The Boo Radleys - Wake Up! LP C/D

Not to keep bumping this thread but needed to acknowledge Ian on his great post. The thing that continues to blow my mind is that for the really hard-core boo fans it is Kingsize that really touches them most. You ran a Boo Radleys site, so you must really like them as well. It just great to meet, hear, or talk to anyone who feels the same way. The great lost album from the 1990s.

It was heartbreaking that they split on the back of such a great album.

Ian or anyone for that matter, that is my real e-mail address and I’m on slsk as BeeOK as well, lets chat sometime!

And then, one gig at the Virgin Megastore (which I didn't get to), and then they packed it it.

That's my feeling about Kingsize exactly. It's a fine album but you can tell it's the end really. I still maintain that Giant Steps is their best, closely followed by Wake Up.

I see early Boos as a completely different beast really, but I still love the early stuff. I don't think there are any bad songs on Everything's Alright Forever and it could fit very well in the recent wave of psychedelia we've been seeing with Dungen and stuff like that. I really enjoy listening to Spaniard, Song For The Morning To Sing, Does This Hurt, Room At The Top, Tortoiseshell, Foster's Van (sublime!), Buffallo Bill and countless others. I think the reason I like Giant Steps so much though is because it's such a big leap from the early stuff yet it retains the original ethic (tracks like Spun Around and Take The Time Around are still as noisy and shoegazey as fuck).
It's about time I made myself a best of Boos CD-R as my favourite tracks keep changing. Right now I'd say this would sum them up for me:

Foster's Van
Buffalo Bill
Spaniard
Song For the Morning To Sing
Room At The Top
Butterfly McQueen/Rodney King
Best Lose The Fear
Lazarus
Joel
Crow Eye
Zoom
Charles Bukowski Is Dead
Reaching Out From Here
Blues For George Michael
Wallpaper
Almost Nearly There
Bullfrog Green
French Canadian Bean Soup
Everything Is Sorrow
Four Saints
Ride The Tiger
The Old Newsstand At Hamilton Square
Jimmy Webb Is God
In A Galaxy Far Far Away

Honorable mentions:
Tortoiseshell
Oh Brother
I Will Always Ask You Where You've Been Even Though I Know The Answer
Vote You

Bodenheim Jr
Kaleidoscope (Ichabod & I version)
Naomi
Everybird
Sometime Soon She Said
Foster's Van
Spaniard
Skyscraper
Room At The Top
Smile Fades Fast
I Hang Suspended
Butterfly McQueen / Rodney King (I think of this as one song)
If You Want It, Take It
Take The Time Around
C'Mon Kids
Four Saints
New Brighton Promenade

November 13, 1992 at the Hollywood Palladium when they were the opening band for Sugar. (Everything’s Alright Forever tour)

November 18, 1993 on the Sunset Strip at the Roxy Theatre and was the only time I got to see them when they were the headliner band. This show went really well for the Boos as a lot of people were talking about how great they were live after the show. (Giants Steps tour)

September 5, 1994 for Lollapalooza 1994 on the second stage. (Giant Steps tour)

In my opinion, "Every Heaven" is the best they ever did. So powerful and loud, and yet so meek and melodic. Four perfect beautiful songs. I like a lot of the early stuff, but not all. All my CDs got burgled, and I only have the early stuff on vinyl now, and rarely get round to listening to vinyl. I've got most of it I think.

I loved Wake Up Boo the song but couldn't get on with the album to be honest. Same with C'mon Kids. Then I forgot about them until a web search last year found me a review of Kingsize. I went straight out and bought it, and think it's fantastic. Just as good, although very different from "Every Heaven".

I only saw the Boos once, at Manchester students union in about 1994. The same mate came up from Cardiff (where he'd seen them a week previous and they were rubbish). In Manchester they were superb. Loved every minute and still remember most of it.

When I found they had split I was pretty upset. Listening to Kingsize now is quite a melancholy experience knowing they've gone.

So I went to Hollywood this last weekend to buy Find Your Way Out, UK release date July 4, 2005. Aron’s and Amoeba were sold out and I’m still without it. I couldn’t be a bigger fan and I still don’t have it in the first week of release.

How do the Remastered songs sound?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/music/4134418.stm

I just pulled out Kingsize today — my first Boos, it always was my sentimental favorite. Anyone who comes to this record first seems to think differently of it than longtime Boos fans.

