I'm Warren, sometimes known as Waz (hence the username), I'm 41 now and as much a PWEI fan now as back then.
Back in my teenage years of the late 1980s The Chart Show was a regular watch, and of course the indie chart featured the likes of Beaver Patrol, There Is No Love Between Us Anymore and Def Con One. I appreciated it at the time, but it was only when I got my own music system circa 1989 that I could really enjoy music a lot more and play it more loudly like I wanted. Can U Dig It was pretty good, but it was Wise Up! Sucker that really got me by the proverbials and made me sit up and listen. I got the single, and I ended up with The Hits Album 10 that summer on tape. Little did I realise then that it had the radio edit "heads in a blast" version of the song that I now am rekindled with on CD.
One of the first CDs I ever purchased was TITD,TITH,TIT! followed by The Stone Roses' debut album, both of which got plenty of play. The former is in my top 10 albums of all time - it was so different from anything else at the time and really kept the attention throughout. As plenty of venues didn't allow you in till you were 18 because of alcohol licencing laws etc, I had to wait till October 1990 to see PWEI. The Cure For Sanity album came out the same day, so I bought it on CD, took it home, played it a couple of times and then went straight to the International 2 in Manchester (alas no more) to see them live. It was an amazing gig, the atmosphere was top notch and the band were very much on form.
Over the next few years I'd track down some of the singles I missed out on, and in terms of the CD singles eventually ended up with a complete run of the UK commercial ones and kept up as the singles from DDMA came out. For me, Ich Bin Ein Auslander is still one of my favourites, it had edge, it had a message, and it also showed how much the band had progressed. The Amalgamation tour was really good: we had Dub War (who I would grow to really like), Blaggers ITA and Compulsion, culminating in PWEI doing a storming set at Manchester Academy 1. The feeling was all good and the cause very noble: I even won in the raffle for a signed Blaggers ITA dressing room sign.
I had already planned another gig for when PWEI were to play a low key gig at Rockworld Manchester (another now defunct venue) in 1996, little did I realise it'd be one of the final gigs they played before the "split". Hindsight is a wonderful thing and part of me wishes I'd have just gone, but can't win them all I guess.
I kept the faith, played the music still, collected a bit more to fill some gaps (including many promo 12"s and CDs, such as GTGKTB promo CD, Can U Dig It US promo 12" and CD, RSVP US promo CD etc) and when it was announced that the 2005 reformation was happening, I simply had to be there, and Birmingham at that. I went to the first night of the two, and it was simply brilliant, still one of my favourite gigs of all time. It just felt right and it only seems somehow right that that tour was the last with the original line up - it went out on a huge positive and better to do that than fade away and end up in tiny little venues I reckon. I have the CD from that night and then bought the DVD from the night after, an essential watch of course.
When I heard Graham was reforming PWEI as effectively a PWEI Mk2 line up, initially I thought "interesting" and then as I heard stuff, I thought "well actually this is going to be pretty good" and as the original members were asked first but all gave their blessing for him to do it, everything's cool (literally). Saw them in 2011 at Club Academy, it rocked. Saw them at Shepherd's Bush Empire last year at Sleigh The UK, also rocked.
It'd be really hard to rank them in order, but other favourite PWEI tracks include There Is No Love Between Us Anymore, Def Con One, Axe of Men, Urban Futuristic, the original VMNP version of 92 Degrees, Wake Up! Time To Die, Everything's Cool?, T+A=$ and Nosebleeder Turbo TV.
I'm still filing some collection gaps and the two Wise Up! Sucker POP2 7" promos are top of the want list right now.
Outside PWEI the music collection is massively varied encompassing all styles of music, from Aphex Twin to Frank Zappa, Slayer to Swing Out Sister. I support Manchester City (the only football team to come from Manchester (tm)) and do IT work during the day, I also take pictures a lot and write poetry.
One final thing: I used to compose music on the humble Commodore 64, mainly in the 1990s. Three channels of SID sound were all you needed to compose something relatively cool. I did a version of Wise Up! Sucker using the Ubik's Musik utility in 1991, and in 1994, using the Dutch USA Team's Music Assembler, I did a version of 92 Degrees (called the 9294 Remix) as well as a second work in progress version of Wise Up! Sucker. All of these should be publicly available to play on a real Commodore 64 for an authentic sound experience, but Enjoy.
Statistics: Posted by Waz — Fri Mar 14, 2014 7:04 pm
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I'm not really.
My name is Toby and I'm a Poppie-holic.
