THE 12 DAYS OF CHRISTMAS – DAY 8: JACK ADAPTOR

On the eighth day of Christmas, 3 Loop gave to me…..

…. A CHRISTMAS MESSAGE AND A FREE DOWNLOAD FROM JACK ADAPTOR!

Here’s Fred and Christopher with a little Christmas message for you!


A Christmas gift from Jack Adaptor

Jack Frost may be nipping at your toes but here come Jack Adaptor with a little track to warm you up on these wintry days.

To download the track just enter your details below…



EXPLORE THE WORLD OF JACK ADPATOR!

Watch Number One Record

Watch Get It Right First Time
Watch The Circle
Watch Burmah Gold

JACK ADAPTOR – J’ACCUSE! THE ALBUM


Jack Adaptor - J'Accuse!

Jack Adaptor - J'Accuse!

Jack Adaptor’s new album, J’Accuse!, is available now on CD, LP and Download.
Order your copy now at the 3 Loop Music Shop and get an exclusive, signed copy.



J’ACCUSE!

1. Number One Record
2. Get It Right First Time
3. The Circle
4. If Not Now, When
5. Zodiac Bones
6. Paper Thin
7. V.U.
8. Wall Builders
9. Antonin Artaud


Click here for all the details on J’Accuse!

Praise for J’Accuse!
“If you can’t find anything to enjoy on J’Accuse, you’re not listening carefully enough”
Backseat Mafia – 8/10

“An album that has left the past behind, and expanded its horizons. Indie is not the world.
You might not know and might not care that these songs share a creator with former indie chart hits like “River of Diamonds” and “Steamroller”, it’s great to hear old voices doing new things, and doing them this well, with a freshness and intelligence.”
Record Rewind Play – 8.5/10

“J’Accuse! is turning out to be something rather special”
Andrew Collins

“a rare beast; an album that bears repeated listening, that doesn’t treat you like an eight year old, that demands you come and meet it half-way. J’Accuse! is intelligent pop music with suss which maintains that there is still something of worth to be done with that form of expression… why is no-one else doing this?”
Louder Than War

“erudite, eclectic and enormously enjoyable… one of those all-too-rare quietly triumphant records; confident, fun, adult, fully formed and self contained.”
The Mouth Magazine

“there’s no doubting J’Accuse! is a mighty accomplished piece of work”
Isolation Records

NEW RELEASE: Christopher Cordoba

“I often said that there isn’t a better unknown guitarist in London than Chris Cordoba and I stand by this. His combination of toughness in tone and his street-wise approach is contrasted with his fluidity, elegance and technical bravado. He’s got blues, jazz, NY downtown experimental, glam, no wave, new wave, new age wrapped around his fingers. Here we have an artist whose ability of self-expression has pushed the world of guitar into new territory…” Max Vanderolf, LMS

CHRISTOPHER CORDOBA – US POOR HUMANS


Christopher Cordoba - Us Poor Humans

Order Christopher Cordoba - Us Poor Humans

Us Poor Humans is Christopher Cordoba’s third collection of instrumental music and is again charged with imagination, intrigue and emotion. It is a dynamic, filmic collection, which morphs seamlessly from genre to genre while being very much a singular statement. Cordoba seems totally in control of the contrasts of shade and light in his music, giving us just enough information to settle on before we are introduced to another dizzying guitar line, sweet synthesizer or intriguing mood.

Touchpoints of the album include Jaga Jazzist, John Foxx, Steve Reichian, Spike Jonze, Kraftwerk, Tortoise, Jim O’Rourke, EST and even Jackie Mittoo meeting Georgie Fame. These pull together to form an set of 13 tracks each of which could be the soundtrack to a film. And someone should make the films these songs deserve.

Order the album now on CD or Download at the 3 Loop Music store – click here

“a determinedly intelligent listen… Christopher Cordoba has a gimlet eye and a magpie ear for bits and pieces of sound which fit wonderfully well together to create something unexpected.Louder Than War

STOP, LOOK, LISTEN

Vanishing High And Low

Us Poor Humans

4 Day Weekend

THE 12 DAYS OF CHRISTMAS – DAY 2: THE FAMILY CAT

On the second day of Christmas 3 Loop gave to me…..