The title track is outstanding — very "Oasis With a Brain." "Monuments..." is brilliant, the last section in particular. But "Eurostar" may be my favorite — epic synthpop, a side of Martin Carr I wish her pursued more in Bravecaptain, to be honest.

Wake Up! has always struck me as the breakthrough and high point, not Giant Steps which has always seemed overly shoegazy and somewhat dated to me, despite good overall songwriting. Almost every song on Wake Up! is brilliant, with some seriously sticky hooks ("Stuck On Amber"), great experimentation ("Marin, Doom!...") and a hugely confident production.

Meanwhile, C'mon Kids was an enormous disappointment to me -- after having heard all the buzz about it being "their Revolver," it sounds in retrospect like a very Nineties Guitar Rock record, "Bullfrog Green" and "Everything Is Sorrow" notwithstanding.

But tonight I will revisit and perhaps report back...

I saw them there around that time. They weren't playing in Scotland, so me and a friend came down to Manchester for the night. Support was by someone shit (was it 18 Wheeler?). The Boos were absolutely amazing. I was right down the front, and I can't remember a single thing they played apart from Lazy Day, but I know I really enjoyed it.

Anyway, yes, probably my second favourite album after Giant Steps. But it's a close-run thing.

Oh yeah Kingsize is brilliant and is still their best, IMO. On a whole all of their stuff is pretty terrific and still sounds great today.

Ok, this is weird. I'm listening to "Swansong" from Learning to Walk and I'm oddly, brilliantly affected. I know they became better - and more pop - but are there other shoegaze tracks that are as good as this?

Learning To Walk is actually a really formidable LP. Foster's Van is a personal fave.

Never got into it.

I did get into "Everything's alright forever"

Thought I'd post this while I'm here, adapted from a Facebook note I wrote the other day.

I was asked by a mate who runs one of those free local magazines to review a retro album for their miniscule music section. I chose 'Giant Steps', it's an album that's very close to my heart and has been since 1996 when I bought a used copy on cassette from David's Music. Blew my f*cking mind to be honest with you. But rather than going out and raving about it, playing it to my friends, making copies and compilations with it on, I kept it kind of to myself. Maybe it was cos the Boos had been demonised by their later success with "Wake Up Boo!", or maybe it was just because I always felt it was "my" album written "for me" and encapsulates everything I like about music - playfulness, heartfeltness, genre-hopping, great melodies, noisy bits, quiet bits - that I didn't want to let anyone in on the secret, or have it ruined by the remarks of others.

Anyway, for whatever reason the cat's out the bag now. Forgive me if it's not Lester Bangs or anything, it's written for non-music fans and I'm an amateur, but these are my thoughts 14 years after the fact.

The Boo Radleys
Giant Steps
Creation Records

1993 saw the Boo Radleys as a band in transition. Before Blur vs Oasis, Cool Britannia, “Disco 2000”, girl power, and a certain breakfast radio staple that ordered us to “Wake up, it’s a beautiful morning” came ‘Giant Steps’ - possibly the single most underrated British record of the nineties. The Boos never really recovered from 1995’s ubiquitous “Wake Up Boo” - a huge chart-hit whose upbeat chorus and catchy horn section jetplaned over the heads of Britain’s morning commuters, who unfairly dismissed the song’s belying lyrical subject matter (living with a depressed loved-one) as “far too chirpy”.

But this isn’t about “Wake Up Boo” – this is about what came before; an album that encompassed everything from Beatlesque harmonies to fat dubby basslines, ambient vamps to clattering space-rock dirges. At only 23-years old, Martin Carr was already a gifted songwriter who had already penned an indie classic with 1992’s ‘Everything’s Alright Forever’. But while that LP worked as a worthy addition to the then-popular shoegaze canon of My Bloody Valentine, Chapterhouse and Slowdive, his follow up proved to be an altogether different beast.

In only a couple of years, the assimilation of sixties music by the Britpop brigade would be all encompassing, with Noel Gallagher and Damon Albarn regularly borrowing great chunks from the works of John Lennon and Ray Davies respectively to fuel their own hit singles. But rather than ripping off the sounds of his parents’ records wholesale, Carr’s tribute to the sixties lay in combining extreme sonic experimentation with a jeweller’s eye for pure pop music. More “Revolution No.9” than “Hard Days Night”, none of the 17 tracks on ‘Giant Steps’ are left untreated by Carr’s gleeful studio trickery. Even the relatively straightforward acoustics of “Wish I Was Skinny” descend into this incredible coda of chaotic fairground organ and Galaxian arcade gurgles. The chaos is revisited on side two’s opener, “Spun Around”, whose gentle arabesque flutes give way to an almighty voiding of the soul, a literary account of clinging onto the bowl while praying to the unknown for redemption. But there are also a lot of sweet moments on this record. The Moody Blues-y psychedelia of “Butterfly McQueen” and the cathartic happy/sad closer “The White Noise (Revisited)” are just a couple. But by far the most ambitious moment is the epic single “Lazarus”, a sprawling psych-rock call to arms with a wordless horn-laden chorus and a minute-long trip-hop introduction.

