THE NIGHTJARS
"Acid In Your Face"/"Hang Me Out To Dry"
(Molesworth Records HUNTS 6)
coverpage
introduction
The Blue Mist
Darkness At Noon
The Pleasureheads
Nutmeg
Flowershop
The Charlottes
The Nightjars
80's Cambs rock(c) Andrew Clifton 2000-1
The final Molesworth release was mainly down to Dave Fletcher. He used experience gained on the Charlottes single to put together a neat little package to promote this Ramsey-area quintet. Whereas Dave played bass in The Charlottes, he drummed for The Nightjars; and this is the band on which he decided to concentrate his efforts.
The Nightjars combined members of Red Over White, an agit-pop band, and Giant Polar Bears. Through 1989 they built up a large local following, thanks mainly to John Lindsell's energetic stage presence. He still couldn't sing in tune, but had adapted to his limitations; his vocals were now "idiosyncratic".
With new guitarists for 1990, they made an impact on the Cambridge Rock Competition, which had expanded to "Anglian". After ten heats and three semi-finals they were just pipped into second place, although they did win the prize for best stage presentation. Their winnings financed the recording of this single with Tim Harding at Flightpath. There was also some media controversy. John was heard to say to the competition final's audience, "Do you take LSD? Well you should," whereas he claimed he said "shouldn't". His songs back him up.
"Acid In Your Face" is a hundred seconds' blast of youthful anger and thrashy guitars. "Hang Me Out To Dry" pillories the fur trade, but more subtly with imaginative use of fuzz and slide. The single gained the interest of Rough Trade Records, for whom The Nightjars recorded the excellent "Animalia" five song demo tape. Unfortunately the Rough Trade / Cartel indie distribution system was on its last legs (although Molesworth's distributor Backs, the East Anglian part of The Cartel, did survive the collapse, to its credit). In mid-1991 John Lindsell and guitarist Tim Slater went one way, and Dave Fletcher and bassist Dave Wick went the other. A few years later the two Daves teamed up with guitarist Richy Archer to form Dogboy who released a well-received, punky-pop, one-sided EP in 1998. Dave Fletcher has drummed for Tim "T.H(c)3.2" Harding, and is now Jack Hammer in country-punk band The Gentlemen Jim.
Instead of running my own label, I decided to concentrate on Leaves Music and some postgraduate research for a few years. CD sales had just overtaken cassettes which, in turn, were surpassing vinyl sales, yet CD manufacture would remain prohibitively expensive until mid-decade. Minidisc and digital compact cassettes were due for (disastrous) launch in 1992. With the market so divided it would be difficult for small indies to operate. For a while Pinnacle almost had a monopoly of indie distribution, and when rivals appeared most were fronts for the majors (who, in an effort to get their new signings "free" publicity in the indie charts, had already infiltrated the indie system with fake indie labels). Some successful indie bands, following the collapse of labels such as Factory and Rough Trade, had signed to majors who rapidly turned "Indie" into a genre rather than a way of working. As with all genres, it soon became formulaic and repetitive.
Continue to discover what else was happening on the Cambridgeshire music scene in the 1980s.