BLUE ORCHIDS
biography
The Blue Orchids were formed in Manchester in 1979 around Martin
Bramah (vocals and guitar) and Una Baines (keyboards), both of
whom had been founder members of The Fall. The pair were joined
by guitarist Rick Goldstraw, bassist Steve Toyne and drummer Ian
Rogers (aka Joe Kin). According to Goldstraw, the name was
conjured by a friend of his, the punk poet John Cooper Clark, who
had envisaged the Blessed Orchids as 'a bunch of haemophiliacs
raised by alsatian dogs on a council tip' and 'the weediest gang
in Salford.' Somehow Blessed became Blue, as in the old Hoagy
Carmichael song, and thus was born a rare and fragile bloom. In
1985 Bramah recalled:
"I think if I'd never been in the Fall they'd still be one
of my favourite groups. At first it bothered me that people
mentioned me with the Fall all the time, but it doesn't
bother me at all now. My contribution was quite substantial
and I'm proud of what I did. I was very wary of sounding
too much like them, travelling on their coat-tails. It was
genuine, though; with the Orchids that was the music I
wanted to play, going back to my influences - Velvets,
Stooges, etc. Songs with strong melodic lines."
Rough Trade, who were still releasing Fall records at the time,
snapped up the Orchids in the summer of 1980, and released their
first double a-sided single in October. The Flood b/w Disney Boys
was co-produced by Mayo Thompson of Pere Ubu fame, and ably
showcased the band's strengths, with Una's inspired, strung-out
keyboards weaving around Martin's inventive, discordant guitar
patterns. This primitive but sparkling wall of sound was quite
unlike anything else released at the time, and as well as drawing
favourable comparisons with Sixties psychedelia won the band
their first Peel session in December. Phil Spector meets the
Velvet Underground beneath the Blackpool illuminations. Sort of.
Soon afterwards Toyne quit and was replaced on bass by Goldstraw.
The next Blue Orchids single is widely regarded as their
definitive statement, coupling the strident Work with its
haunting flipside, The House That Faded Out. Work is best
described as cracked soul music, with Bramah more concerned over
the plight of his soul than with finding a job. Released in
February 1981, in the same week as W.O.R.K. by Bow Wow Wow, the
single won plaudits far and wide, while their profile was also
boosted by a support slot on the first national tour by Echo and
the Bunnymen in April.
An album now beckoned, and joined by new drummer Toby (previously
with Ludus) the band entered an eight-track studio in Manchester
called Relentless in the spring of 1981. After just two weeks
they emerged with The Greatest Hit, produced by the band in
collaboration with Tony Roberts and subtitled, with no little
irony, Money Mountain. Released by Rough Trade in May, this
ambitious album included nothing from the previous singles, and
instead offered ten new classics including Sun Connection, A Year
With No Head, No Looking Back, Low Profile and Bad Education, the
latter covered by Aztec Camera on the flipside of their 1987
single Deep & Wide & Tall. The band also inspired another Aztec's
song, Orchid Girl. Indeed it's no coincidence that in their first
incarnation the band were often bracketed with the Postcard
stable, despite never recording for the label. Certainly the
Orchids were fast becoming press darlings. Dave Hill of City
Limits dubbed the album 'post-punk neurodelia... nicely pitched
to please the wasted frame of mind' while in the NME Mat Smith
praised 'one of the best albums we're likely to hear all year':
The music perfectly frames and complements the lyric - and
this is an album with a message (lyric sheet enclosed). No
heady rhetoric, but songs of romantic, melancholy yearning
for Pure Feeling, Transcendental Oneness, etc. But this
mysticism only tumbles into unintelligibility on the last
number, W.B. Yeats' Mad as the Mist and Snow, set to a tune
reminiscent of the folk source that inspired Stairway to
Heaven... They are making music which is introspective yet
exhilarating, sad but stirring.
