The Distractions – 1995 Demos
Ask 100 people if they know who The Distractions were and your survey would say, “EH UHHH”. To this day, I have only met four people who remember them. Three of them are musical journo’s or musicians from that era, the other, bizarrely, a work colleague from Hull!
The Distractions were a new wave band. I say new wave because they emerged during the new wave era in the late 1970’s but it would be more accurate to describe them as a pure pop band. They initially signed to Factory Records and were highly respected on the circuit in Manchester, but that was really about as far as it went. They managed half a dozen singles, only one of which on the afore-mentioned Factory label, and one classic album, Nobody’s Perfect. They disbanded in 1981 and vanished into obscurity. Mike Finney, lead singer and one half of the main writing duo in the band, went on to work with the Art Of Noise, amongst others.
Their most memorable song was the brilliant “Time Goes By So Slow”, a brilliant piece of nostalgic pop, with quirky Mancunian references. It can be found HERE on the Factory compilation, Factory Records: Communications 1978-1992 via Spotify.
Rumour has it that their album may get a re-release soon, and that there might be a reunion of sorts. Mike Finney and Steve Perrin have already started working together again and a new website has sprung up to ensure some kind of online memorial for the band.
And it’s from that site that a collection of aborted demos has sprung, from 1995. The website describes it thus:
In 1995 Mike Finney and Steve Perrin, two of the founder members of The Distractions, joined forces once again under their former banner. Mike takes up the story: “In 1995, Steve and me got together with Nick Garside (Manc producer), on bass, Bernard Van Den Berg ( Distractions after Alec left, then Secret Seven) on Drums, Kevin Durkin (ex Direct Hits, who we knew from TJM records at the beginning, and Escape Committee) on guitar (bass on Good Girls) and played half a dozen gigs in and around Manchester and Liverpool. All these songs were in the set, with many other new songs, but only Still It Doesn’t Ring and It Doesn’t Bother Me from the old stuff. We were tempted to do Looking For A Ghost for an encore, but settled for Valerie and a few Lou Reed songs, which is in keeping with what we would have done originally.
Good Girls Don’t Get To Paris was written in 1979, but unrecorded until 1995 at Chiswick Reach (Joe Meek’s Studio where Telstar and My Generation were recorded). The other 4 tunes were recorded at Manchester’s Out of the Blue Studio in 1995 (This was the original ‘Madchester’ studio, owned by Nick Garside).”
For your delectation we present the original mixes of these five otherwise unheard Distractions songs. As you’ll hear, there had been no slipping of standards over the 15 years that Messrs Perrin and Finney had been apart. Black Velvet, in particular, is a stone-cold 24-carat classic Distractions song, as well as being almost twice as long as anything else in their repertoire.
And so I invite you to indulge. Experience the sounds of a band that could’ve been the next big thing in 1979 but weren’t and for no real reason. It just didn’t happen. Maybe it was because new wave initially was all grey overcoats and doom and gloom (think Joy Division) and The Distractions were just too full of the joys of life!?
There’s even a Facebook fan page, run by my friend from Hull, and some of it’s 55 members include the band too!!
Revel in their hidden magnificence 🙂
Black Velvet EP to be released this summer ahead of a new Distractions compilation album. See link on the official site (thedistractions.co.uk):
http://distractionsnothing.blogspot.com/2010/04/black-velvet-digital-ep.html
As for the album re-release, that is proving impossible due to Island/Universal licencing issues.
I went to the Leigh Festival with Steve Perrin & Mike Finney in 1980(I think). We bumped into
Peter Hook(then Joy Division) who bet Mike £5 that The Distractions would have a chart single
before Joy Division, I don’t think Mike picked up his winnings!
Steve recorded “Good Girls don’t Get to Paris” as a demo with The Escape Commitee before recording
it with Mike, Steve gave me a copy of the demo on cassette. It had 2 other songs on it, one called
“You Probably Don’t Have To Be Lonely”, possibly one of his best songs in my opinion. Let’s hope
it sees the light of day with the reunion.
Dave Wright
The Distractions are back with their ‘Black Velvet’ EP available for digital download with a limited number of CD promos. See Occultation Recordings website (www.occultation.co.uk) for details of how to order, and keep an eye on http://www.thedistractions.co.uk/home.html for news of the forthcoming 12″ single and CD album in 2011.
I HAVE A COPY OF NOBODYS PERFECT ON VYNIL, ANYONE WANT TO BUY?