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It's Fire Engines Week in Outsideleft! It's Fire Engines Week All Week

It's Fire Engines Week in Outsideleft!

It's Fire Engines Week All Week

by LamontPaul, Founder & Publisher
first published: August, 2024

approximate reading time: minutes

Fire Engines: chrome dawns, is released by Cherry Red on August 30th

It’s Fire Engines Week all Week in Outsideleft. Great things are happening here to coincide with the Cherry Red Records release of the double CD retrospective, Fire Engines: chrome dawns, on August 30th. Tim London talks to Davy Henderson, founding member of the Fire Engines; DJ Fuzzyfelt recounts the impact the Fire Engines had on his listening life… There’s a video gallery so you won’t have to look further, an investigation into the measure of the bands’ influence with a look at Through The Crack In The Wall: Josef K biography by Johnnie Johnstone’s; and, a review of the chrome dawns CD squeezed in there too.

Chrome DawnsI am amazed by the number of people who simply aren’t aware of Fire Engines at all, it breaks my heart really. Whereas music fans will know them to have been and remain one of the most influential bands of all time. A Velvet Underground from Leith Walk (Community Centre) set. 

The original Fire Engines line up consisted of David (Davy) Henderson, (vocals and guitar); Murray Slade (also on guitar); Russell Burn (drums) and Graham Main (bass). Their sound, unique, combustible and confrontational. Their initial recordings between 1980-81 sparkle and stick it to you with intrinsic verve. It’s so like they couldn’t help themselves. Oh wow. And now so much of everything has been collated for the new Cherry Red release. 

Fire Engines: chrome dawns, features all Fire Engines’ Codex Communications/Pop: Aural recorded output; also the two 1981 John Peel BBC Sessions, the latter featuring tracks unavailable elsewhere, and essential live recordings including Fire Engines’ debut live performance at Leith Community Centre, the band’s memorable appearance at 1980’s ‘Why Does The Pope Not Come To Glasgow?’ Edinburgh Fringe and one of the band’s legendary 30-minute sets at Edinburgh Valentino’s captured during the summer of 1981.

Fire Engines: chrome dawns track list

DISC ONE
CODEX COMMUNICATIONS CDX 01, December 1980

1 Get Up And Use Me
2  Everything’s Roses 

Lubricate Your Living Room POP: AURAL AAC 001, January 1981
3  Plastic Gift
4  Get Up And Use Me
5  Sympathetic Anaesthetic
6  Discord
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)

POP: AURAL POP 010, May 1981
12  Candyskin
13  Meat Whiplash

JOHN PEEL SESSION
Recorded February 23rd 1981 / Broadcast March 9th 1981

14  Candyskin
15  (We Don’t Need This) Fascist Groove Thang
16  Untitled
17  Discord

PREVIOUSLY UNRELEASED
18  Sympathetic Anaesthetic
19  New Thing In Cartons
20  Big Gold Dream (Unused Intro)

POP: AURAL POP 013, December 1981
21  Big Gold Dream

JOHN PEEL SESSION
Recorded November 14th 1981 / Broadcast November 23rd 1981

22  The Big Wrong Time
23  Qualitamatic
24  Young Tongues Need Taste
25  Produced To Seduce To


DISC TWO

LEITH COMMUNITY CENTRE, March 16th 1980

1  The Untitled One
2  Insert Yourself
3  Discord

WILF SMARTIES LIVE SESSION, August 2nd 1980
4  Sympathetic Anaesthetic
5  Get Up And Use Me
6  Hungry Beat
7  Everything’s Roses
8  The Untitled One

WHY DOES THE POPE NOT COME TO GLASGOW?
EDINBURGH FRINGE, August 18th-September 6th 1980

9  Get Up And Use Me
10  Discord
11  Hungry Beat
12  Everything’s Roses
13  Get Up And Use Me (Reprise)

EDINBURGH VALENTINO’S CLUB, August 9th 1981
14  Produce To Seduce To
15  Get Up And Use Me
16  Hungry Beat
17  Plastic Gift
18  Discord
19  New Thing In Cartons
20  Coca Cola Cowboy
21  Meat Whiplash
22  Candyskin

CC SOMERVILLE SHOW, January 12th 1981
23  Clip (Excerpt)

NEW! 000, December 2004
24  Jacqueline


Essential Information it's Fire Engines Week

It's Fire Engines Week
It's Fire Engines Week in Outsideleft
Getting to Know the Fire Engines
A Dayglo Mohair Jumper - An interview with Davy Henderson
Everything Happens So Fast
Cheekbones and Speed
chrome dawns

LamontPaul
Founder & Publisher

Publisher, Lamontpaul founded outsideleft with Alarcon in 2004 and is hanging on, saying, "I don't know how to stop this, exactly."

Lamontpaul portrait by John Kilduff painted during an episode of John's TV Show, Let's Paint TV


about LamontPaul »»

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