Gordon Grahame - guitar/vocals
Mike Hall - Keyboards
Richard Buchanan - Bass
Brian Hall - Drums
Gavin Smith - Percussion/vocals
Etkilendikleri
" If you want to know where we are coming from how about the 68 special , Mad Dogs and Englishmen and Electric Ladyland"
Neye Benziyor?
Nobody could decide, but the reviews were (generally!) good. These are courtesy of rateyourmusic.com...
Review of "Friday the 13th..."
"Amazing record. Lyrics. Music. Melodies. Impact. Kind of funny in places. Sounds like the Replacements in places, and Van Morrison or the Meat Puppets in others. A lost gem - one of those records referred to me as a fluke and that I've hardly ever seen reference to anywhere."
of "The Land of Do As You Please"
"Celtic rock in the vein of Hothouse Flowers & The Waterboys. Good tunes even if the production is somewhat workmanlike."
of "Hung Like Jesus"
"The swan song of the Lost Soul Band, where the Celtic proto alt. country of the first two albums has given way sparser, rougher and groovier expression. Gone are also the spiritual elements of the predecessors which have been replaced with tales of sex and drugs and ice-cream. However, some of the lyrics, even if darker and more pessimistic, still retain the clarity and beauty of expression you have learnt to expect from Gordon Grahame. In an interview with the Scotsman newspaper, he has said that the Lost Soul Band was his dream and this unassuming but powerful album seems to reflect his disillusionment with music business right from the beginning with the first track "69" with its pained screams of "success, success!!!" The album was hard to find even when it first came out but if you happen to chance upon it, take it home and it's sure to find a (even if minor) place in your heart. The Lost Soul Band was an accurate moniker for one of the great lost bands of the nineties."
From The Great Scottish Music Biography By Martin C Strong 2002
Lost Soul Band
Formed: Penicuik, Midlothian… 1989 by Gordon Grahame, Mike Hall, his brother Brian Hall and Richard Buchanan; Gavin Smith would soon make them a quintet. One of the most criminally overlooked bands to come out of Scotland in the past fifteen years, The Lost Soul Band somehow slipped through the net - a fact all the more galling when one casts a crirical eye over the surfeit of suffocatingly average dross clogging up the current music scene. In Gordon Grahame, The Lost Soul Band boasted a songwriter of breathtaking depth and ability, a man more than capable of following in the footsteps of spiritual mentors Bob Dylan and Van Morrison. He also possessed a stage presence to be reckoned with, attracting a loyal following in Edinburgh, Glasgow and even London where the band gigged regularly at The Mean Fiddler and The Borderline.
A debut single, “Coffee & Hope”, arrived in 1991 on their own “Lost Oyster” label (by which time Gavin Smith had joined on percussion), followed later that year by “Save It”. Infamous for the stone Roses affair, the London-bases “Silvertone” label were savvy enough to sign the band for a third single “Looking Through the Butcher’s Window”. As with “Trashscene” (also released in 1992) the latter track offered up a taste of the love shows’ rootsy sucker punch, yet it took kitchen-sink mini-epic “You can’t Win Them All Mum” to really sum up the band’s world weary pathos. Memorable performed by Grahame on BBC2’s “Late Show” the song previewed the long awaited debut album “The Land Of Do As You Please”. Finally released in autumn 1993, new fans could’ve been forgiven for thinking the record was a greatest hits set, including as it did no less than five singles. While Grahame’s genius shone through on the likes of “Goodbye Beautiful World” and existentialist masterpiece “God”, the album as a whole was arguably less cohesive than the hastily recorded “promotional” set which preceded it. Apparently recorded in six days and released as a means of raising the band’s profile prior to the debut album proper (confused yet? You should be…), “Friday the 13th and Everything’s Rosie” popped up out of the blue in April ’93. Subtitled “Excerpts from the life of a Sottish cowboy” with a sleevenote outlining the band’s attempts to create their own brand of spiritual country, the record was spontaneous, raw, bittersweet and at 16 tracks, surprisingly consistent. It wouldn’t be going too far to say the band had captured something of the essence of Gram Parson’s fabled “Cosmic American Music” while Grahame’s way with a Dylan-esque lyric encompassed all the encrypted heartbreak, black humour and surrealist poetry which such a comparison implies.
Despite rave reviews from the likes of Select, GQ, Time Out, The Guardian etc, The Lost Soul Band were a band seemingly out of time, largely ignored by the grunge-fixated likes of NME and Melody Maker. Their subsequent demise was barely even noted in the mainstream music press. Although Grahame went on to record a much more oblique, noisy solo internet album “Travelled Some Way” (2000), and play the occasional gig (prior to the Edinburgh Oyster Bars being “stylized” in the name of “progress”) , it’s surely something of a tragedy that as a singer/songwriter he remains a relatively unknown entity. As does his erstwhile musical companion, The Sandyman, who deserves a mention here for not only his backing vocals on “Friday the 13th” but his overlooked talent as a singer and the many late nights of rootsy brilliance he brought Edinburgh punters back in the early-mid 90’s.
Excellent gig guys at Picture house really tight sound and great to hear songs that still kick arse of stuff around today - has to be gig of the year !
Still going to sleep & waking up in the morning with your tunes running through my mind after the last 2 EPIC gigs! The groove you guys have is truly awesome!
That was great, guys. It was like the last 15 years melted away and I was young again! Great to see Gav and Sandy - hope to see you again soon. Nice to see Anne too.
I had totally forgotten The Devil Came Riding In - good to hear it. Trashscene still my favourite!
Hoot hoot! Tickets are booked for the 30th in Glasgow. Cannot wait. Um, requests... Everything from 'Friday 13th'? Everything from 'The Land of...'? Everything from 'Hung Like Jesus'? Not so helpful, huh? See you in a little bit! x
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