Cast your minds back, New Year's Eve 1987/88, a naive 14 year old thinks nothing of a request from a family friend to "Come up to my bedroom, I've got something to show you..." even when a glistening 12 inches was slipped from its sheath and brandished, with some intent. Luckily for me it was the vinyl version of Box Frenzy, the son of my parent's friends was desperate to play me Hit The Hi-Tech Groove as he thought it was the greatest thing he'd ever heard. I was mildly surprised to hear a song with actual swearing in it (remember I was naive and the only album I owned was the Blues Brother soundtrack...) and the Mel and Kim sample had me smiling politely but I wasn't that blown away but a seed lodged. I made my excuses, we went back downstairs, had a can of Shandy Bass and spent the early hours of New Year's Day marching round the housing estate bellowing A-Ha's Cry Wolf (Oooh-OOOOOOO!!) at the top of our voices (no, really, I'm not making this shit up...).
Fast Forward 18 months or more and a bored schoolboy is wandering around Woolworths record department after school (honest...) wondering what to buy now that he's got the soundtrack, both live albums and the Best of The Blues Brothers compilation cassettes; a seed germinates and a name Pops into his head, Pop Will Eat Itself, but what's the album called? There's one on the shelf, the cover is black, that matches, have a look at the track listing, see if anything rings a bell. For some reason, Shortwave Transmission on Up to the Minuteman Nine looks familiar, this must be it (no, I don't know either...), the carefully hoarded lunch money (1 pound per day, one sausage and baked beans is 33p, that's 67p per day to save for other purposes!) is counted out on the counter, the Blues Brothers are removed from the Aiwa personal cassette player, for the first time ever, the new purchase slides in, headphones on, press play... FUCK ME!!!
I didn't listen to anything else for about 3 years. I only stopped listening a few years back because I no longer had a tape player and I only had the albums on cassette. Eventually I found TITD on Japanese CD but it wasn't until the Cherry Red releases that I could really get back into some serious listening again. In the meantime I've bought almost everything on every format they've ever released and I probably own more PWEI t-shirts than records (maybe, it'll be close), as well as the DDMA era blanket coat. I was a member of an earlier incar(PWEI)nation AND I still wear the wooley hat (can we post photos? It's in my coat pocket now!).
However after the split I drifted away for a number of years, eventually one gloomy January day I thought I'd look up the old Nation, see what was going on. That was January 27th 2005, 2 days after the last Reformation gig. I was devastated. You see, 25 years since I first heard them, I've NEVER seen the Poppies live and I guess I never will.
Favourite track? I don't know, they all mean different things, TITD was an awakening, I didn't know music could do that kind of thing and those tracks are classics of course, CFS was a very different path, I struggled against it for a bit but eventually let it in, although Cicciolina was an instant hit for me, I listened to it over and over again, even though I didn't like football, if TITD made me realise how much I like a metal guitar, CFS showed me I also liked electronic and dance music, those albums literally opened up the world to me (and also reminded me that really, nobody else does it like PWEI! I won't tell you where the quiet bits of I Was A Teenage Grandad ended up taking me though!
). For me though, they hit a peak with 4 tracks from side one (still listening to cassettes remember!) of TLOTL, Mother, Get The Girl Kill The Baddies, I've Always Been A Coward Baby and Token Drug Song, a sequence of tracks I don't think has ever been bettered anywhere. Add on Harry Dean Stanton and you've got the greatest EP ever recorded, if you ask me.So that's me, owing a debt to Daniel Ollie for that New Years Eve introduction that I'll never be able to repay. I've never seen him since! Funny how these things work out...
Statistics: Posted by The_LHC — Tue Mar 19, 2013 12:29 pm
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Statistics: Posted by sajmon14 — Sun Mar 17, 2013 2:09 pm
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I'm a relatively late covert to PWEI-ism, as I started getting into them through my brother's Get The Girl single and Weird's Bar And Grill tape, but has made up for lost time since. My fave LP has pretty much always been Cure For Sanity, but I have been starting to listen to This Is The Day a bit more frequently lately. Fave sound would be Dance Of The Mad Bastards, hence my username here.
Thankfully, even though I was late to the party as it were, I got to see the original line-up live at the time, at the Amalgamation gig at Reading Uni. The best one was the Reformation gig on the Saturday night in Brum though, awesome vibe all night.I do listen to a lot of music and will pretty much listen to any old shite but I draw the line at country & western and yodelling. My other all time fave band would be The Shamen, and the Orb would be up there too. I also listen to a fair bit of Icelandic music these days, and other stuff like DJ Shadow, Bibio, Beastie Boys and have had a lifelong love of Kylie Minogue. Still 100% devoted to physical formats too, these iTunes exclusive bonus tracks annoy the fuck out of me (shame even PWEI have done that one).
Used to do some music in the mid-90's on my old Commodore Amiga, but you'll never hear that stuff.
After doing the Babylon cover, I've renewed my interest in doing that kind of thing, so might get off my arse and do it a bit more often in the future.Statistics: Posted by Mad Bastard — Sun Mar 17, 2013 10:38 am
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Jason
Statistics: Posted by jason — Sun Mar 17, 2013 10:23 am
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So I'm Les.
