The Boo Radleys

Encyclopedia : T : TH : THE : The Boo Radleys

-->

The Boo Radleys were a British rock band of the 1990s who were associated with the shoegazing and Britpop movement. They were formed in Wallasey, England in 1988, with singer/guitarist Sice, guitarist/songwriter Martin Carr, bassist Timothy Brown and drummer Steve Hewitt. The band split in 1999.

Contents

1 Band name
2 Beginnings
3 ''Wake Up!'' and later albums
4 Disbandment
5 Discography
6 External links

Band name

The band's name comes from the novel To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee, in which Boo Radley is the name of a character who is feared by the neighbourhood children as some kind of freak, but ultimately turns out to have been misunderstood.

Fans sometimes called the band "The Boos", whilst those who didn't see the attraction were more likely to call them "The Do Badleys" due to the initial chart failures.

Beginnings

In 1990, the band's first album Ichabod and I was released on a small British indie label, Action Records. It was similar in style to much of the then-popular shoegazing sub-genre, and bore the influence of My Bloody Valentine and Dinosaur Jr. Although not a commercial success, this release brought the band to the attention of Rough Trade Records, to whom they signed. Around this time, Hewitt was replaced on drums by Rob Cieka.

Almost immediately after the release of the Every Heaven EP in 1991, Rough Trade collapsed and the Boo Radleys were signed by Alan McGee's Creation Records. Their first release for Creation was Everything's Alright Forever in 1992, which was the first step in a move away from the shoegazing sound. That development in their sound was to be fully realised on their first album for Creation, Giant Steps (1993). The album takes its title from a song by jazz musician John Coltrane, of whom Martin Carr is a fan. Carr said the album "was a step away from the MBV sound into using more instruments and less conventional arrangements." The record was well-received by critics, and was awarded 9/10 by the influential weekly music magazine NME, which wrote:

It's an intentional masterpiece, a throw-everything-at-the-wall bric-a-brac of sounds, colours and stolen ideas. That The Boo Radleys (of all people!) have decided to accept their own challenge and create a record as diverse and boundary-bending as this is, at first glance, staggering. Isn't this the job of the U2s and the leisured idols of rock, unable to do anything without the tacit approval of history? Fortunately not. The Boo Radleys are sifting through time (the mid-'60s, mostly) and conjuring up something that's as cut-up and ambitious as anything you'd care to mention.

Both NME and Select Magazine declared Giant Steps album of the year in 1993.

Wake Up! and later albums

Despite such critical acclaim and a large cult fanbase, the Boo Radleys were still largely unknown to the general public by the time the Britpop phenomenon broke into the mainstream in 1995. This changed when the band released the musically (but not lyrically) upbeat single "Wake Up Boo!" in the summer of that year. It made the UK chart top 10, and has been used extensively since as background music on television.

Their fourth album Wake Up! (1995), from which the single was taken, was close in tone to much of the catchy, melodic, Beatles inspired British pop of the time, but many tracks featured unusual arrangements, relatively complex songwriting, and strangely titled songs like "Martin, Doom! It's Seven O' Clock". The group came to be seen as a Britpop band, which they resented. Interviewed in 2005 by the BBC, Martin Carr said:

I tried to have nothing to do with what was being called Britpop. Our whole career was spent trying not to 'fit in'. We just carried on doing what we had been doing. I didn't like most of the new bands or the flag-waving. I didn't like New Labour or idolise Paul Weller and I hated media-generated movements within music.

They responded to mainstream success in 1996 with C'mon Kids, which featured more experimental sounds. Their final LP was 1998's Kingsize, which was influenced in parts by soul music, hip hop and dance music. Both albums were warmly received by critics, but neither found commercial success. A career-spanning compilation, Find the Way Out, was released in 2005.

[The Boo Radleys - Wake Up Boo! excerpt] ([file info])
*
* Problems listening to the file? See [Media helpmedia help].

Disbandment

The Boo Radleys disbanded in early 1999. Under the name Bravecaptain, Martin Carr has since released four albums, The Fingertip Saint Sessions Volume 1, Go With Yourself, Advertisements for Myself (2002) and All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace (2004). His latest work is titled Distractions and is available for free download from his website.

Sice walked away from music for several years after the split but following a guest vocal on Bravecaptain's All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace and also two songs with Japanese artist Meister he currently is working with his own band Paperlung on new material.

[Free Download of the current Bravecaptain album Distractions]

Discography

Ichabod and I (July 1990)
Everything's Alright Forever (March 1992)
Learning To Walk (1992)
Giant Steps (July 1993)
Wake Up! (March 1995)
C'mon Kids (September 1996)
Kingsize (October 1998)
Find the Way Out (July 2005)

External links

From Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Original article here. Support Wikipedia by contributing or donating.
All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License See Wikipedia Copyrights for details.