Carr’s lyrics have always alluded to his own hopes and fears, ‘Giant Steps’ being no exception. He diarises his experiences of being in his early twenties as poetry - of wishing for more while fearing the future, of his experiments with drink and drugs whilst battling past religious demons, of wanting to move faster but seeking something tangible among the uncertainty. But it never feels overbearing or angsty, and like “Wake Up Boo”, the introspective lyrics are offset by Carr’s childlike approach to the studio-as-playground.

‘Giant Steps’ was the mid-point between the experimental indie rock of the Boo Radleys’ past and their all-too-fleeting affair with the charts. So forget about Britpop’s cash’n’carry mooching off the past, forget Chris Evans’ cloying breakfast shows, and give this record the hearing it deserves.

Check out some other thoughts here:

http://www.booradleys.co.uk/giant_steps/fans.htm

(might recognise some names...)

hehe, yeah i love the fact that site exists!

... still!

Ok, this is weird. I'm listening to "Swansong" from Learning to Walk and I'm oddly, brilliantly affected. I know they became better - and more pop - but are there other shoegaze tracks that are as good as this?

― paulhw, Tuesday, March 31, 2009 7:54 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

Learning To Walk is actually a really formidable LP. Foster's Van is a personal fave.

― the next grozart

otm

can't approve upon what grozart said with "Foster's Van" also being my favorite. Learning To Walk is the third best shoegaze album released.

Where are you going
With your suit of armour on
And your back turned to the sun
And your lips tightly sealed?

What is this poison
That you carry like a curse
I'm your lover not your nurse
But I will wash it away

Don't stay here for me...

(Wake up it's a beautiful morning it ain't).

I've really been regretting lately that I didn't pick up all the Boos stuff back in the early/mid 90's (when you could find it in every store) because I'm realizing now how great it is, and a lot of it is great--including Wake Up! (although I, also, rarely pick it up, since I have it in my head that the other albums are so much better).

http://www.cherryred.co.uk/cherryred/artists/booradleys.php

Re-Released on 17/05/10 on Cherry Red Records.

Released in 1995 on Creation Wake Up! is the fourth album by the Boo Radleys Although the band had received critical acclaim with their previous album, Giant Steps, Wake Up! was their first true commercial success, reaching number one in the UK album charts. This was due in large part to two factors: the emergence of Britpop as a driving force in mid-1990s British music, and a catchy Top 10 single, "Wake Up Boo!"

This deluxe edition brings together on 3 discs the original album as well as all the B-Sides from the time, with newly written notes and a booklet featuring original sleeves.

CD1: Original album track listing:

1. "Wake Up Boo!" - 3:37
2. "Fairfax Scene" - 2:14
3. "It's Lulu" - 3:04
4. "Joel" - 6:10
5. "Find the Answer Within" - 4:34
6. "Reaching Out From Here" - 3:02
7. "Martin, Doom! It's 7 O'Clock" - 6:21
8. "Stuck on Amber" - 5:24
9. "Charles Bukowski is Dead" - 2:39
10. "4am Conversation" - 2:43
11. "Twinside" - 4:45
12. "Wilder" - 6:56

CD2 : Bonus CD 1

'Wake Up! B-Sides:

Janus
Blues For George Michael
Friendship Song
Wake Up Boo! Music For Astronauts
And Tomorrow The World
The History Of Creation [Parts 17 & 36]

Find the Answer Within B-Sides:

Find The Answer Within (High Llamas Mix)
The Only Word I Can Find
Very Together
Don't Take Your Gun To Town
Wallpaper

CD3 : Bonus CD 2

It's Lulu B-Sides:

This Is Not About Me
Reaching Out From Here - High Llamas Mix
Martin, Doom! It's Seven O'clock - Stereolab Mix
Joel - Justin Warfield Mix
Tambo
Donkey

From The Bench At Belvedere B-Sides:

From The Bench At Belvedere
Hi Falutin'
Crushed
Almost Nearly There

there is going to be also this, thanks for pointing this out F'n'B.

