Tuesday, April 15, 2008

The White Sisters

The White Sisters was Jeffrey Borchardt of Honeybunch and Velvet Crush’s first band, also featuring Lawrence Bethe on drums and Derrick McBride on bass. Their debut single was produced by Butch Vig in “the fall of 1985” at Smart Studios in Madison, Wisconsin, featuring the songs Misery, Me & You and Nothing Out There. It was released by Boat Records and Tapes, a label about which I am otherwise entirely ignorant.

For some reason, I have a spare copy of this single, so if anyone's interested (and has something I might want) let me know and we can sort out a swap.

A second and final single, Big Girl and A Love Like Lead, came out on the great Picture Book label in 1988. It was produced by Steve Marker, co-owner of Smart Studios with Vig, both of whom went on to form Garbage. The producers, you will notice, did not exert their personal taste upon these White Sisters recordings.

11 comments:

Anonymous said...

Great to see you covering Honeybunch. I wasn't so keen on the first single but Big Girl is one of my favourite songs from that time. It takes me back to the phoneless bedsit in Seven Sisters which was Medium Cool HQ in those days.

Fire Escape said...

Yep, me too: Big Girl is a far better single than its predecessor and one of the overlooked greats from that time. I remember that your postman in Seven Sisters used to steal cash sent to you...

Anonymous said...

I know I should have said Honeybunch / White Sisters but all those Picturebook singles were fairly incestuous. What a great label though.

As for the GPO, I always thought they deserved more money...

Fire Escape said...

Maybe, but not more of my money. Or the 20 quid your granddad sent you for Christmas. Stealing from schoolchildren and pensioners will not win the GPO the public's sympathy.

The Boy and the Cloud said...

thanks a lot for these two posts mate!

actually, when i was on my bike earlier today "big girl" unexpectedly came on and i almost believed it was summer already. hadn't heard the b-side so cheers for uploading it.

andy, what's happened to the mc site btw?

kris
x

The Boy and the Cloud said...

says in the velvet crush (and related) discography that the first white sisters 7" came with a bonus cassette... know anything about this?

cheers

kris

The Boy and the Cloud said...

"misery..." doesn't seem to want to be downloaded. does it work for you?

The Boy and the Cloud said...

don't worry, got it now.
just divshare being a pain in the arse!

Fire Escape said...

I know nothing about a bonus cassette. None of the copies I've seen have had one (although, of course, that doesn't mean there wasn't one).

Panic on 13th said...

There was a bonus cassette with extra tracks but I don't own it. I do own the Sisters demo cassette "Invisible" that I got when I mailed them a letter begging for their first single.

Anonymous said...

Could you re-upload this songs?