Been a Poppies fan since TLOTL era, bit later than most of you chaps on here but to be fair I was only 12, those XL t-shirts did look like a dress on me. Never saw the original line-up live, bit too young & stuck out in the sticks of Bucks in the 90s & had me leg in plaster when Reformation was on
First PWEI2 tour was destiny though, seeing as on me birthday they were playing 5 mins walk from me girlfriend's house. That & the SUB89 gig last March are 2 of the best I've been to.Fave Poppies LP is of course TITD... top 3 songs are Preaching to the Perverted, Wise Up! Sucker & RSVP.
Bit of an obsessive music fan & record collector, listen to stuff from pretty much any genre, which is probably why the Poppies appeal to me. I like brown booze, coffee, sleeping, comedy, gaming, 60s & 70s cult TV, 60s & 70s sci-fi, 60s & 70s horror & reading (as in the thing done with books, not the town I live in). Work by day in some dull crap at a well known computering related big arse company, which is why I distract meself with so many nation posts.
Shameless self-promotion - do a bit of mixing on the old computer, started about 4 months ago, inspired by people I work with going on about their dull trance mixes so thought fuck it I can probably do better. My 3 complete mixes are here:
2 of them have Poppies tracks in.
PM if you want to add us on the Friendface or the Twatter
Statistics: Posted by RolexTharsus — Sun Mar 17, 2013 9:22 am
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anyway, james here, first time i saw the poppies was at the acid dayz fest thing as a 15 year old, had gone there to see gaye bykers on acid, came home loving the poppies, think gra still played the drums a bit then, fav track is not now james, also my fav song ever, fav album, this is the day, again, my fav album ever
i'm in a band called bronx zoo http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E-k6r0aW ... w&index=11
also do stuff on my own https://soundcloud.com/james-borland
shameless plugging!!!
i like most music, a good tune is a good tune whoever recorded it, though i hate coldplay
i like smoking, drinking, porn and kittens, though not all at once
fav film, alien
fav book, domain, james herbert
t.v, firefly
fav new band the joy formidable, saw them the other day, fantastic
glad there are others who are as geeky about the poppies as me, the nation is a fantastic place to nerd out about my fav band!!
james
Statistics: Posted by bronxzoo — Sat Mar 16, 2013 8:38 pm
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my name is john.
ive been a poppies fan since i first save beaver patrol promo on the chart show in 1987.
i first saw them at govan town hall glasgow in 1987/8 and last saw them at the garage glasgow 2010.
i was a member of the fan club and still have the coca-cola style football top i got tfrom it in 1990.
my favourite poppies song is def con one as it had everything i loved at the time in it i.e samples,scratches,synths and comic, t.v. and movie references.
my biggest disappointment in the poppies, is that they made me wait 20 years to finally hear rock of ages which i remember was going to be the first single off of the cure for sanity album, but never appeared until the remastered reissue.one of their best songs ever in my opinion.
my favourite poppies promo video is can u dig it, for the comics in the background, clint twirling the gun and crabbi' s eye patch.
my least favoutrite poppies promo video is bulletproof, what a mess, all that crayon scrawling over the images was old in 1986 neve rmind 1992.
my favourite poppies t.v. performance is either def con one from the garden party on b.b.c. scotland. or def con one from i think it was c4's club x when richard had his cool wet look bobbed haircut.
i make my own music, its kind of ambient dance with a 90's feel and post it on my you tube channel which is crozierharrison
i use different names for different subject matters; i use phate, hammerheads or soundwave ranger for esoteric subjects matters. crozier or a (sound) wave offering when writing songs about Christianity and God. i use frei-korps and the basturt boys for my 1980s musical output. i use a lot of samples in my music from films like they live or big trouble in little china or dark city and bands i ,love like the poppies or the shamen or Jesus jones or foetus etc. im not a musican, im more interested in ideas and concepts than musical ability.
i like most types of music and still listen as much to the stuff i first bought in 1980 as i do the stuff i bought in 2012. i have no time for musical snobbery, im as happy to listen to the reynolds girls as i am to david sylvian as i am to richard h kirk or to kylie minogue.
anyway thats it really. glad to be a member of the nation and loved the out of print and radio sessions downloads the site provided.
cheers and God bless,
john.
Statistics: Posted by crozierharrison — Sat Mar 16, 2013 7:17 pm
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Jason
I'll start....
Hello, my name is Jason. I am a fan of pop will eat itself. I don't know if I have a favourite PWEI song but something like Wise Up Sucker, Underbelly, ich bin ein auslander, get the girl, 88 seconds. Most of their stuff really. I got the new Foals album recently which I quite like.
Statistics: Posted by jason — Sat Mar 16, 2013 6:32 pm
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