Hope you’re not wearing anything too fancy, because we’re about to get dirty.

Bill Drummond and Jimmy Caulty have about as many aliases as Alain Jourgenson. As the Timelords, they cribbed Gary Glitter and the “Doctor Who” theme song. As the KLF, they created gonzo but fluffy techno house tracks, even bringing Tammy Wynette along for the ride on one of them. And while there is a clear connection between “Tardis” and tracks like “Last Train to Trancentral” (which the Blue Man Group made their unofficial anthem), there is absolutely no way that anyone could have predicted what they’d do a mere six months after the massive success of their 1991 album The White Room. The cute, bouncy house songs like “3 A.M. Eternal”? Dead, gone. In their place: the meanest, grimiest rave track to ever crack the Top 10.

“Bolton, Barnsley, Nelson, Colne, Burnley, Bradford, Buxton, Crewe…”

(more…)

I can still remember stumbling upon the CD for Voice of the Beehive’s Let It Bee for the first time. I guess you could argue that it stood out because, comparatively speaking, there just aren’t that many artists filed under “V” to catch your eye, but, no, I’m pretty sure it was the combination of the bluish tint of the cover photo and the glistening lips of the two really cute girls in the band. I mean, the blonde was blowing me a kiss, for God’s sake! How can you forget that? Granted, it wasn’t until the group started to score airplay on “120 Minutes” that I realized that they were more than just looks, but it would be a lie to suggest that the looks of Tracey Bryn and Missy Belland - they’re sisters, you know - weren’t directly responsible for bringing me into their orbit for the first time.

Although they scored some college radio hits in the late ’80s and early ’90s, Voice of the Beehive were never as huge in the States as they were in the UK. Maybe it’s because they had a slightly kitschy look about them (the Brits love a gimmick), or maybe it was their vaguely retro, harmony-laden sound, but I’ve always figured it was something to do with the fact that they had two former members of Madness - Woody and Bedders - in their line-up. Whatever the reason, they ended up with two top-20 hits (“Don’t Call Me Baby” and “Monsters and Angels“), had three more enter the lower half of the Top 40, and even made it to #12 in Australia with their fun cover of The Partridge Family’s “I Think I Love You.”

Unfortunately, after the requisite support for 1991’s Honey Lingers, the band went into stealth mode…and stayed there for half a decade!

When the third Voice of the Beehive album, Sex & Misery, emerged in 1995, a fair amount had changed. For one, the band had shifted from London Records over to the Warner Brothers subsidiary label, Discovery Records. More importantly, though, the sisters were now doing it for themselves, as it were. Bedders had been gone for awhile (he came quick and didn’t stay long), but now so was Woody; also MIA were Mike Jones and Martin Brett, who’d also been stalwarts within the group. Tracey and Missy now had a new songwriting collaborator: keyboardist Peter John Vettese, who also produced and arranged the album. Vettese had some impressive pop credits to his name, having contributed keys to The Adventures’ Sea of Love, The Bee Gees’ One, Simple Minds’ Real Life, and a trio of Jethro Tull albums (The Broadsword and the Beast, Under Wraps, and Rock Island), but was he a good fit for the sensibilities of the Belland sisters?

(more…)