Re- Released on 17/05/10 on Cherry Red Records.

Giant Steps is the third album by the Boo Radleys, released in 1993. NME and Select named it as album of the year. It reached the UK Top 20, but did not spawn a Top 40 single. The title is inspired by John Coltrane’s album of the same name. The Boo Radleys were never comfortable fitting into any of the easily defined categories that Pigeon-holed so many British bands in the early 1990s. Arriving on the scene as shoe-gazing My Bloody Valentine wannabes, they signed to Alan McGee's hip-to-the-times Creation Records.

They surprised everyone by releasing Giant Steps in early '93. Living up to its title, the album is indeed a step above and away both from what their peers were doing and what was expected of the band themselves. The album is a cornucopia of varying influences from the Smiths-y "Wish I Was Skinny" to the lovely brass arrangement in "Lazarus". Giant Steps is a mouthful, containing 17 songs, but it's also their definitive album. This re-issue brings together all the b-sides and singles from around the time into one great triple CD.

CD1: Original album track listing:

1. "I Hang Suspended" - 3:57
2. "Upon Ninth and Fairchild" - 4:50
3. "Wish I Was Skinny" - 3:37
4. "Leaves and Sand" - 4:25
5. "Butterfly McQueen" - 3:28
6. "Rodney King (Song for Lenny Bruce)" - 2:45
7. "Thinking of Ways" - 3:48
8. "Barney (...and Me)" - 4:42
9. "Spun Around" - 2:31
10. "If You Want It, Take It" - 2:47
11. "Best Lose the Fear" - 4:12
12. "Take the Time Around" - 4:07
13. "Lazarus" - 4:38
14. "One Is For" - 1:36
15. "Run My Way Runaway" - 2:20
16. "I've Lost the Reason" - 5:17
17. "The White Noise Revisited" - 5:02

CD2 : Bonus CD 1

Adrenalin EP:
Lazy Day
Vegas
Feels Like Tomorrow
Whiplashed

Boo! Forever EP:

Does This Hurt?
Boo! Forever
Buffalo Bill
Sunfly Ii: Walking With The Kings

I Hang Suspended B-Sides:

Rodney King - St Etienne Remix
As Bound As Tomorrow
I Will Always Ask You Where You've Been Even Though I Know The Answer

Wish I Was Skinny' B-Side:

Peachy Keen Acoustic Version
Furthur
Crow Eye

CD3 : Bonus CD 2

Barney (…and me) B-Sides:

Tortoiseshell
Zoom
Cracked Lips, Homesick

Lazarus B-Side:

At The Sound Of Speed
Let Me Be Your Faith
Petroleum

Lazarus (Remixes) Part 1 and 2:

Lazarus - 7" Version
Lazarus - Acoustic
(I Wanna Be) Touchdown Jesus
Lazarus - St Etienne Remix
Lazarus - Secret Knowledge Remix
Lazarus - Ultramarine Remix
Lazarus - Augustus Pablo Remix
Lazarus - 12" Version

No C'mon kids..... No credibility ( but that's just me)

i have all those already...

giant steps bonus cds = those classic eps we were talking about in that other thread.

I have a bunch of Lazarus eps, all cd 'singles', 2 from the UK, and about 3 (I think) from the USA, Columbia promos, etc.

I reckon they missed a Lazarus off.

that's all the ones i have (but that's only the english releases)

pop_music/boo_radleys/find_the_way_out/112_lazarus.flac
pop_music/boo_radleys/giant_steps/13_lazarus.flac
pop_music/boo_radleys/lazarus/01_lazarus.flac
pop_music/boo_radleys/lazarus/02_at_the_sound_of_speed.flac
pop_music/boo_radleys/lazarus/03_let_me_be_your_faith.flac
pop_music/boo_radleys/lazarus/04_petroleum.flac
pop_music/boo_radleys/lazarus_remixes/101_lazarus_7_version.flac
pop_music/boo_radleys/lazarus_remixes/102_lazarus_acoustic_version.flac
pop_music/boo_radleys/lazarus_remixes/103_i_wanna_be_touchdown_jesus.flac
pop_music/boo_radleys/lazarus_remixes/104_lazarus_st_etienne_mix.flac
pop_music/boo_radleys/lazarus_remixes/201_lazarus_secret_knowledge_mix.flac
pop_music/boo_radleys/lazarus_remixes/202_lazarus_ultramarine_mix.flac
pop_music/boo_radleys/lazarus_remixes/203_lazarus_augustus_pablo_mix.flac
pop_music/boo_radleys/lazarus_remixes/204_lazarus_12_version.flac
pop_music/various/international_guardians_of_rock_and_roll/107_lazarus.flac

discogs has this on a french ep

3 Lazarus (Kris Needs Mix) 8:53

but i think that is this:

