Adorable – in concert at Glastonbury 1993 – BBC Radio 1 –
Homage to Shoegaze tonight with Adorable, a band from Coventry who were together only four years but managed to get two albums out before splitting.
Formed in 1990, as The Candy Thieves, consisting of Pete Fijalkowski (vocals, guitar), Wayne Peters (guitar), Stephen ‘Wil’ Williams (bass) and Kevin Gritton (drums). But after the release of their first and only single, Homeboy and Underwater, which failed to make any waves. As a result, Peters quit the band in frustration and was replaced by Robert Dillam, and the band changed their name to Adorable.
But even with the name change, the band encountered not a huge pile of success at first – their debut gig under their new name had the misfortune of happening the same night The Gulf War started, in January of 1991. However, their first single, a re-recording of Sunshine Smile for Creation, who they had just signed to, was designated Single Of The Week from NME, and did well on the Indie singles charts, as did two other singles released shortly after. Their debut album, Against Perfection was released in March of 1993 and showed promise, reaching #70 on the UK album charts. The band subsequently did a tour of Europe, the US, Australia and Japan.
And it’s around the time of that tour that this appearance at Glastonbury takes place. When they released their second album, Fake, in September of 1994, it provided two singles which also did well on the Indie charts. However the album itself didn’t break into the mainstream and it proved to be a capper for the band, who were experiencing strained relations between themselves and their label, Creation.
All of that led up to an onstage announcement during a gig in Brussels, that Adorable were splitting up.
I haven’t found very much recorded live of this band, so I suspect there’s not much that is representative of them. If you missed them the first time around, here’s a memory refresher. If you’ve never heard of them before, here’s another example of what was going on in the early 90s.
