Dang.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rf6-5-9efM8

is it pronounced gree-bo or greh-bo, plz say gree-bo, although tbf theyre both p sweet

in that first bambi slam song you can hear that they started off sharing gigs with my bloody valentine, but there was something always so crudy and cackhanded about them

it is pronounced gree-bo as it is apparently derived from the epithet "greasy bastards"

i have listened to "black planet" four times now. it is mesmerizingly bad

so still. so dark all over europe.

haha yes it incredible, the video too my lord stay off drugs everyone

it was nice of andrew to lend them his hat though

If it's actually possible to be "the poor man's Crazyhead" these guys were it

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1x7UC-PUPfg

lol @ "poor man's crazyhead". were they something to do with the bomb party?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pIgT3yhkaG0

^ pronunciation guide

The Batfish Boys were what Simon Denbeigh did after The March Violets. The Bomb Party stand alone although I think there's a GBOA connection after both bands split up?

I never really saw what put any of them together in a scene apart from mainly all coming from the Midlands.

I thought they were all supposed to come from Leicester, though maybe it is just MIdlands since PWEI were from further east, was it Brum?
& I thought there was supposed to be some attempt at something approaching a heavy rockish thing to tie in with the name Grebo. As in Grebo being what people called rockers, motorcycle loving hardrock listening individuals.
So when I was just looking at Grebo I was thinking pre-stoner rock but done wrong but that don't really seem to work. Think there was some psychedelic fixation with people like GBOA, Crazyhead & Bomb Party and some references to harder rock. Though not so sure with GBOA. Also influences from punk & Pop.
Wouldn't have cited Wonderstuff, Ned's and definitely Levellers as having to do with Grebo. Levellers was more crusty folk & wasn't Fraggle used for at least one of the others?

I used to go and see GBOA in '90 and get lifts back to London from them.

PWEI were from further West, not East.

Wonder Stuff, Pop Will Eat Itself and Ned's Atomic Dustbin were from Stourbridge
Crazyhead, The Bomb Party, and Gaye Bykers on Acid were from Leicester
all i can remember were those awful longsleeve t-shirts everyone seemed to wear at the time

Big fan of Rub Ultra back in the day, nice people too, but more mid-nineties Camden indie than any last vestiges of Grebo, almost bordering at times on the indie rock/ragga crossover thing that Bullyrag and Dub War were doing.

Yeah I get that. A more obvious 1995 descendant of grebo (version two) would probably like Collapsed Lung maybe.

A grebo band really needs to look something like this to qualify as True Grebo (TG):

https://i.discogs.com/BM_5kULcp3aZdqK30OLEgIn4oxFgrlm2lAQeVkvgSvg/rs:fit/g:sm/q:90/h:470/w:455/czM6Ly9kaXNjb2dz/LWRhdGFiYXNlLWlt/YWdlcy9BLTI2Nzc2/Mi0xMzM0Mjc2NzQz/LmpwZWc.jpeg

Or this:

https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/peel/images/c/cd/Zodiac_Mindwarp.jpg

both bands look like they smell completely awful, essential ingredient imo. weird to think that the original drummer in zodiac mindwarp was the son of john le mesurier and hattie jacques

America had its grebos too! I give you early White Zombie, although Rob Z is admittedly looking a little philosophical here so maybe they don't count. You wouldn't have caught Crazyhead philosophising.

https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/peel/images/7/76/White_Zombie.JPG

I feel that Reverb Mother Fuckers are the USA analog to Gaye Bikers, maybe a lot of scuzzy NY bands are just Grebo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t8vSGVljuBE

@DanHunterSportsWriter
4 months ago
For two minutes this is absolutely stunning. Otherworldly. Then it all turns to shit.