…. AN EXCLUSIVE GLIMPSE INTO THE FAMILY CAT ARCHIVES!



Ahead of the re-issue of Tell ‘Em We’re Surfin’, Kev and Fred have been pulling boxes out from under the stairs, finding long lost cassettes and all manner of recordings from their earliest days. And on one of the cassettes was this!

25 years ago, pretty much to the day in December 1989, they recorded this radio session, playing Concrete and Gabriel’s Wings. As Fred says, it’s The Family Cat doing an impression of the third Velvets LP!


EXPLORE THE WORLD OF THE FAMILY CAT!

Watch our exclusive interview with Fred and John
Watch the Airplane Gardens video
Watch a Family Cat Interview from 1990 with Steve Lamacq


Watch The Family Cat perform Just A Mirage
Watch the Place With A Name video
Visit The Family Cat Shop

THE FAMILY CAT – FIVE LIVES LEFT: AN ANTHOLOGY


Sonic Youth once claimed that The Family Cat were their favourite UK rock band, so it is about time that there was a collection of their finest tracks.

Compiled by Paul Frederick (aka Fred) and John Graves this 2CD set tracks the band’s career from the first single, Tom Verlaine, on Bad Girl through to previously unreleased tracks from the abandoned 4th album.

All the band’s singles feature including the classic Steamroller, and Colour Me Grey and River Of Diamonds which feature PJ Harvey on backing vocals.

Together with BBC session tracks, key album tracks and b-sides this 37 track set is a must for any discerning record collection!
Order your copy at the 3 Loop Music store along with an exclusive, classic, re-issued t-shirt!


CD1

1. Tom Verlaine (12″ Version)
2. Remember What It Is That You Love
3. Thought I’d Died And Gone To Heaven
4. Place With A Name (Single Version)
5. Colour Me Grey (Featuring PJ Harvey)
6. Steamroller (12″ Single Version)
7. Across The Universe
8. What We Talk About When We Talk About Love
9. Jesus Christ
10. River Of Diamonds (Featuring PJ Harvey)
11. Airplane Gardens (Single Version)
12. Amazing Hangover (Single Version)
13. Springing The Atom (Single Version)
14. Wonderful Excuse (Single Version)
15. Goldenbook (Single Version)
16. Bring Me The Head Of Michael Portillo
17. Tom Verlaine (Re-Bereted)


CD2

1. Sandbag Your Heart (BBC Peel Session) *
2. Slept In Clothes (Album Version)
3. From The City To The Sea (BBC Peel Session) *
4. Endlesss Cigarette (Album Version)
5. Gabriels Wings (Album Version)
6. Too Many Late Nights (Album Version)
7. Furthest From The Sun
8. With A War (BBC Peel Session) *
9. Gameshow (BBC Peel Session) *
10. Fire Music
11. Move Over I’ll Drive (BBC Mark Goodier Session) *
12. Rockbreaking (Album Version)
13. Blood Orange
14. Nowhere To Go (BBC Goodier Session) *
15. If You Think You Know What Love Is
16. Ace Of Cups *
17. Snowplough *
18. Mount Pleasant (BBC Goodier Session) *
19. Taking Your Sister Home *
(* – denotes previously unreleased track)

NEW RELEASE: Jack Adaptor

Twenty years after the demise of independent rock favourites The Family Cat, singer and lyricist Paul “Fred” Frederick returns with a new record.

J’Accuse! is his latest recording as Jack Adaptor, a duo with songwriting partner Christopher Cordoba, Fred wrote the lyrics and sings the songs and Chris provides most of the instruments, production and mixing skills. It is released on CD, Download and limited edition 180g vinyl LP (includes MP3 download code) on 13th October 2014.

