Wedding Ritual #4: Dan Newman

Dan Newman 

is best known for his music as the sometime front-man, sometime entirety of Steveless; in which capacity he has a claim to the title of the last great favourite of John Peel. Less widely broadcast activity has included his work in the covertly brilliant The Girl from Headquarters (who disbanded before I finished building their website) and for my own currently long-dormant zine, 'Attack!!!!'. With Syd Howells, he played Glastonbury Festival in 2005 - to an audience that in my memory consists of myself and some highly amused staff from the Late N' Live stage's café. 

In short, in the face of a seemingly otherwise uncaring world, Newman is an eternal favourite not only of John Peel's, but also of mine - and therefore, dear reader, I shall assume from hereforth, of yours.

Here is Dan Newman's Wedding Ritual, in his own words:

Something Old

"I've picked some Steveless for my something old; somehow the last album was over a decade ago. This is Bored, the opening track from the band’s first album for Cherryade, Popular Music in Theory. I could have picked one of the many tracks I did when 'Steveless' was just me - I recorded and released a bunch of EPs before this. That was all the stuff that John Peel picked up on (he loved how I sent him a sack full of CD-Rs when he asked if I had anything other than the first song he got hold of). But this band - with Rhys Herdman, Simon Jarvis and Matt Williams - was when it really felt proper. Being in a band is the best craic. Making noise with a four-track in the bedroom is fun because you can do anything. But bouncing off your friends - pushing each other and laughing at each other, is how it should be for me.

"I love this track, it’s a really important one for the band. It set out our stall - right at the start of the debut album. There was this theme of being bored and beating boredom across the band’s records. And this was the first time we expressed that. I was really into Situationism and that idea of overcoming the ‘spectacle’ of consumer capitalism and empty commodity fetishism through having authentic, first-hand experiences. And what I think is ace is the way we combine that pretension with an introduction that is essentially the theme music from the Banana Splits. That mix of seriousness and silliness is what made Steveless for me. It was a ridiculous band - and so much fun. I do miss playing with those guys, trying to catch each other out on stage - our sets hung together as loosely as possible.

"There’s a Black Sabbath style ‘two-for-the price of one’ trick going on with this tracks that tickles me too. I’ve always loved the way that if you played someone one of those classic Sabbath albums without showing them the track-listing they might not realise that something like Hand of Doom is just one song because it has different bits going on that could easily be two songs. I remember our first  practice with Steve James who took over playing bass for the second album, he stopped half-way through Bored, cheering, all stoked that we had played our first song together. He’d been digging the album and watching us live for the past couple of years (he loved Steveless and I loved his band, Geisha) but he never twigged this was all one song. Because I guess it isn’t."

Something New

No Hit Radio · The Feelings Haver

"My new band is No Hit Radio. We got together last year. This song is from our debut EP that we cunningly chose to self-release during lockdown when we couldn’t do a launch gig. Actually, we haven’t done any gigs at all yet - we’re all itching to get out and play for the first time. 'We' is me, Martin Kelly and Sharon Thompson. We went into the studio to record a Christmas song for last year's edition of the annual Cherryade compilation and ended up doing a whole EP. I’m really proud of it and it’s wonderful to be able to hear it playing on the radio and have my little boy say that’s ‘daddy’s band’. It all came together in a few practices - which sadly feel like a world away already.

"This is the first music I have made since Steveless. I’ve wanted to make music for ages but never found the time with all the grown-up stuff going on. And, to be honest, I haven’t had the confidence to write lyrics for years. I was too self-conscious for a long time; I felt I needed to do something different from Steveless, something better than Steveless. I was putting a lot of pressure on myself, when those old songs were ones that came from us improvising or that I would write on the bus on the way to the recording studio. I think having kids and just singing silly songs to them helped me to loosen up and remember how much I loved making up lyrics. One of the songs on the EP was written up the morning of recording while my boy was watching Mr Tumble (Laughing Song - it’s about, well, laughing). This song here is about having feelings - and that fine line I often tread between wanting to talk about them and being mortified at someone else knowing I ever had an emotion in my life. I love the mocking ‘wah wah wah wah’ refrain that me and Sharon sing, it captures that idea perfectly for me - the EP is named after it.

