Ochre Records Night
London, Upstairs At The Garage
Sunday, February 29th
20-22 Highbury Corner, London, N5 1RD
Tel: 020 7607 1818
Nearest Tube: Highbury & Islington
8pm – 12 midnight Pay On Door £6

MIKE RANDLE (of Love)
+ THE LAND OF NOD
+ 90 DEGREES SOUTH
+ A Free Signed by Mike Randle Cd for the best answer on this one (this also includes one FREE Pint of your choice!!)

—In the song SNUG HARBOR, the waitress is also an actress. why is that?— send yer answer to: doorsbootlegs@hotmail.com

MIKE RANDLE, the lead guitarist in Arthur Lee’s Love, headlines the Ochre Records Night Upstairs At The Garage to promote his forthcoming Ochre Records album ‘Barstool Blues’.

Mike hails from Los Angeles and has become an integral part of the current Love line-up, not only on lead guitar but on backing vocals as well, and has worked with Arthur Lee in Love since 1993. Mike is currently on Tour in the UK with Love, taking time off to perform this solo gig, as well as helping with the writing, arranging and recording of new LOVE material to be released in 2004.

Mike along with Rusty Squeezebox formed BABY LEMONADE in November 1992 with David “Daddyo” Green and Henry Liu (who, following protocol was replaced by Dave Chapple in 1995). They started playing shows throughout L.A., one of which caught the attention of ’60s folk-psycho legend ARTHUR LEE. Lee fired his band and asked BABY LEMONADE to back him as the re-formed LOVE. They agreed and, before they even had time to wash the stars from their eyes, they were bopping around Europe like they’d been born there. They still worked as BABY LEMONADE, though, and found time to record the WONDERFUL EP on Sympathy for the Record Industry in 1993, followed y their debut full-length for that label, 68% PURE IMAGINATION in 1995. Both received widespread acclaim, and combined with their LOVE activities everything was as solid as Johnson until Arthur Lee’s “3rd strike” conviction in 1996 on a bogus charge that brought that “LOVE train” to a sudden stop.

Carrying on as BABY LEMONADE, 1998 saw the release of their second LP, EXPLORING MUSIC, which was released on Big Deal Records. It was heady times. BABY LEMONADE helped to turn the L.A. underground pop scene into a buzzword by the end of the decade, along with their friends and associates in such bands as WONDERMINTS and THE NEGRO PROBLEM. As 2000 approached, Randle and Squeezebox each decided to record solo albums to explore personal, sonic, and songwriting ground that didn’t fall within the parameters of BABY LEMONADE. Randle’s MY MUSIC LOVES YOU (Even If I Don’t) was released simultaneously with Squeezebox’s ISOTOPES on the independent label eggBERT Records in May 2000. A short UK tour in November was undertaken as well. MY MUSIC LOVES YOU (EIID) was a dramatic departure from any of Randle’s previous musical endeavors — reaching out to envelop everything from bossa nova and kitschy lounge to Prince-style grooviness and the kind of atmospheric soft rock native only to Southern California.

Following the release of the solo albums, Randle and BABY LEMONADE reconvened to begin recording their next opus: THE HIGH LIFE SUITE. After BABY LEMONADE fulfilled their commitment to their record company, Randle enrolled at UCLA to study Film Scoring and was writing music for the as-ever, soon-to-be-released comedy FALLING DOWNSTAIRS when he received a phone call from Arthur Lee, whose prison sentence had been overturned by a California court after 5 years behind bars.

At Arthur’s urging, the guys decided to “Fall In LOVE Again” and picked up where they left off, and have been touring the world ever since, playing to packed venues everywhere they go; from North America to Europe, the UK, and Australia.

Support on the night Upstairs At The Garage comes from The Land Of Nod & 90 Degrees South.

THE LAND OF NOD, whose recent ‘Inducing The Sleep Sphere’ album on Ochre gained rave reviews in NME, The Wire, Careless Talk Cost Lives etc and recently had their John Peel Session on BBC. NME included a review of the album stating ” And Cheltenham’s Land Of Nod offer further proof that these cats know a good space-rock opus when they hear one. With it’s glassy stare fixed on the darkest realms of inner space, ‘Inducing…’ sounds like the Spiritualized LP Jason Pierce could never get round to putting words to. A drifting slush of clicks and pulses, their twin obsessions with the fluffy end of electronic noise and Belgian sportsman Eddy Merckx could mean that The Land Of Nod do for cycling what Kraftwerk’s ‘Autobahn’ did for motorway travel. Got to be worth a go.” Whilst David Keenan in The Wire stated that the album “conjurs the ghosts of countless experimental German roadgoers” adding, “The Land of Nod move further into late night atmospherics and moss coated folk drones, as spiralling metronomic instruments cut up with the burr of automated telephone exchanges, snatches of shortwave drama and eerie alien electronics”. The album has gained rave reviews in Italy (5 out of 5 in ‘Rockerilla’, 7 out of 8 in ‘Blow Up’) whilst Careless Talk Cost Lives stated “The rising soar of ‘Elevator’, the drifting ‘Loose Contact’, along with the driving ‘Eddy’ all surge to an inspirational climax peaking with the title track’‘.

90° SOUTH meanwhile have recently seen the release of ‘Plans For Travel’, which was the follow up to the critically acclaimed Ochre debut album from ‘The Barrier Silence’ and the mini-album on A.A.R Recordings ‘A Distant Memory Of Home’. ‘Plans For Travel’ was a collection of nine pieces inspired by classic journeys and the ground breaking pioneers of land, sea and sky. From the sleek Schneider trophy winning Supermarine S6 sea plane and the huge Ekranoplan cold war ground effect craft to the early electric locomotives and the beautiful Citreon DS. Soundscapes to take you across oceans and continents by trains, boats and planes, airships, cars and motorcycles. 90° South first appeared with the track ‘U.H.F’ on ‘Decalogue’, the tenth and final installment of the Ochre 10” series and with this and the following releases picked up comparisons to Labradford, Calexico and Tortoise. The debut album ‘The Barrier Silence’ was based around the themes of exploration and the Antarctic. Italian music weekly ‘Mucchio’ championed the album describing it as ‘haunting, beautiful and minimalist’. The mini-album on the A.A.R label continued the polar theme being based on the history of a small stuffed Penguin that returned from the Antarctic with Captain Scott’s first expedition and now resides in Cheltenham Museum.

Mike Randle