2-1 Lazarus (Secret Knowledge Mix) 8:50
Remix - Secret Knowledge
Remix [Credited To] - Kris Needs

columbia has

1 Lazarus (Edit) 3:38 (compared to album version at 4:37)

and then there's the columbia promo

6 Lazarus (The Flood Remix)

"Giant Steps" = Olivia Tremor Control
"Wake Up!" = Apples (In Stereo)
"C'm On Kids" = Neutral Milk Hotel
"Kingsize" = All of them

.. and "Everything's alright forever" and "Learning to Walk" (and "Ichabod" ?)

This is great great news! !

I already have all the tracks appearing here (obv) but this is still great news.

.. and "Everything's alright forever" and "Learning to Walk" (and "Ichabod" ?)

I am not very familiar with the debut, but I have the feeling it's more of a shoegazing effort and doesn't really fit into the Elephant 6 analogy.

haha i was thinking the same thing.

Yeah, Everything's Alright Forever was pretty freekin harsh. Much closer to My Bloody Valentine & Jesus and Mary Chain than Slowdive or anything from the Elephant 6 camp.

not sure if i'm going to buy this as i already have everything but these collections are ace. the Boo Radleys made some amazing b-sides and i'm happy that they collected a bunch of them here. Cherry Red Records did a much better job on these than they did on the Slowdive one.

listen to all the singles from the Giant Steps era, drunk and in real time:

I’m glad they put "Lazy Day" first; "Come stab it faster" it would have been to slow otherwise. "Whiplashed" indeed, during this time in my life I was a bit lost but was having the time of my life. "Give My Love to My Friends" indeed. B+

I remember the day I was in the record store, pick up this single and read the title, Boo! Forever and thinking this might be the start of a very special relationship. "Buffalo Bill" is the best b-side from the Everything's Alright Forever era. I can understand Cherry Red adding these singles to this collection as Everythin's Alright Forever wasn't going to given the same treatment at this time.. A-

This is when I knew what they were talking about when they decided to call this album Giant Steps. For the sake of this experiment I'm playing these singles in the order of release. Possible their best moment, this 12" version blew my mind like so few songs ever have. This EP starts around the second half of "At the Sound of Speed" then it just clicks. The flowers just seemed to grow brighter with the beauty. Though that might have to do with other reasons as well. "0Why don’t you tell me that it wrong, you're the reason I go on." A+

Not really a remix fan, has a good down low vibe. "As Bound As Tomorrow" starts about half way through, after all this ambient stuff, sensing a trend. These are songs are truly out there. B-

Though it says "Peachy Keen" acoustic, it is not. Now they have come back to songs that went quite good enough for the album but kick ass. Just made me scream out because really there wasn't stuff this good on the radio. Listening to the last half of "Furthur" and thinking experimental b-sides at their best. A+

This is going to close out the Giant Steps era. "Barney..." is excellent now, probably better than when it came out. "Tortoiseshell" is the acoustic song, not "Peachy Kenn." The original shoegaze song is so much better (from Learning to Walk) but this is pretty. "Zoom, just one look and my heart went boom" nice, remembering and getting those chills all over again. "Smack, just one kiss and I was out of wack. All at once there was no turning back, was so far above the brightest star." They really caught lighting in a bottle and will never filch when I say they are my favorite. A-

Most appropriate that this collection ends with the 12" version of "Lazarus." The three minutes plus intro make this song build to a great climax, something that is actually lost in the single version.

reviving, simply because I got steaming drunk and suddenly "From The Bench At Belvedere" came on the tannoy, and I was suddenly transported. Transported back to a time when I'd like to say things were simpler - but not - rather they were different. The first proper gig I went to was when they were promoting this EP. I was maybe 15, 16. Good god I haven't heard that song in so long. Maybe secretly the quintessential Britpop song? It made me feel real again, and I had to share it with likeminded ilxors because no-one else around me would have understood...