Life's A Shindig! - The latest newsletter
Hi and welcome to the latest newsletter. We’re celebrating here, hence the title, for two good reasons!
First, the Smash LP is finally on its way to the next stage of becoming a real record! The mixes are all done, sleeve photos and text sorted, last decisions made, it’s going to be a gatefold sleeve LP! And a 4 panel digifile CD, and a cassette! So it’s ready for the trip to the actual pressing plant! And the release date is pencilled in for October.
Secondly, we’re double celebrating because just as the Smash LP preparation comes to an end, Squire are featured in the new issue of Shindig! A whopping five page spread, out today - Issue #178! It’s actually a revisit to an interview in Shindig #48 from 2015, but the timing couldn’t be more helpful, because it puts Squire back in people’s minds right when there’s a new record due to be released, and Shindig will hopefully help to bring a few more brethren to the temple of Squire!
You can get Shindig on news stands or order it here -
https://www.silverbackpublishing.rocks/latest-issue/
or get the digital issue here -
https://pocketmags.com/shindig-magazine
If you know someone who'd enjoy the article, please send this newsletter on to them!
The feature follows on from last month’s Shindig jangle-pop issue which placed ‘Girl On A Train’ at the top of their singles list and pondered that:
‘Squire were always ahead of the curve’ when it came to jangle pop!
Shindig have echoed the same sentiment again in this month’s article, and taken it further!
They say it well -
“SQUIRE fashioned a string of perfect pop records that not only marked them out from their mod revival peers but presaged the jangly psychedelia of the Paisley Underground and the ’80s college radio powerpop sound.”
That feels particularly interesting at the moment. With the emergence of not only The Lemon Twigs but now Sharp Pins — who covered four Squire tracks on their Mod Mayday 23 CD, now also released on vinyl — the archive starts to fall into an interesting perspective.
The 12-string sound is actually quite a recognisable part of Squire: an amalgam of British pop sensibility, Californian culture and a mod ethos, and it is encouraging to realise that sound also places us alongside contemporary bands outside the usual mod revival cohort!
You can see the Sharp Pins LP here and listen to the tracks too! https://sharppins.bandcamp.com/album/mod-mayday-23
Eagle eyed fans will spot the Jetset silhouette on their cover art - and Paul Bevoir is doing the Smash artwork too! Another nice connecting coincidence!
The Shindig feature is a good read! It’s adapted from Carl Tweed's original article and interview which first appeared in 2015, but who’s read that recently? And it’s great to revisit some of the perennial Squire stories from an alternative perspective.
Some of the highlights are-
- Mark Perry (Sniffin’ Glue fanzine) telling me, after I played him ‘I Wanna Be Your Boyfriend’, all I needed was a band. Hence Squire!
- Mixing Get Smart at Ocean Way in Lionel Richie's downtime, and using the same echo chambers they used on Pet Sounds.
- Rodney Bingenheimer in Los Angeles turning over the whole KROQ night and playing 26 Squire songs.
Here’s a link to a clip from that actual KROQ show!
- The cassette I compiled prior to recording September Gurls— Big Star's 'September Gurls', Shoes' 'Boys Don't Lie', Three O'Clock's 'Jet Fighter', 20/20, The dB's — handed to Squire’s Kevin and Jon to explain the sound I was after for the post Get Smart sessions.
- And then right at the end of the article, there's this: demos were recorded for an album, tentatively called Smash. It never came out!
And that brings us up neatly to today!
Just to whet your appetite a bit more -
Here’s another track from the SMASH record called ‘I Want It Back’.
And it seems an apt description of the journey to retrace the recording approach and recover all the original equipment used in the sessions, the tape machine, mixer, delay unit, guitars, microphone. They all played a part in the remix and understanding how the sounds were recorded and mixed originally in 1985
It’s been a busy last few weeks. The album has taken a remarkable amount of time to get to the final stage. The tracks have had to be carefully remixed because the aim has been to make it sound like itself, rather than turn a 1985 recording into a 2026 one.
Being able to split the original backing tracks, a process called stem-splitting, like they do for The Beatles re-issues means the songs can now be remixed in stereo!
Nothing has been added to the original performances. Indeed, when I tried replaying a part to fix something, it simply sounded wrong! It was impossible because you could hear the newness of it against the original performances. It’s like renovating an old house. You can’t replace the period features with modern equivalents and expect them to disappear. Restore a Victorian house with modern double-glazed windows and however technically superior they may be, they look wrong.
So instead the work became restoration: separating and cleaning up the original recordings, removing clicks and pops that had been buried in the mixes, and allowing the music to breathe in stereo while preserving what was actually played.
It’s been worth it though!
And while all this has been happening, something else has quietly happened by stealth rather than through any sudden surge: we’ve sold out of both the Get Smart! and Get Ready To Go CDs. The records continue to fly out of the door in all directions, increasingly to people discovering Squire for the first time. So alongside manufacturing Smash on LP, CD and cassette, we’re going to restock both Get Smart! and Get Ready To Go on CD.
This time we’re breaking with the old 1980s jewel-case tradition and moving to gatefold-style cardboard Digipacks, bringing the CDs visually into line with the LPs.
So it’s a good time to remind you that the records are available not only on the hilorecords.co.uk website, but also
eBay,
Meanwhile, over on Substack, as usual, I’m going to expand the story, and look out in the next couple of weeks for a special anniversary post and finally - news on how to order the Smash LP!
All the best from Anthony/Squire