DanHunterSportsWriter otm

great ZTT sleeve though

the OK Computer booklet owes it everything

I feel that Reverb Mother Fuckers are the USA analog to Gaye Bikers, maybe a lot of scuzzy NY bands are just Grebo

It's a fine line between scum rock and grebo, perhaps a non-existent line. I guess the difference lies in the relative levels of cider consumption.

snakebite to be exact amirite

hadn't heard diskord datkord before and this is actually great imo. not sure how grebo it actually is, but it would probably go off in the right club today tbh

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M2pSpP0skw8

one too many actuallys there, soz

I discovered it through almost all 1990 profiles on Adamski mentioning it as part of his (painted less credibly) background and it leads credence to the idea of almost every Adamski single being different to the rest

I think that the influence of Public Enemy was trememdously important on a certain strata of indie bands back in that period and the ones that took on the mantle of beats/samples/dissonance/trash and threaded it into low-slung UK guitar music with various levels of success are the ones that peel away from the more basic garage rock aesthetics of Grebo.

PWEI evolved very quickly as tech was getting worked into the band, from yer garden variety indie to Grebo then the latter kitchen sink dance/rock/hip hop etc:

westbury mentions Age of Chance there, they got a lot of positive press from the likes of the NME, and I totally bought into them at the time, of course they were from a much more nuanced musical background than Crazyhead, Sheffield/FON etc, and were biting on Hank Shocklee's production style in a big way.

Maybe my memory is playing tricks but I remember so much scuzz rock seemed to have that vague Shocklee influence, Head of David, World Dom, Dave Howard Singers, The Three Johns, Blood Uncles probably a ton more.

'sidewalking' by the JAMC seems like a big moment in scuzzy indie bands nicking elements of hip-hop

thinking about it, Sonic Youth's 'Master=Dik' seemed kind of like a joke record when it came out, from the title to the lyrics to the whole ridiculousness of the b-side, but that's perhaps a good landmark in that whole timeline

This might be the thread to mention that Gaye Bykers on Acid are touring the UK from this week, I'm aware of this remarkable turn of events because my mates are supporting at some of the shows.

https://www.gayebykersonacid.co.uk/gigs

so are ARE weapons stateside grebo then

Tempted to take a purist view and say if they're not mentioned in Rich Deakin's book then they're not grebo.

Arguably this leads to defining W Mids and E Mids grebo as different things - E Mids being the one true grebo obviously.

W Mids seems to come from C86/JAMC peers and influences - PWEI, Stuffies, Ned's - and pre-Neds was all Breton shirt/stripy tights and Thurston haircuts, like in this early Poppies photo.

The first photo I took of Pop Will Eat Itself in 1986, outside a disused shop in Stourbridge that someone had gone to great trouble to change the letters round.
Photo: Dave Travis#PWEI #popwilleatitself #stourbridge pic.twitter.com/IyEQD3U2X0

— Dave Travis (@MrDavidTravis) February 11, 2020

E Mids was metal/punk/psych garage/classic rock influence, biker jackets, chains and looking unwashed. And liking or knowing the Janitors and the Bomb Party.

how on earth did i not see this thread revival !?
especially with the AOC shout outs.

picked up the PWEI live cd yesterday for a coin, and yeah, have been digging around the archive for more of the same.
turns out that i enjoy GBOA more now than i did at the time.
and yeah, the PE love runs deep, with GBOA shouting out 'Dont believe the hype !' a lot during 'better of dedd'.

nb : the connection between AOC and PWEI was always obvious.
seem to recall Clint wearing an AOC baseball cap on the cover of GBF.
that and the story re Clint going up to Geoff T asking for info re the techno toys that they used prior to an AOC gig.

I'm old enough to remember when PWEI were called Wild and Wandering. I think their version of "Orgone Accumulator" in the midst of C86 was ur-grebo.

typically the first time i saw PWEI live (Poppies Say Grr era), they were supported by Hurrah! who i was much more into.
so i went off and chatted with the Hurrah! folks instead of checking out PWEI.
next time i saw PWEI they had discovered samples/beats etc and Hurrah! were no longer of interest to anyone, including me.

it is pronounced gree-bo as it is apparently derived from the epithet "greasy bastards"

― Superphysical Resurrection (NickB), Saturday, October 6, 2012 4:12 PM (twelve years ago)

Today I Learned (thx NickB)

