#fierce panda

5/21/23.

Bag of Cans (Norwich, England) "We Are A Band" is their debut album on Fierce Panda (London). I've neither heard of the band or the label, but all three songs currently available on Bandcamp are great.

This is a compilation of several British bands who have worked with the Fierce Panda record label over the span of their first ten years. The track listing is pretty lengthy - 20 tracks that span over 75 minutes - with bands like Supergrass, Coldplay and Keane catching my eye. I’ve been excited to check this CD out for a while. Given the length, I’ve decided to review it in two parts, or “sides” - much like a vinyl record.

I have to mention before we get started, though - this compilation has been a pain to review. This CD had a track list on the back of the jewel case, but the metadata for each track is completely wrong - it turns out there’s an American track listing and a British track listing, and my copy had the latter with the metadata of the former. I’m very tired, and not in a particularly good mood - but regardless, I’ve tackled the first half of this compilation, and my thoughts are under the cut. 

That’s right! Burned As Witches, the side project of Ash drummer Rick McMurray, has released a banging new single entitled “Hold Your Nerve.” It’s from the forthcoming self-titled album due out April 17. For tour dates and to sign up for the mailing list, visit the Burned As Witches website. The video, directed by Anthony Neale, is a fun one with Ash’s Mark Hamilton as “The Reaper Cop.”

Fierce Panda's Recording of WIBBLING RIVALRY by Oas*s

Pandamonium! How (Not) to Run a Record Label by Simon Williams Chapter 12: GULP

In true hapless Fierce Panda style, if I'd had my way, our most infamous release would never have happened. Sound City, Glasgow 1994. Midnight chaos at the Forte Crest Hotel bar. Bands and journalists and press officers and hangers-on everywhere, drinking and puffing and drugging up. I'm gabbling to Karl Hyde from Underworld after their heroically haphazard headline set when Karl Hyde from Underworld after their heroically haphazard headline set when John Harris appears through the schmoozy fug. He's come up to interview Oasis, who themselves are appearing at Sound City, for the NME front cover. Mad for it. Only trouble is, we've only just put Oasis on the front cover.

It was the one I did, with the snap of Liam from Oasis standing in the Oasis bar in Newport. It was part of an on-the-road trip taking in Portsmouth Wedgewood Rooms, Newport TJs and, for me, the added bonus of Derby Victoria Inn. Their first proper tour with the buzz building and the dates selling out. Just the band: no roadies, no tour manager, no hangers-on, just five blokes in a mini-bus. Nice blokes. Very efficient, very polite. At breakfast the morning after the TJs show they are suffering, but it's Guigsy and Bonehead who entertain, acting the hungover clowns while everyone else looks on, laughing through the lager fumes. Cool. Mad for it.

Over that same south Wales breakfast in Newport, they slightly kidnapped me and took me with them to Derby Victoria Inn, the five blokes and one journo in the mini-bus. Bonehead was driving. Leastways, he was when he wasn't stage-diving into the back of the van in the middle of a motorway traffic jam. Our road trip ended with drinking supersonic gin and tonics with Noel in the bar of the Brittania Hotel back home in Manchester. It was quite the journey.

Now we were interviewing them again? This was proper journo madness, publishing overkill - the worst thing you can do with a new band is over-write about them - you overwhelm the readership and sicken them. Then they won't believe the hype.

Fierce Panda's Recording of WIBBLING RIVALRY by Oas*s

Pandamonium! How (Not) to Run a Record Label by Simon Williams Chapter 12: GULP

Words were shouted by me to John. Words were shouted back by John to me. John duly interviewed Liam and Noel. It would be the last time they would ever be interviewed together for the press. They basically had a massive mother-fucking fight on tape. Swear words were shouted. Swear words were shouted back. Turns out John and I had an argument about doing an interview that was going to turn into one of the most famous arguments in the history of rock 'n' roll.

John knew he had solid cassette gold. Back on the South Bank, he played the interview in its entirety to the whole NME office. Everyone was aghast, enraptured, howling, howling, howling as Liam and Noel traded insults in a Glasgow hotel room. We hadn't had this much fun since Frank Sidebottom read out the football results. It was our generation's Troggs tape. Oasis were back on the front cover of the NME. Word spread.

'This should be properly released,' someone said, fatefully.

If only we knew someone who put out records.

Oh, hang on a minute . . .

At this point I would like to say that, as debonair reprobates, we sallied forth into the release-o-phere with nary a carey in the world. Truth is: we were as scared as the Postcard Records drumming cat. We had what I considered to be a decent relationship with the Oasis team at Creation Records, but Creation went through Sony, so this had the potential to go seriously legally awry. It took quite a while for us to convince ourselves to put it out, let alone anyone else. Over a year, in fact.

A Little Princess by Frances Hodgson Burnett

Pandamonium! How NOT To Run A Record Label by Simon Williams [the very same NME writer who wrote the fucking delightful June 1994 feature on Oasis 'THOSE WINDOWS ARE SAYING THROW A CHAIR THROUGH ME' and then later published Wibbling Rivalry in 1995 on his label Fierce Panda]

Photo by Gannon Padgett

“A finite game is played for the purpose of winning, an infinite game for the purpose of continuing the play.”  James P. Carse, Finite and Infinite Games: A Vision of Life as Play and Possibility

Razor-cut licks, shout-along choruses and surprising bouts of vulnerability — this new project produced and co-written by Ben Hozie shares much with his other outfit, Bodega. The band, formed around the dual guitars of frontman Kyle crew and Dylan Joyce, bassist Miles Fox and Hector Guillen on drums sweetens mayhem with a touch of melody. A sax floats through, blearily, as the beat clatters on and guitars ping and carom off one another. It comments acerbically but with heart on modern life, reaching an anthemic fever pitch on the late-album title track. “I feel limitless,” sings Crew against a post-punk clash and tumble, “This is what freedom is.”