I Thought You Were Dead...

It's nearly five years since we first heard that new Distractions songs existed from the mid-1990s.  Thanks to Mike Finney and Steve Perrin, we had the chance to hear them in this blog from future-Distractions songwriter, guitarist, head of Occultation Recordings and Granite Shore frontman, Nick Halliwell.  First, the back-story, which mentions the Granite Shore's future records - their long-awaited debut LP has just been recorded in Exeter with June Brides, Phil Wilson and Arash Torabi, and recent Distractions drummer, the legendary Mike Kellie..

Sunday, 6 September 2009

I Thought You Were Dead...

First of all, once again I do apologise for the long silence, but we're currently working hard on the second Granite Shore single and then more records after that. More news about this in the coming weeks. The new single will be Flood of fortune to be released on 7" vinyl on Occultation early in the New Year.

Now, to the matter in hand: last year I wrote a piece on The Distractions. One or two people got in touch to say how much they'd also loved the band and... well, that was that for the time being.

 

Then a couple of months ago a comment was left on that particular page from Mike Finney, the band's lead singer, intriguingly mentioning some demos he and chief songwriter Steve Perrin had recorded in 1995 and that he'd be happy to send them to me. Only he said he wasn't sure how to do so and would check the blog again for a message. I immediately posted one asking him to e-mail me and then... Nothing. I thought he must've forgotten all about this and resigned myself to missing out on the chance to hear these demos. Then finally, a few weeks later, out of the blue I got an e-mail from Mike to which he'd attached five songs.

Now we all know that generally speaking bands shouldn't reform. 10 years ago I'd've said this was pretty much a rule with hardly any exceptions. However now we know better, don't we? Look at third incarnation of The Wild Swans (who, incidentally, will be releasing a new single on Occultation over the next couple of months, I've heard it and it's another absolute corker, but more of that another time...) if proof be needed. Apparently Mike, Steve and some chums got together and played a few gigs in the North-West and then went into the studio. Some of the songs here were originally written for the Distractions first time around and performed by later incarnations live.

[to be continued]