Straitjacket Fits - C/D

I guess I made a mistake? Should I ignore the horridness of Blow and check out the earlier material?

I love the Double Happys, which is one of the main reasons why it was so distressing to me to discover that Straitjacket Fits were so bloody average. I mean, I love Shayne Carter's voice. I guess he jsut ran out of tunes. But yeah, "Needles and Plastic" is a classic. "I Don't Wanna See You Again" is another good one.

Yeah, I was wondering about that. Arista is SUCH a crap label, why did they sign to it? SJF seems more like a Sire-type band. Did they not realize that, like, Kenny G. released stuff on Arista? And the Grateful Dead? Brutal.

blow was perfectly titled, it blew. they lost all the prettiness that undergirded shayne carter's intensity when andrew brough left. is orange any good? the pre-sj fits brough band?

I second these wise words.

I listened to Melt for the first time in ages last night in a hypnagogic state while in bed, and Andrew Brough's tracks sounded like some heavenly Kiwi distillation of John Lennon and George Harrison's best Beatles traits. The man is a fuggin' genius, yet he only received George-like song rations. Scandalous.

the songs he recorded with Bike were not terribly inspiring IMO, especially next to the stuff on Melt..

However, I've been listening do the DoubleHappys CD a lot recently (as well as "Randolph's Going Home" by Carter/Jeffries) and am now of the opinion that they were perhaps par with the great FN bands: The Clean, Verlaines, Chills, and Bats. The DoubleHappys managed to take the classic organ 'n' guitar Dunedin sound and infuse it with Crampsy roots/rockabilly as well as snotty teenage brattiness. Amazing. One wonders what they could have achieved had Wayne not died young. They probably would have been bigger (and better) than Straitjacket Fits--though I have to admit I've gotten a strong urge to check the latter out again, and Dimmer, too.

I just found Hail for fiddy cents in a used vinyl store...hails yeah!...take away the Cohen cover and you've got a bona fide classic...I prefer Melt, though the CD version of Melt (at least the Flying nun version) was mastered terribly...no-fi, to be sure...

Andrew Brough as great unheralded songwrite seconded...

Somehow it escaped me all these years that the Flying Nun and Rough Trade versions of Hail had almost completely different tracklistings (I'm only familiar with the RT version). Anyone have the FN version, and is it good enough to track down?

the rough trade version is best. they took the worst songs off of the original version and replaced them with the life in one chord ep. the andrew brough song 'take from the years' is another of his classic pop songs though. there used to be a copy of the version with all of the songs on it in nearly every other bargain bin that i passed.

Listened to Melt and Done repeating all night and, even though the knowledge of how great they are is always with me, I forget how great until I'm actually playing them.

Shit luck that I didn't put Hail next to those in my cd box, because now I don't know where it is. Off to the rar blogs!!!

A little too EMO for me. I prefer the rawer garage-like sound of the DoubleHappys.

RIP David Wood. Sad to hear.

Very sad, never saw them live to my lasting regret.

Just read about this. Has anyone heard a cause of death yet?

R.I.P.

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

And this:<object width="480" height="385"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/7cnq_p2X8Qw?fs=1&;hl=en_US"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/7cnq_p2X8Qw?fs=1&;hl=en_US" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="480" height="385"></embed></object>

heres a wee bit of documentary about them: don't know how to embed properly but you get the idea.

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I think i like the song hail the most. i used to play this very very loud in my bedroom as a wee lad.my parents didn't like it so much.

<object width="480" height="385"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/KM5dBt8k5v4?fs=1&;hl=en_US"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/KM5dBt8k5v4?fs=1&;hl=en_US" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="480" height="385"></embed></object>

jeez andrew brough looks so hurt by the end to this band.

No need to post the whole embed code...just post the link.

ok sorry bout that. i have trouble programming my video player to record the waltons.

apparently it was suicide. sad.

rip :( didnt even know they'd reformed for a lil while, wish i'd been back in nz for that

so sad. lucky enough to catch them on their (only?) uk tour, they put on a great show in front of one of the most disparate crowds i've ever seen. rip.

RIP, saw the Fits play a couple of great shows in London around 1992-ish, Hail and Life In One Chord still sound good today.

Very sad..

I was supposed to see them at a gig with The Clean and arrived too late, it was some sort of rotating bill, totally gutted! That was 1995-ish maybe?

Y'know they did a kickarse Peel Session just before the release of Melt and all four songs sounded 100x better than the album, including a rampantly good 'Roller Ride'. I'd love to hear that again.

yeah, i saw them performing a lot of those 'melt' songs prior to them being recorded for that album (with its weird aqueous production) and they were so much more fierce live. ('roller ride' and 'quiet come' being particular standouts)

Yep, the production on Melt is really boxy, pity really.

This is weird.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7NuejVMkOkA
Can anyone in NZ confirm if She Speeds is some sort of alt music anthem or something?

yeah i can confirm that it is

down in splendour's pretty huge also

In 2001, as part of the Australasian Performing Rights Association's 75th anniversary, a poll was conducted to vote on New Zealand's top 100 songs of all time. Straitjacket Fits' song "She Speeds" was named at number nine, and "Down In Splendour" at number 32, and "If I Were You" at number 88 on this list[1].

This makes me happy!

Still love Hail, still love Down in Splendour, still kicking my own ass at missing this band pay in London years ago.

Love the first two albums, "Done" is mostly crap to my ears. The last two Dimmer albums are killer as is Andrew Brough's Bike album.

New Zealand news is reporting that Andrew Brough has passed away: https://www.stuff.co.nz/entertainment/music/119259795/ex-straitjacket-fits-guitarist-andrew-brough-dies

Oh no

aw what

Aw.

I love so much NZ stuff, but for some reason this band (and the Verlaines) never clicked with me. I should give them both another belated shot. In the meantime, despite not being a huge Fits fan, this has remained one of my favorite songs for decades:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZCnSEb61BTE

This is too bad. He and Shayne Carter were quite the manic duo, complementing each other perfectly. "Lay Down in Splendor" is an eternal classic, and not just in Kiwipop. RIP.

Well that's bloody awful. Jeez, was he even 60? I loved everything he did, the Bike album is a hidden gem worth discovering.

Just awful.

Whoa! Didn't anticipate that reason for the revive. :(

I do get a bad feeling when I see an out-of-the-blue revive for a band whose heyday was in the 80's or 90's...

Terrible shame, I always liked what he brought to the band, a song like Sparkle That Shines is a perfect compliment to Carter's more angsty leanings.

The Peel session version of Roller Ride is so damn great, especially compared to the awful, boxy album production, I love the dissonant notes and passages that they thread into the song.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JOdkv3aeFfc