The original Birdie is back!



Saint Etienne collaborators Debsey and Paul have dusted off their guitars and will be performing as Birdie for the first time in over ten years.
Along with original band member and former Etienne drummer Jon Chandler, they play at The Union Chapel in Islington, London this Saturday 21st January.
Also playing are The Wood-Be-Goods and David Tattersall. This is a lunchtime event starting at 12 midday and admission is free.

http://www.facebook.com/events/213608028726260/

Felt / the book


©Lawrence

Bob has written the intro to a lavishly designed hard-back book telling the story of Felt
through Lawrence's words and stunningly reproduced photos from his personal archive.
It's a limited edition of 1000 copies and comes from a new publishing company formed by three of our favourite designers (Fabrice Couillerot, Paul Kelly and Lora Findlay) and
can only be pre-ordered here http://www.firstthirdbooks.com/

And on Feb 3rd there's a book launch at Rough Trade East with a Q&A with Lawrence,
Gary Ainge, Martin Duffy & Phil King - with Paul Kelly showing clips from
Lawrence of Begravia


Heavenly Films...

has a new beautifully designed (natch) website where you can see clips of
past projects, learn about our new work in progress 'LDN' and even snap up
one of the last remaining 'Lawrence of Belgravia' posters
http://www.heavenlyfilms.net/
and on Fri 10th Feb there will be a special screening of Finisterre and
What Have You Done Today Mervyn Day? at the Museum of London, Docklands
more deets here: http://www.wegottickets.com/event/149097



The Best of Times, the 100 Best of Times

Possibly the worst pseudo-Dickensian play on words but hey it's December
and nearly Chrisssstmaassss (in cod Holder voice), and what an amazing
night we had on Sunday playing "Our 100 Best Tunes". Thank you to
all who made it, and those that followed the live updates on twitter (from as
far afield as Chile)
There's some incred "views" of the night's action through the lens of the venerable
Paul Kelly click here

Want to read our latest newsletter?
Want to know the full 100 Best Tunes.
Want to hear our Christmas message
and a sneak preview of our new single? - click here

Greetings Pop Pickers



We're prematurely full of festive cheer, organising this year's 
Christmas party. It's called OUR HUNDRED BEST TUNES and that's exactly 
what you'll get. The three of us will be playing our absolute 
favourite records, in order starting at no.100.

The date is Sunday December 11th and the place is the tinsel-laden 
Bethnal Green Working Mens Club, London E2.  It will be hosted by 
Welsh party princesses the Vinyl Vendettas who came up with the natty 
idea.

Yes, there will be scorecards, AND a small Xmas gift.

The party starts at 5pm and finishes at 11.15pm. Tickets are priced at 
just £10 and can be purchased here http://www.wegottickets.com/event/144844  from noon
this Wednesday 23rd  November.

Looking forward to seeing you!

love Bob Pete and Sarah xx

Ahoi Pop! Our first Austrian Gig!
We're playing a non Halloween themed set on 31st October at the Posthof,
Linz http://www.posthof.at/programm/programm/article/saint-etienne/



South Pop Festival - Isla Cristina - Spain, September 10th

If you fancy some late summer sun, sand and Saint Et - this could be the one for you.
Bob DJed there last year and came back with glowing reports (must have caught the sun arf arf)

www.southpopfestival.com


Apple Cart Festival in Victoria Park - London,  August 7th

This is shaping up to be a lovely day/evening with the likes of The Magic Numbers, Chilly Gonzales,
Steve Mason, Soul II Soul and then us bringing the proceedings to a rioutous close.
There's magic, comedy and DJ action from such luminaries as Sean Rowley and Kevin Rowland
and the mooted resurrection of Pete (Wiggs) and Johnno's Erection Section.

For tickets and info have a look here
it finishes at 10 and under 14s are free!


Free Download

We did a remix of  "An Old Photo Of Your New Lover" for LA's The One AM Radio and turned it into
a duet with Sarah, which they are very kindly letting you download for free.