Fans of The Family Cat will recognize the vocal style and find joy in the sophisticated songwriting of Frederick and Cordoba, from up-tempo indie rockers like Number One Record (a tribute to Alex Chilton and Big Star) to atmospheric, genre-defying songs such as V.U. (check out the unpeeled banana!).

Fred refers to J’Accuse! as “a distillation of 20 years thinking about music and the kind of record I really wanted to make. Now I feel I really have something to say and the musicians to give it life”.

Tracklist
1. Number One Record
2. Get It Right First Time
3. The Circle
4. If Not Now, When
5. Zodiac Bones
6. Paper Thin
7. V.U.
8. Wall Builders
9. Antonin Artaud

Order J’Accuse! at the 3 Loop Music store.

The word on the street…
“there’s no doubting that J’Accuse! is a mighty accomplished piece of work” Isolation Records

“an album full of quality songwriting” No Crowdsurfing

“J’Accuse! is turning out to be something rather special” Andrew Collins

“erudite, eclectic and enormously enjoyable… one of those all-too-rare quietly triumphant records” The Mouth Magazine

“refreshing sunny side up two step buzz bleached power pop deceptively shimmying its way on the blind side through your defences” The Sunday Experience

“intelligent pop music with suss which maintains that there is still something of worth to be done with that form of expression… why is no-one else doing this?” Louder Than War

EXCLUSIVE PLAYLIST: The Roots Of The Cat – Part 2

The Roots Of Family Cat Part 2

Click to listen to The Roots Of The Cat Part 2 playlist

Fred, frontman of the Family Cat, has compiled a playlist exclusively for us at 3 Loop Music giving an insight into where The Family Cat sound came from. In this second part of the playlist, Fred explodes myths, reveals inspirations and where The Family Cat’s name came from!

Five Lives Left, The Family Cat 2CD anthology is available now – click here to get your copy.

Listen to the playlist in Spotify here.

While you listen, here’s Fred to talk you through it, track by track.

Sonic Youth – Kill Yr Idols
Working at ULU we did Sonic Youth a couple of times early on, once supported by Big Stick and Live Skull – a truly legendary line-up. That period Sonic Youth was raw and uncompromising. The later records do have a kind of serene beauty (“Sugar Kane” etc), but the in-your-face de-tuned energy of the early records really had an impact on us, especially Tim, who was an unreserved Sonic Youth fan, a fact reflected in the number of (mainly unplayable) guitars he had on stage. The thing about TFC being Sonic Youth’s favourite UK band is a total lie, though Steve Shelley was at the Goldsmith’s Tavern when we supported Loop as he was brought along by Epic Soundtracks (who we knew from around). But Sonic Youth were definitely the Family Cat’s favourite American band.

Pussy Galore – Dick Johnson
I adapted the riff for Too Many Late Nights from this song, believe it or not, well it was my take on it. I saw Pussy Galore lots of times, including the infamous Mean Fiddler show in 1988 when they kept us waiting for an hour and a half, then finally came on and played a 30 second set. I had rare US copies of the very early records, but this one is on the “Dial M” album.

Big Star – I’m In Love With A Girl
Covered this acoustically with John and Tim in rehearsal, we also attempted “You and Your Sister”, but these are hard songs to do if your singer is neither Alex Chilton nor Chris Bell. The “other” TFC seemed to have the monopoly on Big Star love in the 1990s, so I guess we played it down, though we did cover (and release a single of) “Jesus Christ”. I last saw Big Star at the Shepherds Bush Empire a couple of years ago and it was wonderful. Alex Chilton was one of those people who found it too easy to be a rock star, and perhaps I just tried too hard, a subject I have tried to address recently in Jack Adaptor’s “Number 1 Record”.