The Greatest Hit topped the independent charts and went on to
sell around 10,000 copies. The vibe around both band and album
is summarised well by Simon Reynolds:
Acid-doused and brazenly mystical, the Orchids' hypno-swirl
of clangourous guitar and incense-and-belladonna keyboards
could hardly have been more at odds with the early
Eighties. Beyond the sheer thrill of their ramshackle
trance-rock, the Blue Orchids tapped into something:
currents of disaffection and withdrawal from Thatcher's
enterprise culture that would later surface, substantially
transformed, as crusty and rave....Essentially what's
rehearsed on The Greatest Hit is the Nineties slacker
ethos: defeatism as dissidence, opting out and
acknowledging no rules except 'the law of dissipation' (Bad
Education). But the Blue Orchids don't have that Gen X
curse of irony. Bramah and Baines' lyrics teem with pagan
poetry and ache with naked pantheist devotion.
During this period the band was introduced to the legendary Nico,
the one-time Warhol superstar by then living in Manchester's
Whalley Range and struggling with a hard drug habit. For much of
1981 the Blue Orchids became both her backing band and support
act on a succession of UK dates and a Dutch tour in the spring
of 1982, described in more detail in a pair of warts and all
biographies of Nico by James Young and Richard Witts. These were
heady (and somewhat druggy) days for the Orchids, whose minimal
musical style was a perfect match for Nico's dark, introspective
soundscapes. Sadly their intriguing collaboration never made it
onto record, although there are several bootlegs in circulation.
In the wake of the Nico collaboration Martin felt it was time to
reappraise the group's direction. Rick Goldstraw left, choosing
to remain with Nico, and was replaced by Mark Hellyer. A second
Peel session taped in May 1982 offered much improved versions of
four songs from the cheaply recorded debut album, which found
Bramah in far better voice, and new material was written and
recorded over the summer. In October a four track 12" ep was
released by Rough Trade under the title Agents of Change,
produced by the band with Steve Hopkins. The session displayed
a newfound maturity both in terms of sound and songcraft, and the
subtle influence of Nico was apparent in tracks such as Release
and The Long Night Out, while the title track was pure, driving
Blue Orchids at their best. In discussing the ep in 1985 Bramah
summed up his approach to songwriting thus:
"Trying to be honest about your situation, the way we fit
into a technological society, the way the world has been
fucked up by man. I've always been optimistic but things
are so bad you can't just blame one thing... I like to
write happy songs and also sad songs. I always liked
Leonard Cohen, very emotional music. A lot of men think
it's soft to show emotion. but it's actually very brave.
Long Night Out was about drugs, and was a reflection of
what was happening to people I knew."
However, Rough Trade's promised promotional push failed to
materialise, so that Agents of Change sold less well than
previous releases and proved to be their last recording for the
label. This despite a major show at the Lyceum in October with
Comsat Angels and the Sound, and the ep's novel packaging with
a free poster, all housed in a bespoke plastic carrier bag. By
the end of the year the group decided to disband. Bramah in
particular felt discouraged by his adventures in the industry,
departures from the band, and the increasing demands the Blue
Orchids made on his personal life.
After a two year period spent in limbo, and making music only in
private, in late 1984 Bramah and Baines decided to break cover
with a new version of the band. Joined by drummer Nick Marshall,
in March 1985 the pair recorded a new single for the tiny Racket
label, run as a worker's cooperative by Bramah's former Fall
comrade Tony Friel. The record coupled the superb Sleepy Town
with a reggaefied take on Thirst, and was supported by a string
of live dates with an extended seven-piece band that never really
gelled, and after playing a few dates in Austria and Germany,
Bramah and Baines again parted company to pursue separate
interests.
For Una Baines, these took the form of a new band, The Fates, who
released one album (Furia) on Taboo in late 1985, on which Bramah
guested. Bramah had meanwhile hooked up with another Fall emigre
Karl Burns in Thirst, who released a solitary ep on Rough Trade
called Riding the Times. Produced by John Leckie, the four tracks
offered a more rocky, Stooges-like sound than the Blue Orchids,
and lacked their trademark keyboards, although The Unknown was
written as an Orchids song. Despite positive reviews the single
sold modestly on release in November 1987, but can now be heard
again on the Orchids' archive set From Severe to Serene. During
this period Bramah also turned down an offer to sing in Inspiral
Carpets, a vacancy subsequently filled by Tom Hingley.
