Fire Engines: chrome dawns, Double CD Edition

• Featuring all Fire Engines’ Codex Communications/Pop: Aural recorded output.

• Plus the two 1981 John Peel BBC Sessions, the latter featuring tracks unavailable elsewhere, and essential live recordings including Fire Engines’ debut live performance at Leith Community Centre, the band’s memorable appearance at 1980’s ‘Why Does The Pope Not Come To Glasgow?’ Edinburgh Fringe and one of the band’s legendary 30-minute sets at Edinburgh Valentino’s captured during the summer of 1981.

• And a track from the 2004 ‘reformed’ Fire Engines; ‘influencers’ now covering the ‘influenced’ with 2004 Mercury Prize Winners Franz Ferdinand’s ‘Jacqueline’.

• With a 32-page illustrated booklet with extensive sleeve notes by accomplished writer Neil Cooper together with a recent interview with all four original members (Davy Henderson, Russell Burn, Murray Slade, Graham Main).

Fire Engines’ life as a band might have been over before it had barely begun, but the punk sired Edinburgh band’s short life blazed with incident and colour. ‘Boredom or Fire Engines – You Can’t Have Both’ went the legend. The small and imperfectly formed back catalogue they left in their wake sounded like they had crawled out of a cellar and come blinking into the inner-city light in a parallel universe somewhere between Leith Walk and CBGB’s. Boredom wasn’t an option.

Edinburgh’s incestuous inter-band family tree also included crossovers with The Flowers and Boots for Dancing, both of whom released singles on Bob Last and Hilary Morrison’s Pop: Aural label. Following the release of their debut single – ‘Get Up and Use Me’ / ‘Everything’s Roses’ – on the Codex Communications imprint – Fire Engines too found a home with Last and Morrison’s post Fast Product label.

Now remastered from Bob Last’s original master tapes together with two accompanying

John Peel Sessions, ‘Chrome Dawns’ is the definite Fire Engines artefact including the 7” inch – ‘Candyskin’ / ‘Meat Whiplash’ – now regarded as a classic; the mini album – Lubricate Your Living Room – as a wilfully perverse objet d’art; and the 12” – ‘Big Gold Dream’ – best remembered by some for its sleeve. Despite such limited output, Fire Engines had a rich history the brevity of their lifespan doesn’t do justice.

TRACK LISTING

1 Get Up And Use Me

2  Everything’s Roses

CODEX COMMUNICATIONS CDX 01, December 1980

3  Plastic Gift

4  Get Up And Use Me

5  Sympathetic Anaesthetic

6  Discord

7  New Thing In Cartons

8  Hungry Beat

9  Lubricate Your Living Room Pt. 1

10  Lubricate Your Living Room Pt 2

11  Plastic Gift (Version)

Lubricate Your Living Room POP: AURAL AAC 001, January 1981

12  Candyskin

13  Meat Whiplash

POP: AURAL POP 010, May 1981

14  Candyskin

15  (We Don’t Need This) Fascist Groove Thang

16  Untitled

17  Discord

JOHN PEEL SESSION

Recorded February 23rd 1981 / Broadcast March 9th 1981

18  Sympathetic Anaesthetic

19  New Thing In Cartons

20  Big Gold Dream (Unused Intro)

PREVIOUSLY UNRELEASED

21  Big Gold Dream

POP: AURAL POP 013, December 1981

22  The Big Wrong Time

23  Qualitamatic

24  Young Tongues Need Taste

25  Produced To Seduce To

JOHN PEEL SESSION

Recorded November 14th 1981 / Broadcast November 23rd 1981

DISC TWO

1  The Untitled One

2  Insert Yourself

3  Discord

LEITH COMMUNITY CENTRE, March 16th 1980

4  Sympathetic Anaesthetic

5  Get Up And Use Me

6  Hungry Beat

7  Everything’s Roses

8  The Untitled One

WILF SMARTIES LIVE SESSION, August 2nd 1980

9  Get Up And Use Me

10  Discord

11  Hungry Beat

12  Everything’s Roses

13  Get Up And Use Me (Reprise)

WHY DOES THE POPE NOT COME TO GLASGOW?

EDINBURGH FRINGE, August 18th-September 6th 1980

14  Produce To Seduce To

15  Get Up And Use Me

16  Hungry Beat

17  Plastic Gift

18  Discord

19  New Thing In Cartons

20  Coca Cola Cowboy

21  Meat Whiplash

22  Candyskin

EDINBURGH VALENTINO’S CLUB, August 9th 1981

23  Clip (Excerpt)

CC SOMERVILLE SHOW, January 12th 1981

24  Jacqueline

NEW! 000, December 2004