Guy Clark – Desperados Waiting For A Train
Our manager Pete Lawton introduced me to all sorts of interesting country rock music: Guy Clark, Townes van Zandt, Jerry Jeff Walker, John Stewart, which led me to try to write songs in that mode (“Happy To Be Here” on the B-side of “Springing The Atom” is one, and was directly inspired by “Desperados Waiting For A Train”). I would have liked to have done more of that kind of stuff, though the Rockingbirds got there first. My first band after Family Cat, Pure Grain, with John Graves on Bass, was much closer to that spirit. I have a signed copy of the Guy Clark LP this song is on. I saw Guy play at the Union Chapel in the mid 90s and it was a wonderful show.

Love – Maybe The People
We all agreed about Love, as most sensible people do – it’s together and untogether at the same time. “Blood Orange” came from this. The vocal and guitar work together in places, which is quite Family Cat. John Graves probably introduced this because his Mum had a lot of cool LPs from the 60s and 70s – Laura Nyro, Fairport Convention and Todd Rundgren (though it was cooler to listen to Love in 1989).

Strawberry Alarm Clock – Incense and Peppermints
The very name The Family Cat came from the back of a Strawberry Alarm Clock LP (it was the name of the lighting company who did their live shows) spotted by Tim, who came up to me and said it to me as a potential name. I happened to be holding a blue plastic cat I had just got from a Christmas cracker and it seemed serendipititious at the time. Though we could have been called Paper Hat.

Jacques Loussier – Air On A G-String
John played it and we turned it into “Hamlet For Now”. There is incredible space in this music, now I actually come to listen to it. John really knew his stuff. He loves a mixture of incredibly cool music and was the King of Easy Listening a long time before it was hip in 1995. His record collection went from being worth 50p in 1990 to £30,000 at the height of the easy boom. It’s now back to 50p, much to John’s relief.

Acker Bilk – Stranger On The Shore
John used this as the intro to “Sandbag Your Heart”, thundering into the riff after. I can’t remember why, but it was funny at the time and we stuck with it.

Scott Walker – Copenhagen
I was quietly in love with Scott after my friend Orville played me “Scott 1” late one night after a night out at the Falcon in Camden. This led to a horribly misguided version of “Montague Terrace” which was put out as a free single with the “Furthest from The Sun” LP.

The La’s – Timeless Melody
Tim was the real La’s fan but I got it too – incredible songs. We saw them at The Marquee and it was a really memorable show. This is one of the great all time records, still sounds fresh today. This has a brilliant guitar solo.

Neil Young – Cortez The Killer
We played this song lots of times but only at in-store appearances. I still can’t decide if I like this or “Powderfinger” better, but “Cortez” is really emotional. “He went dancing across the water….”

Jonathan Richman – Roadrunner
I was in love with this song as much as Jonathan Richman was in love with Massachussetts! When I was 15 I heard “Roadrunner” on John Peel in the dark through the little earpiece I had and it was like hearing the sound of freedom. Next day after school I bought the single from Revolver Records in Southampton bus station. The sound of suburbia I recognised by being from suburbia and in love with America, the America I had never visited. “She Cracked” was a favourite of Jelbert and Tim and I think Kev’s favourite was “Hospital”.

Paul ‘Fred’ Frederick, December 2013

Click here to listen to Part One of the playlist.

Five Lives Left, The Family Cat 2CD anthology is available now – click here to order your copy.

EXCLUSIVE PLAYLIST: The Roots Of The Cat – Part 1

Fred, frontman of the Family Cat, has compiled a playlist exclusively for us at 3 Loop Music giving an insight into where The Family Cat sound came from. It’s too good not to share so click and listen to the tracks that influenced and informed the band and their music.

Five Lives Left, The Family Cat 2CD anthology is available now – click here to get your copy.

Listen to the playlist in Spotify here.

While you listen, here’s Fred to talk you through it, track by track.

Husker Du – New Day Rising
Jelbert and I saw Husker Du at the Electric Ballroom on 1986 or so, they played for what seemed like four hours, the crowd got thinner and thinner but we stuck it out. This track is the “overture” to the melodic, angry and maudlin masterpiece New Day Rising. I think Husker Du were really influential on the ideas Jelbert brought in for Cat songs.

