Hello and welcome to the latest Squire Fan Club newsletter.
We’re very excited to announce that the white-label test pressings for the SMASH! Vinyl album have arrived - and they sound fantastic!
The record goes into production next week, and we’ll be opening the order page then. It will be available on vinyl as a gatefold sleeve album, in two colours, translucent blue vinyl, and classic black vinyl, in a limited edition of just 300 copies! It is also on CD as a gatefold digifile to match the vinyl, and on cassette - because we know how much you liked the cassette when we released Get Ready to Go! Indeed, here it is! And there's only a handful left, so if you want one, click on the picture - and be quick!
We want to make sure everybody who wants one gets a copy of SMASH, so we’ll also be writing to you individually when ordering opens as well.
We’ll have more details next week, once we’re certain of the delivery dates, but we’re expecting the records to arrive around the middle of October. Making records takes a surprisingly long time: we first mentioned the album back in May, so it’s both brilliant and something of a relief to have reached this stage. But it exists, it sounds wonderful, and it’s coming!
Following the release, we’ll be playing a couple of special live dates.
On Saturday 28th November, we return to Cambridge for a headline show, a city Squire has played constantly since 1979, and one we’ve always loved going back to. Then, at the beginning of December, on Sunday 6th, we’ll be appearing alongside our friends The Jetset for a special one-off show at The Lexington in London. It should be something like an early Christmas party.
And while we’re talking about The Jetset…
Last month, Squire were featured in a whopping five-page article in Shindig! magazine. Look out for the new issue, which contains an equally substantial interview with The Jetset! - and which also mentions Squire and HiLo Records because we released their wonderful “April, May, June and The Jetset LP” in 1986,
so an important part of their catalogue, and I recently performed with them onstage at the 100 Club.
And Paul also designed the SMASH sleeve, so we're in constant touch!
In fact, we've been talking about the Boys About Town single with Ed Ball, Paul Bevoir and Simon Smith from Mood Six, recalling the show we all played together on KUSF in San Francisco in 1985, which came out as an EP on Little Teddy in 1995.
So its a remarkable coincidence, that not only Paul and I are playing together on stage a couple of times this year, but Mood Six played their first date in 20 or so years at the Water Rats yesterday, and here they are with Phil Ward on vocals - and there's Simon Smith on the drums!
Also, Ed Ball had a tribute album released recently, on The Beautiful Music label, and has provided a personal commentary to each featured track and reminiscences of the era, and you can read that here, by clicking the sleeve!
And so it’s suddenly very 1985 again, with Paul, Ed and Simon!
And that is perfect for SMASH! Because the album was conceived during that era. However, no one has ever heard it, apart from a few tracks leaked here over the last few weeks, so its all new!
One other feature in Shindig! this month that caught my eye are Sharp Pins, whom we keep mentioning for a very good reason. They’ve just released their Mod Mayday ’23 set on vinyl through K Records, and, extraordinarily, five of its eleven tracks are Squire songs. Almost half an album of Squire - which is completely bonkers.
We loved their version of The Face of Youth Today, but now they’re featuring Live Without Her Love as the lead off track on their Bandcamp site. It’s fascinating hearing what somebody else discovers inside one of your records.
You can find the album here:
It’s also available on coloured vinyl from Rough Trade.
The most remarkable thing is that Kai Slater is only about 20 years old. The same age I was when it was first recorded! This isn’t homage, revival or nostalgia. It’s simply somebody finding the songs and loving them - or at least we presume that’s what happened!
More next week, including full SMASH! details and the link to order.
Thank you, as always, for supporting Squire!
Anthony
Squire / HiLo Records