"We’ve been likened to Sonic Youth in one review, Jon Spencer by a radio presenter. I was probably listening to Dump Him, Adwaith and Surfbort lots when we made it. But we all have totally different bands we’re into so there’s no one influence. There‘s jangly indie-pop and skronky post-punk side-by-side on the record. I play bass for the first time in this band so it’s exciting to come at writing songs from a different angle - and have a much better guitarist than myself playing. I haven’t had that since I played with Steve Marr in the Girl From Headquarters and it’s so liberating to not have to fuss about nailing both the words and the guitar, which I know are the two things most folk notice first. What I think is rad about this band though is how all three instruments are equal, sometimes Sharon’s squealing guitar gets your attention, others it’s Martin’s thunderous drums and sometimes my gut punch of a bass gets you."

Something Borrowed

 

"This is Charmpit, the band that inspired me to start making music again. I went to see them in Cardiff last year - my little boy’s first ever gig - and I was blown away. They were having so much fun on stage - it was a bunch of friends letting the audience into their collective joy of playing together. They were making mistakes, starting and stopping songs, working out what they wanted to play as that went along. They were joking around with each other and the crowd. And the music kicked ass. They were loud and could play hard. They had massive tunes and instantly catchy choruses. They were immense and I had the best time watching them. It made me desperate to be back up on stage and doing the same. So that is when I finally pulled myself together and started up a new band after forever of not making any music.

"They’re a pop punk band with a neat combination of righteous social justice and good-humoured everyday observations. This is a track from one of their pair of stellar early EPs. They released an awesome album this year too but this is my favourite track and it’s from 2017’s Jelly. It’s got everything. It’s called Buckfast My Heart. It gives me all the feels, making me smile and grabbing at my heart strings too. The hooks are huge. The middle eight floors me. Everyone needs to hear this track, it’s just the most perfect pop song I’ve come across in a long time. I can play it ten times in a row and still shout out the final chorus with all the gusto I can manage.

"We don’t sound anything like Charmpit. I don’t think I can capture joy in the same way they do. I would also kill for their sugar sweet melodies. I would like to think we have some of their spirit, though. For me, it’s about where music can take you and the sheer thrill of making noises with some buddies. They’re also wonderfully lo-fi and it feels like you’re in the room when you hear them on record, which is definitely something I try to go for. I love watching them live, the energy is simply infectious - they have everything I want in a band, everything I need in a show, they just give me that buzz. You can see the impact they had, I’ve been talking about getting back into music for years but they are the band who finally gave me that push to go for it. And I’m thankful for that!"

Something Blue

Steveless & Syd Howells · Shit Muriel

"For something blue, I was racking my brains for a song that was a bit rude. I realised that there is no swearing in any Steveless or No Hit Radio song. And thematically, they’re pretty PG - I think this is family entertainment! Nothing blue here. But I made a few records with Syd Howells, and those albums have a lot of swearing and for sure some darker themes (there was an ace Christmas song about burying a body under the snow). I’m assuming he was a bad influence. This is the first song from an album we did for Womb Records (Stolen Owls May Die Fears Owner). The album is a lost classic, proper wonky pop fabulousness. 

"I mostly just shout ‘shit’ lots on it. I sound quite gleeful doing it so it must have been some sort of cathartic release! It was always fun recording with Syd, he comes up with really witty lyrics and we just clatter whatever instruments come to hand until the song is full. Song structures are usually accidental but always seem to work - we’re pretty much a ‘one take, need to listen back’ type act. One of our most enjoyable records was an EP made up of instruments we bought for a fiver from a pound shop the day before. 

"My first ever release was actually a split single with Syd on the utterly brilliant Taffpop Records so he’s been around me since I started making music. The amount of awesome sounds he’s opened my ears to over the years is just immense with endless mixtapes of noise and nonsense. I’ll always remember that we had such a great time ruining Glastonbury festival for the handful of people unlucky enough to see us, probably the same year as this album came out actually. Syd makes awesome tunes these days in My-Ra Superstar. I hope we can make a record together again one day - and I hope it’s absurd as all our old stuff is!"

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You can listen to No Hit Radio's new EP (and buy it on a name-your-price basis) here - updates from the band are available via Mark Zuckerberg's personal website.

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Wedding Ritual #5 will feature Maria Beadell.