"An Old Photo Of Your New Lover" - remixed by Saint Etienne



Camden Crawl - Sonic Film with Saint Etienne
Prior to our gig at Koko on the 30th April, Bob has curated this special event in conjuction with the Camden Crawl and the East London Film Festival, its round the corner at The Forge on Delancey Street and runs from 1.45 to 6pm
here's what's happening:





Record Store Day and Scandinavian Live Dates



You may be vaguely aware that both Bob and Pete are vinyl junkies and are rarely to be seen without a small 7" shaped box when they are on dj'ing duties. It made incredibly good sense that, for 2011 Record Store Day, we should release some of the St Et singles that didn't come out on 7" the first time round. So...

• We're releasing a limited edition (1500 copies only) box set of 7" singles, for record store day, on Saturday April 16th.

• The box set will be the first of two (the second one to come out next year) that will include six 7" singles - each one a Saint Etienne single not previously released on our fave format. Some (Lose That Girl and Shower Scene) are singles we wanted to release that for one reason or another never came out in the UK.

• Each single caries the original artwork as it would have appeared at the time of issue.

• Many of the B-side tracks are appearing on vinyl for the first time.

• Box One contains:

Avenue c/w Stranger In Paradise
He's On The Phone c/w How I Learned To Love The Bomb
Lose That Girl c/w Swim Swan Swim
How We Used To Live Pt 1 c/w How We Used To Live Pt 2
Boy Is Crying c/w Northwestern
Shower Scene c/w Aqualad

The box, we'd like to think, is quite beautiful, designed - as is the insert - by Paul Kelly. And the pressing quality is top notch - mastering by the redoubtable Guy Davie.



In other news...

Having had fun in Singapore we've decided to book up a few more live dates; this time were heading off to Scandinavia for a short trip that takes in:

Stockholm - Strand - Friday 20th May - http://hornstullstrand.se/
Malmo - Babel - Saturday 21st May - http://babelmalmo.se/
Helsinki - Korjaamo - Sunday 22nd - www.korjaamo.fi/fi

And don't forget we're playing in London at KoKo on Saturday 30th April too!

Now we've filled your diary and emptied your wallet, back we go into the studio. We'll be playing a handful of new songs at KoKo and in Scandinavia so you can keep tabs on our progress.

See you soon,

Sarah Bob and Pete xxx

Ian Catt's Legendary Solo Album



Originally released on the now defunct Vinyl Japan in the mid 90's, Ian's hard to find solo project under the moniker
"Katmandu" is now available as a download only release via Corporate records. Ian is in the process of unearthing Saint Etienne and Trembling Blue Stars mixes of the track "Welcome to California" which he'll make available when he finds them! To hear snippets, get free tracks and download the rest go to:

http://corporaterecords.co.uk/artists/Katmandu/


Pete DJing at Modern Lovers in Brighton



With club events in Glasgow, Edinburgh, Gothenburg and Malmö, Modern Lovers European beat happening comes to Brighton! Saint Etienne's very own Pete Wiggs joins resident Craig Jamieson for further adventures in retro stereo, from psychedelic soul to cult pop to girl groups, glam, garage punk and beyond.



Truck Festival

We are  headlining a special Heavenly stage at this years Truck festival (Saturday 23rd July) which is in a 3000 capacity tent on the site. Other acts on the Heavenly stage that day are Cherry Ghost, Sea Of Bees, The Rockingbirds
plus VERY special guests
Our good friends Justin Robertson and Richard Norris (Beyond The Wizards Sleeve) will DJ into the wee small hours after the Saint Etienne set. Fun will be had by all.

The Festival is small, great fun and family friendly and the other acts so far confirmed include Gruff Rhys, John Grant, The Duke And The King and Catlin Rose with many more to be announced.


