Only a prawn in Cleethorpes

Not many bands came to Grimsby to play when I was growing up. If you wanted to go and see some of your favourite bands you either had to sneak across the Humber Bridge to The Adelphi, or get on this horrendous huge black bus with Mick Jagger lips on the side (honest) run by a company called Solid Entertainments, which would whisk you off to Nottingham or Sheffield, or, if you were feeling really saucy, London.

And so imagine our delight when Cud announced they were going to come and play a show at the Beachcomber in Cleethorpes. It was 1989, I was thin, and my Dad was going to let me go to the gig. Well, he had no choice... Times were good.

I'd taped Cud's first Peel session the previous year and had played it relentlessly. Their debut album, When in Rome Kill Me is a masterpiece of scratchy, sometimes noisy pop music, and it had become a firm favourite. It still is, in fact. To say I was excited about seeing Cud just a few miles from my house was an understatement.

And yet I remember absolutely bugger all about the show itself. I remember the week leading up to it, and I remember me and my friend enthusing about the gig afterwards. But I don't recall a single moment. Ho-hum.

Anyway, yesterday I came across their first, superior Peel session on the Perfumed Garden blog. You can download it here.

Cud went really, really shit in the early 1990s. They sort of followed The Soup Dragons into the world of baggy, only more belatedly. Which was a shame. Whatever - here's some live footage of Cud at the peak of their powers.

Les Clochards

Did you know Peter Momtchiloff had a new band? No, me neither. But he does, and it's called Les Clochards.

Les Clochards have a rather fantastic album out soon called Sweet Tableaux and it makes me want to be French even more than I have done since I was nine years old.

You can find more stuff about The Tramps here, and I'll review their ace album when I haven't got so much work to do.

Songs that saved your life, part 5

I don't do it much any more, but I used to spend hours alone late at night listening to music, sat in front of the stereo with piles of records all around me, and a bottle of wine or two to keep me company.

I used to think, during these drunken episodes, that I was somehow deep and feeling it, man. That I was really, like, connecting with my favourite pop stars. And I used to sing along to every note, sounding like a castrated hyena, throwing ridiculous shapes with my hands and arms, and shaking my fringe around as though my life depended on it.

Then my Dad would arrive home from the pub with Chicken Maryland, drunk, and insist on watching Prisoner: Cell Block H. Which sort of spoiled my deep, poetic moments.

There were plenty of songs that used to get a regular airing during these deeply unromantic witching hour sessions; The Boo Radleys' "Finest Kiss"; The Fall's "Bill is Dead"; The Edsel Auctioneer's "Our New Skin"; New Order's "Bizarre Love Triangle"; The Housemartins' "Flag Day" and Morrissey's "Late Night, Maudlin Street".

"Late Night Maudlin Street" knocked my socks off when I bought Viva Hate as a still-in-mourning Smiths fan of 14. Yeah, you see, cos it WAS ALL ABOUT ME and my parents' endless divorces and living in virtually every small village in Lincolnshire before the age of 12. Yeah, Morrissey wrote this song for me. And I actually kept believing that for some years, up to an embarrassingly late age.

I don't believe he did write it for me any more. Although I'm pretty sure "King Lear" is all about me. Don't try and tell me otherwise.

Anyway, for late nights in front of the stereo getting drunk on £1.99 bottles of wine and thinking that the whole world was against me, then "Late Night, Maudlin Street" is right up there with the best. I suppose I could've picked any Smiths song before this, but this is probably my favourite Morrissey song, and I was just at the right age for a good old mope along to it.

Here, rather wonderfully, is quite a nice live version of it.

The Drums

You know when you can't work out whether you really love or really hate a song or a band? Well, I got all confused when I first heard The Drums on the indiepop list.

I couldn't quite work out whether their fizzy synthpop sounded like something off the soundtrack to Mannequin, or was a cute as a button. It only took a couple of listens to remind myself that music should be fun and make you feel happy and to place myself in the cute as a button camp.

Have a listen to I Felt Stupid and see what you think.

Drum Club have an EP coming out this summer titled Summertime! on Twentyseven Records.

Boy Genius - Blame Love

Boy Genius are from New Yoik, don't you know, and have been described as the "quintessential American college rock band." Please! Come back! They're much better than that.

Blame Love is a punchy, confident, humdinger of a song. Lying somewhere between Lloyd Cole, The Chesterfields and Jonathan Richman it's the sort of spunky little bruiser that you can imagine bouncing around to at a gig, or, indeed, miming along to in front of the mirror as you're getting ready to go out for the night. It moves, it grooves, it, ermm... proves (sorry, went a bit Keane there) that you don't have turn your guitars up to 11 and a half to make ace music these days, and that Boy Genius have pop coursing through their veins AS WE SPEAK.

Have a gleg at the band's myspace page for details on ordering the single

I get my kicks on the A65

A trip to Lancaster and Morecambe the other day saw me "Dj-ing" (man the lifeboat!) in the car with the ipod. At least one of my co-passengers squealed (well, perhaps purred is more apt) with delight when Felt's "Primitive Painters" came on, describing backing vocalist Liz Fraser as "a lovely howling banshee." Hard to disagree, I'm sure you'll agree.

I never really got into Felt. They were far too mysterious for an impatient teenager to make any effort with, but "Primitive Painters" defies any explanations of beauty by getting more and more elegant as it goes on. Just as you think the next guitar shimmer can't get any more spine-tingling, the one after that floors you all over again. And Liz Fraser and that voice finishes the picture perfectly.

It certainly made Morecambe even more humdrum when we got there, anyway.

You do all the driving

There are very few better ways than coming back from a fantastic week away with friends in the North Yorkshire Moors, than sticking Math and Physics Club on in the car and just taking in the scenery. It really is beautiful up there. But I think I need another week off to recover from this one.