It took until 2025 for the complete set of their recordings, almost all unreleased, by this ephemeral quartet at the crossroads of punk-funk and free jazz, to appear on CD.
On April 18, I was shopping at my favorite vinyl dealers when I heard an unidentified sound on Keller Street. It sounded punk-funk, but in the most abrasive way, a bit like the tracks from 23 Skidoo’s Coup era (1984) or Shriekback’s My Spine (Is the Bassline). All of this might have seemed familiar if the band hadn’t laid over it a certain assuredness, even arrogance, that recalled the swaggering nihilism of The Birthday Party, Nick Cave’s first band. But a Birthday Party where Rowland S. Howard’s sharp guitar had been replaced by a karate-practicing bassist capable of a virtuoso gymkhana inspired by free jazz. Such a cocktail is quite rare, so I asked for the name of this creature.
“Splat!, with an exclamation point.” Splash! So. Never heard of that — and yet, I thought I had exhausted them one by one, the acts that had seen the light after buying Junkyard by The Birthday Party. Apparently, there was still one left under the counter.
Splat! is a quartet from Long Eaton, a small town halfway between Nottingham and Derby. It must be something to be a musician in a town barely bigger than a pocket and to feel like the last outcast there. Splat! probably even made them bitter, because as this record sweeps through their brief career (1981-1985), you hear the band not softening its edge, as was the case for almost everyone in mid-1980s England, but instead becoming more and more wild, tribal.
This group, torn from the outset between The Pop Group’s We Are all Prostitutes and the decaying invocations of The Birthday Party, would logically have shifted in 1983 toward something more dance-oriented. They chose chaos. So there was no manager, no label to steer them toward money and fame? No, they were alone and self-published. On their own operation, Ron Johnson Records, a one-man empire run by Dave Parsons, the singer.
Parsons wasn’t twenty yet when Splat! started. He was almost the oldest in the band. His drummer, Paul Walker, was only 17 and claimed to listen only to free jazz. The bassist, Mark Grebby, 20, a near-old man, enjoyed anything industrial and confessed a fondness for patchouli-infused progressive rock. John Allsopp, the guitarist, barely 18, claimed allegiance to all the English post-punk outfits, with PiL at the forefront.
If Splat! recorded their first single at Cargo studio, it’s because Joy Division and Gang of Four had laid down some of their records there. John Peel played the single on the radio. Life could begin. A second single was released in 1983, but nothing happened. They played dirty, arrived by mini-van to Amsterdam, pushed chaos even further, and split after that rare excursion outside their industrial England. Dave Parsons decided to keep the label going and signed on Ron Johnson Records a few acts that today are regarded as seminal: The Ex, Big Flame, The Mackenzies, The Shrubs, A Witness, Stump.
To release these bands he believed in, he worked all day in a biscuit factory. It took until 2025 for the complete set of their recordings, almost all unreleased (ten on the vinyl edition), to be released on CD. Is that all? Almost. Ron Johnson, the name of their label, was the surname of the last man to be hanged in Nottingham. This kind of anecdote that only England knew how to manufacture between 1977 and 1985.
And Yeah So (1981-1985), Lantern Records (vinyl, 10 tracks) and And Yeah So (1981-1985), Corbett vs. Dempsey (CD, 19 tracks).
