Dubstar: Anywhere THE FIRST DEMO

Gear, the cassette album by The Joans

Dubstar, who at this point was known as The Joans, had already made an album that was released to the local press. Yet despite the efforts that Chris and I had made to boost our profile, we were essentially unknown on the Newcastle music scene. Most, if they knew us at all, knew us through the profile of my club nights, and that felt like a dead end to me. Jesmond wasn’t Bristol, we couldn’t launch an alternative act off the back of a DJ’s reputation, especially as my nights focussed on either the student culture or Indie Rock. They were incredible fun, but neither style was particularly cool in 1994, and neither were we.

Flyer for Westworld, Steve Hillier’s club night at Planet Earth, formerly Walkers nightclub

But it wasn’t a dead end. Four months earlier Sarah Blackwood had joined us through those same club-scene connections. Her singing was a leap above my own. Where I sounded like the 1980s, Sarah sounded exactly like 1994, with a voice that hit you differently from the other singers on the Newcastle scene. Something important was changing for The Joans.

‘Gear’ didn’t have a hit single, but it had early versions of Disgraceful, popDorian, If It Isn’t You and Not So Fast. The rest of the cassette was strange twisted vignettes similar to the interludes on the Disgraceful Remixed album. Weird stuff, and this was not helping us. As one reviewer put it: ‘The Joans don’t know who they are or what they want to be’. He was more accurate than we realised.

But in January 1994 it all changed, and this is the recording that made that change. Anywhere was the first song The Joans recorded with Sarah on vocals, and in that moment Dubstar was born. We sounded fundamentally different from Gear, another big leap forward. I didn’t fully appreciate this until I played this demo to my friend Graham Ramsay, the promoter at the Arena in Middlesbrough. Where previously he’d been politely supportive of us if not much of a fan, now there was a look on his face of ‘hmmm….’. That meant a lot.

DUBSTAR’s original studio at Steve’s in Jesmond, Newcastle upon Tyne, 1994

The first Anywhere demo sounded like the beginning stages of an actual record, maybe a hit? Underneath the indie-guitar noodlings that Chris and I had been making, there lurked some big songs. And now that we were working with a singer who sounded and looked the part, we might have a chance of getting somewhere. Other tunes followed in quick succession. With Anywhere, St Swithin’s Day and Week In Week Out on one demo cassette it was much easier to get gigs. Mission accomplished, next stop Darlington.

ANYTIME I’M FREE

Anywhere began life in my studio bedroom at Manor House Road, Jesmond in the early months of 1991. It was a simple melody (“I’ll be around Anywhere, any place you want me…”) played over a very different chord sequence that you can hear at the end of the Disgraceful Remixed album. And there it stayed, running around in my head for years. I wrote the lyric while DJing at Planet Earth at the Westworld club night, and I changed the chord sequence to fit a new beat that owed a lot to our musical heroes: William Ørbit, Andrew Weatherall and One Dove. Chris added his guitar riff and we were set.

All the drums were samples I’d recorded into my Roland W-30 sampler, including the classic Amen Break (and a secret sample from Howard Jones!). The kick and snare were made in my Korg Mono/Poly, as was the bass line. The two other stars of the show were the Yamaha DX100 which played the off-beat chords, and the Casio CZ101 which plays the distinctive riff just before the first chorus.

Sarah came round to my flat on Grosvenor Avenue to record her vocals. The whole backing track was first recorded to cassette, bounced down to DAT, recorded back onto the cassette with Sarah adding her two vocal lines on the remaining free tracks. It felt a bit amateur, but we got some good results.

THINKING BACK NOW

Sarah Blackwood, March 1994

The number one thing we learned from this period, and something that I keep returning to, is that you can’t make successful music alone, rarely can you do it all by yourself. Chris and I were becoming insular in 1993, a little detached from the Newcastle scene. But meeting Sarah threw the doors open again.

Sarah was known on that scene but was an unknown quantity. Hanging out with the singers of other acts, she held the position of ‘friend of the bands’, and that was about it. But Sarah had that rarest of qualities, incredible undiscovered talent. When she joined Chris and me, The Joans became Dubstar. We would go on to be the first band from Newcastle to be signed to a major record company since…well, I’m not sure. Maybe it was since the Kitchenware acts like Prefab Sprout and The Kane Gang, but they were both from County Durham. Lighthouse Family (which featured Paul Tucker, the pianist from Walkers Nightclub!) were signed quickly after us, but that was about it from Newcastle for a long while. If I have that wrong please let me know. One thing I noticed writing this blog, between Dubstar and The Lighthouse Family, Prefab Sprout and The Kane Gang there are no band members from Newcastle. To be fair, Chris is from Gateshead so that’s as close as damn it, but still…

Anywhere was, in my opinion, the first Dubstar song. More than a hundred tunes later, it wasn’t the last.