Truck festival 2011, July 22nd-24th, Hill Farm, Steventon.
TICKETS AVAILABLE FROM:         
Seetickets (nationwide) – 0844 209 7363 http://www.seetickets.com/?c=539091
Truck Store, 101 Cowley Road, Oxford – 01865 793 866  and other local outlets 
For all things Truck: www.thisistruck.com 


Gig news

 We'll be making our first ever appearance in Singapore on March 19th at the Mosaic Festival playing two similar sets (one at 7.30pm and the other at 10pm) tickets are selling fast according to their website!

We're headlining the Saturday of the 10th Camden Crawl at Koko in Camden, London on April 30th.
It's a Bank Holiday weekend.



 Test Pressing Mix

If you have an hour to while away, you can do no better than to lose yourself in Pete's imaginatively titled "Mix!" of psych tinged soul and funk tunes that he has put together for
testpressing.org  - which is a rather good blog.

(Amongst other gems on said blog there is a method of cleaning records using Copydex
- Anyone tried it??)



Test Pressing - Mix


A Tribute to Trish Keenan by Bob Stanley

In the fifties Jo Stafford was famous for her incredible pitching and the purity of her voice. Purity and pitch aren't words that get used too often when describing modern singers, but Trish Keenan had the purest voice of her generation. The first time I heard it, so warm and hypnotic, I was hooked. Broadcast, hands down, were my favourite group of the last fifteen years.

Like a lot of people, I've been thinking about Trish for most of the weekend. I've been thinking about her beautiful voice, and how incredibly generous she was with her time and her knowledge.

Anybody who heard Broadcast and thought of Trish as an ice maiden, or aloof, wasn't really paying attention. On stage she was often lost in concentration under her mane of hair, but I remember her giving a right mouthful to some leery lads giving her shit when they played at the Garage. Another time at Koko, she quietly mumbled "umm, it's my birthday today" between songs - everyone spontaneously sang "Happy birthday, dear Trish" and she grinned her face off. For me Broadcast were the most fun, and certainly the most inspiring, group we ever toured with when they played on the UK Finisterre gigs in 2002.

I met Trish when me and Pete were trying to sign Broadcast to our shortlived EMIdisc label in 1995, and we went to see them play in Birmingham for the first time. They let us stay over, we went to the their favourite balti house, and the next day we went second hand record shopping. It seemed like there was a whole spooked electronica scene (Broadcast, Pram, Plone, Novak) based around a video shop in Moseley; at least one member of each group seemed to work there. We drank a lot of tea and listened to lots of records.

Trish and James put me onto so much over the years, sending me mini discs (possibly the only other people in Britain still using them) of Carl Orff, Basil Kirchin's Abstractions Of The Industrial North, stuff I knew nothing about which blew my mind. Talking to Trish about Delia Derbyshire, she'd point out that Daphne Oram was the *really* important woman at the Radiophonic Workshop and stick on an early 60s EP of Oram's music for primary school children to prove it. After sharing a love of the Czech folk fairy tale film Valerie And Her Week Of Wonders, out of the blue Trish sent me a video of Milos Forman's Loves Of A Blonde. I don't remember swapping being an issue, it was all one way; she was just very kind.

As attuned to pop and melody as she was to experimentalism, Trish wrote some beautiful lyrics: Come On Let's Go is a declaration of romantic independence ("what's the point in wasting time on people that we'll never know?"); Tears In The Typing Pool is a small town, small romance break up song of terrible sadness ("The letters are sighing, the ink is still drying/I told you the truth and now I sigh too"); Before We Begin an inspiring manifesto of winking hope ("So here we are again, back to the beginning/So the salt will spill again, throw it over your shoulder").

Trish and James were an amazing couple; working and living together, Broadcast was their lives and, shamefully, they seemed permanently hard-up. America understood them better and they played shows there that, relatively, were three or four times as big as ones they played in Britain. Marc Jacobs certainly loved Broadcast and provided Trish with a wardrobe of fineries - she might have had beans on toast for tea, but she was the best dressed girl in Birmingham.

