At
the beginning of 1986, I got to see The Jesus and Mary Chain for
myself, and they performed a full set lasting almost half an hour
(relatively good value considering some gigs they played). We had to
travel out of the city for other bands. When Yeah Yeah Noh announced
their last ever gig in their home town of Leicester, I went down on a
National Express Coach with Tim Donkin, Steve McKevitt and others.
However, the gig over-ran and we couldn’t get back to the coach station
in time for the last bus. The temperature was well below zero, and
because there was a real danger of freezing, our only option was to
spend the night huddled together in a disabled toilet. There were so
many of us, we mostly had to stand (one person at a time could sit on
the loo itself).
20. ‘Another Side to Mrs Quill’ by Yeah Yeah Noh, InTape, 1985.
Yeah
Yeah Noh were a proper indie band. They were jangley and low-fi, with
an accented bald singer who spoke rather than sang. They sound like a
mellow Midlands version of The Fall. Their lyrics were ironic and
sardonic and silly, and they had the temerity to embrace psychedelia,
which was not particularly fashionable (despite everyone’s reverence for
The Television Personalities).
There
were only five Yeah Yeah Noh singles, and they are all excellent,
although there are many similarities in sound and tempo. To choose one
as a favourite is difficult, but the song that has always stayed with me
is ‘Another Side to Mrs Quill’. It appears to tell the story of a
lonely young housewife living a dull suburban existence. But there is
something weird and sinister about the whole song.
When it was collected on the album Cutting The Heavenly Lawn Of Greatness .
. . (1985), the song was re-named ‘Home-Ownersexual’ and lyrics printed
on the inner sleeve confirmed the idea that Mrs Quill was managing to
float, naked, around her living room. There is also a butterfly in the
bedroom which ‘whistles as Mrs Quill floats by’. I can only assume that
to relieve the tedium of existence, Mrs Quill is experimenting with
hallucinogenic drugs. The reference to The Magic Roundabout seems to
back this up, as do the curious guitar sounds.
I’ve always thought
Yeah Yeah Noh’s alternative universe in which Timothy Leary took
mind-altering sub-stances in a rainy 1980s Leicester quite compelling.
