More Tea! (Rare Re-Post Shock!)

Nick Haeffner - The Great Indoors

ESWA re-post shock! Something quintessentially English from St. Albans' Bam-Caruso label. The Great Indoors is the debut (and only) solo album by former Tea Set guitarist and Hopeful Chinaman Nick Haeffner. I had forgotten how much I loved this record, it was only after my recent Bam-Caruso post a few weeks ago I was reminded to dig the album out, dust it off and give it a good listen with older ears. Some twenty years after it's last play, decades in a box have thankfully done little to diminish its charm.

The opening You Know I Hate Nature is a gentle saunter through a country garden during a hot British summer and is one of a few pleasing instrumentals on the album. The wonderfully freaky Sneaky Monsters and The Master were both singles with no audience though I am sure I once did stock the latter on 12" in my provincial chain store employer back then. The lush strings and tolkienesque lyrics of Don't Be Late were also found on the first Bam-Caruso sampler. Over twenty years on and I still have no idea what Furious Table is all about ...answers on a postcard please. The clever Breaths, the psych beats of Back In Time For Tea (also a single), and the gentle folk of Steel Grey are prime examples of Haeffner's varied and skilled songwriting, whilst the closing epilogue of the title track walks us back over those same summer lawns as the opening track, but this time more upbeat and with some lovely plucky guitar and electric piano melodies. Freaky deaky!

Ripped from a vinyl album released on Bam-Caruso Records (KIRI 071) in 1987 to high quality lossless FLAC audio

A1. You Know I Hate Nature
A2. The Sneaky Mothers
A3. The Master
A4. The Earth Movers
A5. Don't Be Late
B1. Furious Table
B2. Breaths
B3. Back In Time For Tea
B4. Steel Grey
B5. The Great Indoors

Sneaky Mother...

Nick Haeffner - Sneaky Mothers

Ripped from a 7" vinyl single released on Bam-Caruso Records (OPRA 60) in 1986 to high quality lossless flac audio.

A. Sneaky Mothers

B. World Spinning Sadly (by The Parking Lot)

Nick Haeffner - The Master

Ripped from a 12" vinyl single released on Bam Caruso Records (PABL 072) in 1986 to high quality lossless flac audio.

A1. The Master

A2. Steel Grey

B.   Song From The Bottom Of A Well

Nick Haeffner And The Readymades - Back In Time For Tea

Ripped from a 12" vinyl single released on Bam-Caruso Records (PABL 073) in 1986 to high quality lossless flac audio.

A.   Back In Time For Tea
B1. Mean Guitar
B2. Ev'ry Time We Say Goodbye

At the end of 2013, I upped my copy of Nick Haeffner's only album during a Bam-Caruso Records splurge. I ripped these too but they sat on a hard-drive which failed a few months back, and it has taken me a little while to get them re-worked.

Sneaky Mothers is one of the stand-outs on The Great Indoors album with its blend of English eccentricity and folky psychedelia. This featured on a rare Bam-Caruso jukebox and radio play single backed with an obscure sixties track by The Parking Lot, which sounds as if it was lifted from an acetate. The Master is more up-beat but still weird enough to evade the commercial market. I do like his dreamy version of Steel Grey and the William S. Burroughs sampled Song From The Bottom Of A Well has an industrial feel. Under the guise of Nick Haeffner And The Readymades,  Haeffner harks back to his time with post-punk eccentrics The Tea Set. I am a big fan of the b-side Mean Guitar which sounds like an exercise in using as many guitar styles as possible on one instrumental track. I'll let you make up your own minds about his industrial drunken karaoke take on Every Time We Say Goodbye.

Back In Time For Tea

The Remayns - The Remayns First E.P.

From the remains of The Tea Set came The Remayns, essentially Nick Haeffner, Clive Pig, Martin Calloman and Gary Hawkins re-formed as the missing link between early eighties garage-punk and retro-psychedelia. Four old numbers are covered on an excellent multi-colour splashed clear vinyl 7" EP. I'd guess that the pressing process would ensure no two singles are the same design. The Remayns cover The Squires, The Byrds and Paul Revere (in that order), and do it pretty damn well. The was to be the first and only Remayns release.

Ripped from a 7 inch vinyl single released on Bam-Caruso Records (NRIC 029) in 1988 to high quality lossless flac.

A1 Why
A2 Going All The Way
B1 Go Ahead
B2 Just Like Me

More Tea, Vicar?

Nick Haeffner - The Great Indoors

Something quintessentially English from St. Albans' Bam-Caruso label. The Great Indoors is the debut (and only) solo album by former Tea Set guitarist and Hopeful Chinaman Nick Haeffner. I had forgotten how much I loved this record, it was only after my recent Bam-Caruso post a few weeks ago I was reminded to dig the album out, dust it off and give it a good listen with older ears. Some twenty years after it's last play, decades in a box have thankfully done little to diminish its charm.

The opening You Know I Hate Nature is a gentle saunter through a country garden during a hot British summer and is one of a few pleasing instrumentals on the album. The wonderfully freaky Sneaky Monsters and The Master were both singles with no audience though I am sure I once did stock the latter on 12" in my provincial chain store employer back then. The lush strings and tolkienesque lyrics of Don't Be Late were also found on the first Bam-Caruso sampler. Over twenty years on and I still have no idea what Furious Table is all about ...answers on a postcard please. The clever Breaths, the psych beats of Back In Time For Tea (also a single), and the gentle folk of Steel Grey are prime examples of Haeffner's varied and skilled songwriting, whilst the closing epilogue of the title track walks us back over those same summer lawns as the opening track, but this time more upbeat and with some lovely plucky guitar and electric piano melodies. Freaky deaky!

Ripped from a vinyl album released on Bam-Caruso Records (KIRI 071) in 1987 to high quality lossless FLAC audio

A1. You Know I Hate Nature
A2. The Sneaky Mothers
A3. The Master
A4. The Earth Movers
A5. Don't Be Late
B1. Furious Table
B2. Breaths
B3. Back In Time For Tea
B4. Steel Grey
B5. The Great Indoors