Dubstar: Stars by The Joans - the original demo

The Joans: Chris Wilkie, Steve Hillier and Gavin Lee

So in 1993 The Joans became me and Chris again. I’d put together an album called Gear (with artwork by the amazing Adrian Nitsch) which was intended to be a promotional item on the North East gig circuit. I was told you weren’t taken seriously unless you put out an album, so this was ours. It had early versions of Disgraceful, popDorian, Not once Not Ever and Not So Fast On It (plus The Gender We Lose which I revived for the Lost and Foundland series). We had few reviews, with one slating us: ‘The Joans have no idea of who they are what they want to be…’ Devastating, largely because it was correct. Truth hurts.

Gear had included a few terrific pop songs and long weird electronic vignettes, not dissimilar to those I made for the Disgraceful Remix album, just nowhere near as good. I think these had confused everyone, time for a rethink. This sincere crushing blow actually kick-started the process of getting the act together again.

STARS Parts 1-2-3

It was 1993 and I was loving the work of Andrew Weatherall. I’d played out Loaded every Wednesday night for a couple of years, it was a Walkers Nightclub anthem and his mix of My Bloody Valentine’s Soon was already one of my favourite records. But he put out two records in 1993 that blew me away: One Dove’s Morning Dove White* and the Sabres of Paradise mix of Conquistador by Espiritu**. These two records were like a spotlight being shone on a previously unseen path, a way out of the forest. 

I decided we should make a demo of Stars Go Out, one of the songs that didn’t make it onto Gear. We should do it in a proper recording studio too, and make a long dub version of it, Weatherall style, somewhere between Morning Dove White and Conquistador. That was the future!

So one Saturday morning in April 1993 I drove us down to Middlesbrough in my Yugo to record in a studio whose name is now lost to time. We would be there all day with one objective: record and mix a fourteen minute version of Stars, where the first three minutes was exactly as we played it live so I could edit the rest out to send to venues to get gigs. One recording, two uses. Clever stuff.

The result is what you hear on this video. There are three big samples that couldn’t make it onto the Dubstar version of Stars. There’s a big chunk of the end of Pepper Tree by Cocteau Twins that ends every chorus, the drum solo from Time to get Ill by Beastie Boys playing backwards…and the Waiting for The Night synthesizer riff by Depeche Mode which rolls all the way through the last four minutes. That Depeche Mode snippet in particular does sound fine…but too expensive to include on a commercial release and not strictly necessary. Thanks Graeme. 

And thinking about it this morning, those three samples summarise rather well what The Joans was about to become. DUBSTAR: the textures of Cocteau’s infused Dreampop, Hip Hop beats with melancholy electronic instrumentation and lyrics. Nice.

What happened next?

Stars worked, Chris and I got a lot more gigs, there was talk of co-headling on a national tour with two other local bands. I was doing a fair amount of radio presenting too. And thinking back now, we probably could have continued like this for years, doing a lot on the North Eastern music scene, always being on the cusp of something but never quite taking off. It happens to a lot of acts, and my attitude wasn’t helping.

The Joans at The Free Trade Inn, Newcastle upon Tyne

I tend to get distracted easily. Oh yes, I was passionate about getting on with music, but I also took every radio show going, every gig going, every journalist commision, every DJ residency (which continued even after the act was signed, I made more money from DJing in the first couple of years of Dubstar than I did from Dubstar itself!). I also have a habit of falling deeply in love with new records and going off at tangents musically. That reviewer was right, The Joans didn’t know who they were or where they going, and it was my fault. We had so much potential, some exceptional songs, but we were flailing around like a Catherine Wheel that’s come off its pole. 

SUMMERTIME IN JESMOND

It was a sunny Monday afternoon in July 1993. Danilo Moscardini had popped round to my flat in Jesmond. We had known each other for years, not well, but well enough for him to come over. I think I knew his sister first…

He was telling me about a singer he’d been working with, I would later discover she was also his girlfriend. He was pretty excited, I think he was intending to stop singing (he’d had a band called The Songs who’d done the rounds in Newcastle for a while) and have her take over. Or maybe start something new, I’m not sure. Danilo was a little older than me, maybe being an unknown singer in your mid twenties in Newcastle maybe felt a little..like a dead end?  We had the usual cup of tea and then he went off to meet his friend Roger Newbrook at the Carlton Hotel bar at the top of my road.

Next came the most important moment in my entire music career. 

Danilo had been gone for about ten minutes before I realised he’d left the cassette he’d been intending to give to Roger on the table in my lounge. I played it.

There were two songs, ‘She’s Still Sad’ and ‘Dreaming of Going Away’. Both were good but I wasn’t interested in the songs, I was focussing on the singer. She sounded amazing, the purest voice I’d ever heard and with a distinct indie-folk vibe. Like one of those amazing vocalists on the This Mortal Coil albums I adored. And she sang with no vibrato. None, like a female Julian Cope. She sounded amazing. I was blown away, again.

I rang Chris and played She’s Still Sad down the phone to him and I told him that I wanted this person to join The Joans and that I was going off to the pub get her number. I wasn’t thinking of stopping singing, more a kind of extra vocalist, like in the Pixies or something. Chris didn’t seem into this at all, and to be fair I don’t blame him. I was saying I wanted to scrap everything we’d done for nearly two years and start again, this time with a girl, on the strength of a cassette I’d just heard and a person I’d never met. 

But at that moment I was extremely excited. I would have been ecstatic if I’d have known that in nine months time and as a direct consequence of this accident Food Records would want to sign The Joans. In the very same room that Danilo had left his cassette. 

But I’m getting ahead of myself. I still had to meet this singer, and before that I had to convince Danilo he should give me her phone number.

To the pub!

NEXT TIME:

How many versions of Elevator Song can anyone need? Does it matter if you get your nose pierced hours before your debut appearance? And why can’t we stop drinking?

Want more? You can find the story behind every Dubstar song ever recorded including dozens of unreleased songs right here at Dubstar.com

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