My Bloody Valentine

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My Bloody Valentine were an Irish-British shoegazing rock band. Sharing their name with that of a Canadian slasher film, they formed in 1984 in Dublin and continued into the early 1990s. Original members were guitarist/singer Kevin Shields and drummer Colm O'Ciosoig. The band's lineup during their heyday also included singer-guitarist Bilinda Butcher and bassist Debbie Googe.

1 Early history
2 Settling in London
3 Conway departs; Butcher joins
4 Creation Records
5 Discography
- 5.1 Albums
- 5.2 EPs
6 References
7 Notes
8 External links

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Early history

Colm and Kevin met in the late 1970s as teenaged boys, when they both answered adverts placed by another boy. The two both joined the band in question, The Complex, soon discovered they shared an interest in punk rock, and immediately formed a friendship. The pair played in many bands around Dublin over the next six months, including playing in a band with Liam Ó Maonlaí, later the singer with Hothouse Flowers.

Towards the end of 1983 the two formed their own band, with Dave Conway. The band was filled out by various members, and split up and reformed on several occasions during 1984. Also during this period Conway was travelling through Europe, and on the strength of the bands home recordings and the contacts he made on these travels, had managed to book the band a concert in Holland. The three recruited Conway's then girlfriend Tina to play keyboards, adopted Conway's suggested name My Bloody Valentine for the concert, and moved to Holland. They stayed in Holland for three months before lack of opportunities and a lack of the correct documentation meant they had to leave. The band then chose Berlin as their next destination, where they recorded the mini-LP This Is Your Bloody Valentine for Dossier Records. Unfortunately the record failed to have the expected impact, and after four months the band left Berlin, returning to Holland briefly before settling in London around the middle of 1985.

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Settling in London

After a period where the members lost contact with each other as they looked for places to stay, the band regrouped and decided to audition for bass players. The band had not used a regular bass player, like The Doors before them instead relying on the keyboards to fill out the bottom end of the sound. However, Conway's girlfriend had decided to leave the band, not feeling confident in her abilities as a keyboard player, and as the band had taken to using a bassist towards the end of their stay in Berlin, they felt recruiting one was vital to furthering the band. Having been given the number of a bass player in London, namely Debbie Googe, by someone in Berlin, they invited her to audition, and ultimately to join the band, fitting in rehearsals around her day job.

The band were at this point rehearsing at Salem Studios, which was connected to the record label Fever Records. Impressed by what they heard, Fever agreed to release an EP. On the strength of this Googe left her job, and the EP, titled Geek, was released in December 1985. The band soon began to play on the London gig circuit, but the record again failed to have the impact the band had hoped for, and with the band feeling things weren't moving quickly enough, Kevin was contemplating moving back to New York, where sections of his family lived.

However Joe Foster, an associate of Creation Records, had decided to set up his own label, Kaleidoscope Records, and persuaded the group to record for him. The EP, The New Record by My Bloody Valentine was the result, released in early 1986. The band also began to step up their live appearances, developing a small following and venturing outside of London for gigs. Unrecorded songs from this period include Destination Ecstacy, a song noted as being in the vein of their later works on Isn't Anything and Loveless.

The next record the band released was Sunny Sundae Smile, an EP released in February of 1987 by the Lazy Records label, who also managed The Primitives. The label had been interested in the band for a while, losing out to Joe Foster previously, with the band turning to them this time due to Foster's indifference. The band then spent a couple of months performing in London, and also managed to secure a support slot with the Soup Dragons. It was during their supporting of the Soup Dragons that Conway announced his decision to leave the band; he had been ill for a while and felt he wasn't reaching his potential with the band. Conway has since pursued a career as a writer.

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Conway departs; Butcher joins

Conway's departure led to the band being without a vocalist, a situation they decided to remedy by placing adverts in the music press. This process proved torturous, Shields noting "It was pretty dangerous, I made the mistake of mentioning the Smiths because we liked their melodies, the whole thing was disastrous and excrutiating, you should have seen some of the fruitballs we got."

The band eventually turned to recommendations, and experimented with having two vocalists; Bilinda Butcher and a male vocalist called Joe. It soon became apparent that Joe was unsuited to the band, and Kevin took on second vocalist duties alongside Butcher, whom he noted "sounded all right and she could sing one of our songs which sounded fine, we just had to show her how to play guitar."

Under pressure from Lazy Records to produce an album, the band compromised, citing the need for time to allow the line-up to gel; the band agreed to record an EP followed by a mini LP. The EP, Strawberry Wine was comprised of three tracks and released in August of 1987. The mini-LP followed soon after, titled Ecstacy. The EP has been noted as being "certainly the better of the two releases" - Ecstacy has been criticised as showing "a group who appeared to have run out of money half way through recording - this is actually true". Ecstasy was also hit by production difficulties - Shields citing errors in the transferring of the music from tapes to the masters by the cutting engineer.

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Creation Records

At this point the band were courted by Creation Records, and upon being told "not to worry about anything, just do it", they signed, entered the recording studios and emerged eight months later with You Made Me Realise. The group followed with Feed Me With Your Kiss and the LP Isn't Anything (1988), which, together with the followup LP Loveless (1991), are considered representative of their sound: a distinct blend of noise rock, ambience, and off-kilter pop. The thick, swirling, multi-layered guitar sound pioneered by My Bloody Valentine would later be termed shoegazer by the British press (because of the band's tendency to look down while performing on stage). The tag was applied to a number of new alternative pop-rock or rock outfits of similarly heavily layered and distorted guitars and soft, hushed vocals like those generally sung by Bilinda Butcher. The songs were written by Shields, except for "Touched", a short instrumental by Colm O'Ciosoig. In 1999 Pitchfork Media declared Loveless to be the greatest album of the 1990s Template:Ref; however in their 2003 revision of the list, it moved down to number two, swapping places with Radiohead's OK Computer Template:Ref. Kevin Shields has also been noted by Alan McGee as "a genius artist. A visionary." Template:Ref, whilst an NME review of Loveless declared, "...however decadent one might find the idea of elevating other human beings to deities, My Bloody Valentine, failings and all, deserve more than your respect." Template:Ref

After leaving Creation Records in 1992 and signing with Island Records, the band fell into a creative black hole. Rumors spread among their fans of albums being recorded and then shelved. Debbie Googe left the band to form Snowpony; she had not played bass on their recordings since You Made Me Realise. Colm O'Ciosoig eventually left and recorded an album with Hope Sandoval of Mazzy Star. Kevin Shields sporadically collaborated with other artists, most notably Experimental Audio Research, Curve, Sugar and Primal Scream. He revealed in a fall 2003 National Public Radio interview that Island Records quit financing his My Bloody Valentine endeavours after he spent half a million pounds of their money.

As of 2004, My Bloody Valentine were rumored to be re-recording five additional tracks for the re-release of 1990's Glider EP, minus Debbie Googe. In 2003, Kevin Shields contributed some music to the score of the Sofia Coppola film Lost in Translation.

Similar bands include The Boo Radleys, Lush, Slowdive, Curve, and Ride. Their influences include The Velvet Underground, Sonic Youth, Cocteau Twins, late-1970s Wire, The Jesus and Mary Chain, and independent artists such as The Pastels. Kevin Shields has also named The Beach Boys as a personal influence. Whether a follow-up to Loveless will be made is doubtful as Shields is a reclusive perfectionist and refuses to release an inferior album. Although many rumours still persist and regular stories of new material crop up. Shields himself has stated that he did not spend all his money to build a studio in his house if he did not intend to make any more music. Whether this will happen remains to be seen.