It goes without saying that Trish's passing is a terrible loss for music. She was also a truly beautiful person, one of the most open and friendly people I've ever met. It is heartbreaking. Our thoughts are with James, Broadcast's manager Martin, and Trish's family.


Radio Six Live Acoustic Session

Sarah, Debsey, Gerard and guitarist Tommy performed a timber shiveringly atmospheric
acoustic session for Huey Morgan on BBC 6 music yesterday (14/12/2010), and you can hear it online for a week or so here:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00wkm6g#p00cqzky


 

A Glimpse of Stocking

Has now sold out (apart from a very few copies that the band are taking to the UK Xmas shows


Our new Xmas album is available for a very short period at Saint Etienne's Xmas Emporium. It features 7 all new tracks (listen below) and eight vintage numbers including some ultra hard to find rarities.  Visit the store to find out more, including details of the ultra deluxe personalised edition.





RIP Andrew Midgeley

It's very hard to believe that Andrew Midgley, the pop art terrorist also known as Boy Naughty, is no longer about. He died last Tuesday after he'd been at the gym. The gym! It's safe to say he'd have thought that was the daftest way he could have gone. I met him when I was working at Virgin Records in Peterborough in 1985. Customers' tastes ranged from number one in the chart to number two in the chart, it was a pretty uninspiring job. So when this skinny kid walked in looking like a brylcreemed Kenneth Williams and asked for the Primal Scream single (their first one) it was quite a shock, and I pounced on him. It turned out he lived up the road from me so we went for a pint and I met his gang of mates - Andrew, Bobby and Chris - who would help to make my life a lot more interesting and a lot more fun. He got me into a ton of new music, the coalescing C86 scene, at a time when I was listening to Roy Orbison, John Barry, and almost nothing new. He even changed my name; because there was already a Bobby in the Peterborough gang I became Stan. We'd go to gigs in Bedford and Lincoln, and Naughty would heap cheeky abuse on ratty indie support acts and below par soundmen. But he was more excited at the prospect of Frankie Howerd or Norman Wisdom coming to town (I saw the former but skipped the latter, to my shame). He laughed like Syd James, and he laughed a lot. When I met them Andrew and his friend Andrew Rainey - soon rechristened Boy Naughty and Brian Orchard - were about to do a fanzine called Pop Avalanche, and they asked if I wanted to do a 'colour supplement' (it was printed in red ink). Soon immersed in mid 80s fanzine culture, me and Pete started one called Caff after Pop Avalanche, while Naughty and Brian did The Horn, a filthy rag full of smutty jokes about The Soup Dragons. I moved to London and ended up at NME and Melody Maker off the back of our fanzine work. Naughty kept working at the DHSS for years but gave it up when he helped us out by fronting Cola Boy in 1991; he acted as if it was the most normal thing in the world to suddenly be doing Top Of The Pops and PA's in Greenock and Burnley. When that ran its natural course he started writing syndicated columns for local papers - astrology, gardening, cookery, agony aunt advice. He did the lot under ridiculous pseudonyms (I wish I could remember some of them) with the help of a few books he'd picked up in charity shops. I dread to think where the agony aunt advice came from - Carry On Loving, probably. Naughty always saw through bullshit and had a black sense of humour and abruptness that healthily messed with my middle class Surrey upbringing. Just after we'd met I called him up at about 7.40 on a Tuesday. "Don't EVER call me during Eastenders!" he said and slammed the phone down. He'd always point out, with unceremonious Naughtiness, if you were doing something foolish or getting over-serious. I played him our version of the TV Personalities' How I Learned To Love The Bomb (he got me into the TVPs as well) and asked what he thought. He looked solemn for a while, and then said "It sounds like Beverley Craven." It's impossible to explain how great it was to pick up the phone and hear his voice shout "STAN!!". Whenever we did meet up I'd be pissing myself laughing and, as is always the way at bleak times like this, I really wish I'd seen more of him in the last few years. He was a fucking brilliant bloke, I owe him so much and I will miss him enormously.

Bob Stanley November 2010