Wednesday, January 03, 2007

Big in 2007? Rivals: The Popstars?


A shorter one today. Two bands. Who used to be one. Sort of.

Anyway, the story centres round two blokes. Vincent Vincent (who I think is really called Mark) and Charlie Waller. They used to both play together in East London band Vincent Vincent and the Villains (above), who are often described as rockabilly, but are really more of indie band with a particular interest in 50s rock ‘n’ roll. Not just the sound either, which they do very well. They look quite the part too.

VV&TV have been going for quite a few years now, and my interest in them has been as intermittent as their record releases. They released the great 7 inch single On Your Own on Smoking Gun Records, back in 2004. That was my introduction. The next year I heard that they had split up. But what seems to have happened is that Charlie left the Villains to go full-time with his other band, which became known as The Rumble Strips (left). Vincent and the rest of the boys continued on without him. But the split wasn’t entirely amicable. There was some real acrimony between the two bands. So much so that Vincent wrote a song called Johnny Two Bands about Charlie, who before the split was unsuccessfully dividing his time between the two bands. It was a single for them a few months ago.

I don’t know if Charlie and Vincent have patched things up, but I guess their loss is a gain for fans of retro rock ‘n’ roll. We now have two bands. The Rumble Strips differ from the Villains by augmenting their rock ‘n’ roll sound with horns, which has brought along the inevitable Dexy’s Midnight Runners comparisons.

The other thing the two bands now have in common is that they’ve both landed major label deals – the 'Strips on Island and the Villains on EMI. Maybe that will mean that both of them will get a major push this year which will land them firmly in the mainstream. Maybe both at the same time. Who knows, maybe then the whole history will be dragged out again.

Anyway, hope you enjoyed this story. You may be hearing it again soon somewhere else. And I hope you enjoy listening to these tracks.

Download: The Rumble Strips – Hate Me You Do
Download: The Rumble Strips – Motorcycle
Download: Vincent Vincent & the Villains – On My Own
Download: Vincent Vincent & the Villains – Johnny Two Bands (demo)

Read more: Music Like Dirt was watching The Rumble Strips way back in 2005. And again almost exactly a year ago. The Villains have their own Wiki page.

Watch:
Rumble Strips - Oh Creole! video. Villains - Johnny Two Bands video.

Buy:
Vincent Vincent records at Rough Trade, and Rumble Strips records at Pure Groove

See them live:
No gig dates for the Villains at the moment - look out for them - they're good live. I've not seen the Rumble Strips yet, but may get my chance at The Scala on 20 January.

5 comments:

Matthew said...

Excellent - I heard the Johnny Two Bands demo a couple of years ago and really liked it, but never really saw anything by them knocking around.

I'll like to this post myself if that's fine with you.

Matthew said...

That is, er *link to this post* of course! D'oh!

The Daily Growl said...

Yeah - course it is! Post the mp3. I don't mind. They have a few singles floating around. Try Rough Trade. I think they're only on 7 inch.

Anonymous said...

Cheers for all the links - i'll be paying you commission at this rate lol

There's some great stuff on those Chalk nights. Might go down to one or two myself, although the 4am part puts me off (must be getting old!)

The Rumble Strips as you noticed by my frequent ramblings about them are well worth catching live. Hopefully 07 will be there year... I thought 06 might have been

Simon said...

I want to catch the Rumble Strips live too - they had the Sunday of Summer Sundae on their website gig list for ages and then took it off a couple of weeks before the event. There's a clip on YouTube of VV&TV on TOTP2 in November, but filmed off a TV by one of the band at some sort of party, which is a nice touch.

Oh, and according to Vincent he and Charlie have met and settled their differences.