As Bill Drummond once said on his blog: "Who is Luke Haines?"
A similar artist to Mr D. in many ways, Haines has taken a (slightly) more conventional route through rock's malaise since the mid-1980s, but at the same time reflects Bill's irracibil(l)ity. Plus, he's been involved with some of the most amazing pop music ever made.
Very briefly, post-1990, Haines formed a band called the Auteurs - at one point, they were the anti-Suede, sharing column inches and magazine covers, and "Showgirl" became a fondly (if not particularly strongly) remembered single from the immediate pre-Britpop era. Coupled with "The Drowners" and tripled with "Razzamatazz", it acted as a clarion call that things were changing in British rock. But just as most of his contemporaries began to affect Estuary accents and pretend they never read books (or in Oasis' case, would throw books into an estuary), Haines took the Auteurs on a more dangerous road, producing four albums of increasingly dark and skewed indie-pop, even allowing Aphex Twin's old mate Mike Paradinas in to remix some of their tracks. Then (like Drummond) Haines went off on the Way of Pseudonyms - first with Baader Meinhof, his reworking of the Auteurs dark template into jet black, named after a German terrorist group; and then with the synthpop of the equally ghoulishly-named Black Box Recorder (a band featuring the haughtiest-girl-in-school vocals of Sarah Nix, with Haines taking a background, songwriter-and-svengali role).
As the new decade dawned, Haines proclaimed "I'm back, and I'm solo" on the fantastic album 'The Oliver Twist Manifesto'. Now, one of the few other rock mavericks to bang on about Oliver Twist has been Malcolm McLaren, so the ex-Pistols manager was an obvious touchstone for the album. But Bill Drummond fans too will see many echos of "The Man" (both the album, and Bill himself), including Haines' obsession over the vacuity of the current arts scene ("The Death of Sarah Lucas"); his constant obsessing over reaching that rock'n'roll age of 33 1/3 ("the time that Christ spent on earth"); and his insistence that he was going to turn his back on "showbiz". It could be argued that the sublime "Oliver Twist Manifesto" is a brilliant sum of fantastic parts.
Interestingly, in the week running up to his debut solo release, Haines went on the radio proclaiming that there should be a "pop strike". Now, you could argue that for someone who hadn't bothered even the lower reaches of the pop charts for six years, this was pretty rich! But it gave him some publicity (result!) and the album (plus its "sister" record, the soundtrack to "Christie Malry's Own Double Entry") were released to good reviews (if not good sales).
Now, fast forward five years, and one of Bill Drummond's entries on his not-really-a-blog-but-actually-yes-a-blog blog: http://www.the17.org/words/48.htm. Now, I reckon Bill is being slightly sniffy about old Luke, and also possibly disingenious in claiming he's never heard of him. As a young guitarist, Luke had worked (through David Westlake) with members of the Triffids in 1987, and released an album on Creation within a few months of Drummond's "The Man", which again featured members of the Triffids. Haines also appeared solo on "4 Scott", the Scott Piering tribute live album from 2002, which also included a "new" mix of "Justified and Ancient" (actually, just the single mix with added sampled crowd noise) and a reworking of the Orb's "A Huge Ever-Growing Pulsating Brain", too.
So, I would imagine Bill had possibly, maybe, might have heard of him ...
Anyway, you can find links to most of the Auteurs material, along with Black Box Recorder, readily on the internet (or buy it, it's usually quite cheap). Although, if anyone knows of links to the Baader Meinhof album or the "Luke Haines is Dead" set, I'd appreciate it.
Sorry, I know I said brief; but we now come to the nub ...
Pre-1990, in fact pre-1985, Haines was a student at a music college in London. Hoping to go there and meet a John Cale avant guarde type, by the time he reached the scary prospect of a 20th birthday, Haines was worried that his chances of musical expression were slipping away. So, in early 1986, he answered an advert and joined a group called "The Servants", fronted by a grossly-overlooked genius called David Westlake. The Servants had previously released several singles, and done a Peel Session (all of which were collected on a still-available 2006 CD called "Reserved"), but Westlake was on the verge of splitting them up. Briefly signed to Creation, he and his new recruit Haines recorded a six track mini EP, simply called "Westlake", marketed as a solo project rather than a Servants album. It featured the rhythm section of the Triffids as session men. Creation sat on the album for six months before releasing it in 1987, and it bombed.
Here is a link to the long-deleted "Westlake" album on Creation: http://rapidshare.com/files/104545216/Westlake.rar which was taken from the sterling Triffids blog: http://triffidsbeach.blogspot.com
In 1988, a battered Westlake decided to reform the Servants, again with Luke Haines on guitar, and briefly featuring Hugh Whittaker of the Housemartins on drums. This line-up produced one further single (again, available on the "Reserved" compilation) before again disbanding. In 1989, with no record contract and no hope of success, yet another line up of the Servants went back into the studio to record their one and only proper album. This was the ironically-titled "Distinterest", a beautiful collection of 12 songs which aped many of Westlake and Haines' heroes, particularly the Go-Betweens, and was eventually released on Paperhouse records (PAP005CD) in 1990. As you might expect, the album sank without trace - and is so obscure that Windows Media Player doesn't even recognise it when you put the CD on to play!
Deleted for nearly twenty years, I've recently re-dug this album out, and in the midst of my current unashamed Hainesmania, I've been listening to it a lot over the last couple of days. It really is so brilliant that I had come out of semi blogging retirement to share it with people. Apologies for the great preamble beforehand, though!
Link: http://rapidshare.com/files/150804658/_1990__Disinterest.rar.html
Now - soon, hopefully, I shall get around to those Blue Pearl uploads ...
Wow, I had never even heard of this before but it is EXCELLENT. Thank you for sharing it!