Dinosaur Jr – Little Fury Things
Tim bought the “You’re Living All Over Me” LP and we played it to death in the summer of 1987 when Tim, Jelbert and John all lived in the same house in Finsbury Park. Classic Dinosaur Jr line-up, tight, loose and super-melodic. And the production is great too – noise and clarity at the same time, something we aimed for in the studio but never quite pulled off. Later in the band’s life I tried to echo the musical breakout section of this song for a Family Cat song (“Whaling Station”, now lost).

Velvet Underground – What Goes On
When Jelbert and I started to be friends we’d hang out in his bedsit in North Pole Road on Saturday afternoons and drink Wild Turkey bourbon and listen to Orange Juice and the Velvets. By the time Final Score came on we’d have done the Wild Turkey and listened to “Live 69” three times: amazing versions of the best songs, Sterling Morrison at his violently rhythmic best, Lou Reed sounding like he actually means the words, Mo Tucker putting down the beat like someone driving a steamroller across a rickety wooden bridge. There is a hypnotic, transcendent certainty in this song that says: this is perfection defined by its imperfections. If only we had realised that these were ace musicians, not beginners like us… would that have put us off? The relentless lack of a guitar solo should perhaps have told us something.

Television – Marquee Moon
One of my favourite songs of all time. Just to hear it takes me back to being 15. I bought the 12” single of “Marquee Moon” in Virgin Records in Southampton, along with the Pistols “God Save The Queen” and the first Jam LP, not a bad haul. Later I used to see Tom Verlaine in the launderette in Goldhawk Road where I lived for a while (moving along the Hammersmith and City line). I didn’t see Television live until Glastonbury in 1992, a Contrane-y set which went with the LP they released around then, and I recall being as excited about that as I was about the Family Cat set the next day. At the Royal Festival Hall a few years back they did older material and Tom Verlaine put so much vibrato in the left hand during the solo to “Marquee Moon” he had to keep taking his hand off the strings to shake the cramps out. I stole the hook from a song from Tom’s Dreamtime solo LP for the outro to our “Tom Verlaine”.

Creedence Clearwater Revival – Fortunate Son
We covered this on Tim’s suggestion, he loved Creedence, especially the photo of John Fogerty inside the live LP, where he’s wearing a checked shirt and has his arms outstretched in front of thousands of adoring fans. CCR had many hits but seem somehow to fall outside pop history, perhaps because of how they sound, perhaps because they were Boston boys pretending to be from the bayou… The Family Cat live version was a struggle for me as I couldn’t really sing it.

Question Mark and the Mysterians – 96 Tears
We played this live a lot in the early days, mostly as an encore. I think John introduced the idea of covering it, and actually it’s quite TFC in that the drive comes from the bass line. It gave me the chance to take the mic and show off, something I was (am) very bad at. The middle eight is weird, almost undeliverable. The Stranglers covered it too, and when we found out, we stopped.

The Litter – Action Woman
We were all really into Nuggets in the mid-eighties, plus another series of vinyl LPs on a German label I can’t remember the name of. This song was on one of the volumes of the latter and we covered it really early on in rehearsals, way before we had the chops to do garage rock properly. People think it’s easy, but you have to remember that the American local bands that did those garage/pysch/beat records in the 60s were usually good, live-show hardened musicians who just chanced upon cheap studios and made singles. And this is a stone-cold classic example!

Hollies – Bus Stop
We recorded a version of this for Imaginary Records, but I don’t remember ever playing it live. Tim loved this and introduced it. Bus Stop has the classic Hollies mix of prosaic, mundane lyrics and sweeping, arching melody lines and close harmonies. Deceptively hard to sing. Carousel is probably an even better song.

MC5 – Kick Out The Jams
The greatest rock intro ever. When I first met Fraser in the shop we worked in I put on an MC5 LP to impress him with my rock credentials. It worked. John Graves and I played the whole of the live LP on a drive from Calais to Dijon recently at deafening volume and it made us feel very good indeed. The root of many Family Cat songs, from Wonderful Excuse to Move Over I’ll Drive… But oh to have had the voice (and political awareness) of Rob Tyner. Saw a reformed MC5 in London a couple of year ago and my hair stood on end.

