Day 68: "Prozaic" - Honeycrack (1995)
As we embark on a new column of albums from The Pile, we reach one I've been looking forward to writing about for a while - in fact, it was nearly the very first album I wrote about for the site. You see there's very little ordering to the layout of the Pile, but when I was looking at which albums were at the top, and saw this one sat in the first position of my actual CD racks (rather than the loose pile of CDs next to it), I nearly re-arranged where the columns of loose CDs were just so I could write about it first. In the end I thought that went against the spirit of the original tweet which prompted this whole endeavour, but now I've slogged through 67 albums already, my reward is I get to talk about this most unlikely of CDs.
I'm delighted to tell you you can listen to me here
Generally, albums in the Pile tend to fall into one of two categories; either they have some weird and personal connection to me, or they are interesting from a musical point of view, at least enough so that I can find some way to entice people into listening to them who might not have done so before. This is one of those rare incidences where both are the case. Let's dig in to the whys before we deal with the how-on-earth's, shall we?
I've mentioned a couple of times before that one of the few things my father and I took a keen mutual interest in during my adolescence was trying to find new music to recommend to each other. Often, that traffic tended to be slightly one-way in my direction - my father's in-depth knowledge of 60's and 70's weird band obscura meant he nearly always compared whatever new music I had found to some incredibly underground musician who'd already done it, but better*. One of the few moments where that was not the case was when we both simultaneously saw the Top of the Pops performance by The Wildhearts doing Caffeine Bomb (him working away from home at the time). When the show ended, he called home to ask me if I had seen it, and instead it was the first thing I asked him before he could even get a word out to me when I was handed the receiver.
That fateful performance. You have to understand that things like this did not appear on chart shows in the mid 90's on British TV. Ever.
From that point on, my Dad and I were united in our early fandom for this peculiar English throwback punk band. Looking back, I have to wonder how much of my interest in their particular talents was based more on it being a thing that me and my Dad shared, rather than me being a die-hard fan of their music. I don't, for example, own any Wildhearts albums currently. But it's because of them that I own this album.
The Wildhearts initially burned brightly but briefly; their lead singer Ginger was famously a giant ass both on and offstage at the time, only having formed the band after being fired from the Quireboys, then sacking their lead guitarist after a fight between the first and second album, getting a replacement in who lasted just one session before quitting rather than work with him, and so on. Sufficed to say, the man had a reputation.
However, it was his volatile temperament that led to the existence of this album. When guitarist Chris "CJ" Jagdhar was fired as the Wildhearts guitarist, he got in touch with one of the Wildhearts' session musicians who had chosen to turn down a permanent position in the band, and the two of them went on to form Honeycrack.
To be honest I can't remember exactly how I became aware of this album; I remember reading about CJ 'leaving' the Wildhearts in an issue of Kerrrang! or something similar, and someone somewhere must have alerted me to the fact that this band comprised of former Wildhearts members, because I dutifully went out and bought it.
Let me tell you something about this album. It's crazy how good, different, and socially conscious it is for an album made by people who were just in a band creating songs like "Caffiene Bomb" and "If Life Is Like A Love Bank, I Want An Overdraft". 'Prozaic' is just filled with well crafted Indie-rock tunes which feel like they're the prototype for the sounds bands like Feeder and and Ash would take to the top of the charts just a couple of years later. Each song has a message, a story to tell, or an interesting inspiration which make it more than just a disparate collection of tunes. There's a 5-minute rock song about Andy Warhol on there - and its really good!
In my heart of hearts, I thought this was what the future of my Wildhearts fandom would be - a springboard into discovering this really great, smart indie rock band who were bound to go places.
Regular readers will know my powers of musical prognostication are not only incorrect, they're often an unavoidable curse on the bands in question, and Honeycrack were not immune to my Cassandrian ways and they released this one album, fell out with their label, broke up, and CJ returned to the reformed Wildhearts in 2001 and they are still touring to this day.
And so 'Prozaic' remains in my collection as a kind of well of great musical potential left untapped, and a collection of 13 songs which are way better than they have any right to be.
* Footnote: I wanted to include an unrelated story here as well because I'm not sure where else to put it. In 2012, myself and lifelong friend Jamie went to London to see a reformed Faith No More at Hammersmith Apollo, who were supported by an Italian 3-piece rock/bluegrass band called Guano Padano. They were great, sounded amazing, and had the audience totally engaged. Stood with Jamie, he said I should record it on my phone and send it to my Dad, as it might be right up his alley musically. I told him I would, but that he'd just tell me about some obscure band which were like this but better.
Jamie said there was no way he would have some obscure musical pull which sounded like them, so I dutifully recorded them performing "Prairie Fire" on my phone and sent it to him. When I saw Jamie that weekend, I duly showed him the text message from my Dad saying "they seem decent, but they're a lot like <whatever stupid band he mentioned>" and Jamie never questioned me about it again.
