Heeeeyyy... Speed Trials!

Dandelion Adventure - Speed Trials

Dandelion Adventure - Chickenfeed

The Fall posting last week got me thinking of all the bands that have been influenced by The Mighty Fall, there have been many including early Pavement and their ilk, but I've decided to go with one of my old favourites Dandelion Adventure, the self proclaimed "Greatest Fall Tribute Band..... in Preston".

I loved pretty much everything about this band from their shambolic recordings featuring razor sharp guitars that could take the top of your head clean off from 50 yards and that fuzzed to buggery and back bass sound, to their cheeky interpretation of the classic Sonic Youth photo they used on their Puppy Shrine record, which these first two tracks are taken from.

Speed trials is possibly the easiest to listen to track of theirs, and how bloody catchy is it... I guarantee that after listening to this track you'll be using the phrase "Heeeeyyy... Speed Trials!" at every given opportunity... much to the bemusement of everyone around you....

Chickenfeed is a whole different kettle of fish.... It's bloody noisy, but bloody gorgeous, not in a beautifully sung and orchestrated Scott Walker kind of way, more of a jesus... what a bloody gorgeous racket... I want to be in this band kind of way.
Sounds like :- The Fall as played by The Jesus And Mary Chain on a shitload of speed.
Yeeesss!

Dandelion Adventure - Jinxs Truck

And to finish up with here's a track from their second and last release Jinxs Truck, which has a great drawing of an armadillo on the cover...
I think more bands should incorporate the armadillo into their artwork...
I like armadillos.


Their recorded output was very sadly a bit thin on the ground... a grand total of 13 tracks in all split between their two releases Puppy Shrine ('89) and Jinxs Truck ('90), but what a couple of corking records. They also recorded a Peel session in 1990, and there were plans to release the whole lot on one CD, which would be great.... so fingers crossed from me for this in the future.

Dandelion Adventure were signed to Action Records, a great little shop/label that started as a record stall in Blackpool in 1979 before shortly moving camp to Preston, they also released some Fall records and the early Boo Radleys stuff... bonus.

As to what the members of Dandelion Adventure have all been up to since the bands demise...
Well, It's a little difficult to trace them as they kept using different aliases on their records...
But David Chambers went on to play drums for Cornershop for the first four or five years (that being my favourite period of theirs too.... possibly a coincidence, but I think not).
Ajay moved to Holland and put a band called Donkey together and released a couple of records before forming another band called Bent Moustache...
And here's the twist... Marcus Parnell (aka J.Frank Parnell or Fat Mark, Dandelion Adventures singer) went on to design some Fall sleeves including the great Country on the Click.... you couldn't script this better if you tried.
Anymore info on what any of them are up to nowadays would be very greatly received.

Their records sadly aren't generally available anymore, but Action Records usually have a few copies lying round, so you might want to give them a try.


Visit - Action Records

Simon
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