V05-T02 I'm A Cadillac

.....About five years ago I tried to research this band to update my notes but couldn't find much in the way of a discography besides Martin C. Strong's "The Great Alternative & Indie Discography" (Canongate, 1999). As of the next edition, The Batfish Boys were one of dozens (hundreds?) of entries excised from future editions for reasons of space. The band could not be reasonably expected to release more material; they had split when the 1990's began and the lead singer/songwriter went into technical work for other bands (reportedly including Sisters Of Mercy). To this day, Amazon does not carry CD format issues of their music. For these reasons, excising them from a print database seems inevitable however disappointing. If a book becomes too large, its own weight will split its spine. It comes down to a choice between expanding the entries of those artists who continue to produce and reprinting already published information about those who do not.

.....For the past few days I've been finding far more luck online than I did five years ago, digging up label and sleeve scans of the original pressings and learning a few things about the band's history. More about that later.

Volume 5: DON'T TOUCH THAT DIAL (YOU DON'T KNOW WHERE IT'S BEEN), track 3

• 03:58 "I'M A CADILLAC" (The Batfish Boys)
• performed by The Batfish Boys
• original source: B-side 7" Batfish Incorporated USS 108 (UK) 03/87
• and my source: LP LURVE-- SOME KINDA FLASHBACK Twilight Records/Fundamental Music TR013 (US/UK) 1987

.....My original notes on this track from 1994 were brief: "According to Trouser Press, this band burned out quickly after this, but this song snagged my attention with the Iggy Pop reference. After playing it on the radio a few times, I learned that it contained what would be one of my all-time favorite lyrics: 'I'm as sane as the next man and the next man is Howard Hughes!' A few years after leaving the station I found a sealed copy (import only!) for just a couple of dollars in a liquidation sale. Ah, vinyl."

.....Thinking about this later it occurred to me that the reason I first tried this song is that there's a Mott The Hoople song by the same title. Everything else in the paragraph above is still true, although there's a pretty complicated qualifier to the remark about the record being an import. The jacket was printed in the UK but the actual vinyl was pressed in the US by a small label in Covington, Georgia called Fundamental Music for an even smaller imprint in Atlanta called Twilight Records. Twilight carried two stateside Batfish Boys albums, the compilation LP LURVE in 1987 and the previous year their second album, LP HEAD, with radically different jacket art. All their early recordings (1985-1987) were released on their own label, Batfish Incorporated. Their later recordings (1988-1990) were on the label GWR Records and consisted of at least an album and two singles. But it's the earlier stuff I find more interesting. Batfish Incorporated issued works by a few other bands as well, but unsurprisingly the Batfish Boys made the bulk of its output. They put out three 7" singles (two of which were also released in 12" format with third tracks), an EP of exclusive material and two albums. The LP LURVE was apparently put together for the US market which had been less singles oriented than England since the mid 1970's. It collects all the non-album tracks from Batfish Inc. except for two. "PEACOCK MACHINERY" from the EP is missing and the A-side "JUSTINE" was more plausibly left out because it was already made available to the US on the LP HEAD. In their place was a track from the first album LP THE GODS HATE KANSAS called "LOOTENANT LUSH".

.....The Batfish Boys formed after the abrupt departure of the March Violets' vocalist Simon Denbigh, who renamed himself Simon Detroit (or Simon D.) and recruited the Skeletal Family's roadie turned drummer Martin Henderson, who became Martin Pink (and later simply Bomber). At first he used a guitarist and bassist who coincidentally(?) had the same last names as two of his March Violets bandmates. They were soon replaced by guitarist Johnny Burman and bassist Bob Priestly (who became Bob Diablo). These four recorded everything after the first single until the label switch to GWR. Most of that was with guitarist Murray Fenton (of Artery), but this song is the B-side of the last Batfish Incorporated single, "THE BOMB SONG", by which time guitarist Zero Rek replaced Fenton. That single was also the only one produced by the band with Vic Maile. Previously Denbigh would handle the production himself.

.....The nature of this series of compilations, being an unthemed cross-section of whatever the gravitational pull of my collection pulled into its orbit, almost guarantees that it will veer off into some outre territory with some regularity. Knowing that, I wanted to start from an accessible sound of guitar driven rock (like this), even if the particular selections aren't well known (like this). There'll be a few artists famous for being guitarists on Volume 5, although not necessarily for what I've selected.