Saturday, September 6, 2008

THE FRESHIES (YELLOW SPOT)

FIRST OFF, LET ME TELL YOU THAT THE SONG YELLOW SPOT DROVE ME AND MY FRIENDS CRAZY FOR YEARS. MY UNCLE HAD IT ON AN OLD TAPE, BUT HE DIDN'T KNOW WHO DID IT. WE LOOKED FOR IT FOR YEARS. ALWAYS HOPING THAT IT WOULD TURN UP ON THAT NEXT UK COMP THAT WE BOUGHT. BUT IT NEVER DID. I PLAYED IT FOR EVERYONE THAT I NEW AND NO ONE RECOGNISED IT. THIS SONG WAS A MYSTERY FOR AT LEAST 20 YEARS. THAN, ONE DAY I WAS LOOKING ON EBAY AND I SAW THIS RECORD, AND I THOUGHT, COULD IT BE? SO I BOUGHT IT AND SADLY, ANOTHER MYSTERY WAS SOLVED. I LOVE THIS RECORD AND I HOPE YOU WILL TOO. The Freshies were from Manchester, England & formed in the mid 1970's.
Their first single, The Freshies EP, was released in 1978 on the RAZZ record label. Their biggest selling and best known song is 1980's "I'm In Love With The Girl On The Manchester Virgin Megastore Checkout Desk", renamed as "I'm In Love With The Girl On A Certain Manchester Megastore Checkout Desk" on request from Virgin Records, which reached number 54 in the UK charts in 1981.
The Freshies were led by Chris Sievey, and the members of the band changed numerous times. Others who played with Sievey inluded Martin Jackson (later with Magazine) and Billy Duffy (later with The Cult). The usual line-up, however, was Barry Spencer (guitar), Rick Sarko (bass, ex-The Nosebleeds) and Mike Doherty (drums, ex-The Smirks).
Sievey pre-dated the self-financing ethic of punk when he created his own record label "Razz" in 1974. "Razz" went on to release over 60 titles, including much of The Freshies material. They also produced possibly the first multi-media single by including The Biz, a Sinclair ZX81 game, on the tape version of one of their singles, something which Sievey later did himself as a solo artist with his single "Camouflage". THIS INFO CAME FROM THE FRESHIES MYSPACE, CHECK THEM OUT. http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendID=186415534
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1. YELLOW SPOT
2. IF ITS NEWS
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RAZZ RECORD 1980
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2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Wow, I just heard "Yellow Spot" on the streaming radio on the site, and decided to see if it was posted. Sweet. Thanks.

Frank Miller said...

No problem, the Freshies were definately underrated. I have other cool records from them I may post sometime.