Despite Mark E. Smith having earlier dismissed the Blue Orchids
as 'hopeless people' and 'a lot of fucking handicaps' in 1989
Martin Bramah rejoined the Fall to produce their outstanding
album Extricate, released on Polydor, as well as the subsequent
White Lightning ep. Bramah still saw the Fall as a great creative
outlet, and Extricate marked a critical renaissance for the band,
although after a year he and keyboard player Marcia Schofield
were unceremoniously fired while in Australia towards the end of
a world tour. Surprisingly, Bramah bore no grudge and nearly
rejoined the band yet again in 1998 for what became the Marshall
Suite album, but for various reasons it didn't quite happen.
From Australia, Bramah returned to the UK to gather up another
bunch of Blue Orchids, including Martin Hennin, Richard Harrisson
and guitarist Craig Gannon, previously with the Bluebells and the
Smiths. The result was a 12" single on As Is which coupled
Diamond Age with Moth, released in the autumn of 1991. Diamond
Age offered a cascading waterfall of sound, and featured a spoken
dream sequence in the middle of what was an almost transcendental
pop song. The new single was followed in 1992 by an excellent
career retrospective on Playtime, A View From The City, although
with only 1000 copies pressed the collection was not available
in sufficient quantities to establish their rightful place in
history.
Without Gannon, the new band recorded a concept ep called Secret
City, which was pressed up by Authentic in 1992 but never
properly released. The music betrayed more than a hint of the
indie/dance crossover that had flowered as the Madchester
phenomenon, and the band toured with the Inspiral Carpets, whose
own sound in turn owed a considerable debt to the Orchids' early
output in 1981/82. However this incarnation of the band was
destined not to last, and sundered later in 1992 after Bramah
relocated from Manchester to London.
Although no more Blue Orchids records emerged, this was by no
means the end of the story. In London Bramah assembled a new band
with Adrian White (drums), Stuart Kennedy (bass) and keyboard
player Alistair 'Baz' Murphy, who had completed the Bunnymen tour
with the band a decade earlier as stand-in for an unwell Una
Baines. Over the course of several months in 1993 this line-up
recorded nine superb Bramah songs for a planned second Blue
Orchids album at EMC studios in Camden, a non-digital facility
which rejoiced in old school valve technology. This polished set
contains some of Bramah's best work in tracks such as Lover of
Nothing, Weird World, Dream Boat and Blue Grey Boy, but sadly
attracted little interest from labels at the time and so remained
on the shelf. The original title Dark Matter was later dropped in favour of The
Sleeper. Faced with indifference, the band eventually ground to
a halt in 1995.
In 2002 a well-chosen compilation on Cherry Red titled A Darker
Bloom served to remind the world at large that the Blue Orchids
were an unsung yet major talent, while the release of The Sleeper
in 2003 confirms that Martin Bramah is a songwriter and guitarist
of real genius. True, the Blue Orchids suffered more than their
fair share of bad luck (having perhaps created a measure of it),
and laboured too long in the shadow of mentors such as Nico and
Mark Smith, but here is a band that followed its lights and muse,
and made the world a more colourful place.
James Nice
November 2002
Sources:
The core of this history is based on Martin Bramah's own account
which appears on the Blue Orchids website. The 1985 quotes are
from an interview in issue 4 of The Hell With Poverty [sic]
fanzine, autumn 1985. Another useful source was an MB interview
by Odran Smith printed in Fall zine The Biggest Library Yet
(issue 2) from November 1994. The derogatory Mark Smith quotes
are from the famously unguarded interview in issue 8 of Allied
Propaganda fanzine, from August/September 1983. Simon Reynolds
is quoted from his review of A Darker Bloom, which appeared in
Uncut magazine (2002).
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