Helen Love – in session for Steve Lamacq – June 22, 1998 – BBC Radio 1 –
Eleven minutes of haywire, compliments of Helen Love, in a session for Steve Lamacq at BBC Radio 1 on June 22, 1998. Love, who claims she listens to nothing but Ramones records, has managed to conjure up and turbo-charged soup of Punk and Bubblegum, with samples, references and Joey Ramone thrown in for good measure. Formed in 1992, the Welsh band, fronted and founded by Helen Love released nothing but singles and single compilations until 2000 when their debut album, Love and Glitter, Hot Days And Music came out.
A diehard fan of the Ramones (with the aforementioned predilection for only listening to their albums), Joey Ramone introduces this session from 1998 which features their then-latest single, the b-side Shifty Disco Girl.
In keeping with The Ramones ethos, none of the songs are more than 2 minutes long – are all rapid-fire and all are claustrophobic little masterpieces of high-tension, bubblegum-angst and haywire imagery, rolled into carpet of fuzz and the double-tracked dulcet tones of Helen Love herself.
With a huge discography released by several labels (although I don’t think they have a U.S. distributor), Helen Love has carved out a serious niche for their particular brand of mayhem.
But – I have to say it’s riveting. And even though I ran one of the more mellow Classical music concerts earlier, a blast of Helen Love is certainly an antidote to what are some seriously insane times.
So if mellow just isn’t you tonight (and sometimes Hump Day just brings out the fangs in all of us), I would strongly suggest you plug this one into your sound system and crank it up – way up.
If you aren’t familiar with Helen Love, but are reasonably impressed with this live session from Steve Lamacq at BBC Radio 1 – you can dive into their vast catalog of compilations as well as three other studio albums, and the stack of compilations and just go crazy.
