Fire Engines: chrome dawns, Double Vinyl Edition

• 2LP limited vinyl pressing.

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

• Plus the two 1981 John Peel BBC Sessions, the latter featuring tracks unavailable elsewhere.

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

DISC ONE

Side A

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

Side B

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

DISC TWO

Side C

1 Candyskin
2 (We Don’t Need This) Fascist Groove Thang
3 Untitled  
4 Discord   
JOHN PEEL SESSION
Recorded February 23rd 1981 / Broadcast March 9th 1981
5 Sympathetic Anaesthetic
6 New Thing In Cartons

Side D
        
7 Big Gold Dream (Unused Intro)
PREVIOUSLY UNRELEASED
8 Big Gold Dream
POP: AURAL POP 013, December 1981
9 The Big Wrong Time    
10 Qualitamatic     
11 Young Tongues Need Taste    
12 Produced To Seduce To
JOHN PEEL SESSION
Recorded November 14th 1981 / Broadcast November 23rd 1981