The grebo was also the dance the guys behind Mud did on that Top of the Pops performance of Tiger Feet.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aqwPkgYGiAA

https://pwei.bandcamp.com/album/delete-everything

Would not have been interested 12 months ago, but given the recent revival, quite tempted.
do love the fact that PWEI is effectvely the retirement home for the noise/dance strand of grebo.
i.e. a mash of PWEI, GBOA, Hoodlum Priest, and @440 now

thanks for sharing that video! was never much of a fan tbh but it was oddly affecting to see PWEI so down in the dumps about things. GBOA were much as expected, really fun but imagine being stuck in a tour van with them for two weeks, christ. TPE seem like the exact opposite, quite quiet thoughtful boys aren't they, very un-grebby

while Mack wore the same clothes/hair etc and was a surfer,
i never really associated TPE with the grebo scene.

yeah just around during the same period, probably playing on some of the same bills (defintely at reading i think) and sharing fans, also themselves fans of the stooges and the butthole surfers etc, but yes never grebo. were they ever even part of a scene themselves?

nah, think TPE were always a difficult band to pigeonhole, hence the myriad of record labels involved, as no-one knew what to do with them.
but yeah, they shared a lot of the same world/bills.
they were on Virgin at the same time as AOC and GBOA of course.

I always thought of TPE being closer to Fatima Mansions or someone like that, never thought of them as even vaguely grebo and to be honest I never liked them.

Listened to the two free tracks on the pwei bandcamp link and yes, far better than I expected and leans hard into the Hoodlum Priest/@440 side of the business.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eWyDmzxT7uk

... remembering that this album is about 1976.

Yeah TPE definitely not a Grebo band, when I first got into them, it felt like they were a little bit on the agit side of things (around Babble) but they were always between a few stools, great live band, the albums always seemed have a lot of ideas and approaches, but there were always at least three songs on each record I'd just skip altogether.

there was obviously a beefheart thing going on in the guitars on the first couple of albums, so i suppose they were closer to stuff like stump or the shrubs. but then they started thinking of themselves as more of funk thing and they kind of lost me then. was nice to hear a little bit of 'cellophane' in that video though

Great bunch o' lads though.

Hearing a snippet of Hot Thing in that video has been today's highlight.

I remember seeing them at the Barrowlands once, supporting somebody, and spent the whole performance wondering why Franz Treichler from The Young Gods was suddenly playing bass, it was surreal. I think one of the guys in TPE translated some lyrics for the sleeve of L'eau Rouge

Roli Mossiman produced Babble and was involved with The Young Gods.
Also, Mack used to wear and promote FOETUS a lot.

oops : Roli Mosimann.

Oh! Thanks, I didn't know that Roli did Babble, makes sense :)

TPE included ex-members of the Undertones, which I'd forgotten. One of those bands that were hugely supportive of other more interesting acts while not really matching their levels of innovation, I always wished them well while not really wanting to listen to them. I never thought of them as grebo! They had little in common with the Batfish Boys, Crazyhead et al, for a start they were way more popular.

just remembered i saw TPE at the Town & Country around the time of 'Babble', they were supported by Voice of the Beehive (one of them was Steve Mac's gf iirc), but third on the bill were this lot, proper grebs, the Junior Manson Slags...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=olLVPEASMS0

Eh wait no, actually i'm be misremembering that. Slab! were the third band that night, and I saw the Junior Manson Slags at the same venue with Throwing Muses and the Pixies

when i saw TPE on the Babble tour i got Bogshed as support,
and then Yargo on the next tour.
Bogshed were not of interest to me despite my brief interaction with Steve M during which he enthused about them,
whereas i seem to recall being somewhat impressed re Yargo.

in other news : the PWEI album that the crabbie managed to get Cooking Vinyl to release properly, is very much a post 'Dos Dedos .. ' release.
not many samples, and a lot of industrial stylings, albeit with the PWEI verbal twists (aka cliches perhaps .. ).
but i kind of love it.

p.s. i have struggled to remember the band re the Babble tour.
it could have been Stump as opposed to Bogshed ..
but i decided to go with Bogshed cos i checked out Stump and really don't think it was them.
it was definitely Yargo when i saw TPE next though.

ordered the new PWEI album that's out at the end of this week.
PWEI vs Vestan Pance : i.e. the name that's credited to all their songs.
today is the day i learnt what that was all about.
for years i genuinely thought it was a pseudo for clint.
no wonder the new stuff sounds like a continuation of their original era.
and no, i never clocked re the supposed joke nature of the name.