Small Faces – Afterglow (Of Your Love)
Tim and I once argued for hours with Dedicated’s Doug D’Arcy in a Paris restaurant about who was better, the Kinks or the Small Faces. Doug was for the Kinks, and I guess he had a point having lived through the period, and also I now think the “Village Green” album is as close to a perfect record as you can get. But the Small Faces were often cool and tuneful and heavy, everything the later version of The Family Cat wanted to be. (Only they had Plonk and Steve Marriott). We were once amazed by Terry Staunton’s ability to play Small Faces covers on an acoustic guitar at a hotel in Liverpool after a Cat show. An NME hack a better musician than the band? Could it be? It be.

Camper Van Beethoven – (We’re A) Bad Trip
We went on a band outing to Dingwalls to see them and it was an amazing gig. They could PLAY. This song is from the “CVB III” LP and was a band favourite. “Went to your party, drank all your beer, we’re a bad trip”: a bit like we perceived ourselves as a band… Great musical section after the second chorus, cheesy, woozy organ and harmonizing guitars. The bass player was cool. David Lowery went on to do Cracker, and those records are brilliant too.

Orange Juice – Tenterhook
Another group that Jelbert and I initially bonded over. I had bought all the early singles and the debut LP in Southampton and saw the band as a part of a new kind of future. I got the Rip It Up LP at HMV where Jelbert and I worked for a spell in 1986/7, before I went to live in France in a last ditch attempt to not become a failed indie-rocker. But you can’t beat destiny. This is such a beautiful love song, Edwyn Collins’ mannered voice is cloaked with emotion. The ending and the coda gets me every time, and reminds me of an HMV Christmas party where I decided to love one girl rather than another.

Primal Scream – Velocity Girl
Before the onset of pomposity, Primal Scream wrote some great songs and this one, a Kev Downing favourite, is short and succinct. In 1986 people aspired to this. I stole the atmosphere of this song for “Place With A Name” and some of the other early Cat pop songs.

Paul ‘Fred’ Frederick, August 2013

Five Lives Left, The Family Cat 2CD anthology is available now – click here to get your copy.

An interview with The Family Cat – Part 4

During the compiling of Five Lives Left, we sat down with The Family Cat’s Fred and John who told us their rock’n’roll tales and the inside story of one of our favourite bands.

Click and watch Part 4, the final episode, where Fred and John discuss what was happening as the band split up and how they feel looking back at their legacy.

Five Lives Left: The Anthology is available here.

An interview with The Family Cat – Part 3

During the compiling of Five Lives Left, we sat down with The Family Cat’s Fred and John who told us their rock’n’roll tales and the inside story of one of our favourite bands.

Click and watch Part 3, in which Fred and John recall their encounter with the nascent PJ Harvey and the recording of their second album, Magic Happens.

Five Lives Left: The Anthology is available here.

An interview with The Family Cat – Part 2

During the compiling of Five Lives Left, we sat down with The Family Cat’s Fred and John who told us their rock’n’roll tales and the inside story of one of our favourite bands.

Click and watch Part 2, in which Fred and John tell us about the band’s songwriting process and their early success.

Five Lives Left: The Anthology is available here.

Five Lives Left – Louder Than War Review

The esteemed Louder Than War have given Five Lives Left, The Family Cat 2CD anthology a glowing review.
They said “I knew that this compilation would be good, but it is so lovingly compiled that it exceeds my expectations. This collection emphatically shows that the Family Cat had the songs and the talent to have been major players. I recommend you buy this compilation in order to hear the missing link between shambling C86 type indie and the Kasabians, Muses and Beady Eyes of today – remember what it is that you loved.”

Read the full review here.

Buy your copy of the album here.

Read the Loder Than War review of the Family Cat's Five Lives Left